None-too-bright Mathew Horne gets dumped by his girlfriend (Lucy Gaskell) and his fat mate James Corden loses his Party Clown gig, so the latter suggests a holiday to get away from it all. A local at the pub suggests a hiking expedition in rural England, something that pudgy Corden is unenthused about. A van full of Swedish beauties (more like footballers’ wives if you ask me) changes his mind, though. Unfortunately the village they stay in is under a curse by legendary lesbian vampire queen Carmilla (Silvia Colloca), all of the women in the village were destined to become lesbian vampires on their 18th birthday. Needless to say, they’re in a bit of a pickle, with a lesbian vampire curse, an inn full of sexy Swedish chicks, and with only vampire hunter/vicar Paul McGann and a phallus-handled sword to work with! Did I mention that McGann’s comely daughter is nearly eighteen herself? MyAnna Buring plays the nerdiest and most virginal of the Swedes, who takes a shine to Horne.
I think we all know what I was expecting when sitting down to watch this 2009 Phil Claydon film. The title clearly promises lesbian vampires, and lesbian vampires should in my estimation lead to lesbian sex. This film, a horror spoof, barely provides the former (most of the women appear to be heterosexual to me), but does not provide the latter at all, thus I’m ever-so tempted to give the film a zero stars rating on principal (despite knowing perfectly well that movies with titles like this always lie). The problem with that? It’s a fairly well-made, extremely well-shot, and funny film. Damn. The opener is fun, mixing hilarious narration, creative use of title cards, a bit of King Arthur, and the visual design of “The Spirit”, and certainly it looks a lot more expensive than it probably really was. The two leads (apparently from some show called “Gavin and Stacey” that I’ve seen listed in the TV guide but never watched) are clearly meant to be “Shaun of the Dead” rip-offs, but I pretty much hated “Shaun of the Dead”, and find Corden to be ten times funnier and less creepy than Nick Frost.
Thanks to Clayton and cinematographer David Higgs, it’s a beautiful film to look at, I love me some light through foggy forest scenery and this film has oodles of it. If this film was shot on digital video as I suspect, it’s one of the best of its kind on a purely visual level. So director Claydon shows he has genuine style and can make a good and funny film, just not one called “Lesbian Vampire Killers”. It’s certainly one of the most chaste lesbian vampire films I’ve ever seen, and I will thusly dock points from it, I mean, we can see an axe to the head but not Sapphic love or T&A? I’ve also got to deduct points for the singularly disappointing Paul McGann, essentially in the Peter Cushing role (the film is basically a belated Hammer spoof), he’s underwhelming.
But…damn it, I can’t say it’s not rather well-done, and whilst McGann is no Cushing, Buring does have an Ingrid Pitt look about her to nearly compensate. Seduction Cinema (home of all those Misty Mundae/Darian Caine lesbian vampire flicks) would’ve done it right in terms of the sex and nudity, but probably would’ve made a much worse film than this on a technical level. And any film that features a literally phallic sword, can’t be too awful, especially with a funny visual gag once the sword and vampire blood come (so to speak) into play. Let’s just say that in this film, vampires bleed white. And sticky.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Due to its lack of Sapphic delights, this is destined to be the best movie I’ve ever hated in my entire life. “Vampyros Lesbos” this most certainly is not. But so long as you’re not a total perv like me, you’ll probably really like this one.
