Michael_Elliott
Vampire Ecstasy (1973) * (out of 4)The beautiful Helga (Marie Forsa) arrives at a mysterious castle with a dark past and soon she is being seduced by the lesbian vampire (Nadia Henkowa) who was put to death four-hundred years earlier.Director Joseph W. Sarno made a handful of films in Germany and this here is one of them. I haven't seen too many of Sarno's films but I've enjoyed what I've seen but sadly that's not the case here as I found this film to be quite horrid. It's also known as VEIL OF BLOOD, THE DEVIL'S PLAYTHING and several other titles and it's also available in a shorter 85-minute version as well as the 104-minute version, which is what I watched.There are all sorts of problems with this film and the running time is certainly the major one. Whenever a film is this slow and boring an extended running time is never what you want to see and sadly this film really does seem like it's longer than THE GODFATHER trilogy. This thing just drags and drags and then drags some more and not once does anything make any sense. Obviously there a lesbian cult looking for new members but the scenes never add up to anything and they just last too long.Another problem is that the pacing is awful and I can't help but think the shorter version must have played better. Forsa would appear in a couple other Sarno pictures and she's certainly the best thing about the film and keeps it from being a BOMB. The film offers up plenty of softcore sex and lots of beautiful women but even this grows boring after a while. The castle does look beautiful and the locations are also terrific to look at but overall this film is really bad.
Dries Vermeulen
Making his way back to home soil following the extended Scandinavian sojourn that yielded the landmark likes of INGA and DADDY, DARLING, Joe Sarno got sidetracked into the Swiss alps by distributor Chris Nebe who had made a mint dubbing and distributing several of the director's '60s sexploitation efforts in German-speaking countries and was now looking to branch out into production. For Sarno who was dragging his feet to return stateside anyway, knowing full well that he couldn't keep escaping the looming ever larger specter of hardcore, this artistic alliance came as a godsend. Their association, which was to last the course of three films (BABY LOVE and BUTTERFLY being the other two), got off to a less than fortuitous start with VEIL OF BLOOD which clearly adhered more to Nebe's notion of naughtiness, informed by Hammer's sexy streak of lesbian vampire sagas with the Karnstein trilogy and his access to a 12th Century Munich mansion owned by his uncle, the Baron Malsen. Sarno seemed out of his depth dealing with the Gothic trappings the genre demanded, resulting in one of his clunkiest carnal capers. Fortunately, both follow-ups played much more to his great strengths as a filmmaker which were the psychology of sex and the often inadmissible motivations that drive a character's attraction to another person. VEIL only really swings into gear when focused on the unhealthy desire between brother and sister Peter and Julia Malenkow, brought to a head by innocent interloper Helga, played by the magnificent Marie Forsa making her dirty movie debut.A proverbial wild child prowling the streets of Stockholm when they met, this Swedish siren served as Sarno's true inspiration for the triumvirate in which she was to take center stage. No shrinking violet, she shrewdly had it put in her contract that no explicit footage could be made public, regarding a legitimate career that never happened, no matter how far she decided to take matters with her co-stars, which was all the way by most accounts ! Her work for Sarno holds additional interest for American audiences to hear her deliver her own dialog as by means of experiment to facilitate export these movies were shot with the predominantly German cast speaking English. This proves something of a drawback in the case of VEIL however as its dense plot requires reams of plot exposition, most of it delivered with fluctuating intelligibility by Hungarian Nadja Henkowa as Frau Wanda Krock, the sinister housekeeper at Castle Varga, the ancestral home of an evil Baroness (Elisabeth Batory in all but name) burned at the stake four centuries ago. Hot to trot Helga's one of two remaining descendants come to roost, the other being uptight brunette for contrast Monika, the scrumptious Ulrike Butz, a veteran of the SCHOOLGIRL REPORT series who sadly OD'd a few years later. She's fawned over by butch best friend Iris, frequently forgotten skin starlet Flavia Keyt, who had caused quite an uproar half a decade earlier sharing a bathtub with pneumatic Sybil Danning in Adrian Hoven's THE LONG SWIFT SWORD OF SIEGFRIED. Monika barely features in the film's narrative until the fiery reincarnation finale, heavily signposted by