The Gist: Three nerds from the midwest take off for Hollywood for a life of stardom but end up in over their heads when they head to a a vampire run brothel on their first night.
Clarification: This film by Fred Olen Ray is one of those old school "USA Up All Night" classics that is EXTREMELY hard to find now a days (if you find a copy jump on it IMMEDIATELY). It's 80's B movie magic at it's finest, full of bad puns and R rated humor to the point that it's so bad that you have to like it. Especially Eddie Deezen as super nerd "Kyle" who is probably the only one in the world to end up in a bed with a hot girl in lingerie and try to run and that's long before she breaks out with the fangs.
Selling Point: It's a movie that consists of naked women with fangs and tons of sex humor which is always a great combo.
Female Vampire Factor: This film gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5. The movie is all about how hot they are. As a matter of fact the only non hot thing about them is what happens to them when they touch holy water. That's definitely not pretty at all. Otherwise it's 80+ minutes of hot fanged women in lingerie with goofy comedy in between.
Vampiress Cast
Britt Ekland (Madamme Cassandra)
AKA the hot blonde bond girl from "The Man With the Golden Gun", a much older (but still hot) Ekland plays the owner of the brothel and head vampire of the group. Most of her air time consists of her attempting to make bad puns regarding her dislike of the "Beverly Hills Cops" and directing the girls.
Jillian Kesner (Claudia)
The sexy late actresses character Claudia is the one who handles clients who are into a much rougher version of having a good time. She's very much a dominatrix just without the whips and chains and ball gags (all the girls at the bordello dress very classy). She's one of the first vamps to vamp out on screen and unfortunately for her she's also the first the hunters encounter to take out (and it isn't pretty what happens to her either).
Debra Lamb (Jessica)
Jessica is the glamor of the group. When she ends up in the bedroom with one of the nerds named Russell all he wants out of her is to take sexy pictures of her in and out of her lingerie. She's also really into talking dirty as she explains to Kyle while he's vampire hunting how all she wants to do is bite his neck, drink his vital juices and make him her sex slave for all eternity (before groping him and giving him the old "is there a stake in your pocket or are you glad to see me" line).
Michelle Bauer (Kristina)
Scream Queen Bauer who has appeared as a vampire in a few other films after this including 1995's Blonde Heaven (which for reasons beyond me has since been renamed "Morgana" for it's DVD release) was the vampire originally assigned to have sex with then drain movie protagonist Kyle. Because Kyle is loyal to his girlfriend he wants nothing to do with her and ends up escaping. She almost gets her hands on Kyle through hypnosis (or as True Blood would call it "glamoring") but he came prepared with a cross on his boxer shorts. I can't say Kyle won out in that case if going out also meant he was going to get a happy ending.
Brigitte Burdine (Molly)
The late actress who spent her last years of her life as a casting director for popular video games played the midwest girlfriend that Kyle was so loyal too. Eventually she gets worried about Kyle and heads to L.A. to find out what's going on with him. When she gets their the only one she finds is Brock (Tim Conway Jr.) has has already been turned into a vampire by the girls in the bordello who then volunteers to help her look for Kyle. The next time we see her is at the end of the movie where Kyle believes that everything has gone back to normal after killing the head vampire until you see that Brock and Molly both now have fangs and are going after him.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a 1996 film directed and starring Quinten Tarrantino. The film follows two fugitive brothers who kidnap and hold hostage a family at gunpoint. The whole group end up having to stop for refuge at a strip bar called the "Titty Twister" somewhere along the US/Mexican border. After a shootout in the bar leaves Richard (Tarantino) bloody, most of the bar reveals themselves to be vampires. This results is a melee in which friendly or not every human in the bar has to work together in order to get out alive.
After the success of the first movie, two straight to video releases followed. 1999's "From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money" which told the story of a group of bank robbers who on their way to a big heist in Mexico get turned into vampires when one of them has a run in at the Titty Twister resulting in his being turned while trying to escape the clubs bartender and main troublemaker. The robbers one by one end up turning each other and the police along with the guy who orchestrated the robbery have to work together in order to stop them. This movie was NOT female friendly as far as vampires go and even if it was, they were not attractive in anyway as you can see by the below example of 1 of the 2 that are in the movie.
Tania Kline vamping out in From Dusk Till Dawn 2
and finally 1999's "From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter"
. This was a prequel to the first film telling the story of "Esmeralda" the young Mexican village girl that would eventually go on to become "Santanico Pandimoniam" who was the snake carrying vampire/stripper in the first film. This was the most female vamp friendly movie of the series with many of the female vampires being main characters unlike the first film in which they were just extra's in the films end fight scenes. For my review of the television series based on the original story CLICK HERE.
Vampiress Cast
From Dusk Till Dawn
Salma Hayak (Santanico Pandimoniam)
The MVP of the franchise as the only scene many even remember from this movie is her coming out in the red two piece doing her snake dance. For whatever reason when she turned she resembled a snake as well, something that was never explained even though the 3rd film revolved around her characters story thus plenty of opportunity to do so.
Tia Texada
Though there are countless vampire strippers in this movie only one of the nameless beauties gets to show her stuff looking "Normal"and this is her.
Texas Blood Money
Maria Checa (Lupe)
As I stated above this movie was not very female vamp friendly. There was only two and nothing says non female vampire friendly than taking a playboy playmate and turning her into a disgusting demon creature. In the film Lupe was having sex with one of the robbers named Jesus. After the deed was done she goes to take a shower and is attacked by a mutant bat and killed. The bat turned out to be "Luther" who was the first robber turned. In Jesus's attempt to escape Luther he runs into the now deformed Lupe trying to bite his neck.
Hangman's Daughter
Ara Celi (Esmeralda/Santanico)
Esmeralda was nothing more than a poor young girl in Mexico when we first see her in Hangman's Daughter. Her father whipped her if she did anything close to wrong. Eventually she got fed up helps a criminal escape the noose and runs away with him. This leads them all to eventually go to the what eventually becomes the Titty Twister where the head mistress of what at the time is a bordello seems VERY interested in her. What we eventually find out is that the vampire head mistress is her mother (who she believed died during child birth) and Esmeralda was prophisised to be the queen of the vampires one day.
Sonia Braga (Quixtla)
Old school hotty coming up. Former Brazilian playboy playmate Braga played the mother of Santanico. Even in her advanced age she is SUPER sexy in this film seducing her next meal as the group of stage coach travelers ended up at the bar. She is easily one of the best "Cougarpires" in film history.
Rebecca Gayheart (Mary Newlie)
The Newlies were a Newlywed christian couple on their way to doing some religious work in Mexico when they ended up at the bar. What eventually came out is that Mr. Newlie was not at all religious and only put up a front so that he could get some from Mary (which even after married still didn't happen). Eventually he gets tired of waiting and has a good time with Quixtla, gets dunk and starts a bar fight which starts the vampire blood bath that always happens during these movies. Poor Mary becomes a bi standard of the fight and is turned. She starts out pretty hot as a vampire but as her lone vamp scene goes on her progression gets worse and worse. Still doable though, I mean this is still the 90's Noxema girl after all.
