A favourite Dracula movie. As my very most favourite Dracula movie has been claimed, I go with its nearest competitor that somehow also features my favourite Jesus*

 

Linda (Ewa Strömberg) has been summoned by Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda) to handle a real estate inheritance from a certain Count Dracula. Spellbound, she finds herself on a small island, and helpless in the Countess' embrace.

“You are one of us now. The Queen of the Night will bear you up on her black wings.”

– Countess Nadine Carody

A film that can easily hold up against Jean Rollins' dreamy vampire erotica, this love letter to Soledad Miranda's brooding torment is a delight to watch and a pinnacle in Jess Franco's filmography. Its influence on neo-Giallo Amer and Dario Argento – particularly his Suspiria – is evident, and that in itself should give you enough clues of how much of an essential chapter Vampyros Lesbos is in adult European filmmaking.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

“Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road, and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers. The same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing, as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

In a strange other #England – in the village of Chillingbourne to be precise – a train pulls into the station. On board are several people on their way to #Canterbury.

“You're not dreaming.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

When Alison disembarks, believing she arrived at the pilgrim's town, a stranger pours #glue in her hair. She's the eleventh, the policeman said. It's the glue man, the townsfolk know. Like the pilgrims of #Chaucer's poem, Alison and her fellow stranded travellers journey towards the closure of this mystifying case.