By Melissa Antoinette Garza
Do I want to go down under with some Aussie vampire doctors? Stamp my boarding pass, I am ready for travel.
Mrs. Barker (Shirley Cameron) and Dr. Gauss (Henry Silva) open the show as employees in a dimly lit hospital where a patient is going crazy. Still, Mrs. Barker claims she’s doing better than when she first was brought in a week prior.
We are then introduced to our female protagonist Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri). She is in a relationship with Derek (Rod Mullinar) who she sees roughly three days a week. Derek has a killer mustache, but is not my type at all.
That said, there is a voyeur outside who dos strike my fancy. That man is Sean (Robert Thompson). Sean is a blonde man with curly hair and the crazy I may just kill you eyes that are devilishly sexy. Robert Thompson used those same eyes while he did kill people with psychic powers in the great cult classic PATRICK (1978).
Sean we find out isn’t really a peeper. He’s more like the vampire cult’s personal private eye. He informs Mrs. Baker, Dr. Gauss, and Dr. Fraser (David Hemmings) that she has no family and Derek is her only close relation. Even there, she only sees him three nights a week.
The doctors kidnap Kate and bring her to the hospital. She is informed that she is actually a part of the lineage of vampires (though they don’t care for that word) that run the facility.The Bathory bloodline is a cult of roughly 80K worldwide. This facility keeps patients drugged and hypnotized while they harvest their blood. Mrs. Barker calls it a farm.
When Kate doesn’t willingly want to take her place as the baroness, Mrs. Barker has her drugged. Dr. Fraser (David Hemmings) steps in as he disagrees with the way in which she’s being treated and tries to reason with her instead. He has her walk the grounds, but when she talks to the patients and sees their condition, she wants out. She’s disgusted and horrified by what she sees and hears. She makes a run for it, and finds an old man on a farm. She begs him and even tries to bribe him for help, but it’s clear that he knows the score and can’t help her. She does the smart thing and steals his car. I love smart strong women! Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin would be proud as sisters are truly doin’ it for themselves!
It doesn’t take long before she is caught and brought back. It’s a wonderfully intense scene where Kate is in the middle of the road filling up her tank and trying to start the small truck as cars slowly pass by. I love stuff like this. I love when the heroes are intelligent and take the right action, but still due to being outnumbered, unfortunate events or unforeseen betrayal they are screwed over. Similarly, RACE WITH THE DEVIL (1975) does the same with their characters. They do their best to get out of town. They don’t trust anyone. They keep driving, but it doesn’t matter. Here, Kate is approached by a couple who ask if she needs help. She’s appropriately wary given the circumstances and doesn’t take the assistance. She pours the gas in the tank as if her life depends on it and jumps back into her vehicle in record speed. She isn’t stopping to check her make-up! I love that. She knows she’s in trouble. She knows they’re after her and she’s doing everything she can to get away, including automobile theft. For the record, I’m #TeamKate.
When she goes back a black mass of sorts takes place. Their cult ceremony includes a granny vamp biting down on a beautiful dame’s neck. Kate is horrified.
Later, Barker tries to talk with her once again. She brings up a time when Kate was a child and saw a pig’s throat get slaughtered. She asked Kate what she felt when she saw the blood, and Kate claimed she was disgusted. Barker stays analytical and acts almost like a psychiatrist towards Kate. She’s crazy, but she’s clinical in her approach.
Barker and Dr. Gauss decide it’s safer to go against Fraser’s wishes and use manipulation, drugs and brainwashing techniques to bring Kate into the cult. They even seem to have a telekinetic manner of communicating when the meds are administrated.
In a drug-fueled delusion, Kate is briefly reunited with Derek. She begins to think the time at the hospital was nothing more than a bad dream. The two make love and have a picnic where she takes a bite into chicken that turns out to be filled with blood.
Derek then turns into cult member Mr. Hodge (Max Phipps) so I guess those two had sex. Again, if she’s gonna sex someone up, why can’t it be the voyeur with sexy eyes and killer hair?
After the romp and blood feast with Hodge, Kate runs in the rain. She ends up back at her home, where her maid Lori (Rosie Sturgess) tells her that she had only been gone for an hour. Once again, she thinks maybe this whole thing is a bad dream. Poor Kate. Forget drinking blood and being a vamp, that level of gas-lighting is enough to make anyone insane.
She steps in the shower and blood sprays from the faucet. Lori comes back and reveals she’s a bloodthirsty lady of the night as well She tells Kate that she’s getting the thirst. Kate then has a series of flashbacks to when she was a toddler put in boarding school to when she was told her mother unexpectedly died.
Surreal imagery, intentional colors, methodical music, disturbing noises and growls, Kate’s emotional breakdown and a continuous switch from present to past makes this scene the best of the film. Its riveting, it’s dark, it’s hauntingly magical and twisted in its depiction of light. I adore it.
Kudos to Chantal Contouri for conveying so much, so well in such little time. Every thought a rational human being going crazy would feel in that circumstance is shown with barely any dialogue from her. Other than uttering, “this is real” and a few please, Contouri sold the anguish with expressions alone.
By the end, one can completely understand why she feels solace in giving in. What choice does she have?
The conclusion offers a few cool swerves and a flips a few more vampire tropes on their head.
I can’t recommend this one enough. Admittedly, it’s not sexploitation. There isn’t that much nudity and barely any sex. Still it has a solid plot, a fantastic cast, strong female characters and a unique take on an old tale.
Currently, this is on AMAZON PRIME if you subscribe to HORROR TV for $1.99 a month. I believe it’s also on SHUDDER, but oddly VUDU doesn’t have the rights. It may be worth buying this outright as it is something to watch far more than once and a film worth sharing with those who have similar strange interests.
Scared Stiff Rating: 8/10
