Daughters of Darkness - Movie Review

One alluring night after getting married, a newlywed couple takes temporary residence in an ocean-side vacation resort. That same evening, the mysteriously enchanting Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) and her gorgeous assistant Ilona (Andrea Rau) arrive as well, and their appearance strikes a befuddling memory with the innkeeper as he swears that Countess Bathory had stayed at that resort forty years ago and she looks exactly the same now as she did then.

The newlyweds, Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet) share a few encounters with Countess Bathory and Ilona with each meeting brushing off the dust over the secrets that Stefan and Valarie have hidden from one another. Soon, their perfect getaway is becoming a sadistic nightmare with Elizabeth Bathory fiddling with the strings to this macabre puppet show whom herself is being pursued by a detective who’s eyeing Elizabeth Bathory as his prime suspect for a slew of virgin corpses that have been discovered all across the shoreline.

Daughters of Darkness (1971) was released around the time when films of its like were considered nothing more than European sleaze with a few credits towards artistic merit, like the majority of Jess Franco’s and Jean Rollin’s movies. With Daughters of Darkness, director Harry Kumel succeeds in that crossover appeal. It is a beautiful film to watch; shot with elegance and elaborate settings with a superior use of color and artistic imagination.

For someone wanting a blood and guts shower hour this is certainly not the film for them. The pacing is slow and will surely be considered a boring film by someone yearning for a hefty body count. In actuality this movie is a well crafted character piece with new layers of each person being revealed with every scene. Particularly impressive is Delphine Seyrig as a vampire version of the real life “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Bathory. She approaches the character as a ten ton hammer wrapped up in subtle confidence and vivacious seduction. She suckered even me in with her deadly charm. There are a few shocks and nude shots to appease a general horror fan, but even the nude shots are done with class as they add to the atmosphere and not just for cheap thrills.

If the slow storytelling doesn’t throw you off then I hope patience will reward you as it did me. Daughters of Darkness is filled with a small array of interesting characters filmed in a lavishly imaginative manner.