Female Vampire

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Female Vampire

1975

La Comtesse noire

Directed by Jesús Franco

World famous shock!

A mute noblewoman's vampiric heritage compels her to drain the life force from all of her lovers.

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nathaxnne [goodbye <3]
Review by nathaxnne [goodbye <3] ★★★★★ Liked 11

From the moment Lina Romay walks out of the fog wearing a cape, a belt, thigh-high boots and nothing else, it is on. She is an eroticized, convex abyss, absorbing all light because it wants to be there, with her, in her. Her pupils, her nipples, her pubic hair, the camera scans down and then back up again. She is the vampire as that which takes in, but in so doing, the taking from, the relieving of, is a profound gift. This is no mere pornography, this is the centering and fixing of magickal relations between Jess Franco behind the camera and Lina Romay, the engazed. The viewer can feel this erotic bond across distances spatial and temporal. It is…

Ian West
Review by Ian West ★★★★ Liked 6

“He was killed by a mouth, he was bitten in the middle of an orgasm, and the vampire sucked his semen and took his life away.”

Shrouded in soft focus zooms and dreamlike transgressive eroticism, the constant certainty emerging from the thick fog is just how much Lina Romay and Jess Franco feed off each other, some sort of uncompromising collaboration so lush, lusty, and outright hypnotizing it isn’t even funny. Pretty sure I was seduced by Lina Romay multiple times while watching this and I can’t say that’s ever happened to me before while watching a movie.

I’m glad my revisit of Diabolical Dr. Z made me crave more Franco because this movie hit the spot—and it’s even better the second time around

Lou (rhymes with wow!)
Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½ Liked 9

On the Portuguese island of Madeira, a mysterious beauty silently roams the forests. Meanwhile, several people are found dead, completely drained of their life juices. While a coroner tries to solve the deaths, a baron heads out in search of the mysterious woman.

Female Vampire is one of the earliest Jess Franco/ Lina Romay collaborations and it's marvelous. It is peak dreamlike horror-eroticism.

To me, this felt more like a later day (80's) Franco effort, because there was a lot more focus on the sleazy stuff.

If you are so inclined, please check out nathaxnne's review for this movie. It's a bit lengthy, but it captures Female Vampire's essence perfectly. It's beautifully written, has a lot of humour and is, as far as I'm concerned, the definitive write-up for this movie. :)

Patrick Pryor
Review by Patrick Pryor ★★★★ Liked 3

Call me crazy, but I think I'm a Franco sexual. Lina Romay twerking in a bathtub full of blood burned a hole through my television screen and ignited a fire inside me that I never felt watching any old movie-film. I guess part of it comes from the way Franco zooms on Romay and really lusts after her every bed post caress and neck bite and kiss and writhing thrall of vampire ecstasy. And the way Romay performs for the camera, knowing her lover is watching and capturing her performance forever on celluloid for any jabroine and sad sack and erudite Euro snob and basement dwelling horror-fiend and plain ol' filmgoer in Whereverland to see. A kind of cinematic director-actress carnal love that transcends time and space and melts any medium to imprint on anyone caught in this white-hot grind of lust. Someone please grab a fan or open a window, 'cause I have the vapors!

comrade_yui
Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ Liked 7

the vampire is a figure who represents our most exaggerated desires -- the desire for eternal life, for absolute power, for intimacy and connection, for ecstasy. franco's female vampire, unlike jean rollin's wandering immortals, is a half-conscious wraith who laments her omnivorous appetites, she hates herself for how her existence has been reduced to the superficiality of consumption, yet she is still driven by an insatiable lust, the body which leads the mind. the mortals she encounters are inevitably sucked into her gravitational pull whether she commands them or not -- they believe they can handle the mind-breaking mystery of the supernatural powers of this world, but they cannot; the mystery obliterates them before they ever begin to uncover it, they tremble in fear of lina romay's silk-razor skin touching theirs and knowing that death is the end of all pleasures -- "in the silence that surrounds me, i am no longer alone."

Taylor Heider
Review by Taylor Heider ★★★★½ Liked 6

A definitive, romantic, elegant, mood piece. Drenched in fog and desire. Blurry, but totally in your face (Franco loves that damn zoom lens). I let myself get lost in every beautiful, lush frame - engulfed by it's wonderful score and atmosphere. I'm not sure if this is my favorite Romay performance but it's her most iconic for sure, and for good reason. She is magnetic and hypnotic and irresistibly seductive.

