Sunday, March 23, 2014

Year 3 Day 77

movie: Thirst (1979)
starring: Chantal Contouri, Max Phipps
genre: Thriller
year: 1979
format: DVD

plot: A woman is kidnapped and taken to a compound run by a cult of vampires. They keep prisoners like cattle, draining them of their blood in order to live. Kate is told repeatedly that she is from the Bathory bloodline, and that it's her duty to take her place among them.


It plays like a bad drug induced nightmare, never really giving up what's real and what's in the character's head. The end scene I found, lends itself to having you wonder if the lead character was "a vampire" all along, or a prisoner who desperately wants to be?
The vampires in this use a set of fake steel fangs, (right away thought of Triple H in Blade 3 Trinity) and seem to be more human then non.

The big theme seems to be paranoia and insanity. Are the things happening to the character because she's a suppressed vampire, or just a victim of a cult of sadists?
This is also one of those 1970's vampire movies that seemed obsessed with the Bathory story, adding it almost as an excuse to make the movie than any real purpose to advance the story. 

Okay, I was like just giddy when I found this in one of my boxes of movies, cause this is one that I didn't even remember having.  (bottom of the box, kicked up a lot of dust which I'm still tasting)  But, as I started to watch it, it seemed a bit familiar.  I have something like five vampire movies with the same title "Thirst" and almost all of them either have blood dripping lips/fangs on the cover or the generic Blockbuster covers from when I bought them in the clearance sale the year Blockbuster Canada closed.  Forgetting about this film, was understandable, and after watching it again, explainable.

For a 1979 film, this could have been a lot worse, the editing seemed to be jump cuts, and there wasn't a lot of dialog to really explain the plot. You spend half the movie listening to the score, and having to decode the odd looks the actors give the camera.

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