The Gist: After receiving news of her estranged mothers death, a women goes to the ancient castle she lived in to claim it along with the rest of her inheritance just to find out that the supernatural events surrounding her moms death and her entire family history is part of a much bigger plan than now includes her.
Clarification: This film was originally titled "Malenka". Malenka refers to the main character Sylvia's (Anita Ekberg) great grandmother who was a scientist that was looking to find the key to immortality. She was successful in a way as her cure ended up turning her husband into a vampire (who now poses as Sylvia's uncle) but resulted in her untimely death via being burned at the stake (apparently the second leading cause of death in women during the early 1800's behind "mystery plague").
The sub-plot of the film revolves around Silvia's fiance Piero trying to save her from her "uncle". He really doesn't do that good of a job considering the entire movie consists of everyone and their sister (literally) telling the man exactly what's going on yet because he's a doctor him not believing it. He looks the most boneheaded when he witnesses hot bar wench "Bertha" rise from her grave and attack the town doctor despite the fact that it was he who pronounced her dead in the first place. I guess he's admitting that's he's not that good of a doctor after all.
Selling Point: Fantasy style vampires that seem to come right out of Gothic art paintings.
Female Vampire Factor: Technically there are only two vampires in the entire movie. While Count Walbrooke aka Sylvia's uncle is a vampire he never actually shows his fangs. That includes in the lone vampiric scene he has where he bites Bertha leading to her final turn into a vamp. That means all the real vampire action is from the women.
Adrianna Ambesi (Glinka)
Her cleavage is the real star of this film as you can see. Anyway Glinka seems to be the Counts chick on the side. He keeps her locked up in the dungeon cellar under the castle but somehow gets out on a regular basis. We first see her when she sneaks into Sylvia's room to inform her of the eminent danger she's in. This establishes her as the "good" vampire. This warning is then followed by some oddly lesbianic nurturing before the Count catches her, chains her back up and whips her. He then exposes her to Sylvia as a vampire in an attempt to discredit her warnings. My favorite scene in the film with her revolves around Piero's buddy Max seeing her for the first time while waiting for Piero to save Silvia. All he see's is her cleavage and legs and he's in love, so much so that her basically admitting that she's a vampire and has every intention of sucking all the blood out of him seems like a great idea to him. She then seems to forget about her blood lust when he offers to take her back to Rome with him but it doesn't happen though as she ends up getting preoccupied with helping Piero and Silvia escape....or does it?!?
It's pronounced "Bare-Ta" by the way. She is the hot bar made who along with her sister tend to tell everyone who walks into the bar that she's not feeling well and is increasingly weak. It does come off as weird as it sounds "well today's special is ground beef with vegetables and if you happen to be a doctor I've been really week lately" type of stuff. Dr. Piero eventually diagnosis her with anemia and prescribes her some vitamins but she ends up dead the next day after a midnight visit from the count. Despite everyone advising to stake her, Piero of course ignores it (not to mention his buddy Max while being left alone with her body actually seeing her fangs come in and only responding with "what death does to some people" before covering her up) and of course she rises that night full of energy and really, really happy to be a vampire.
So we have a good vampire in black, a bad vampire in white who has a tendency to chase people but never catch them (and you can tell the Count definitely has a "type" as they do resemble one another who both resemble Silvia's great grandmother) so what better way to end a film like this than with a leggy, cleavagy female vampire catfight!
While critics consistently bash this movie for the cheesy acting and repetitive nature of the story I find the whole thing entertaining as more of a comedy (it does seems that the film starts out as a serious horror then gets a lighter tone the further you get into it). At the end of the day though this blog is about the female vampires and in which case the film gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5. They're SUPER hot, aren't stake fodder and the movie is dead without them.
Clarification: This film was originally titled "Malenka". Malenka refers to the main character Sylvia's (Anita Ekberg) great grandmother who was a scientist that was looking to find the key to immortality. She was successful in a way as her cure ended up turning her husband into a vampire (who now poses as Sylvia's uncle) but resulted in her untimely death via being burned at the stake (apparently the second leading cause of death in women during the early 1800's behind "mystery plague").
The sub-plot of the film revolves around Silvia's fiance Piero trying to save her from her "uncle". He really doesn't do that good of a job considering the entire movie consists of everyone and their sister (literally) telling the man exactly what's going on yet because he's a doctor him not believing it. He looks the most boneheaded when he witnesses hot bar wench "Bertha" rise from her grave and attack the town doctor despite the fact that it was he who pronounced her dead in the first place. I guess he's admitting that's he's not that good of a doctor after all.
Selling Point: Fantasy style vampires that seem to come right out of Gothic art paintings.
Female Vampire Factor: Technically there are only two vampires in the entire movie. While Count Walbrooke aka Sylvia's uncle is a vampire he never actually shows his fangs. That includes in the lone vampiric scene he has where he bites Bertha leading to her final turn into a vamp. That means all the real vampire action is from the women.
Adrianna Ambesi (Glinka)
Diana Lorys (Bertha)
So we have a good vampire in black, a bad vampire in white who has a tendency to chase people but never catch them (and you can tell the Count definitely has a "type" as they do resemble one another who both resemble Silvia's great grandmother) so what better way to end a film like this than with a leggy, cleavagy female vampire catfight!
While critics consistently bash this movie for the cheesy acting and repetitive nature of the story I find the whole thing entertaining as more of a comedy (it does seems that the film starts out as a serious horror then gets a lighter tone the further you get into it). At the end of the day though this blog is about the female vampires and in which case the film gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5. They're SUPER hot, aren't stake fodder and the movie is dead without them.
Full Film
To bad we don't get to know what happened to them. After the villain is killed they just disappear from the movie.
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