Nearby our house, during the summer, you can find ants who breeds little beetles like pets, or cows - as I call them. They're using a small section of the vegetation near the forest taking care of these beetles. I have no idea what they're doing with them, but I guess the cows somehow produces something juicy and nice that the ants can eat. I find this very fascinating. One day my boyfriend took one of the beetles, he just touched it with his fingers and it got stuck on him. We looked at then noticed how an ant was looking up at us. So he carefully put the finger close to the ant - who reached up and grabbed the "cow". Magical.
I'll never forget it and it came to think about these fuckers today while watching Thirst, an Australian vampire movie from 1974 starring Chantal Contouri, David Hemmings and Henry Silva. It's about an organisation called The Brotherhood, lead by high society vampires. They're using humans as blood-donors, through fancy luxury farms - more or less like slaves, but during very comfortable cirumstances. They've been using all their resources to find the last relative of Elizabeth Bathory, Kate Davis (played by Contouri) to make her the queen vampire in their new society. The only problem is that Kate isn't that fond of the idea and fights back with all her inner power to not let her win...
Thirst is a highly original vampire movie, and even if it's not without its faults, it's from now one one of my favorites in the genre. What I especially like is the cold, calculated style of the movie. Have you seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? Yeah, something like that. Very 70's, very stylish and slick - no experientation, no fancy camera work. John Carpenter-esque is something I could call it also. Rob Hardy's directing is excellent and also dares to play with our expectations - we're not even sure this is real vampires, or what the hell is real or not. In a very smart movie it almost seems like the movie is gonna end in the suckiest way possible - but it's all a game, it's all another twist to wake us up. I love that. I friggin' adore stuff like that.
While Chantal Contouri pretty owns the whole movie there's an excellent cast of supporting actors, including the always brilliant David Hemmings - here getting a bit closer to the chubbier version of himself, Henry Silva in a very straightforward baddie part and of course the mesmerising Shirley Cameron as one of the vampire-doctors. It's not a gore-fest of any kind, but have a lot of unsettling and disturbing set-pieces, a clinical look at sucking blood and some blood and really good effects. The stand-out sequence is when Kate hides out in a room - after finding a friend of hers melting away in a chair - and some unknown force tries to get inside the room by literary tearing it apart. Very impressive stuff!
Thirst might have too many endings. We're not talking "kill your darlings" here, which is fine by me. But it also takes its toll by feeling slightly too long during the last half hour. This is nothing to worry about, because it's still a very original and fresh take on the vampire-mythology and is up there with John Badham's Dracula, John Landis Innocent Blood, Tom Holland's Fright Night and Ted Nicolaou's Subspecies series - my personal favorites in this suck-friendly genre.
"Nearby our house, during the summer, you can find ants who breeds little beetles like pets, or cows - as I call them. They're using a small section of the vegetation near the forest taking care of these beetles. I have no idea what they're doing with them, but I guess the cows somehow produces something juicy and nice that the ants can eat. I find this very fascinating. One day my boyfriend took one of the beetles, he just touched it with his fingers and it got stuck on him. We looked at then noticed how an ant was looking up at us. So he carefully put the finger close to the ant - who reached up and grabbed the "cow". Magical."
I heard about this but never seen it.......there is something ants use the milk for....I just don´t remember what.
"I'll never forget it and it came to think about these fuckers today while watching Thirst, an Australian vampire movie from 1974 starring Chantal Contouri, David Hemmings and Henry Silva. It's about an organisation called The Brotherhood, lead by high society vampires. They're using humans as blood-donors, through fancy luxury farms - more or less like slaves, but during very comfortable cirumstances."
Never heard about this film before......but I wonder if Michael Spierig and his twin brother Peter Spierig has seen it, it reminds me of their film Daybreakers(2009).
"What I especially like is the cold, calculated style of the movie. Have you seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? Yeah, something like that. Very 70's, very stylish and slick - no experientation, no fancy camera work."
I think I know what you mean....
"including the always brilliant David Hemmings"
Oh yeah....I remember him from Blowup (1966), very good actor.
"Henry Silva in a very straightforward baddie part"
Hell yeah!
Silva is always watchable.
"This is nothing to worry about, because it's still a very original and fresh take on the vampire-mythology"
Yeah, it does sound like they wanted a fresh spin on the whole bloodsucker theme.
"and is up there with John Badham's Dracula, John Landis Innocent Blood, Tom Holland's Fright Night and Ted Nicolaou's Subspecies series - my personal favorites in this suck-friendly genre."
I only seen Fright Night (1985)& (2011) and Innocent Blood (1992)......but the rest sounds good too.
Great review and thanks.
Posted by: Megatron | September 22, 2013 at 17:23