Product Details

• Actors: Gilda Arancio, Alice Arno, Luis Barboo, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Roger Germanes
• Format: Color, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• VHS Release Date: August 8, 2000
• Run Time: 72 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305943818
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #403,721 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Vampire Eye of Jess Franco, August 16, 2001

By 

Ava Lomax (Carrboro, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Female Vampire (DVD)

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. . . .

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wow, May 23, 2004

By 

Fabiola (Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Female Vampire (DVD)

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.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF!, February 24, 2005

By 

L. Steidl "Luigi Alberto" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Female Vampire (DVD)

It never fails that every time I experience this film, and I've seen it now about three times in the past year, it produces a vastly different reaction each time I view it. I bounce from absolute admiration for Franco's directorial style, dreamy camerawork and musical score, and committed performances from the cast, to thinking that this is nothing but a cheap, porno-wanna-be-flick with absolutely nothing to do with "vampires", and no artistic integrity whatsoever. Fortunately, the positive vibes win out over the negative and I, once again, admire this film and all that is right and wrong with it. If I fail to make sense, well good then, because neither does this flick. Ms. Romay is, to say the least, totally uninhibited as she romps about the beautifully filmed outdoor scenes while a Chopin-like score lusciously underscores her every movement. Her scenes with the bed posts are, er...., quite a moment in the Euro-Erotic field, and the way she swishes and moves about on her bed like a pent-up, totally horny young woman about to have an orgasm for the first time is, well...... something to see. I love the moments of male frontal nudity, especially a scene where Ms. Romay is seducing a hotel masseur. The simulated sex is quite laughable, especially since our young man can't seem to "get it up". This is quite an atmospheric film and, if you love your 70's horror/vampire flicks, I think you will find much to admire in this one.

Luigi - NYC