TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE (BLOOD BATH) 1966
This film finds its place in my offbeat collection of vampire cinema from around the globe. It is a curious, unconventional gem or (garbage, depending on who you ask) that defies traditional lore and geography, adding a uniquely fragmented and surreal voice to the vampire mythos. It’s a perfect fit for those who seek the strange, the eerie, and the unexpected in vampire storytelling.
Given its ragged birth, it’s honestly a minor miracle that Blood Bath manages to keep you watching. But if you’re like me and appreciate a film that wanders gloriously off the beaten path, it’s worth every bizarre, atmospheric turn.
Roger Corman, ever the astute producer, enlisted Jack Hill to craft an original film by repurposing footage from a low-budget Yugoslavian crime drama Operation Titian, centering on art smuggling, featuring William Campbell, who, switching to this new vision, which Corman acquired inexpensively, filmed in 1963, winds up playing an artist/vampire named Sordi.
Originally titled Blood Bath, the film was reassembled from footage from its predecessor with new horror sequences shot by Hill and Stephanie Rothman, resulting in a disjointed but fascinating blend of styles and moods. It was incorporated into various versions with new horror scenes culminating in Blood Bath and later the TV-friendly Track of the Vampire.
Two different actors play Sordi and his vampire persona, creating continuity quirks that only enhance the film’s dreamlike, fragmented quality. Despite its narrative gaps, the film boasts striking, atmospheric shots, including a haunting beach dance and macabre wax-covered corpses in the finale.
Dissatisfied with Hill’s progress, Corman replaced him mid-production with Stephanie Rothman. The final product is understandably uneven, occasionally bordering on incoherent, but Blood Bath still delivers moments of genuine visual and atmospheric impact that linger beyond its rough edges.
Blood Bath (Track of the Vampire) became a 1966 American horror film notable for its patchwork production and moody, surreal atmosphere. Directed jointly by Hill and Rothman, it stars Campbell as Antonio Sordi, a disturbed artist believed to be the reincarnation of a vampiric ancestor who kills his models before turning their bodies into waxed art. With co-stars Marissa Mathes, Lori Saunders, and Sid Haig, the film blends elements of horror, mystery, and a touch of 1960s beatnik culture that adds some levity.
Among its quirks is the film’s self-aware nod to the 1960s art scene, mixing horror with the restless beat of the avant-garde, non-conformist youth movement. Budget constraints and uneven storytelling aside, it crafts a distinct mood, a simmering blend of creeping dread, surreal visuals, and flashes of dark humor that catch you off guard. Standing in for an ancient European town, Venice, California layers this strange brew with an uncanny, dreamlike dislocation, where the familiar feels off-kilter and time seems to fold in on itself.
The story takes shape as a disrupted construct, pulled apart and loosely stitched, an assemblage of jarring elements that clash rather than cohere, each sequence resisting smooth connection and demanding that we navigate its unsettled terrain and fragmented pieces. Jack Hill laid down the foundation with the vignettes of beatnik-subculture-infused lurid horror and raw and scattered 1960s art world quirks. Then Stephanie Rothman stepped in, weaving in vampiric threads that stretched the film’s edges in new, eerie directions. The result is a curious blend, disjointed yet hypnotic, where two distinct visions collide; it lurches from one tonal train crash to another, riddled with tangential inconsistencies that derail any sense of cohesion. Yet, this patchwork doesn’t unravel the film’s spell.
Stephanie Rothman excised Magee’s scenes and reinvented Campbell’s character as a vampire, but with Campbell refusing to return for reshoots, the vampiric killer got a fresh face instead, thus the second actor playing Sordi’s evil spirit. This switch sparked enough creative chaos for Hill to disown the final cut. Yet, Corman saw enough merit to finally roll the film out into theaters—a curious cocktail of recasting drama and directorial intervention that left its mark on the movie’s legacy.
