The Gist: A couple on their honeymoon are the targets of a vampire cult.
Clarification: Your run of the mill Hammer horror film meaning it is very high quality even if the story is pretty cookie cutter for a Hammer Film. Husband and wife go on vacation, end up in spooky place, head of spooky place wants woman and wants to get rid of guy. Pretty much Dracula without Dracula. This is no coincidence because this film was originally scripted to be a
Dracula film but no Christopher Lee meant no Dracula.
Selling Point/Female Vampire Factor: There is only one real vampire in the film who tends to do the dirty work for the entire cult and that would be Tania played by
Isobel Black.
Any time something vampiric happens during the film she is the one to do it. We're first introduced to her when she goes to the grave of her friend waiting for her to wake up. Instead she finds a shovel sticking through her friends coffin (
which we see earlier in the film that her father did during her funeral suspecting her for being a vampire). Once dear old dad comes back for revenge she goes from innocent girl to deadly vamp as soon as she realizes she's in danger.
As it seems there's a possibility that she's the only real vampire in the group because of this but that's never addressed. It's just odd that she literally has to do anything that relates to biting someone and no one else in the film fangs out at all.
I mean there's even another female in the cult played by Jacquie Wallis but she's seemingly just a background character despite being the head cultists daughter.
Even with this I give the film a
Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5. Out of all the Hammer Horror women to play a vampire Isobel is easily top 5. She barely says a word in the film but her screen time is never wasted.
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