A Circus Full of Vampires

In Vampire Circus (1972), the caged panthers are people and the people are vampires. But not the monkeys. The monkeys are just plain monkeys. Too bad – monkey vampires would be pretty cool, I think.

But there’s a reason the entertaining Circus of the Night came to the plague-infested Austrian village of Stetl during the 19th Century. It was to exact revenge on the jittery townsfolk who, fifteen years earlier, assassinated Count Mitterhaus to death. The Count didn’t count on the villagers having enough strudel to serve him up a nice juicy stake for sucking the youth juice out the town’s kids and rubbing the bare boobies of both married and unmarried lady folk.

Turns out Mitterhaus has a cousin Emil who is the featured attraction in the aforementioned traveling circus. Before he chokes on the stake, he instructs his naked lady friend to find Emil to bring him back to life. Oh, and he manages to curse the village with the aforementioned plague because he’s kind of a dick.

Too prevent the germs from germinating the Germans, a blockade keeps the villagers from sneezing their way out of town. Yet somehow the circus gets in and the fun begins. First night of the show Emil – in panther form – transforms from animal to human. This mesmerizes the groin of the Bürgermeister’s young virginal daughter, who gives it up smooth to Emil in the panther cage after the show. And he didn’t even have to loosen her up with some sweet and refreshing Steinlager™.

The villagers are sucked on by the circus performers, who can even turn into bats, which I felt was pretty neat. But the goal from the get go was to resurrect Mitterhaus and his need to bleed those uppity townies.

There are six boobies, two of which are painted green with tiger stripes. Lots of neck chewing with blood so red, it would make ketchup jealous. Then there’s some head chopping, because vampires occasionally deserve that kind of treatment. As cool as that all is, monkey vampires would’ve really taken this thing all the way to the Big Top.

Danish Aliens

Encounters (2015) is a just-released in Denmark (available on VOD) found footage sci-fi flick. What makes it stand out from all the other “everybody is doing it” found footage flicks? Pretty much nothing. Shaky camera, screaming, annoying characters, crazy running, requisite night vision, camera batteries that just won’t die as easily as the annoying characters… You think all they did was download the cookie cutter plot, turn on the GoPro™, and start emoting with a runny nose.

Yes and no. While the filming technique is as played as this blog, there’s something more to Encounters than just another found footage knock-off. First, the plot…

“The four young filmmakers know the stories, they’ve seen the movies and they joke about it as they travel into the Swedish woods to shoot yet another low-budget horror movie.”

“But though they make fun of horror clichés, there’s nothing to laugh about when the group gets lost and one of the actors disappears only to return hours later, naked and in a catatonic state. As much as they try to figure out what’s going on, none of them have the faintest idea of what they’re about to experience, or how to explain what’s been captured on tape.”

If you can get past the budgetary limitations (Encounters cost $2.79 – about as much as a wienerbrød with a side of ketchup) and inevitable screaming/bleeding/dying, there’s some impressive UFO effects, decent pacing, and nice ramp ups to the instances of screaming/bleeding/dying.

Look for a worldwide release shortly. While you’re waiting, watch Encounter (2015), YET ANOTHER found footage sci-fi flick with almost the same name/premise/budget.

French Sex Vampires

If you’re a criminal on the run and looking for a place to hide, a castle full of naked vampire chicks that have blood-drinking sex parties might be a suitable choice. Such is the plot of the French R-rated horror movie, Fascination (1979), which stars Brigitte Lahaie, a legitimate porn star. She earned her cred the hard way. Um, no pun intended.

It’s 1905 and two high-steppin’ Paris gals go shopping, lock lips and stop by the local slaughterhouse to drink ox blood from glasses with pinky extended. They claim to have severe anemia. All vampires do, I’d reckon. Eventually tiring of cow ketchup, they move up to people, specifically men. This creates a convenient dinner solution when a gold-coin carrying thief running from other thieves who want the gold coins seeks refuge in the ladies’ porn palace.

While hiding his hide, he bares his hide with a little horizontal romance action with one of the gals. Good way to pass the time before the arrival of the marchioness (a snooty woman with the paper rank of a marquess) and her “servants.” When they get to the castle they have a party with the criminal being the only guy, bobbing up and down in a sea of boobies.

The vamps want his blood, but one of the gals, who finds him attractive, helps him escape before this becomes a draining experience. What to do but to quench their eternal thirst by sucking the joy juice out of one of the party girls. How b*tchy.

The criminal finally gets a taste of justice when he gets shot by the very same gal who had a weekend crush on him, but changed her mind at the last minute and hooks up with the marchioness. If you know girls like that, run away.

As mentioned a bunch of words ago, Brigitte Lahaie stars as one of the lesbian vampires. While there is copious amounts of front to back/head to toe nudity, nothing explicit is shown in the ways of well-lit nature. For all I know they could’ve been faking those sex scenes. Bummer.

The Dead Belong In Jail

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a bunch of dweebs sneak into an abandoned funeral home to party. Someone whips out a Ouija board, thereby unwittingly summoning the dead. One by one the dumb asses are possessed, hacked, sliced and diced by mean undead warriors with glowing evil eyeballs and machetes on loan from Friday the 13th (1980) — and not even graphically enough to warrant a G-rated bandage.

 

The gore in the lazily contrived Prison of the Dead (2000) is so PC’d, all you get to see is a couple of ketchup squirts simulating a violent act. They should give away french fries with this flick. And where the hell has illicit sex gone in these Z-grade handle jigglers? No one drops top anymore, which breaks the #1 cardinal rule of low-budget videos.

Prison’s most notable scene comes at the end where the “action” abruptly stops as though it were my car driving around on $1.25 of gas. The director either ran out of money or ran out of ideas. Hard to believe the latter as the whole movie is as cookie cutter as it gets. Someone needs to go to prison for this.