La comtesse noire AKA Female Vampire (1973)


Alternate Titles: Erotikill – Lüsterne Vampire im Spermarausch, Female Vampire X, Insatiable Lust

Directed by: Jess Franco

Written by: Gérard Brisseau, Jess Franco

Cinematography by: Jess Franco

Film Editing by: Jess Franco

Cast: Lina Romay, Jack Taylor, Alice Arno, Monica Swinn, Jess Franco, Luis Barboo, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Raymond Hardy, Anna Watican, Gilda Arancio, Roger Germanes, Ricardo Vázquez

Description: In the Madeira Island, the mute Countess Irina Karlstein is the last descendant of the evil Karlstein vampire family. She lives with her also mute servant and seems to be nymphomaniac, seeking for sex most of the time without satisfaction. Irina likes oral sex with men and women to suck off not only semen, but apparently also blood, killing her male and female lovers.

In the UK the film was originally passed for cinema in 1975 as “The Bare Breasted Countess” in a heavily edited version running less than an hour long. The 1994 UK Redemption video release was cut by over 6 minutes by the BBFC to heavily edit the lesbian/bondage scene and to remove shots of female masturbation and sexual closeups. Some cuts were restored in the 2002 Arrow DVD though 1 min 51 secs were removed from a scene of a woman being forced to strip and engage in lesbian sex.

There at least three versions of the film:

1] a horror version

2] a softcore version (with bitings to the genitals but no hardcore scenes). This is the version released by Image in the US and by LaserParadise in Germany.

3] a hardcore version (soft version plus four HC scenes, released by X-Rated in Germany).

The tape from Redemption Benelux titled Female Vampire is Jess Franco’s cut of the film, running at approx. 98 minutes PAL speed (101 NTSC speed) The version titled The Loves of Irina runs for approx. 94 minutes and is a sex-horror version without the supernatural angle. The version titled Erotikill runs for approx. 72 minutes and is a more conventional horror version. A German tape titled “Entfesselte Begierde (Insatiable Lust)” contains hardcore footage and runs at approx. 89 minutes.
The back cover of Image Entertainment’s DVD release shows pictures from the more horror-oriented version of the film titled “ErotiKill”. These scenes are not actually in the “Female Vampire” version of the movie, although some of these alternate scenes are included as extras on the Image DVD.

The DVD released by Image Entertainment under the title “Female Vampire” runs for approx 101 minutes and is an explicit sex-oriented version, although is it missing some brief footage of the Countess performing fellatio that is present in some foreign prints.