Happy Halloween and welcome to the annual tradition of the B-Movie Enema special Halloween review!

This year, the annual October theme that I always choose to celebrate not just the earliest days of B-Movie Enema but also the spooky season was 1970s Women-in-Peril films. Now, for the most part, the movies I choose each October will fit some kind of theme. Sometimes the Halloween special will follow the theme and sometimes they don’t. This is one of those years where it kind of doesn’t, but there’s a specific reason why I chose this movie to celebrate Halloween.

The Vampires Night Orgy was selected because it was a movie from the 70s but it’s not really a full-on women-in-peril type film like we’ve seen in weeks past. I selected this because it falls in line with a tradition that I’ve sort of halfway gestured at during the course of this month. If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you know that B-Movie Enema was started in 2014 as a way to do something with a whole bunch of movies that I had from various cheap-o 50-movie multipacks. A few years before that, I had wanted to work with some friends to create a horror host show. These movies let us know what basically was available to us at that time. When that fell apart, I felt I had to do something for a creative outlet and the idea of creating a blog was formed on a random night in September 2014. October 3, 2014, the first review was released – The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. That movie was found in one of these multipacks of movies.

It came from the same set that I looked to for this week’s movie review.

B-Movie Enema is a site that cherishes some of the traditions I’ve set up in the 10 years since starting this site. While the original iteration of the blog was short-lived before returning in 2016, I always make sure to have a very specific theme for each October, and because the fifth review ever on the site, Oasis of the Zombies by Jess Franco, was released on October 31, 2014, Halloween is a special day at B-Movie Enema. The tradition to always make sure a Halloween review was released came in 2016 with, appropriately enough, Halloween: Resurrection. After all, Halloween is the most fun day on the calendar and 2016 was the resurrection of B-Movie Enema. Now, over 450 reviews and many, many years later, the tradition continues.

Tradition is sometimes thought of as something to hold dearly to some while being something that others will actively attempt to reject at all costs. I think there’s room for both to be considered within an individual. I’m a deeply sentimental person. There are things I hold with great esteem from my past – be it a memory of someone I loved or an experience that affected me in ways I struggle to put into words. I think, in those ways, tradition, sentimentality, and nostalgia can be very good for you. Naturally, there are ways to be too rigid in those things that you ultimately end up forming a toxic relationship with those concepts.

Certainly, there are things at this site that were traditions like what we’re doing here this month and on this day based on the beginnings of the site. I’ve long sought out covering movies by Norman J. Warren because I find his movies to be fascinating in ways that it’s hard to see how they’ve all been made by the same guy. Brett Piper has been another filmmaker that I like covering his movies. Of course, there were the movies featuring our site’s official girlfriend, Candice Rialson. These were traditions I’ve held deeply through the years, but, to be honest, those names are going to someday no longer be covered because I’ll have covered their entire filmography. It’s okay to let them pass into the past. I’ve long talked about experiences watching the Roku channel Bizarre TV and how it helped revive this site, give me plenty to want to cover, and how devastating it was when Rhonda, the channel’s manager and operator, passed away after a long illness. The most memorable movies from that channel’s last days were all covered on the site and, while I sometimes think about those movies or the shorts that played in between them, I was happy to have covered each of them and let them pass into the ether of memory and sentimentality.

My final point about tradition before I touch upon the movie and then start doing the thing I do around here by diving deep into the plot is that B-Movie Enema has a strong backbone of tradition and sentimentality, but it’s not afraid to let time march forward. The site has existed now for 10 years. I’ve changed. The reviews have taken on different tones and different ideas. On this Halloween, I celebrate the history of B-Movie Enema, but I am excited to look to the future. And that future begins now with The Vampires Night Orgy by Leon Klimovsky.

One of the things about this movie that I feel like I constantly have to check time and again is that the title is peculiar. “Vampires” in the title is pluralized, not possessive. Is it Vampires Night like a night celebrating vampires or is it supposed to be like Valentine’s Day like a day to celebrate your valentine? OR! Or is it supposed to be like Presidents’ Day, which is a possessive plural? Eh. I feel like there’s a translation issue here.

And, yes, this movie comes to us from Spain. This was coming during the time of Jess Franco and Paul Naschy redefining the genre for Spanish audiences. In fact, this is not the first time Klimovsky has had a movie featured on this site. Waaaay back in October 2016, I covered The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman which he directed and starred Paul Naschy in one of his many films about the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. Then, a few years ago, I hosted Vengeance of the Zombies on B-Movie Enema: The Series which also starred Paul Naschy and has one of the catchiest themes ever. In that episode, I talked about how Klimovsky came from Argentina. He ended up with a pretty decent career in film. He and his brother, Gregorio, who ended up becoming a noted mathematician and philosopher in the field of epistemology, were the children of Jewish Russian immigrants to Argentina. While Leon left for Spain to make films, Gregorio remained in Argentina. Both died well into their 80s.

