The Devil's Plaything (1973)

I kept coming into this movie part way through on the 'American Horrors' streaming channel, never seeing the opening or getting to the end and consequently left with no idea as to what the Hell was going on.  It obviously involved vampires, lesbianism and bongo drums, but exactly how they all fitted together.  Well, this week I finally managed to watch The Devil's Plaything (aka Vampire Ecstasy) all the way through.  It seems that it all has to do with the attempts by a coven of lesbian vampires based at an old castle in Germany to reincarnate a long dead vampire Countess in the body of one of her descendants.  To this end, the current female descendants of the vampire and her sister are invited to the castle.  A female expert on vampire mythology and her brother also turn up after their car breaks down.  They quickly find themselves involved in all sorts of shenanigans as the coven - led by the housekeeper, who appears to be a close relative of Young Frankenstein's Frau Blucher - engage in nightly topless ceremonies, dancing to the sound of bongo drums and fondling penis shaped candles.  No, I am not making this up, nor is the film meant to be a comedy.  Character's get bewitched and find themselves possessed of insatiable sexual appetites.  The lady doctor has her clothes ripped off by bats and, under the spell of the coven, very nearly succumbs to her incestuous feelings for her brother.  The vampire countess is reincarnated and gets it on with both men and women.  

Judging by its release date, I'd hazard a guess that this piece of erotica was inspired by Hammer's early seventies trilogy of 'lesbian vampire' movies.  Unfortunately, it lacks the narrative drive, performances, style, or even erotic charge, of even the weakest of these films (probably Lust for a Vampire (1971)).  Director Joseph W Sarno had, by the time he made The Devil's Plaything, built up quite a reputation as a director of superior pornography, (The Young Playthings being particularly admired), but here he delivers a would be piece of Gothic erotica which is far too slowly paced and too tame to score as either horror or porn.  The film drags badly, being at least twenty minutes too long for its content, with the thick accents of the German cast making much of the dialogue seem even more ludicrous than it already is.  The talky script spends far too much time telling us about the Countess' (who  sounds like a cross between Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory), rather than actually showing us any real depravities, (let alone eroticism).  On the plus side, it does look very good, Sarno making good use of his locations - a real castle and surrounding mountains and, on occasion, creating some decent atmosphere.  But, in the end, truth to be told, The Devil's Plaything is something of a bore, promising far more than it delivers and too po faced to be any fun, despite all the ridiculous goings on.  Twins of Evil (1972) was far more enjoyable.