Recent viewings:

Coyote Ugly. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Do not watch this unless someone is holding a gun to your head. If that is the case, try to close your eyes and mentally go somewhere far, far away. You'll be happier that way. Trust me.

Lust for a Vampire. Another very silly movie, but this one is at least attractively filmed and has the modest virtue of being self-consciously, deliberately campy. (From the trailer: "This is one finishing school where they really do... finish you!")

The plot is horribly silly, full of cliches about central-European vampires who wear black-and-red capes and live in rotting castles on top of towering cliffs surrounded by villages full of superstitious peasants with lots of buxom blonde daughters who go tripsing merrily through the woods, tra-la-la-la-la, in their poofy peasant blouses until the Evil Vampires' big black carriage drawn by big black horses pulls up beside them and they mysteriously disappear after getting in one really good corker of a scream. (Strangely, the vampires seem to be unharmed by sunlight but wear hats and hoods and cloaks nonetheless.)

Then of course there's the dashing English traveller who simply must go charging up to the haunted castle just to show the superstitious locals what's what, you know. He finds himself being followed through the ruins by three young women in hooded cloaks, but guess what? They're not vampires -- they're students at an Exclusive Finishing School for Girls that has just suddenly opened up next door to the haunted castle! Imagine that!

This turns out to be a finishing school of very, ahem, advanced ideas for the 1830's. The girls flounce around the campus in gauzy gowns, go through stylized outdoor dance routines while the male teachers watch, and seem to have a predeliction for going topless whenever they're indoors. A good many of them seem to have Sapphic tendencies, especially one rather striking blonde girl who suddenly arrives from nowhere and whose name just happens to be an anagram of Carmilla.

Can you see where this is going?

Well, of course you can. That's beside the point.

Necks get bitten. Lovely ladies (and one or two not-so-lovely male extras) swoon and perish or are otherwise dispatched. Fetching Miss Anagram-of-Carmilla suddenly and inexplicably falls madly in love with the dashing English traveller.

You didn't see that coming, did you? Oh well. You get to see her coming. So to speak.

Did I mention that the plot was very, very silly? Watch it if you enjoy campy horror films with a touch of soft-porn. If not, don't bother.

Trivia note: According to one of the extra features on the DVD, this movie was originally to star Peter Cushing until he backed out. So did the original director. And Yutte Stensgaard, the blonde vampire-girl, was a fill-in for Ingrid Pitt, the star of Hammer Horror's previous lesbian-vampire movie The Vampire Lovers, who reportedly turned down this sequel because she hated the script. It seems that Lust for a Vampire was the high point of Miss Stensgaard's career. I suppose this must mean something.

Additional note: This fellow has a much longer and more entertaining plot synopsis in the unlikely case that anyone's interested.