This tinkering with whatever materials they had at hand led to the noticeable inconsistencies and jarring tonal shifts. You feel the uneven rhythm in the different actor than Campbell, becoming the restless echo of Sordi’s eternal curse, the baffling shift in continuity like a beard one scene but gone the next. Yet, this frenzy-fused nature ultimately adds to the film’s cult appeal, lending it a dreamlike, fragmented quality that we fans find an intriguing exploitation of offbeat horror. People either love it or hate its bewildering feel.
The film’s chaotic production history makes it tricky to pin down who’s responsible for these wildly different slices of weirdness. Technically speaking, like practically everything else, the movie careens all over the place, but somehow, that messy scatter adds to its peculiar allure. Although its narrative coherence is weak and the story often meanders, the film’s uneasy mood, eclectic score, and unique mise-en-scène might keep you hooked in a hypnotic, unsettling way. Instead, you could consider that all the chaos intensifies the experience, enveloping you in haunting moments, like the sequence with the endless, ghostly dance on a deserted beach, with Lori Saunders as Daisy, reminiscent of Rothman’s later The Velvet Vampire.
There are certainly oddly memorable moments that stick with you. Campbell fakes a kiss with a corpse to dodge suspicion. Then there’s this surreal, almost Salvador Dalí-level dream sequence that feels pulled from another dimension. Sid Haig’s quirky presence among the beatnik crowd brings a quirky vitality and only deepens its unique vibe. Sordi’s slow unraveling into madness and monstrous hunger, the chaotic finale, shockingly combining wax figures rising in grotesque vengeance, and the supernatural retribution, is a bizarrely memorable climax.
From the very start, the movie already feels scattered, with each scene piling on new characters. We see artist Antonio Sordi talking to a portrait of Melizza, followed by a tense, shadowy pursuit that ends with a vampire attack. If you blink, you might miss the sudden jump from Yugoslavia to California. Bathed in noir shadows, the Yugoslavian scenes simmer with suspense as a lone, hat-wearing figure navigates deserted streets, turning every corner into a silent promise of danger.
The film tosses us into a beatnik hangout that could’ve been lifted straight from A Bucket of Blood (1959), Walter Paisley, the hapless artist immortalized by Dick Miller in Roger Corman’s cult classic is the archetype for Antonio Sordi’s character, a parallel to the creative tortured artistic soul haunted by madness and dark obsession inseparable from his descent into horror.
Then we pivot to a dance studio, and suddenly drift to a beach where a character breaks into an uneasy, fleeting dance. None of these moments weaves together smoothly; instead, they collect like mismatched puzzle pieces. The movie makes a half-hearted stab at uniting them, but the result still defies sense.
Tony Sordi makes a name for himself with a rather gruesome series of “dead red nudes” macabre canvases, visceral portraits of mutilated women; they are paintings that are as morbid as they are bizarre.
The story also follows art student and model Daisy Allen (Marissa Mathes), who, after breaking up with her beatnik boyfriend Max (Karl Schanzer), becomes drawn into the orbit of Sordi, whose disturbing paintings of nudes mask his dark vampiric secret. Lured by his grotesquely captivating artwork, Daisy agrees to pose nude for him, only to fall prey to his monstrous impulses of his vampiric alter ego.
Sordi stalks the town of Venice, California, hunting and killing young women in a cold, ruthless way, and then in a sick ritual preserves their boiling wax-covered bodies as macabre art pieces, creating a chilling blend of artistic obsession and supernatural horror. The story unfolds through a series of atmospheric, eerie set pieces: from a vampiric chase into the surf, a chilling drowning at a party, and menacing moments set against beatnik hangouts and art studios in Venice, California, all suffused with a creepy, surreal quality.
The film’s narrative gains tension as Daisy disappears, her boyfriend Max searches for her, and Donna, Daisy’s sister, uncovers the dark legend of Sordi’s cursed lineage. As the local young women start disappearing, Max, Daisy’s ex-boyfriend, who is also a rival artist who’s probably a bit too green with envy over Sordi’s success, goes in search of Daisy after she winds up missing.
