elegantly minimal perversion and eerily depopulated locations, THE VELVET VAMPIRE is the closest American cinema ever came to the world of Jean Rollin. It might have seemed too classy for the drive-ins since the trailer tries to sell it as a bloodier, harder item than it is.
It opens with Diane LeFanu
(BEAST OF BLOOD’s Celeste Yarnall), a stylishly-dressed femme fatale, turning the tables on a mugger and bleeding him out in a fountain, but doesn’t generally try to match the action- packed, snarling-fangs mode of the Count Yorga or Blacula films. A collector of fine art, de- signer clothes (Yarnall sports a silvery top and a marabou- trimmed negligée which even re- sembles outfits Delphine Seyrig wears in DAUGHTERS OF DARK- NESS) and pretty people, the predatory Diane meets hand- some, blonde couple Lee (BE- YOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS’ Michael Blodgett) and Susan (THE PACK’s Sherry Miles)
at the Stoker Art Gallery in Los Angeles and invites them out to her desert home for a weekend of seduction.
Diane is an interesting screen vampire. She drives a dune buggy (Yarnall seems undoubled in some neat stunts) and invades the couple’s dreams (emerging from a TWIN PEAKS-like red- draped room behind a mirror). Though clearly a baddie, she is easier to like than the blandly handsome good guys and her fate, flashmobbed by crucifix- waving Jesus Freaks outside a the Los Angeles Greyhound ter- minal, is surprisingly affecting. Yarnall’s performance is reticent, quietly expressive and very strik- ing. Also in the cast are Jerry Daniels (Yarnall’s co-star in “The Apple,” a STAR TREK episode), Gene Shane (also mixed up with hippies, monsters and Jesus Freaks in WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS) and later-familiar bald bad guy Bob Tessier as a biker. Rothman, who had added the vampire theme to her TRACK OF
THE VAMPIRE cut of the much- made-over Operacija Ticijan, makes very good use of the desert and downtown Los Ange- les, snatching a stalking-chase sequence in the bus station with a traditionally Cormanesque lack of permits. The punchline is very much in line with the twists at the end of THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, the Count Yorga films and other vampire movies of the period. Previously available on cassette (as THE WAKING HOUR in the UK) and laserdisc, THE VELVET VAMPIRE looks gor- geous in Shout’s new 1.78:1 transfer: the red dresses, espe- cially, are glowing, the skin tones sensuous and the landscape at once arid and lush. Extras run to an ominous and scratched stan- dard-frame trailer (“And what were her sinister plans for the at- tractive young couple she enticed into her evil world?”), a photo gallery and a lively, chatty com- mentary track from Yarnall (who has a lot of specific memories about the production and her
Rosalba Neri was rechristened “Sara Bay” when Roger Corman’s New World Pictures released LADY FRANKENSTEIN to US theaters in 1973.
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