Tom Buckley (Bruce Fairbairn) and Terry Wayne (Trey Wilson) are two sailors on leave in Manila. They just got into port from San Francisco and are anxious to paint the town. Their CPO, Eddie Taylor (Lex Winter), lets them in on the local hot spots. Tom and Terry run into problems with drag queens, muggers and various other low lives while trying to score hookers.
Eddie shows up with his cab driver guide Julio (Leo Martinez). They end up at a local bar. Sitting at the bar is a beautiful woman called Cherish (Karen Stride). While Tom and Terry fight over the woman Eddie zooms in and takes her away. They get into Julio’s cab and head for Cherish’s place only to find that she lives in a graveyard. Although Eddie isn’t really sure that he wants to have sex in a graveyard he does want to have sex with Cherish, so he follows her in.
It turns out that Cherish is a vampire and lives in an underground tomb with two other female vampires Suzy (Lenka Novak) and Marcy (Katie Dolan). Along with them is their old vampire pimp and king vampire Richmond Reed (John Carradine). To round out the family is Pavo (Vic Diaz) a Renfield style servant with a serious gas problem.
Eddie is bitten by Cherish and drained of his blood and everybody shares in their good fortune but Eddie’s bad luck.
In the morning when Eddie fails to show up for roll call he is reported as AWOL. Tom and Terry don’t believe that Eddie would just not show up unless something happened to him. They go about trying to find their friend.
“Vampire Hookers” AKA “Cemetery Girls” AKA “Night of the Bloodsuckers” AKA “Sensuous Vampires” AKA “Twice Bitten” was released in 1978 and was directed by Cirio H. Santiago. The movie is a Philippines American co-production filmed in Manila. It is a sexploitation film and is supposed to be a horror comedy. It is neither horrifying nor funny.
Some movies are the best of the worst, and some are the worst of the best. This one is one of the worst of the worst. When your main running joke is flatulence you know the movie is geared toward 8- to 12-year-olds. There are bad jokes and sexy vampires and John Carradine waxing poetic on Shakespeare and Walt Whitman. Carradine plays the old vampire Richmond Reed which happens to be his real name, Richmond Reed Carradine. As for Carradine by now acting is no longer a calling, it’s a job. Still, he belts out his lines as if he’s on stage, which was his real love.
Much ado has been made about the lady vampires having tan lines even though vampires can’t go out in the sun. Since vampires don’t age, I would also assume that they look exactly like they did when they died. In that case if they had tan lines when they became vampires, they would have them forever. Although, since the female vampires were somewhere around a hundred and thirty years old, I’m not sure if people were sunbathing back then. Why go on about tan lines? Because it’s more interesting than the movie.
I will say that the more the movie goes along the better it gets. It doesn’t really get good just not as horrible. As for the sexploitation, there are a few boob shots and a slow-motion orgy that looks like it goes on forever but it’s basically the same shots over and over again.
Despite the juvenile humor it has one saving grace, the closing credits. I don’t mean because it’s the end of the movie but because of the closing credits song. It really is the best part of the film. I love a good theme song and “Vampire Hookers” does have a catchy one.
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Theme song