By Chris Hyde

March 2, 2004

To this point in history, North American DVD release schedules have been sadly devoid of Argentine vampire flicks. Now, Mondo Macabro sets things right.

Pete Tombs and friends have made it clear from the very first that they are willing to scour the globe to unearth little seen gems of horror and reissue them in digital form. At first there was only a UK outfit, but luckily for those of us here across the pond, a second domestic arm was added so that we wouldn't miss out on all the international fun. While their releases thus far run a regular horror gamut, they seem to have a particular penchant for cross culture vampire stories. Last year gave North Americans the chance to see an excellent Pakistani version of Dracula (The Living Corpse) that was rescued from the trashcans of Lahore just shortly before it might have disappeared forever. This time around they've gone South of the Border, letting us catch a glimpse of what happens when Transylvania gets set to a Latin beat.

Less beholden to the Bram Stoker version of bloodsucking undead than its Mondo Macabro Lollywood predecessor, Blood of the Virgins begins with a short introductory sequence that introduces the audience to a historic love triangle. Somewhere in time, the voluptuous Ofelia (Susana Beltran) is deeply enamored with the dashing - but enigmatic - Gustavo. Her rich parents don't approve, however, and instead marry her right off to stolid young Eduardo. Unfortunately, the wedding night fails to go as the hapless chump expects, since Gustavo shows up to ice him and turn his lovely virgin wife into a vampire. Que verguenza, no? Faster than you can say "what in the hell is going on?" the cool animated credit sequence rolls, and next thing you know we're following a bunch of wayward love children apparently vacationing in the mountainous countryside. Following some minutes of topless frugging and other assorted wacky hijinx, the beautiful people then pile into their car only to sadly run out of gas far from anywhere but an old, abandoned inn. Of course they decide to spend the night - which, if you've ever seen a horror film before, you'll recognize as perhaps not the greatest idea of all time.

The plot unfolds from here in rather haphazard manner, punctuated occasionally with surrealistic red filter shots of flying seagulls accompanied by the strange burbling sounds of an analog synthesizer (?). Not being one to spoil the party, I won't finely detail all the various exsanguinations and sexy stalking. But yeoman director Emilio Vieyra moves things along at a pretty brisk pace, and with this one clocking in at a sprightly 77 minutes, there's not a whole lot of downtime here. While this is certainly not the most coherent movie ever made, the filmmaker's first foray into the color horror film is entertaining throughout and has surprisingly high production value. One would actually expect a '60s Argentine B-movie to look a lot crappier than this one does; but the sets, camerawork and makeup work for this movie attain a surprisingly high level of quality. The same really can't be said of a lot of the acting turned in by the ensemble cast in Blood of the Virgins, but let's just say that fans of actresses of a, um, pneumatic nature at least shouldn't be disappointed.

As with all of the Mondo Macabro product line, the transfer done for this one is excellent both in the visual and auditory sense. Since this is a fairly old film, these aspects aren't absolutely perfect -- but save for the occasional flaw everything looks and sounds about as good as might be expected. Colors are well defined and bright, flecking is minimal, and the go-go soundtrack and creepy keyboard music come in loud and clear in pulse-pounding mono. Also as usual, the film itself comes accompanied by a nice handful of extras that enhance the DVD's value: lengthy notes on the production, a stills gallery and a great batch of trailers from other movies by the director of Blood of the Virgins. What's especially interesting about these previews is that they include all of Emilio Vieyra's horror films as well as promos for some of his work in other genres, so they give a tantalizing glimpse of the filmmaker's wide-ranging oeuvre.

Another primo bit of bonus material accompanying the main event on this disk is a high quality documentary on Argentine exploitation films, which gives some historical context for the film as well as celebrating the ample charms of famed Argentine starlet Isabel Sarli. I'll go on record here as noting that I find these Mondo narrative segments sort of a mixed blessing; while there's no denying their value in providing information on lesser known film industries from around the world, they tend to leave me either dying to see all these other movies that are shown only briefly or otherwise lamenting over lost classics. How can one not want to see stuff like Leon Klimovsky's black and white 1950 drug film Marihuana after being teased with the bizarre snippet shown here? And it's just heartbreaking to see small segments of early black and white Argentine horror movies that have seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.

But I guess there's no sense crying over deteriorated nitrate when the company is now actively working to preserve the celluloid heritage of the globe with each release it makes. Besides, maybe if we're lucky this is all just some kind of "always leave 'em wanting more" marketing strategy designed to leave fans pining for future releases from the company. Whatever the case may be, this most recent DVD from the domestic wing of Mondo Macabro proves once again that with nearly every digitization that they get to store shelves, the cinematic legacy of the world is greatly enriched. For wouldn't we all be that much poorer if the single foray of the Argentine film industry into the world of vampirism had somehow been laid to rest forever? As long as there are companies such as this one, the future will never completely manage to drive a stake into the heart of the past.