Thirst

1979 Directed by Rod Hardy

Horror Marathon Day 19 Film 30

This is a welcome turnabout for the vampire genre- a moody film where a woman wakes up screaming in a coffin. It becomes quickly apparent that she's being toyed with- hostile experiments try to mindfuck her to joining in a cult of blood drinkers. They believe in the eternal beauty and longevity of Bathory. There's a lot of scenes involving the blood farming and how they'll get the woman to become one of them.

I especially liked seeing the blood pets hooked to donor tubes and drained. It puts a certain perspective on rich society draining less fortunate so that they may feed. Otherwise the scenes with vampiric confirmation are a bit too ritualized in the decor of inverted Catholicism. I do think films could be more experimental in their ritual initiation beyond the Catholic- though that does give the audience a reflection of their society or place to understand the practice that's going on. Though some of the film drifts into a bit of campy villainy, the slow descent into breaking one’s will has some real dread. While watching there’s a lot of tension around if she will succumb to the thirst!