I don’t know much directly about The Vampires Night Orgy other than a few tidbits thanks to a sparse page on Wikipedia and only two bits of trivia on IMDb. I can say from IMDb’s trivia that I’m told this has a misleading title as there is no orgy depicted in this film. Bummer, but I bet the term could be applied in a different way. We’ll have to wait and see. The trivia also says that the film, when released in Spain, did not have nudity, but nude shots were inserted for international release. Once again, the world has defeated Spain. Over at Wikipedia, I do see that Jack Taylor, an American actor whose career started in Hollywood before going to Europe where he’d work with Klimovsky and Jess Franco on films, leads a mostly Spanish cast aside from Dyanik Zurakowska. Zurakowska was from the Belgian Congo and appeared in about 40 films in a short, 12-year career. In this, she plays Alma who is one of the people who gets mixed up in this vampire night orgy that is not so much an orgy but an unfortunate stop in the vampire capital of Europe.

The movie opens with various shots of what appears to be a nearly ancient village in Spain. This town is old and dirty and looks like it could use a little bit of paint and soap. There’s a funeral going on at the small cemetery in the town. As the casket is accidentally dropped and falls into the grave, a maggot-infested, decaying corpse is revealed making all the mourners run away. The credits play over a close-up of the worms and maggots just to make sure you think twice about eating those gummy worms you bought to eat while watching the movie.

After the credits, on a lonely patch of winding road near the village, a bus rumbles its way through the countryside. Inside is a handful of travelers. They are headed to a specific mansion that is still some 100km down the road. The bus is not exactly in the best of shape. The people on the bus are all contractors who have been hired for various functions. There’s a gardener, a teacher, and a lady who will be a maid. As the driver continues down the road, he starts to faint. Soon, it’s realized that he didn’t faint, he died. As the men on the bus take care of the driver’s body, the little girl with this group, Violet, is taken outside so as to not see this unpleasantness. As she is walking around alone, she sees a boy who is just… watching what’s going on. She approaches the boy, introduces herself, and asks if he’d like to play with her. He does not respond.

The girl decides to play anyway despite the little boy seeming uninterested. As she stacks some rocks in the field, all of a sudden the boy disappears. When she returns to the bus, she tells one of the guys that the boy disappeared but he just thinks she has an overactive imagination. When the bus gets back on track, they opt to forego going to their original destination for the much closer Tolnia where they can rest and recharge their batteries.

When they roll into Tolnia, the town we saw at the beginning, the town is completely quiet. No one is on the street. They go into a restaurant/pub. They find the same emptiness. They meet Luis who has been on the road and rolled into Tolnia about an hour before the bus. He said he took a walk around town and found no one. What’s more, the town does not even have a church. The group decides they will stay the night anyway and make themselves at home in the various rooms and houses in the town.

As he prepares for bed, Luis opens the wardrobe to put his jacket away and discovers a hole at the back of the wardrobe. He looks through it to see Alma stripping completely naked and getting into her nightgown for bed. It also must be really cold in her room if you know what I mean. After she gets in bed, Luis gets in his bed with a smile on his face.

As the clock strikes midnight, one of the travelers, Ernesto, notices the door opening and closing by itself. He begins to get the sensation that he’s not alone. He goes outside and inspects the bus and discovers the driver’s corpse is missing. He has a smoke and hears stirring going on around him. He walks down one of the roads to see who might be out there with him. He doesn’t realize he’s being followed… Tolnia is not so abandoned after all.

Ernesto tries running away from the many villagers who started emerging from the buildings and alleys of the town. Completely surrounded by the villagers, they knock him down. Soon, they each begin to lean over and feed from him.

The next morning, Alma wakes to someone sitting on the bed with breakfast for her on a tray. She says everyone else is already awake and downstairs having breakfast. Sure enough, when Alma joins the others, she finds everyone else awake and the restaurant and bar are bustling. Luis tells her that everyone seems to be pretty friendly here.

A man calling himself Major approaches Alma and Luis. He says he’s the mayor, of sorts, of this town. He explains where everyone was the night before. He says they were all at the cemetery. Alma finds that peculiar and he says it was a funeral for a beloved member of the community and they all wanted to accompany him on his final journey to the afterlife. I like that this guy introduces himself as Boris, but everyone calls him Major, despite never being in the military. It’s just a name in his family. That’s so oddly specific, but kind of warm, and it makes him kind of approachable.

