Bites only take place at night - the vampire happening
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Bites only take place at night - the vampire happening |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1971 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Freddie Francis |
| script |
August Rieger based on an idea by Karl-Heinz Hummel |
| production |
Pier A. Caminneci for Aquila Film (Berlin) |
| music | Jerry van Rooyen |
| camera | Gérard Vandenberg |
| cut | Alfred Srp |
| occupation | |
| |
Bites are only performed at night - the vampire happening , often referred to as Bitten Only at Night , is a German horror film comedy filmed in Austria in 1970. It was directed by Freddie Francis , who specializes in horror fabrics .
action
Elisabeth von Rabenstein made a career in Hollywood as the film star "Betty Williams". Now she has returned to Europe to take over her uncle's inheritance: a noble castle of her ancestors. The attractive blonde wants to take a look at her legacy before selling it as planned. The timid servant Josef is immediately startled at her first sight - after all, Elizabeth bears a terrifying resemblance to her long-faded great-grandmother Clarimonde, who was once reviled as a witch and whose naked image hangs in the royal suite in the form of a painting. The same magnificent room serves Joseph as a bedchamber for the American heiress. The Castle Factotum tells Betty that her ancestor was found dead one morning with two bite marks in her throat. Since then she has been haunted as a vampire through the walls, they say. During his tour of the house, Josef Betty also introduced the castle's own torture chamber.
The following night, Betty has a desolate dream in which her faded ancestors invite her to an erotic castle party with ghosts. This proves to be extremely stimulating for the American, and the next morning Betty intends to follow in the footsteps of ancestor Clarimonde and to seduce one of the priests from the convent opposite. When she discovers the monk Martin, completely immersed in his studies in the monastery courtyard, she immediately decides to make him look good. With the fervor of a devout Catholic, he tries to fight off the sin woman. Finally, she invites Martin to a cozy get-together the following night at her castle. When Betty opens her great-grandmother's coffin a little later, it still seems very fresh and not at all composted. No wonder - the lady is alive! Startled, Betty backs away and escapes from the crypt. A little later Clarimonde emerges from the cool marble: the vampire thirsts for fresh blood.
When Brother Martin accepted the invitation in the evening, it was not the blonde Betty who received him, but the pale black-haired Clarimonde. While Betty is amazed that her expected guest has already been picked up by her dark likeness, as Josef meekly reports, the vampire bites heartily at the same time and sucks blood from Martin's throat. He dies. At Martin's funeral, Betty meets Jens Larsen, who works as a teacher at Miss Niessen's girls' school. Betty invites him to her castle in the pouring rain. Betty quickly pulls Jens into bed and sleeps with him. While she lost herself with her new lover, Josef nailed Clarimonde's coffin shut, dragged it out of the castle and sunk it in the nearby lake, hoping to finally put an end to her vampiresque hustle and bustle. But in no time at all, Betty's great-grandmother is back in the castle. In order to take revenge on Josef for this insolence, she tries to penetrate his bedchamber, but the servant is prepared and has a whole garlic battery draped over his bed.
That same night the monastery brother Martin, who had become undead, rises from his damp grave. To satisfy his appetite, he enters the bedroom of two convent students and bites one of them in the neck. When he wanted to bite the other one too, he decided at short notice: there should be something left over for breakfast. When Betty takes in bath water, Clarimonde sneaks through the castle, puts on a blonde wig and now looks completely like Betty. Dressed up like this, she goes into Jens' room and wants to bite him there. Josef, who has put on a helmet with a visor and collar to protect himself from vampire attacks, believes, however, that Clarimonde must be Betty and then wants to stake the real Betty who comes out of the bath. He only realizes his mistake late. Clarimonde, who still has an open bill with the housekeeper because of the coffin in the lake, simply dumps it into a shaft that leads directly to the fountain in the castle courtyard. Jens fishes him out there. Josef explains to the teacher that Clarimonde is up to mischief here and that he is trying to kill her. Only now does Jens realize that he had amused himself with an undead yesterday. Josef pushes a stake into his hand, but when Jens sees Clarimonde breathing in the open coffin, he feels unable to stake her.
