2022 A month of Halloween movies -- October 13th

Daughters of Darkness (1971) [Criterion]

The funny thing about subscribing to Criterion is that you might think it's a whole lot of highfalutin' foreign art films, but they actually throw in a decent amount of trash and exploitation films.  Okay, the trash is going to be highfalutin' trash, like what Wikipedia accurately sums up as "a 1971 English-language Belgian erotic horror film," but it's still trashy.

I don't know what to say about this little piece of early '70s exploitation.  Aside from a sleazy opening scene, there's really less softcore to it than you might expect.  Most of the salaciousness comes from all of the characters except a hotel concierge and a detective being bi, and really I'm just making unwarranted assumptions about the hotel staff and Belgian law enforcement there.  There's a bit of sadomasochism midway through that's presented as grounds for a divorce that really ought to be unnecessary since the couple hasn't been married long enough to be disqualified for an annulment.  Which brings up one of the main takeaways from this movie, which is that rushed marriages are never a good idea.

The other takeaway from this is that I really want to go to Belgium, but maybe only if I can stay in 5-star hotels while I'm there.  Part of the decadence of this movie is the idea that it might be nice to have an expensive Belgian hotel all to yourself except for the lesbian vampire couple across the hall (or the improvidently married bi couple on the other side of the hall if you happen to be part of the lesbian vampire couple; you know, I really need to stop making assumptions about who might be reading this).  It might even be nice to have that expensive Belgian hotel all to yourself even if only one person works there, which appears to be the case in this movie (the concierge is presumably an excellent chef based on what the married couple has for dinner in one scene).

Such plot as there is here is rather silly, involving Elizabeth Bathory manipulating everybody around her until (spoiler) she gets killed by a tree (spoiler) sort of.  A detective is lurking around, acting like he knows what's what but accomplishing little more than being a parable about bicycle safety (he is no Hercule Poirot, for certain).  One keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the shoes, while fabulous, mostly stay on feet.  Bathory has a gorgeous gothy secretary/lover who is mostly there to sulk and cause trouble.  The male lead is a waste of space but his mother is actually a somewhat interesting twist.  The female lead is attractive but is mostly here to be pushed around and thwarted the only time in the entire movie she shows any agency or even backbone.  All that said, it's enjoyable.

I did find myself wondering if I was going to make it a double feature tonight while the Scatterkat hung out with her mom (I think the answer to that is going to be book and bed).  I'm close to finishing my reread of a few of Peter Straub's works since his passing last month; I reread his Blue Rose trilogy and an anthology of short stories connected to the trilogy, and I'm about to finish an anthology of his short stories, Magic Terror.  I mention all this because one of the sad themes in the Blue Rose trilogy and the related stories is child abuse, and watching a vampire movie with child abuse in the back of my mind inevitably led to thoughts of Let The Right One In.

Let The Right One In is an old favorite, and it's included in the same Criterion Channel collection of vampire movies (cleverly called "Vampires") that includes Daughters of Darkness and Blacula.  (I also have it on a DVD and ripped to a Plex server, but the DVD is in storage and the Plex server is a little bit of a headache for a variety of reasons that can probably be boiled down to my embarrassing technical incompetence re: anything clever that's happened since 2000 or thereabouts).  I think I've said before in this series that I'm wavering about rewatches even though Scatterkat and I did rewatch The Bat.  Let The Right One In would be a re-re-re-re-(well you get the idea, feel free to add res)-watch.  But it's also a beautiful and tragic and disturbing movie, easily on a shortlist for best vampire movies.  I may give it the re-go because it's been a while.  Whether I do or not, it's worth checking out if it passed you by.