He asks Alma if they are tourists and she says that’s kind of the case here. He seems excited that they actually have tourists in Tolnia for once. He’s called into the kitchen where one of the townspeople asks what kind of food will be served to these outsiders. They had reserves of flour so they could at least make bread, but they didn’t have meat to serve. Major says the Countess will solve the problem for them. So a big beefy guy who works at the restaurant visits a pair of guys who work as millers or some other generic job in this village. He says he’s here on behalf of the Countess. He singles out one of the guys who has a bum leg and chops it off to cook up and serve to the outsiders.

The meat goes over well with the people it is served to, but the absence of Ernesto does not. They need to leave as soon as possible. When Marcos, the one who is most frustrated about Ernesto not being around asks some of the other travelers about the missing guy, Ernesto arrives at the restaurant looking a little pale and less than lively.

Marcos believes Ernesto is too drunk to drive. After all, he doesn’t look like he’s had any sleep. Ernesto says he took care of the body of the driver. Marcos says for all he cares, Ernesto could have eaten the body. The bus loads up with the plan to go to their original destination. But uh oh… Neither the bus nor Luis’ car will start. Looks like they are stuck here in Tolnia.

The problem, as illustrated by Marcos, is that they were supposed to be going to that other town to work. They have no money otherwise. Being stuck in Tolnia is not ideal because they can’t pay for the hospitality Major is providing. He says that they’ll be taken care of by… the Countess.

She sends for everyone to come meet her so she can finally talk to someone from outside the village. She hopes their detour there will last longer. They are stuck for at least 2 or 3 days while the courier that goes between towns returns with whatever parts are needed to repair both the bus and Luis’ car. The Countess even offers them a fairly large sum of money just in case they run into any other troubles after they leave town.

She does have one request. The Countess has quite an appreciation for poetry. She discovers that the guy who was going to be the teacher at the estate they were originally headed to, Cesar, knows some poems. She requests he stay with her to recite some of those poems he’s studied by the greats. She then seduces the young buck. That night, he wakes up to discover she’s not quite as young and beautiful as she was earlier in the day.

The Countess takes a bite from Cesar and tosses him off the patio to the townsfolk below to get their dinner. Back at the inn, Luis once again watches Alma put on her nightgown so he can take a peek at them tittaes. I actually kind of think the footage of her changing looks a lot like what we saw earlier in the movie. If it is repeated, I’m not exactly complaining, Dyanik Zurakowska has a pretty great body, but I digress.

That night, Godo, the gardener, notices the village is completely empty once again. He asks Marcos if they go to a funeral every night. They hear someone tossing stones at the window of the room they are in. They see Ernesto by the bus. He says there’s something he wants to show them. They go to the bus where Ernesto and several other townsfolk attack them.

So it turns out that after a slow start, the town is starting to go to, well, town with the outsiders and beginning to turn them all into vampires.

The next morning, Luis pulls Alma into his room and says something is wrong going on. He said he couldn’t sleep the night before. He saw Ernesto call Marcos and Godo down to the bus. He said he saw them get inside but never came out. There were strange noises coming from within the bus too. Cesar is also missing. He clearly stayed with this Countess everyone talks about but he’s still not been seen since.

Later, Violet is playing with the little boy that she met earlier. She wants to play hide-and-seek. She sees that guy from the day before with his axe walking through town. I suppose that means they need more fresh meat for the travelers. As the little girl looks for the best possible hiding spot where the little boy can’t find her, she sees the big guy attack a villager and chop off his arm.

Now on the third day of being here in Tolnia, I’m beginning to think that the Major either can no longer keep his cool and is being pretty damn obvious that nothing is as pleasant as he makes it seem or he’s so out of practice from being an undead ghoul for so long that he doesn’t know he’s being pretty damn obvious that he’s not what he says he is. He sits with Alma and Luis and says he will only drink a specially made liquor from Tolnia and it’s thick and red and very clearly blood. If I was Luis, I’d be pointing at that, nudging the shit out of Alma’s arm, and shouting, “SEE! THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!” Well, it turns out he doesn’t have to. As Alma eats her meal, she finds a whole-ass human finger on her plate.

Violet’s mother goes to find Marcos to talk to him. She tells Violet she is not to leave their room. Of course, when she leaves to find Marcos who is very much a fangy monster now, the little boy from town goes into the room to tell Violet they can go and play and they’ll be back before her mom returns. In Alma’s room, Luis says his car is working. He found the problem – a connection was cut by Ernesto. Tonight, they are going to leave town. She needs to tell Violet and her mother (by the way, I don’t think anyone has called her mother by her name, which is Raquel until very late in the movie). Then, at nightfall, they’ll beat cheeks.

