Iconic studio publicity shot featuring the evil vampire Lina Romay (Irina von Karlstein) laying nude on a large antique bed with blood all over her lips. Irina is once again ready to bite the neck of her latest female victim Gilda Arancio while holding her head.
Female Vampire (a.k.a. The Bare-Breasted Countess) is a French-Belgian horror film written, directed, and co-edited by Jesús Franco. It was produced in 1973, but was only theatrically distributed in 1975. The film is set in Madeira and stars actress Lina Romay as Irina von Karlstein, a vampire who has sex with both male and female victims. In an unusual variation of the vampire myth, Karlstein performs oral sex on her victims until they die, draining them of their sexual fluids.
From retrospective reviews, Kim Newman referred to the film as "One of Franco's better films" as well noting that for Franco's fan-base it is "a masterpiece; to everyone else, wearisome tat." The online film database Allmovie gave the film one and a half stars out of five, but opined that the film "benefits from a haunting performance by Romay as the cursed vampire."
Three versions of the film were shot: straight horror, horror mixed with sex, and a hardcore pornography version. Franco's original title for the film was The Bare Breasted Countess, but it was released under many different titles over the years. To assuage Franco, the film was screened as The Bare Breasted Countess at the 2009 Fantastic Fest in the United States, which Franco attended as guest of honor. The film's title was inexplicably changed to Female Vampire for its DVD release.
In director Jesús Franco's productions from 1972 and onward, his films became more inclined towards themes involving female sex and zoom in shots on female genitalia. After the death of Franco's previous preferred lead actress Soledad Miranda, he cast 19-year-old actress Lina Romay as the Countess Irina. Romay was more open about her sexuality than Miranda, which allowed Franco to focus on his more sex-based themes in his films. Franco originally made three different versions of the film.... a straight vampire film called La comtesse noire (The Black Countess), a horror-oriented erotic film entitled La Comtesse aux seins nus (The Bare Breasted Countess), and the hardcore pornography version Les avaleuses (The Swallowers). These 3 versions ran at 72 minutes, 82 minutes, and 96 minutes respectively.
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