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Vampyros Lesbos
Jesús Franco’s dreamily seductive, sun-kissed take on Dracula is one of his most famous works; famed for its hip, psychedelic-loungecore soundtrack.
Director: Jesús Franco
Overview
This lesbian, Aegean take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula stars Ewa Strömberg in the Jonathan Harker role, as a lawyer sent to deal with the mysterious Countess Carody (Soledad Miranda) on a remote Turkish island, finding herself soon drawn into a strange world of hallucinatory fantasies.
One of the most well-known works from Spain’s legendarily prolific Jesús Franco (this was one of at least four films he shot during 1970), Vampyros Lesbos is a prime example of his strangely seductive, dream-logic take on erotic horror. A Spanish-German co-production presented here in its German-language version, Vampyros Lesbos (aka Vampiros Lesbos) gained an unexpected second life in the 1990s when a rerelease of its psychedelic-loungecore soundtrack by Franco, Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab became a cult, hipster hit. Miranda (credited here at Susann Korda) was a significant collaborator and muse for Franco, starring in a number of his most successful works in the period, but she would tragically die in a car accident mere months after this film’s completion.
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