The film also features Dorian or Dorean, played by Lori Saunders, an avant-garde ballerina and Daisy’s former roommate. Dorian is significant because she closely resembles both Donna and a former love of Sordi named Melizza, which appears to affect Sordi deeply. Melizza was the lover of Sordi’s ancestor, Erno, the warlock vampire who imprisoned souls in his paintings. Now, she haunts her descendant, flickering through portraits with a mocking laugh that won’t let him rest. Throughout the film, Dorian is drawn into Sordi’s dark world and becomes entangled with his vampiric transformations and violent acts.
After she goes missing, Daisy’s sister Donna (Sandra Knight —Thunder Road 1958, Frankenstein’s Daughter 1958, Tower of London 1962 with Vincent Price, and The Terror 1963 with Boris Karloff), starts to suspect something more supernatural at play. She confronts Sordi, believing and rightfully so, that he might be channeling the spirit of his medieval ancestor, after hearing about his paintings of Daisy and the eerie circumstances surrounding her disappearance. She uncovers Sordi’s dark secret — that his ancestor Erno Sordi was rumored to be a vampire. The problem? Nobody’s buying Donna’s vampire theory, and even Max is skeptical, maybe because vampires just aren’t trendy enough for the Beatnik crowd.
The plot may be familiar territory, borrowing heavily from Roger Corman’s low-budget genre films like A Bucket of Blood (1959) and H.G. Lewis’s Color Me Blood Red (1965), with its beatnik loner artist motif just with a greater surreal and Gothic tilt, but it’s the film’s episodic, patchwork structure that really defines it, including the oddly extended, split-screen scene where pin-up Saunders just dances barefoot on the beach. These quirks make Blood Bath feel less like a polished feature and more like an overstuffed episode of Night Gallery—a comparison noted by Bryan Senn and Mark Clark in their Sixties Shockers, who also point out the film’s uneven but fascinating nature.
While the story culminates in an almost B-movie chaos of wax figures springing to life and exacting a gruesome revenge, the film explores themes of artistic obsession, cursed bloodlines, haunting legacies, and the hazy boundaries between creator and monster. The living waxworks are Melizza’s twisted creations, reanimated corpses fashioned into zombies, unleashed to hunt down and torment Sordi.
Track of the Vampire, a unique curiosity in 1960s horror cinema, has earned it a reputation as a moody, bizarre horror oddity, that blends exploitation, art house experimental horror on the fringes of genre filmmaking and its willingness to veer from conventional storytelling, embracing weirdness with an odd humor and striking imagery, even though its origin was born out of chaos.
Despite its flaws, its influence and weirdness landed it on an Arrow Video Blu-ray set—alongside its alternate versions and extensive visual essays, acknowledging its unique cult status in horror history. It endures as an evocative artifact of 1960s genre filmmaking, with a tone that shifts from creepy to camp, melancholy to macabre. Though uneven, the film remains a hypnotic, strange experience, a dark and quirky relic, and a fascinating outlier of the wild experimental fringes of 1960s genre filmmaking. It’s a delightfully unsettling watch for us fans of cult cinema.
Track of the Vampire, or Blood Bath to those who know it casually, defies the polished horror classic mold. It’s a moody, offbeat, and eccentric experiment that resists tidy categorization. With two directors weaving their distinct visions into one, the film carries an intriguing jumble of styles and an unmistakable, slightly askew charm. It’s less about polished scares and more about mood and madness. This curious, often puzzling gem rewards those of us who are willing to lean into its eccentricities, and isn’t that exactly where the best discoveries tend to hide?
VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS 1970
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) was directed by Jaromil Jireš, a key figure of the Czech New Wave who brought a distinctive blend of surrealism, fairy tale, and subtle horror to this landmark film; one that is emblematic of the Czech New Wave movement celebrated for its poetic, politically subversive, and visually inventive cinema.
The cinematography by Jan Curik bathes the narrative in a haunting, ethereal glow, using light and shadow to create a dreamlike atmosphere that perfectly complements the film’s otherworldly tone and its haunting dreamlike imagery.
