The Devil's Plaything | |
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Directed by | Joseph W. Sarno |
Written by | Joseph W. Sarno |
Produced by | Chris D. Nebe |
Starring |
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Cinematography | Steve Silverman |
Edited by |
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Music by | Rolf-Hans Müller |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 85 minutes |
Countries |
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Language | English |
The Devil's Plaything (German : Der Fluch der schwarzen Schwestern) is a 1973 horror film directed by Joseph W. Sarno. An international co-production of Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany, the film's uncut version, features more suggestively sexual scenes. [1]
In a central European castle, two young girls are summoned to learn about a will making them heirs to the property, on condition that they stay there for a full year. They are received by the hostess, an austere-looking woman named Wanda, who organizes satanic lesbian rites at night that celebrate, in sex and sapphism, the vampire Varga. Coincidentally, on the same day an anthropologist studying local superstitions and her brother were victims of a road accident and asked for accommodation at the castle.
Wanda turns out to be the descendant of a vampire baroness, Varga, burned alive centuries ago by the villagers for vampirism. Through the lesbian priestess Wanda, Varga seeks revenge by eliminating the families of her torturers.
Nick Schager of Slant Magazine gave the film one and a half out of four stars, writing, "The Devil’s Plaything exhibits a disinterest in horror and an inability to muster eroticism..." [2] Ed Hulse of the trade journal Video Business describes the film as "a key title in the history of erotic horror", and writes, "The attractive young leads aren't the surgically enhanced bottle-blondes we typically see these days in Hollywood-made offerings of this type, and their acting is more than equal to the limited demands the script makes of them." [3]
Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 25 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Countess Mircalla Karnstein. The lead character is the original prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The story is often anthologised, and has been adapted many times in films, movies and other media.
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is a 1922 silent German Expressionist vampire film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife of his estate agent and brings the plague to their town.
The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck is a 1967 comedy horror film directed by Roman Polanski, written by Gérard Brach and Polanski, produced by Gene Gutowski and starring Polanski with his future wife Sharon Tate, along with Jack MacGowran and Alfie Bass, and featuring Ferdy Mayne.
Dark Water is a 2005 American supernatural horror film directed by Walter Salles and written by Rafael Yglesias. It is a remake of the 2002 Japanese film of the same name, which was inspired by the short story "Floating Water" by Koji Suzuki, who also wrote the Ring trilogy. The film stars Jennifer Connelly, Tim Roth, John C. Reilly, Pete Postlethwaite, Perla Haney-Jardine, Dougray Scott and Ariel Gade.
Nosferatu the Vampyre is a 1979 gothic horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is set primarily in 19th-century Wismar, Germany and Transylvania, and was conceived as a stylistic adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, taking the title, setting and titular character's design from F. W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. The picture stars Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker, and French artist-writer Roland Topor as Renfield. There are two different versions of the film, one in which the actors speak English, and one in which they speak German.
The Vampire Lovers is a 1970 British Gothic horror film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing, George Cole, Kate O'Mara, Madeline Smith, Dawn Addams, Douglas Wilmer and Jon Finch. It was produced by Hammer Film Productions. It is based on the 1872 Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla and is the first film in the Karnstein Trilogy, the other two films being Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971). The three films were somewhat daring for the time in explicitly depicting lesbian themes.
Vampires are frequently represented in popular culture across various forms of media, including appearances in ballet, films, literature, music, opera, theatre, paintings, and video games.
Vampyros Lesbos is a 1971 erotic horror film written and directed by Jesús Franco. The film stars Ewa Strömberg as Linda Westinghouse, an American who works in a Turkish legal firm. Westinghouse has a series of erotic dreams that involve a mysterious vampire woman who seduces her before feeding on her blood. When she travels to an island to settle an inheritance, Linda recognizes a woman as the vampire from her dreams.
Lesbian vampirism is a trope in early gothic horror and 20th century exploitation film. The archetype of a lesbian vampire used the fantasy genre to circumvent the heavy censorship of lesbian characters in the realm of social realism.
Pamela Jayne Soles is a retired American actress. She made her film debut in 1976 as Norma Watson in Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) before portraying Lynda van der Klok in John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Riff Randell in Allan Arkush's Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
Blood Bath is a 1966 American horror film directed by Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman and starring William Campbell, Linda Saunders, Marissa Mathes, and Sid Haig. The film concerns a mad painter of weird art who turns into a vampire-like man by night, apparently as a result of a family curse, and believes that he has found his reincarnated mistress in the person of an avant-garde ballerina.
Twins of Evil is a 1971 British horror film directed by John Hough and starring Peter Cushing, with Damien Thomas, real-life identical twins former Playboy Playmates Madeleine and Mary Collinson, Isobel Black, Kathleen Byron, Damien Thomas and David Warbeck. This was the Collison sisters' final acting roles.
Natasha Wightman is an English actress who appeared in British and American films and British television productions from 1999 until 2005. Productions in which she has co-starred include Gosford Park (2001), Revelation (2001), Mouth to Mouth (2005), and V for Vendetta (2006). She also appeared in several episodes of the British TV serial State of Play.
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La Noche de Walpurgis /Walpurgis Night, is a 1970 Spanish/German horror film starring Paul Naschy, the fifth in his series about the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. This film was directed by León Klimovsky and written by Paul Naschy, and is generally regarded to have kickstarted the Spanish horror film boom of the 1970s. This was Naschy's all-time most financially successful film. It was also the first of 8 films that he would make with director Leon Klimovsky at the helm.
The Devil's Nightmare is a 1971 supernatural horror film directed by Jean Brismée and starring Erika Blanc, Jean Servais, Daniel Emilfork, and Lucien Raimbourg. Its plot follows a group of tourists who spend the night in a historic castle owned by a family plagued by curses and Satanism.
Transylvania Twist is a 1989 comedy film that parodies horror films. Originally released by Concord Production Inc., this film is distributed on home video by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In the film Angus Scrimm reprises his role of the "Tall Man" from the Phantasm films, as a parody. The humor of the film is most often said to be in the style of Airplane!, and Mel Brooks comedies. It occasionally breaks the fourth wall rule with characters looking at the camera, and one even saying "I'm in the wrong movie". The film's main theme has been released on a variety of albums, and the entire soundtrack was released on CD and as a direct download in the year 2010, twenty-one years after the movies initial release.
Fascination is a 1979 French horror film written and directed by Jean Rollin, and starring Franca Maï and Brigitte Lahaie. It focuses on a thief who seeks refuge in a remote château where two mysterious women with potentially sinister intentions are residing.
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