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[Review] Imitation Hammer Plus Bare Knockers Equals ‘Blood of the Virgins’
Ofelia has family problems.
She is in love with Gustavo, but her parents are arranging her marriage to Edwardo. Bound by family honor, she says goodbye to Gustavo, and marries abiding to her parents will. But Gustavo is a vampire, and he’s not having any of this. So he arrives on her wedding night, murders Edwardo by stabbing him through the jugulars, and bites Ofelia in the neck so they can be together forever.
Now Ofelia has vampire problems.
Fast forward to the present (1967), where its time for go-go dancing, free spirits, and lots of bare boobies. In something equivalent to today’s road trip, four young adults soon find themselves broken down on the side of the road, with only an abandoned mansion nearby for shelter. Its there they stay despite warnings, and Gustavo begins to visit them one by one – turning them into the undead as he feeds. Ofelia visits with one of the men, and makes love to him without feeding, confessing that she wishes for eternal rest. As she and Gustavo wrestle with cabin fever of eternal proportions, their four young lives all hang in the balance.
While this all may sound somewhat interesting, Blood of the Virgins (Sangre de vírgenes) is weakly executed, and plays out like a faux Hammer excursion, with all the familiar ornate gowns, mansions, and fangs – only director Emilio Vieyra adds a little Argentinian heat by topping it with lots of bare breasts – which this vampire like to suck on more than necks. It sits neatly among the other Hammer titles of its time, being generally familiar and atmospheric, and it passes as one to those otherwise unaware. Just be aware now, going in, that its a bit of a snoozer and should probably be avoided before bedtime.
Its not an entire loss. Blood of the Virgins is barely watchable. Aside from the nearly catatonic acting of the lead vampire (and the excruciating overacting of the ladies writhing and screaming in bed with the disease of vampirism), there is the charming nudity factor, a couple of bloody practical fx kills that nearly pass as “gory”, and perhaps its most enjoyable sequence – the paintings of the opening credits that tell a storyboard story of Ofelia’s curse of courtship, if you will, into her prison of a mansion.
Drink some coffee before watching this, if curiosity gets the better of you.
PS: If you enjoy watching Susana Beltrán as Ofelia, dare to check out another film by Emilio Vieyra called The Curious Dr. Humpp. In it, a mad doctor captures victims and forces them to have drugged up, insatiable sex. He extracts liquids from the men and women with a syringe and inject himself with it for his own special “vitality”. I kid you not.
After scaring up a strong theatrical run, Oddity director Damian McCarthy’s Hokum heads home to Digital this week.
Settle in for a spooky supernatural chiller as Hokum arrives on all Digital platforms to rent or own beginning June 2, followed by a Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD Combo and DVD release on August 11, 2026.
Adam Scott (“Severance”) stars in Hokum as reclusive novelist Ohm Bauman. When he retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, the staff’s tales of an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite take hold of his mind. Disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance draw Ohm into a nightmarish confrontation with the darkest corners of his past.
Peter Coonan (“The Alienist: Angel of Darkness”), David Wilmot (“Station Eleven”), Florence Ordesh (“Departure”), Michael Patric (“Frontier”), Will O’Connell (“Game of Thrones”), Brendan Conroy (“Bodkin”), and Austin Amelio (“The Walking Dead”) also star.
Get a peek at the upcoming physical media release below, including a few special features.
Spooky Pictures’ Roy Lee (Weapons) & Steven Schneider (Insidious) produce alongside Image Nation’s Derek Dauchy (Late Night with the Devil), Tailored Film’s Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde, & Mairtín de Barra, and Cweature Features’ Ken Kao & Josh Rosenbaum.
I wrote in my review for Bloody Disgusting, “A quaint Irish hotel with a deeply haunted history awaits an American writer in McCarthy’s third outing, continuing his streak for folkloric tales of supernatural karma and spine-tingling terror with a dark sense of humor.”
What’s next from Damian McCarthy? He’s currently writing a haunted house movie, but recent comments suggest he may be moving into other genres beyond that upcoming project.
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