The Curator of Schlock #329 by Jeff Shuster

Vampyres

Sometimes characters deserve to die due to their own stupidity. 

You know, I noticed a huge portrait above the entrance to this stately mansion I’ve been residing at for these past few months. The painting is of a southern aristocrat with wispy raven hair, a pasty complexion, and a stern countenance. A black cape adorns his broad shoulders and he grips a cane adorned with a silver skull at the head. I asked Jervis about that man and he told me his name was Wallace Jameson Volkasin III, the master of this estate some two hundred years ago. I’m sure none of this information will be of any importance to events I will describe on next week’s blog.

Tonight’s movie is 1974’s Vampyres from director José Ramón Larraz. Did any of you see Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Remember that scene where Keanu gets seduced and sucked dry by Dracula’s beautiful brides? Now imagine they made a movie out of that scene and presto, you’ve got Vampyres. If I learned anything from this movie, it’s that regular people are really stupid when it comes to dealing with vampires.

We begin with two women, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka), getting shot to death in bed after an explicit lesbian love scene. Not long after, we’re introduced to a young British couple, John (Brian Deacon) and Harriet (Sally Faulkner), driving down down an isolated highway with a camper in tow. John and Harriet notice two young women in long flowing coats hiding in trees on the side of the road. Wouldn’t you know it? It’s those two young women that were shot to death at the beginning of the movie. How can they still be running around?

John and Harriet decide to drive down an unkempt road and park nearby an abandoned gothic mansion. I’m not really sure why they do this as this mansion is creepy as all get out. Next, we’re introduced to Ted (Murray Brown), a proper English gentleman that’s traveling on business or some other unspecified reason. He picks up Fran, one of the aforementioned strange women in the woods, and drives her to the abandoned gothic mansion. She offers him some fine wine and it’s not long before their clothes are on the floor and the two of them are having a torrid affair.

Ted wakes up the next morning to find a huge bloody gash on his arm and some broken glass with his blood on it. He visits Harriet and John, who give him some first aid and a fresh cup of coffee. You’d think Ted would get the hell out of dodge, but he turns the car around and heads right back to mansion. Sure, it’s likely that Fran sliced his arm open with some broken glass in order to suck on his blood, but the sex was just that good.

Still, the Darwin Award goes to Harriet and John. It’s one thing to camp outside a vampire infested mansion for an evening, but to stay there day after day? They should have driven a hundred miles away from there at the first sign of anything unusual. Like when Harriet decides go inside the mansion to do some exploring just to find those strange women holed up in the basement, sleeping in contorted positions in the middle of the day. Or when Harriet wakes up in the middle of the night due to one of Fran and Miriam’s victims banging on the camper window only to disappear a moment later. John, of course, dismisses Harriet’s alarm, saying she just imagined it. The two of them are going to die horribly, but they had plenty of opportunity to escape. Vampyres is another creepy one, worth checking out.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, & episode 442) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.