The Velvet Vampire Starts Bad and Campy Before Elevating to Dismal Predictability
In The Velvet Vampire Day-Walking Vampires traipse around the desert seducing swingers, inspiring erotic dreams and causing general pain to movie watchers everywhere.
Written by BHM Contributor Dr. Chills
June 10, 2009
Release: October 18, 1971
Directed by: Stephanie Rothman
Written By: Maurice Jules and Charles S. Schwartz
Starring:
Michael Blodget as Lee Ritter
Sherry Miles as Susan Ritter
Celeste Yarnall as Diane LeFanu
When I sit down to watch a movie that I will be reviewing for Best Horror Movies.com, I usually do so with pen and paper, in the event that I want to make note of something I’ll reference later in my review. In the case of this film, I’ll begin with the final note that I scrawled on my note pad… “PAINFUL.” Yes folks, The Velvet Vampire was truly painful. I held out some hope that the movie would get better, but with each passing minute, with each new dreamscape, with each new change of background music, The Velvet
Vampire just continued to spiral with ever more rapidly downward.
The basic plot of the film involves some 70’s swingers who meet a pretty woman at a party and take her up on her offer for a weekend in the dessert. Now I know what you’re thinking right now. What on earth is a vampire doing living in the desert? I asked myself the very same question. One even wonders if Celeste Yarnall (Diane LeFanu) was a vampire at all considering her seeming tolerance for the hot desert sun. Maybe she was a Day Walker?
While enroute to the desert retreat the couple miraculously develops car trouble. The tell tale sign in any horror movie that people are going to die. The film quickly goes from a bad campy beginning to even worse predictability. One of the swingers, Susan Ritter (Sherry Miles) decides she�doesn’t want to swing, but her husband has no objection. Though it seems Susan is rebuffing the advances of the seductress vampire, she can’t seem to get the vampires out of her dreams. Susan dreams almost every night of the beautiful Diane LeFanu, who coincidentally is always wearing a bright Velvet Red in all of the dreamscapes.
As I foreshadowed earlier, people do die. And there are a few funny scenes. One notable one was when the Lee Ritter character (Michael Blodget) notices that the grave in the yard which houses the husband of their hostess dates back to the 1800’s. He thinks this odd, but takes no action. Now most normal people would have high tailed it out of there once they realized it was 1970 and their hostess was married to a guy who lived nearly 200 years ago. But hey, you know how 70’s singers are.
The Velvet Vampire does end with the death of the vampires, but like any good vampire, she passes on the gift of immortality to a friend before she goes. This is an irony in itself; that she would pass along immortality as she dies. Ah well such is the world of day walking velvet vampires. Questions or comments about The Velvet Vampire? Discuss it on The Ossuary Forums!
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