After committing a murder (that we are told of in retrospect) while dressed as party clowns (don't ask), we meet our two lesbian protagonists (Marie-Pierre Castel and Mireille Dargent) as they, and a male accomplice, flee the authorities along the rural back roads of France. A gun battle ensues and the male is killed, so the girls leave the body in the car, which they then set ablaze, after which they set off into the desolate rural fields with no idea where they are. Their wanderings eventually lead them to a remote and apparently abandoned chateau that turns out to be the home of a cabal of vampires, their slaves, and several chained-up and naked women whom the slaves merrily molest, torture, and violate. After being bitten and mind-controlled by vampire bats, the girls witness the considerable debauchery perpetrated upon the prisoners in the dungeon only to awaken the next morning, themselves unharmed. When they attempt to escape, no matter which direction they may run, all paths lead back to the chateau. What horrible fate will befall our heroines, and why is the influence of the chateau keeping them there? Can they make it out alive, or is there a more sinister purpose at play?
Originally released in its native France as REQUIEM POUR UN VAMPIRE, CAGED VIRGINS plays like a modern day Grimm's fairy tale for adults, as its story is a simple tale of two girls lost in the middle of nowhere and menaced by baleful forces. It has very little dialogue and allows the audience to witness the events without too much unneeded exposition, which renders roughly the first third of the film to be a very slow burn with the girls endlessly and silently wandering until they run into the vampires. But once the vampires show up, whoo-BOY, it's off to the races as the slaves avail themselves to the shackled nubiles. There's an extended sequence of softcore groping of damned near every inch of the prisoners' bodies, which are rendered naked as the slaves gleefully tear the meager clothing from the women. I can't speak for the rest of you, but I always find it comforting to see displays of Euro armpit hair and shaggy '70's bush, and this film is not stingy with those elements. Short of graphic closeups of genitals or penetration, anything goes, including flagellation and torment with lit candles, so keep that in mind if your tolerance runs more toward the vanilla.
I should also mention a now-infamous shot of one of the captive being orally pleasured by a vampire bat, which brings up a number of ideas that even this film saw fit not to explore further. My first exposure to this film was seeing an image of the cunning linguist bat going to work in a coffee table book on Euro horror owned by a friend — an image his parents had no clue about, I can assure you — and it blew my mind. It took nearly fifty years for me to finally witness the movie for myself, and that image remains indelible. Hell, they even saw fit to include it in the trailers shown in U.S. grindhouses back in the days, and the sight of it must have gone over a treat with the regulars.
Dripping with atmosphere and very European in its flavor and frank approach to sex and nudity, CAGED VIRGINS is definitely worth a look for the curious, but don't go into it expecting any scares or gore. All that's on its mind is its eerie dreamlike vibe and getting away with as female nudity and sex as possible. I have nothing against prurient material, but when I'm given what's supposed to be a horror film, I expect at least a bit of dark frisson. Then again, this is reportedly typical of the output of director Jean Rollin, for whom this is but one of his forays into blending the nighttime world of the undead suckface with that of the softcore tenderloin cinema. Prior to this I had seen only one of Rollin's other vampire films, namely LA VAMPIRE NUE (THE NAKED VAMPIRE, 1970), which I found to be a crushing bore, but Rollin redeemed himself to me with this effort, and I now look forward to seeing where else he goes when exploring this niche of fetishistic horror. I mean, how do you top a pussy-eating vampire bat? I, for one, am quite curious to find out.
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