her "uncanny resemblance" to the portrait of the dead Baroness.Fly in the ointment is Dr. Julia Malenkow (Anke Syring, shouldering the heaviest thespian burden not altogether convincingly, familiar from the impressive line-up of pulchritude offered by Franz Antel's SEXY SUSAN SINS AGAIN supplementing the ranks of Terry Torday, Edwige Fenech and Femi Benussi), an expert in the occult whose car has conveniently broken down in the vicinity. Brother Peter (bland hunk Nico Wolferstetter, an occasional hardcore performer in Lasse Braun's landmark SENSATIONS) in tow, she's dead set on getting to the bottom of the strange goings on at Castle Varga, starting with that infernal bongo beat rising from the basement every night as the bare nekkid Wanda leads her band of boob and butt shaking Baroness worshipers in a rudimentary introduction to belly dancing and bouts of feverish penis-shaped candle fondling, a spectacle even Sarno couldn't save from ridicule. Still worse is the lady doc's bat attack done on the cheap, Syring wildly waving her arms at unseen assailants as amplified bat squeaking fills the soundtrack and subsequently mauled by a pair of unconvincing hand puppets ! Far more effective is the character's tortured soul searching as she finds her brother's taken for granted affection alienated by Helga, the resulting triangle fuels what modest dramatic tension the story manages to develop. Even the vaunted vampire aspect alluded to in all of the movie's many titles is almost casually discarded with only the Malenkows clutching their "garlic crosses" a clear reference to bloodsucker lore, as sure a sign as any Sarno was definitely operating outside his comfort zone. Equally clueless appears the cinematography by his regular contributor Steve Silverman, a master of mood on ALL THE SINS OF SODOM who can't muster much more than murky here, scoring zilch on atmosphere and squandering a superb location.Tragic Claudia Fielers portrays Wanda's right hand wench Samana whose lascivious finger-licking after fondling Forsa "down there" leaves an indelible lustful impression, more genuinely erotic than much of the textbook heavy breathing. She's sadly remembered most for being the subject of Andrzej Kostenko's supremely tasteless THE EVOLUTION OF SNUFF incorporating the actress's real life suicide at age 28. Robust blonde Heidrun Hankammer was a sex education mainstay and co-starred in Dietrich's original 1968 adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's DIE NICHTEN DER FRAU OBERST. While Sarno resumed residence on the other side of the Atlantic for one of his most fruitful filmmaking periods with the Rebecca Brooke cycle, Nebe's association with adult proved short-lived. Taking a page perhaps from the book of respected ex-pat Yugoslavian documentary director Marijan Vajda, who acted as production manager on VEIL while his same-named son handled second unit (and was to helm the Nebe-produced creepy cult horror BLOODLUST), he turned to documentaries with considerable success later in life.
EVOL666
THE DEVIL'S PLAYTHING is my second attempt at a Joseph Sarno production - and although I will say it is far more enjoyable than the painfully dull and unerotic Swedish WILDCATS, it is still a little slow and un-explicit for my taste.This one centers around a group of vampire girls who live in a castle, that want to resurrect their previously murdered "leader". In order to do so, the girls have to dance around naked and kiss each other and chant weird stuff - and of course drink some blood, too. When a doctor and her brother's car breaks down and they have to stop at the castle for lodging - they provide the ideal bloodbank for the horny vampires...but they may not be as helpless as they seem...THE DEVIL'S PLAYTHING is a pretty good example of early 70's exploit sleaze. Lots of nudity - including some full-frontal, some sleazy undertones - including incest and of course, lesbo-bloodsucking...but these scenes are still pretty tame by today's standards. Some pretty hot women in this one, would have benefited from some more explicit sex, but I guess ya can't have it all. Also would have benefited from some heavier violence/gore, being that it IS a vampire film, but I think the purpose of THE DEVIL'S PLAYTHING was more to showcase skin, not blood. Still a little slow - and the acting for the most part is absolutely wooden - but that's to be expected from something from this era and of this budget. Worth a look to exploit fans - others may find it a little too dull for their liking. 7/10
Charles Modzinski
Well, if you are looking for a great mind control movie, this is it. No movie has had so many gorgeous women under mind control, and naked. Marie Forsa, as the busty Helga, is under just about everytime she falls asleep and a few times when she isn't. One wishes they made more movies like this one.
