Franco's personal works are very much an acquired taste. Many people slate him, calling him a hack and dismissing his work as boring garbage. Personally, I think he makes very interesting, highly personal films which can be erotic, entertaining, disturbing and/or very well made.
'Les Avaleuses' was released by Redemption Video in a heavily censored form under the title "Female Vampire" (cuts were required by the censors). It was this version I first saw on cable television a lot of years ago, where there was this Argentinean cable channel "I-Sat" (still running) which had a space dedicated to exploitation films only. Redemption Benelux released the uncut version of the film some years later, and is perhaps the definitive director's cut of Franco's film, but that version doesn't appear to be any longer available. In the US, the film was released on DVD by Image Entertainment - again under the title "Female Vampire" - but unfortunately they decided to censor one of the sex scenes, which included shots of Lina Romay sucking a man's penis, pushing the film into hard core territory...thus spoiling what is probably a very nice release, as this is no longer what the director originally intended (and I don't like films that are censored cause you're missing the whole thing)! This version does contain some alternate footage in its extra's from the "blood sucking" version of the film, however, which may be of some interest.
More recently the film has surfaced on DVD in Germany under the title "Erotikill - Lady Dracula 2" (on screen title 'Lusternde Vampire Im Spermarausch'). Not a particularly good image, but satisfactory all the same, it is an uncut German language version of the film, though still not quite the original director's cut.
As stated above, two versions of the film were shot - a traditional 'blood sucking' version for places where censorship was strict, and for markets that were more relaxed, a more sexually explicit - borderline hard core - 'semen sucking' version. A few years after its initial release, additional full blown hard core sex scenes were shot and inserted into the movie. It is this version that the German DVD offers, with a running time of 105m (PAL).
In case you can´t maker your way to the full uncensored version of the film, as I do ( I own the Image release) you're not really missing lots of interesting stuff, mostly the porn scenes which in the German edition appear complete but are pretty naff, with sequence mistakes as Romay suddenly sporting red finger nails during a cunnilingus scene, while on the rest of the movie we don't see those red nails, also a fellatio sequence that is repeated twice in two different moments in the movie.
Probably, if you're into exploitation you'll be more than satisfied with the Image Entertainment currently available DVD release, cause overall the movie feels more like an erotic tale rather than a horror film, so it can be classified under the exploitation genre with no doubts. The full version is more like a porn movie with a horror script poorly developed so, whatever version you find take a look at it and see if you dig it, probably the movie it's too much on the side of pointless sex scenes and even the censored edition is borderline with a hardcore sex movie, and there are plenty of exploitation films which were uh, let's say more subtle when dealing with sex and nude scenes.
Still, to date the available editions are not what Franco originally intended...
Now, those into these kind of movies Do know Lina Romay did a long lasting porn career, so talking about plot, scripts and movie directing can probably be a matter of no interest at all, since Romay has an extended fandom list which I'm sure dig her "most dramatic" scenes ahahahha
Here's the opening sequence of the film:
Female Vampire
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