The fact that Valerie and Her Week of Wonders emerges from Communist-era Czechoslovakia adds a compelling layer of complexity and a certain richness. Filmmakers like Jaromil Jireš, navigating the tightrope of censorship, turned to fantasy, allegory, abstraction, and surrealism to explore themes of innocence, desire, and repression. Though the Czech horror tradition may not tower as prominently on the global stage as its British or American counterparts, it boasts striking gems like Juraj Herz’s The Cremator (1969), a darkly comic psychological horror film set in 1930s Prague, following Karel Kopfrkingl, a crematorium worker whose fascination with death and Tibetan Buddhism spirals into madness. Work, like this alongside Valerie, helped carve out a distinctively Eastern European horror sensibility, one that favors mood, metaphor, and existential unease over explicit gore or conventional scares.
The eerie narrative follows Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová), a young girl’s passage as she navigates the confusing and often frightening transition from adolescence to womanhood, making it both a coming-of-age story and a subtle, atmospheric horror. Schallerová was chosen from around 1,500 girls who auditioned for the part and became well-known for this role, which marked her acting debut at age 13.
Valerie stands right on that strange, trembling edge of womanhood when she’s handed a pair of earrings, no ordinary trinkets but enchanted gateways that let her see her medieval world through a completely new lens. In this realm of lurking vampires and whispering witches, perception isn’t just about sight; it’s a survival tool against the prying, lustful eyes of overzealous priests who keep turning her journey into a precarious dance with danger and desire.
Set in a realm where reality gracefully dissolves into fantasy, Valerie finds herself journeying through a dreamscape populated by peculiar characters and mysterious forces that hover between the psychological and the supernatural. The film’s fragmented, poetic structure deliberately sidesteps traditional storytelling, favoring instead a rich, layered anthology of symbolic imagery, color, sound, and mood that’s as mesmerizingly beautiful as it is disquietingly unsettling.
Valerie’s grandmother, Elsa (also called Babicka), becomes a vampire through dark supernatural means and is disguised as a young woman named Elsa. She bites Hedvika on her wedding night to steal her blood and regain youth. Later, Elsa tries to bite Valerie and steal her magical earrings that protect her. Valerie’s encounters with Elsa as a vampire play a crucial role in the film’s surreal and symbolic story, capturing the threatening and transformative challenges Valerie faces as she navigates her journey into adulthood.
There’s a standout sequence where Valerie is accused of witchcraft and is threatened with being burned at the stake. During this intense moment, the town priest denounces her as a witch who has tempted and tormented him.
Valerie’s response is defiant and playful; she calls the priest a liar, mocks him with childish gestures like making a mustache from her hair, and even sticks out her tongue while flames surround her. This blend of surreal horror and dark humor highlights her innocence and resilience despite the persecution she endures.
Just as she seems doomed, she swallows a magical pearl, which acts as a protective talisman that transports her to safety. This moment preserves the film’s dreamlike and allegorical tone, and it captures the film’s blend of fairy-tale surrealism, psychological complexity, and feminist undertones, making it a memorable highlight.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders still takes your breath away as a shining example of Eastern European cinema’s one-of-a-kind voice in the horror-fantasy realm. It’s not just a film, you feel its visual poetry seep into your skin, wrapped in layers of mystery and surreal storytelling that keeps you guessing and marveling all at once.
VAMPYRES 1974
Spanish director José Ramón Larraz, celebrated for blending eroticism with horror, brought a distinctive vision that deftly combines lingering, atmospheric shots with unnerving tension. Larraz started his career as a comics writer in Paris and later moved to England to make horror and exploitation films.
For Vampyres 1974, he takes a detour from Barcelona to the English countryside and delivers a British horror flick drenched in Gothic atmosphere and erotic menace. Shot at iconic spots like Oakley Court in Windsor and Harefield Grove, the film unfolds in a lonely, isolated manor where vampire lovers Miriam and Fran prowl, snaring unsuspecting victims to satisfy their insatiable thirst. Larraz’s Vampyres (1974) stands out as a fascinating entry in the 1970s wave of arty vampire cinema, a subgenre where the Gothic meets the avant-garde and sensuality slinks hand-in-hand with threat.