I watched this in 2015 and it was my first Franco ever (!!!) except I hated it and I am very, very happy I revisited it after I gained a better understanding and more importantly appreciation for his films. It is not very good as a starting point (much too unconventional and plotless), but it's completely essential to his filmography.

Slig001
Review by Slig001 ★★★★ 1

Female Vampire begins with Lina Romay walking clad in only a cape, belt and black leather boots. The Bare Breasted Countess indeed. Jess Franco's hypnotic vampiric haze focuses on the Countess as she drains the lifeforce from those she meets. Her thirst is not for blood, but for an alternative bodily fluid. This is a Jess Franco vampire film after all! Female Vampire really is Lina Romay's film. It's a very physical performance, not least because her character is mute. There's not much in the way of vampire lore, but Romay really gets the seductive nature of the vampire down - best shown during the scene she shares with Anna Watican. There's no shortage of sex scenes and it's all…

alejaaa
Review by alejaaa ★★★★ Liked

hi Lina Romay, when are you appearing to me wearing only your cape, high boots, and leather belt to feed your insatiable desires on my blood and other bodily fluids?! thanks.

this film might not escape the label of sexploitation but i think it's also an abstraction of a tragic and dark poem. a melancholic view on vampire loneliness and eroticism (with a touch of necrophilia!) a spell of beauty and desolation, lingering fog in a forest, rubbing bodies, and a woman exploring her sexuality to feel some kind of relief in her curse of eternal life. 😮‍💨
also we as a society should bring back the art of dry humping ahem 🙄

Liz
Review by Liz ★★★★ Liked 4

"How are we to know that the pleasure isn't worth life itself? Why fight against it?"

The hazy, solemn flipside to the pop-art explosion of Franco's earlier Vampyros Lesbos, with Lina Romay now donning the cape and giving a performance that's more smoldering, more explicit, and more elegiac. It's also more erotic than outright horror, but the eroticism isn't necessarily what you'd expect it to be. It's not the simulated sex or the exposed parts, but the mutual seduction of Jess and Lina. Much like the relationship between Russ Meyer and Kitten Natividad in the later Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, the two are clearly smitten with each other, her performing to him through the camera and he in…

Gentry Austin
Review by Gentry Austin ★★★★½ Liked 4

“She appeared for a moment as a shadow, a white uncertain shape.”

A seminal work, and significant for the introduction of Lina Romay as a main player in the Jess Franco universe. A love affair for the ages. It wasn’t a clean break, but by 1973 Franco had mostly ditched the Fu Manchu, the spy films, the sometimes successful star-vehicles for Christopher Lee, and plugged into a vein of pure-ID, no shame, pussyhound voyeurism. But for as much as Franco’s filmography saw him following his muse wherever it led, he was also at the whims of various production companies. In this case, the often celebrated, often disparaged, Eurociné.

Closer in spirit and execution to the hardcore Doriana Grey or refractory,…

ELECTRICWIZARDx
Review by ELECTRICWIZARDx ★★★½ Liked 3

Solemn strings and piano drawing down a celestial fog that drapes the trees for Lina to walk through, wearing nothing but knee-high boots, a wide buckle belt, a cape and a stoic tiredness in her beautiful eyes. Franco loves her unconditionally with the camera and you immediately know you're in for something special.

The fog gives way acting as a rebirth of vampiric wonder and wander as it disperses into the sunlight distinguishing our world from hers and then melding the two as the Countess Irina walks on out of the misty forest womb. A silent, slow walk to the immortality sustenance of a Vampire of lust and pleasure, draining lifeforces through the acts of both in final climax weaves…

Sally Jane Black
Review by Sally Jane Black 4

Jess Franco's bluntly titled vampire film is as simple as it gets: a female vampire seduces men and women to drain them of their lifeforce, occasionally voices regret, and spends a lot of time fucking. After so many Jess Franco films, I'm beginning to find him amusing in a way--the predictable nature of his depictions of sex and the unpredictability of just where his camera's gaze will fall combine to create a sort of head-shaking amusement. While I would never ascribe to the idea that boys will be boys, I am slowly ascribing to "Jess Franco will be Jess Franco."

Aesthetically, this film is actually quite watchable, though. Franco takes advantage of the locales he discovers for his films, which…