(Review originally written at 5 January 2006)
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"The Vampire Lovers" is an original Hammer movie because it has a very much present lesbian undertone and storyline. But is the movie itself much good? Not always. It's a pretty uneven movie with some nice elements in it but overall it leaves too many loose ends and its story drags too much at some points, which all doesn't make this movie the most pleasant of the Hammer movies to watch.
The movie is fairly slow and never really finds the right pace. Even though the movie is just 91 minutes short, it feels much longer. There simply happens to little exciting or interesting enough in the story.
But main problem I had with this movie was that it lacked a real main character. There isn't really a 'hero' present in the movie and the movie keeps switching between different characters, which makes it uneasy for us the viewer to really feel for any of the characters. It also doesn't make the movie exactly a terribly exciting one to watch.
It was pretty nice to see Peter Cushing going Van Helsing-style again toward the ending of the movie but still his presence in the movie makes a pointless impression. Also a totally pointless impression made John Forbes-Robertson as the 'Man in Black'. The presence of his character and his purpose is never explained in the movie. I suppose that his character was supposed to be Count Dracula? We shall perhaps never know...
The movie does have some nice elements in it and some good movie-tricks and little story-twists at times, so the movie is not a complete bore or disaster to watch. The way of storytelling might perhaps be not the best but still the story is one of the things which makes this movie good and original enough to still watch it.
5/10
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