Other of Larraz’s films include the British-Danish coproduction, Whirlpool (1970), his debut, a bleak erotic thriller about a young model invited to a remote estate by a sinister photographer and her nephew, only to become entangled in manipulation, voyeurism, and violence. The film’s tense atmosphere and dark secrets build to a disturbing climax.
Symptoms (1974) was an official British entry at the Cannes Film Festival that year; a psychological horror film centered on Helen Ramsey, played hauntingly by Angela Pleasence. The story follows Helen, who invites her friend Anne to stay at her remote country estate, but strange and sinister events soon unravel. Pleasence gives an utterly eerie and unsettling performance, with her hypnotic blue eyes. Larraz’s other works include: Deviation 1971, the Giallo-inspired thriller, The House That Vanished (1973), Emma, puertas oscuras 1974, and Stigma 1980.
Larraz and cinematographer Harry Waxman, known for his stunning work on The Wicker Man in 1973, expertly wring every drop of chilly foreboding in Vampyres.
Waxman’s camerawork is particularly noteworthy, capturing the mist-laden woods and shadowy interiors with a painterly quality reminiscent of European art cinema of the era. The use of subdued, earthy tones contrasted with sudden flashes of red blood etches vivid beats of the film’s hypnotic pacing and dreamlike texture. The atmosphere breathes a dark perfume, intoxicating and elusive, eerie, and erotically charged, weaving its way through the haunting English countryside, with its crumbling remnants of stone walls and tangled, overgrown bushes lining the winding dirt roads, whispering tales of neglect and faded grandeur. The foggy gardens and poetic shots of the ravenous lovers of lifeblood moving through graveyards at dawn, all of it, are a perfect backdrop for this intoxicating quintessential Gothic blend of sex, blood, and shadow.
The story centers on two enigmatic female vampires, Miriam, played by iconic vamp Anulka Dziubinska, and Fran, played by Marianne Morris, who lure unsuspecting travelers to their eerie countryside estate, only to drain their life force in slow, seductive scenes that blur the line between beauty and terror.
Playboy: “This is too good to be true.”
Miriam: “Nothing’s too good to be true, it’s just that life is too short.”Ted: “Is there a limit to the questions?”
Fran: “There’s a limit to the answers!”
The film’s sparse dialogue and episodic flow don’t bog you down in words; instead, they sweep you into a hauntingly surreal world where mood reigns supreme and the line between pleasure and death is deliciously obscured.
Ted (Murray Brown) breaks into the manor house, both victim and observer, he becomes entangled in their deadly world and their web of lust and bloodlust, which quickly turns dangerous. A British couple, Harriet (Sally Faulkner) and John (Brian Deacon) wind up at the manor after becoming stranded when their car breaks down nearby. Looking for refuge from the night, they chance upon the shadowy estate where the vampire lovers reign, stepping unwittingly into their seductive trap.
The performances lean toward whispering unease rather than shouting horror, perfectly enhancing the film’s ethereal, unsettling vibe. The fang-tipped femme fatales radiate a chilling allure, capturing the elusive, dangerous essence of the vampiric archetype with a predator’s grace and a seductress’s charm.
Vampyres holds an important place in the genre’s evolution, inspiring later filmmakers to explore vampire stories through a lens that prizes atmosphere, eroticism, and psychological complexity over straightforward scares. Its ripple effect still pulses like flowing blood from an open vein, through cult cinephile circles, crowned as a definitive “arty vampire” gem of the ’70s that cast a long shadow over the aesthetic and tone of horror cinema that was to come.
FASCINATION 1979
Jean Rollin’s Fascination (1979) is a hypnotic and sensual entry in the director’s oeuvre, emphasizing atmosphere and eroticism over conventional horror narratives. Rollin, a French filmmaker celebrated for his poetic, dreamlike vampire films, here crafts a moody meditation on desire, mortality, and supernatural allure. The film stars Franca Maï and Brigitte Lahaie, who together weave an intoxicating blend of complexity, seduction, and dark allure, embodying danger as much as they do desire.
