Vampyros Lesbos
Vampyros Lesbos is a 1971 film from West Germany and Spain, directed by Jesús Franco, running 89 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic.
- Year
- 1971 · 1970s films
- Country
- West Germany · Spain
- Runtime
- 89 min
- Director
- Jesús Franco
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (24/100)
- Also known as
- Vampyros Lesbos
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic
Franco's most watchable. The soundtrack outlived the film by decades.
Jess Franco's most watchable film, and the one where his hazy, zoom-happy style finally serves the material. A woman is drawn across a sun-baked Mediterranean to a countess who seduces and drains her victims, and the whole thing plays as an erotic fever dream rather than a horror film, scored by an unforgettable psych-jazz soundtrack that long outlived the movie.
Soledad Miranda is mesmerising as the vampire, and Franco shoots her against scorpions, kites and empty modernist interiors in a way that feels hypnotic. The album became a cult object in its own right.
The ideal entry point to Franco, and proof of what he could do on a good day.
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Written about
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
On these lists
- The Spanish horror shelf
Shot twice, dressed for the Madrid censor and naked for the drive-in. The blind Templars on skeletal horses are still the best monster on the shelf.
Filed alongside
Black Sabbath
Three stories, one Karloff. The Wurdulak segment is the best thing Bava shot.
The Vampire Lovers
Hammer clocks that the censors have loosened and sends Ingrid Pitt to make the most of it.
Hercules in the Haunted World
Bava shoots Hades in gel colours. Looks like nothing else in the cycle.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
The film that invented the Amicus anthology, dealt out as tarot on a train.
Inferno
Argento's sequel to Suspiria. Even less plot, even more colour. A building that is alive.
Black Sunday
Bava's debut as director. Barbara Steele and a mask full of spikes.
I Vampiri
Freda walked off Italy's first sound horror; Bava finished it. The whole euro-gothic shelf starts here.
The House That Dripped Blood
Four Robert Bloch stories, Cushing and Lee on hand, and barely a drop of the title's blood.
The Whip and the Body
Bava and Christopher Lee doing sadomasochism the censors did not catch.
The Awful Dr. Orlof
Where the entire Franco machine started. Everything he made for forty years is in here somewhere.
Planet of the Vampires
Bava builds an alien planet out of fog and two rocks, and Alien quietly borrowed the skeleton.
The Curse of Frankenstein
The film that built Hammer, in blood-red colour the censors hated.