Product Description

Countess Irina of Karlstein resides quietly in a hotel on the island of Madeira, where she sustains her immortality by feeding on the life essence of men and women. When new victims are found fatally drained of potency, forensic scientist Dr. Roberts consults his colleague, Dr. Orloff, who confirms that a vampire is responsible. Meanwhile, Irina is confronted by a poet who believes he is destined to become her lover and join her among the immortals! Jess Franco's influential erotic horror film is presented here in its full-strength version, and for the first time in a widescreen format. The uninhibited Lina Romay makes her starring debut as Countess Irina in a role that established her as a sex and horror film icon. Submit yourself to the life-consuming thirsts of EuroHorror's most famous Female Vampire!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53660 in DVD
• Brand: ROMAY,LINA
• Released on: 2000-08-08
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 72 minutes

Customer Reviews

The Vampire Eye of Jess Franco
Female Vampire was the first film Jess Franco made after the death of his star and lover, Soledad Miranda, and the film is a haunting and mournful examination of fate and loss. On the surface there does not seem much to warrnt the very high opinion I have of this film: the dialogue is ludicrous, often pretentious, and the acting merely passable, at best. Viewed as horror or porno the film would seem to have none of the qualities we desire from either of those genres: deliberate pacing, various props to create atmosphere, an internal logic, no matter how warped. So while it may seem immediately facile to say so I think this film has more in common with 60's and 70's avant-garde that with, say, Hammer, or Corman. Stan Brakhage came to my mind after watching Female Vampire. Both Brakhage and Franco are obsessed with film as a purely visual medium, but whereas Brakhage sought to reproduce the way the mechanism of the eye perceives information, without interpreting the stimuli, Franco is more concerned with the memory's hold on what the eye takes in. Franco's camerawork can only be described as insatiable--it is the most tactile and grasping use of the lens imaginable. The line on Franco is, and you hear it repeated over and over, that he 'overuses the zoom lens' but he does so, I feel, to imbue the film's space with consciousness, to feel every inch of the subject in the lens (usually the luscious Lina Romay). But like all vampires, Jess Franco's starving eye can never hold, keep, or own, that which it craves so desperately, namely lost Soledad, the pulsing blood of time itself. . . .

Famale Vampire (1969) d: Franco, Jess
Linda Romay bares her considerable assets as Irina, a blood hungry bisexual vampire who sucks more than just necks. Directed by exploitation master Jesus Franco under the alias of J.P. Johnson, this French-Belgium production exists in many different versions. A European porn version entitled The Loves of Irina, with hard-core deep-throat sex scenes, and no vampires. A softer version called The Bare Breasted Countess, which this version of Female Vampire most closely resembles, and the censored North American horror only version which goes under the title Erotikill, and has almost 30 minutes cut from it. (As an added bonus this disc contains horror scenes from Erotikill not included in The Bare Breasted Countess [aka: Female Vampire]). Other versions said to exist in Europe are Sicarius - The Midnight Party; Jacula, and The Last Thrill. The so many different versions of this and many of Jess Franco's other films, make them very fun to collect. Some sources credit him with an amazing 150 films, while others claim his body of work goes as high as 200 movies. Many have attacked him for using the zoom lens too much, however this was a common cost-cutting measure during the 1970's. Jess Franco himself appears as Dr. Roberts, a forensic surgeon. Linda Romay [who later became the directors wife] stars as Countess Irina Karlstein, a mute descendant of a vampire family who, while vacationing in Portuagl and satisfying her thirsts for various bodilly fluids, falls in love with metaphysical poet Jack Taylor.

Wow
That Jess Franco sure was wacky. This ultra-sexy 70's vamp flick probably arouses me more than any modern softcore film, but it's still not as good as Vampire Femmes or Vampyres. The woman here isn't really a vampire in the monster sense of the word. She's more of an energy sucker, kills by sucking sexual energy from her victims. The bad acting will get on some's nerves, and the plot is ludicrous, but if you buy this film to begin with, you can't expect Citizen Kane. A good b-movie sexfest.