Vampira – review

Director: Ángel Mora Aragón

Release date: 1998

Contains spoilers

I am guessing that there is a hardcore porn version of Spanish film Vampira somewhere. It features porn stars and several clumsy cuts in the endless stream of sex scenes.

Yet the “Drive-in Double feature” is a barely 1 hour film that has too much story (or an attempt at story, at the very least) to be relegated to the porn only category and thus we will look at the film.

hosing down

It begins, after a forest pov shot, with a man washing his car. He is approached by a woman who grabs his hose (ooo err, missus) and sprays herself, strips and soon there is sex with all the clumsy edits, to cut out anything too rude, that I mentioned earlier. At the end of it she develops cat’s eyes and fangs and has a good chow down on his neck.

in the woods

Alex (Nacho Vidal) is out in the woods to test out camera film in a dusk, near twilight setting. He is wandering through, making Dictaphone notes, when he hears a strange howl. He runs and sees a woman chewing on another man’s neck. He legs it. Cut to him having sex with her, she grabs at his cross, he sees her in vampire form and then wakes up. He quickly removes the film from his camera.

a bite

He goes to speak to his friend Victor (Emilio Lisbona), a violent chap one surmises as he is never too far from a hand-gun. He says that he dreamt of her again and Victor points out that it has been two days and no body has been found. Given what he thought he saw one wonders why he took two days to develop the film but, as it is, there is nothing to see on the film. Cut to another man and another sex scene followed by a bite.

appeared in photo

Alex listens back to his Dictaphone and has captured the woman’s voice – not that they can tell what she says. Victor has to go to work and so has Alex watch an occult show hosted by Tutto Gettaceo (Xaviar Canals). Following this he sees another show about vampires and then has an erotic dream about the woman talking about vampires. He gets a call from Victor – a woman has suddenly appeared in the photos.

Xaviar Canals as Tutto

They go and see Tutto who is astounded by the pictures – he thought *they* were extinct – but tells them to forget they ever came across them. When they give him the tape he plays the voice backwards and it says “I want your blood”… going on to demand sperm and soul also. Tutto tells them that the creatures are naidas, a kind of blood drinking and sperm eating vampire. They live in a different version of time and space and he suspects they want to bring about an empire of evil.

hunting wabbits vampires

They dislike the sunlight, and will rest somewhere dark and humid. Victor knows just the place; the only house in the woods. When Alex asks what will kill them Victor suggests bullets, and being weapon mad happens to have a variety of pistols, a submachine gun and a crossbow for good measure. You might think, now they are hunting them, the sex would end… not so… they can hypnotise and seduce. We get a scene with two of them together and then Alex stumbles across them (the hunters split up, as you do) and ends up in a threeway – yet somehow survives.

in coffin

Given their powers, and the fact that Tutto clearly thinks of them as perfect creatures and thus can’t be trusted, we wonder at the potential outcome. I will say that the naidas sleep in coffins and seem to be able to vanish at will. I'll also say that bullets do work as a vampire slaying tool.

on the prowl

The acting is as poor as you would imagine, the dialogue (or at least the translation to subtitles) is rubbish. However they did try and do more than a simple skinflick. Did it work? No, not really. However, what did you expect. All that said there was some flesh on show, some fangs and some blood. It was certainly a cut above the accompanying feature, Night Vamps, which was no more than a series of unrelated strip teases by silicon overinflated women, and not a fang in sight. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.