The cinematography by Georgie Fromentin is lush and evocative, drenched in low light and misty interiors that transform a crumbling château into a liminal space where the real and the supernatural intersect. Throughout the film, striking visual motifs emerge: red silk sheets, golden sunlight filtering through stained glass, and the ghostly silhouettes of nude bodies in languid repose. Rollin frequently pauses on symbolic elements, dreamy, hallucinatory in style, like a rose, a candle’s flame, the flickering of shadows, that infuse seemingly simple scenes with haunting poetry, tension, sensuality, violence, and mystery that elevate the film beyond typical exploitation offerings.
The story revolves around Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), a criminal on the run who takes refuge in an isolated château inhabited by two women, Elisabeth (Franca Maï) and Eva (Brigitte Lahaie). They are lovers who share a mysterious, possibly vampiric bond and are involved in secretive blood-drinking rituals tied to a secret society. The film follows Marc’s complex interactions with them, blending seduction, jealousy, danger, and obsession. Marc’s arrival sets off a slow-burning tension laced with sensual encounters and ominous undertones. As Marc seeks refuge, his presence awakens a repressed sexual energy. The lovers’ relationship is complex, blending affection, jealousy, violence, and mortality, especially as Eva’s protective instincts lead to violent confrontations. The film builds up to a powerful mix of desire and death, where passion and tragedy become inseparable, leading perfectly into that haunting, elegiac ending.
The finale is subtle and atmospheric, combining erotic tension with a dark undercurrent of threat closing in and a fragile balance between power and vulnerability. It’s less about dramatic resolution and more about leaving a lingering unease tied to Fascination’s complex, ambiguous relationships.
Standout scenes include a breathtakingly eerie nocturnal dance among mist-cloaked trees, the lush slow-motion reverie of silk garments falling, and a moment of chilling transformation where the boundary between the living and the dead is blurred with surreal elegance and a sensuous, eerie mood. These poetic and atmospheric sequences are key to the film’s haunting and sensuous tone, seen in Rollin’s aesthetic.
An iconic image in Fascination, Eva (Brigitte Lahaie), walks with carnal energy, like a slow brewing tempest, while carrying a scythe. This scene is celebrated for its blend of sensuality and threat, which is a defining signature of Jean Rollin’s style of mixing eroticism and surreal horror with striking visual symbolism. Eva’s slow, deliberate walk through the mist-shrouded grounds, wielding the scythe with both erotic grace and a purposeful stride, is one of Fascination’s most unforgettable haunting images. The scythe, a timeless emblem of death, transforms in her hands from a mere farming tool into a seductive instrument of doom. This haunting tableau perfectly captures the film’s intoxicating, delicate balance between danger, desire, and the supernatural, an image so striking it has become emblematic not just of Fascination but of 1970s horror cinema itself.
Fascination contributed significantly to the 1970s trend of blending eroticism with horror, influencing later directors who sought to fuse genre cinema with artistic sensibilities. Rollin’s work helped open doors for more nuanced, atmospheric vampire films that prioritized mood, symbolism, and emotional nuance over explicit gore or straightforward shivers, carving out a unique space that continues to captivate and mystify us devoted cult cinephiles.
VAMP 1986
Vamp (1986) is a deliciously off-kilter blend of horror, comedy, and neon-lit neo-noir that firmly stakes its claim as a cult classic of the 1980s vampire subgenre. Directed by Richard Wenk in his first feature outing, the film rides the era’s affinity for stylistic excess and eclectic tone swings, serving up a cocktail of bloodsucking mayhem laced with pop culture savvy and sly humor. It is a horror-satire about two fraternity pledges who stumble upon a strip club run by vampires, featuring Grace Jones in a show-stopping performance as Katrina, a seductive and terrifying, nearly silent vampire queen whose charismatic menace looms large over the film.
Alongside her are co-stars Robert Rusler and Chris Makepeace, who play the two hapless idiots who venture into the night and enter the world of a seedy urban nightclub only to fall into the dark underworld teeming with supernatural danger. The performances perfectly mix horror with a cheeky sense of humor, giving the movie’s campy thrills a solid dose of authentic ‘80s style charm and charisma.
