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Eternal

2005, Movie, NR, 108 mins

Eternal: Review

Hungary's Countess Erszebet Bathory, the 16-century royal psychopath whose beauty regimen included bathing in the blood of hundreds of virgins, has been sadly underrepresented in horror movies. True, her dark shadow has fallen over such lesbian-vampire classics as DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1970) and COUNTESS DRACULA (1971), but her filmography is nothing compared to those of her mad, bad and very dangerous to know brethren Vlad the Impaler and Gilles de Rais, the inspirations behind all those Dracula and Bluebeard movies. Luckily, writer-directors Wilhelm Liebenberg and Federico Sanchez help redress this terrible wrong with this stylishly kinky exercise in blood-soaked eroticism. After having disappeared for hundreds of years, the immortal countess has resurfaced — in Canada, of all places — looking as youthful as ever. Now going by "Elizabeth Kane" (the smoky-voiced Caroline Neron), the reclusive beauty and her homicidal sidekick, Irina (Victoria Sanchez), prowl online chat rooms and lure bi-curious women to their elegant Montreal manse where they empty their victim's veins into Elizabeth's bathtub. In what turns out to be a serious lapse of judgment, Elizabeth exsanguinates the wife of Raymond Pope (Conrad Pla), a vice cop with a few vices of his own. Pope's kinky extramarital activities involve guns, belts and his partner's wife, Nancy (Ilona Elkin). Pope, who's more concerned with whether or not his missing wife has run off with another man than if she's alive or dead, finds Elizabeth's address on his wife's computer and pays the bloody countess an unwelcome visit. Elizabeth receives the thuggish cop with aristocratic sangfroid, wounds his macho pride by telling him that, yes, his wife did come looking for some girl-on-girl action, then sends him on his way. But she's not done with him yet: Knowing he'll soon return, Elizabeth and Irina scheme to neutralize whatever threat he poses by framing Pope for the string of murders they themselves have committed. The ending doesn't really work, and Pla tends to overplay what's already a larger-than-life character, but Neron is perfect as the striking and cucumber-cool countess. With a few subtle nods to the more erotic entries in the vampire canon — the films of Euro-horror stalwarts Jean Rollin and Jess Franco seems to be particular favorites — the film is handsomely mounted and uncommonly slick, often with blood. leave a comment --Ken Fox