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.

Billiards, or Paul Newman (1925 – 2006).

“There's too much on my mind There's too much on my mind And I can't sleep at night thinking about it I'm thinking all the time There's too much on my mind It seems there's more to life than just to live it”

– The Kinks, Too Much On My Mind (from Face To Face, 1966)

Hanns (Hanns Zischler) plays billiards with Wim Wenders.

Chocolate for International Chocolate Day (Milton S. Hershey's birthday)

“In all my years of practice, I've never seen anything so sweet. A rosebud.”

– Dr. Mittelfinger

Miss Canada, winner of the “most virgin” contest, escapes her rich, milk tycoon husband into a world of anarchy, lust, and sugar.

We watch the final report by Will Roczinski, who sadly died in a car crash while working on a TV documentary about UFOs and the like. A fascinating early “faux footage” film from the BRD. One can only wonder how the average West German processed the fantastic premise.

Mother Teresa's death day: someone assists the poor. A Heimatfilm in reverse and Italowestern in disguise.

“Denn auf den Bergen, ja da ist die Freiheit, denn auf den Bergen ist es doch so schön, dort wo auf grauenhafte Weise der Jennerwein zugrund mußt gehn.”

Jennerwein-Lied, 19^th c.

Jaider, just returned home from the Franco-Prussian War and incapable to find work, turns to poaching to feed himself and his impoverished town. Soon he leads a gang of poachers, who in their turn are hunted by Bavarian soldiers and state-sanctioned hunters. Loosely based on legendary “Jaider” (“hunter”) and poacher Georg Jennerwein.

A teacher for what would have been Christa McAuliffe's birthday.

“Ich mag Männer, bin 30 Jahre alt, von Beruf Lehrer.”

– Frank Ripploh

Frank Ripploh is a sexual ethics and biology teacher by day, and hedonistic gay man and aspiring pornographer by night. When Frank Ripploh, the man, publicly came out in 1978 in the tabloid Stern, he lost his teaching job and did become that filmmaker. Taxi zum Klo – litt. taxi to the john/loo – is his story. A frank pre-AIDS pre-Internet pre-victimhood depiction of male gay culture in West Germany. Maybe raw, possibly misogynist, definitely true to life.

Celebrating Oktoberfest [in September/October] and the Bavarian royals [rip]: a royal character or family*

“The painter takes his time. He doesn't like her dress. He doesn't like her gloves. One day he asks her if she dares pose for him – all in pink. She dares! And the king, enraptured by her pose, offers her a palace!”

– circus master

Maria Dolores Porriz y Montez, Countess von Landsfeld, Lola Montès for short, now a circus attraction, once the mistress to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. While her fellow circus performers play Lola's former lovers, the ringmaster tells her story.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

– You know, I take pictures, photographs, but I never really thought in black and white before I saw our rushes. Do you know what I mean? You can see the shape of things.   – Life is in colour, but black and white is more realistic.