Raquel goes looking for Violet who has been taken to the cemetery by the creepy little boy. The little boy disappears again leaving Violet alone in the cemetery. Soon, the townspeople start walking to the gate of the cemetery. In an underground tomb, the Countess emerges to follow Violet’s mother. When she returns to her room, she finds all her old friends now turned into vampires and they attack her. In the cemetery, the little boy reappears and tries to protect Violet from the townspeople. Sadly, while he was trying to protect her and keep her from making a noise that would cause them to find her and eat her, he smothered her and killed her.

That… that was not expected. I’ll talk about that and a few other things when I finish summarizing the movie.

Violet’s mother arrives at the cemetery now looking like a ghoul herself. She finds Violet’s body and drags her away. Meanwhile, back in Tolnia, Alma finishes packing as Luis finishes fixing his car. They get to the car and get it started with several townspeople, including people who arrived in town with Alma, climbing on top of the car and trying to get to them. Further down the road, the villagers try to block the way out, but Luis keeps at it until he finally is able to drive through them, smashing some of them along the way. At least… I think that’s what happens. The movie is pretty dark and I’m pretty sure they lit this scene with a couple flashlights with dying batteries.

One thing I do know for sure is that they seemingly get away and out of Tolnia. But, much to their surprise, they have an unexpected passenger in the backseat – the Countess. The Countess claws and scratches at the two of them until Alma bashes her in the face with… something. I’m not sure what it was that Luis gave her to use on the Countess but whatever it was, it works. As they drive further away from Tolnia, they notice the sun shines brightly. The townspeople of Tolnia were able to survive the daytime because the town was constantly covered in dreary clouds and shit. When Alma looks in the backseat, she sees the rotting corpse of the Countess covered in maggots.

They drive to the gendarme and tell him what they experienced. He says there is no village there nor is there one for many kilometers where they say it was. He agrees to drive Luis and Alma out there so he can show them there is no village there. Luis agrees because he wants to prove to them what they experienced. When they get out to where Tolnia should be, there is nothing but rolling hills and fields. They turn back and the camera pans over to reveal where Ernesto hid the bus that brought everyone to Tolnia in the first place.

So, I kind of dig the shit out of this movie. Is it particularly well made? Eh. The framing is relatively generic. There’s not much super interesting to look at. But, frankly, the movie benefits from not having something super interesting to look at. Tolnia is just a small village in the middle of nowhere that looks decrepit and old. The interiors are warm and inviting but the outside is dreary. So, while the movie’s cinematography isn’t anything special, the setting of that village and the dreary look of it sets a good tone. It’s a straightforward type of horror movie where a group of people just show up in this area or town and they are attacked by monsters. Sometimes simple works best.

But when you get a little deeper into this movie, I found a few things that I really loved about the movie. The first thing, which was just well done, is the cast of characters. I liked everyone who came to Tolnia. I can say that there were enough differentiating elements to each of their characters to kind of get their unique personalities. None of them are assholes or jerks that you want to see get eaten by the monsters. Speaking of the monsters, I really liked how the vampires in the town tried to be hospitable to the visitors. For example, they need to feed these people. How are they going to do that? Well, they are going to go out and chop something off a member of the community and feed it to the people who need something more than blood like the townspeople drink. Yeah, kind of out of nowhere, there’s a whole cannibal thing going on here. It’s cannibalism by accident because the people don’t realize that’s what they are ingesting but it’s still not something I expected to find in this movie.

The one thing I really didn’t expect was what happened to Violet. There are a few ways I thought Violet was in danger. A couple of these possible outcomes could lead to her death, but I still didn’t expect it. I thought that maybe Raquel would be turned into a vampire lady and she would go after Violet herself. Then either she would kill Violet or someone would kill Raquel and take Violet with her. The other thought was that the creepy little boy would vamp out and kill her. Then, I guess it’s possible she would have gone after her own mother. What I really didn’t expect was that the creepy little boy was going to not be a danger to her. He actually attempted to protect her from the town only to accidentally kill her. He even feels pretty bad about it too. She died innocently… at least her killer was not trying to eat her or anything and he was innocently trying to protect her. That’s surprisingly well done in this movie that could have disregarded her in multiple ways.

Overall, I liked this movie. If for nothing else, it’s a vampire movie with a lot of mood and atmosphere to it. I think I can very easily defend this kind of unexpected pick for my Halloween review. Sure, maybe there was no sexual orgy going on in the movie, there was an orgy of vampire feasting throughout the movie. It’s definitely one to check out

Tomorrow, we return to our regularly scheduled enemas. To kick off November, which is usually thought of as the time of year when classy movies start getting released from studios, I’m asking a couple of classy actors, Jodie Foster and John Lithgow, to lend me a hand. Join me tomorrow for a review of 1985’s Mesmerized. Between now and tomorrow morning, try to avoid those tiny villages in the middle of nowhere. You might just find yourself in a vampire night orgy.