Vamp or Not? She

This film was mentioned to me by Crabstix who had found a French website about the movie and there was a screenshot labelled as vampire. Good enough for me to give it a go.

The film, directed by Avi Nesher and released in 1982, is set in a post-apocalyptic future in year 23 after the Cancellation – though what the Cancellation was we do not know but the presence of mutants called Nukes kind of suggests it was a nuclear war. Anyway we have sunk into a kind of medieval type of society and the film is a sword and sorcery type movie. It is based on the H Rider Haggard novel that also spawned the famous Hammer film She with Ursula Andress and there is a brief reference although bathing in a pillar of blue fire has been replaced with a mystic pool! Any other connection is purely coincidental one feels.

It centres around Tom (David Goss), Dick (Harrison Muller Jr) and Tom’s sister Hari (Elena Wiedermann), who are traders. Hari is kidnapped by Norks, swastika wearing warriors (there is a totalitarian under current with another character having adopted a symbol suspiciously like the hammer and sickle). In trying to get help they end up (eventually) fighting alongside the Goddess warrior woman She (Sandahl Bergman) and her security guard Shandra (Quin Kessler).

I don’t want to go into the full story, but suffice it to say that it is an absolutely surreal experience. However I will look at the allegedly Vamp part of the film.

Tom and Dick are on their own at the time, being tracked by She and Shandra. They find a house and it looks idyllic with robed youths playing round a pool and talking art and philosophy. The leader, Pretty Boy (David Brandon), insists they stay for a meal and another one, Pretty Girl (Susan Adler), takes a shine to Dick.

After the meal everyone sleeps in the dinning area on the floor, communally. She and Shandra have broken in and find human body parts in the kitchen. Just then, in their sleep, the youths all transform, growing fangs but also sprouting hair and attack Tom and Dick. They are rescued by the two women who use swords to despatch the creatures.

Okay there are fangs but these are bestial creatures, akin to werewolves if anything. Indeed the DVD blurb describes them thusly: “a tribe of innocents by day and man eating werewolves by night.” Of course, DVD blurbs often lie and some of the imdb comments do refer to this as vampiric, however there is nothing at all to suggest that they are vampires I’m afraid. So we have to go Not Vamp.

If you want to find out more about this surreal movie which includes, amongst much weirdness, a bridge guard who multiplies if bits are chopped off and a robotic Frankenstein’s Monster then the imdb page is here.