Cinematographers Elliot Davis and Douglas F. O’Neons drench the film in an atmospheric palette of shadowy club interiors, pulsating neon lights, and grimy urban decay, capturing the gritty yet stylish aesthetic that defines Vamp. The film’s unyielding artistic vision is a restless pulse beneath a neon glare; the look of the film contrasts beautifully with its tongue-in-cheek script, creating a world where the sinister and the absurd coexist effortlessly.
Plot-wise, Vamp kicks off as a straightforward story that centers on a group of college pledges, AJ (Robert Rusler) and Keith (Chris Makepeace), who are tasked with finding a stripper to bring back to their fraternity party as part of their initiation. They try everywhere until they find the sleaziest bar possible. Along for the ride is their socially awkward friend Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), who has the car and is the designated driver.
Their excursion quickly descends into a bizarre nightmare as they set out on their rescue mission, looking for their missing friend at the night spot, only to discover the seductive vampire queen, Katrina, and her gang of vampires who are reigning over the club like visceral predators cloaked in glamor and menace.
When they first enter the ominous venue called The Mansion, or the After Dark club, the guys break apart, exploring separately, and they are lured away and trapped. AJ becomes separated first when he slips away to meet and try to convince Katrina, the stripper, to come with them. He is then seduced and bitten by her, becoming a vampire. Keith grows concerned about AJ’s delay and begins searching for him, with help from a waitress named Amaretto, whose real name is Allison (Dedee Pfeiffer). During this search, Keith and Amaretto become separated from each other as they flee from an albino gang and vampires. Duncan, who has the car, is with Keith and Amaretto when they flee the club, but later, ultimately abandoned by the others, is drawn deeper into the club’s sinister underworld and is also turned into a vampire.
The nightclub, The Mansion is the vampire’s blood-soaked stage, a sinister façade where desire is currency and death is the ultimate performance. Here, the vampires feed on the city’s discarded souls, hiding in plain sight as they weave a deadly web of seduction and slaughter beneath the neon glow. Their existence is raw and ruthless, a savage dance of power and prey set against the urban wasteland pulsing outside the club’s doors. Keith and Amaretto eventually navigate the sewers and the vampire crypt, facing more dangers on their own.
Scenes shift with a restless energy between tense stalk-and-attack sequences, bizarre nightclub performances, and moments of quirky dialogue that keep you both on edge and entertained. From the eerie catacombs below the club to the relentless showdown between the vampire hunters and the undead, the film never loses its sense of mischievous fun. A memorable moment: Katrina’s chilling declaration, “Tonight’s your lucky night,” is equal parts threat and dark invitation, perfectly capturing the film’s campy yet ominous tone.
Vamp played a significant role in shaping how 1980s vampire films incorporated humor and urban style, influencing the genre’s move away from Gothic settings to contemporary cityscapes where vampires blend into the modern night. Its unabashed embrace of camp, vivid character work, and glossy color-saturated, yet grimy visuals make it a standout piece for those of us craving vampire tales with a funky edge and fang-sharp wit.
Grace Jones is an electrifying presence in Vamp (1986), bringing to life the vampire queen Katrina with a magnetic blend of sultry menace and otherworldly charisma. Her performance transcends acting, becoming a living embodiment of the film’s edgy, avant-garde spirit.
Jones can absolutely be considered a visual, musical work of art, both in Vamp (1986) and across her iconic music career. Her mesmerizing presence uniquely blends fashion, movement, and sound into a living collage of avant-garde expression. I would say that Grace Jones is a living canvas of sound and vision, her every move a symphony of bold shapes and soulful rhythms, transforming music and image into an electrifying performance art that transcends the bounds of both stage and screen. Grace Jones’s magnetic presence is perfectly matched by the film’s throbbing soundtrack, a synthesis of Gothic rock, new wave, and electronic beats that wraps the nightclub in a mesmerizing, disquieting, hypnotic, and unsettling spell.
This rich soundscape not only deepens the film’s eerie allure but also roots it unmistakably in the vibrant, shadowy heart of 1980s underground, elevating Katrina from character to enduring icon in the crossroads of horror-infused and pop culture.