Jens falls asleep promptly, although he wanted to put Clarimonde on guard at the open coffin. When Clarimonde wakes up, she lets him sleep unharmed. She puts on a blonde wig and a white dress to accept an invitation to the von Ochsenstein festival. Then she hides in the trunk of Betty's Mercedes. She, in turn, has put on a black wig, now looks like Clarimonde normally, and drives her car to the Count Ochsenstein festival without knowing who is hiding in her trunk. The Ochsensteins are just as dead as all the other invited guests; Count Dracula floats in personally with his own helicopter as a guest of honor. Jens and Josef also mingled with the vampire guests, in the costumes of two musketeers. When Miss Niessen, who has also become a vampire, discovers her colleague, she draws everyone's attention to him. Now his life doesn't seem worth a damn. With a foam syringe he can stop the angry mob for a while and even convince him of his "innocence" with false vampire teeth in his mouth. When he thinks he has found Betty, Clarimonde with the blond wig makes it clear to him that he was wrong. She is her and not Betty. Then Jens first faints.
Betty with her black Clarimonde wig is also exposed and can barely escape the angry vampire bob. Clarimonde and Betty meet for the first time in the costume store. They exchange their clothes and wigs and make a truce: May each of them be happy in their respective world. The stupid Josef, who didn't notice anything about the role reversal, "saves" the fake Betty alias the real Clarimonde from the other vampires and puts her in Betty's Mercedes in front of the castle entrance. The sun rises and Clarimonde then flees at full throttle towards the castle at home. The other party guests of the Rabensteins also panicked out of the castle to find a dark, light-protected place. Arriving in front of Clarimonde's coffin at Schloss Rabenstein, Josef again holds the stake over Clarimonde's heart, and again Jens cannot strike. Rather, believing that his Betty was in the coffin, he had the splendid idea of sending Clarimonde back to Hollywood in an opaque coffin. At the airport you run towards the real Betty and hug Jens. He and Josef, who is also present, are completely surprised: Only now do they suspect that they have sent Clarimonde on the way to America. A large train station is being prepared for “Betty” at the Los Angeles airfield, and everyone is cheering her homecoming. The first person to hug her, Clarimonde, completely starved after the long flight, bites in the neck.
Production notes
Filmed in Austria in autumn 1970, the outdoor shots a. a. at Kreuzenstein Castle , in Korneuburg and other places in Lower Austria . The FSK exam was only bitten at night on March 11, 1971. The German premiere took place on June 4, 1971.
The buildings were designed by Hans Zehetner , one of his last cinema works, the costumes by Lambert Hofer . Uli Richter designed the costumes for Pia Degermark. Adrian Hoven, whose production company Aquila Film made this strip, did not produce it personally this time. The Swede Degermark met producer Pier A. Caminneci while filming and married him the following year (1971).
Reviews
“A great figment of the imagination. The director probably intended to combine the grotesque and shocking effectively, but it did not succeed. The result was a pretty wild mess, in which the most angry allusions were not dispensed with. "
"An attempt at a vampire film parody that failed on the script, silly and boring."
In the AllMovie Guide, Robert Firsching found the flick to be an “international mishmash, (which) is neither very scary nor very funny” and also wrote: “There is a lot of nudity, bad jokes, lousy image settings and Ferdy Mayne - the star of Tanz der Vampire, who served as a template for this strip - as a helicopter-flying Dracula. It is certainly unusual and horror film-obsessed people want to stop by, but most viewers will find the film both ridiculous and stupid, a combination often seen in Francis films ”.
Web links
- The happening of the vampires - is bitten only at night in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Bites only take place at night - the vampire happening at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bites only take place at night - the vampire happening. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ “Bites Only at Night” in The New York Times