"Eternal" Movie Review

Like the vampire itself, tales of vampirism are eternal and eternally fascinating. In the age of cinema, that fascination has made less-than-perfect vampire films like "Underworld" and "Queen of the Damned" addictingly watchable. And vampire films are almost never perfect. It's rare that the genre attracts the kind of talent and budget necessary to create "The Hunger" or "Interview With the Vampire."

Occasionally, a film like "The Lost Boys" or "Fright Night" will receive Hollywood studio backing and moderately generous funding and become a classic. "Eternal," a Canadian film by first-time directors Wilhelm Liebenberg and Federico Sanchez, belongs to another realm of guilty pleasures, the low-budget but lavishly art-directed foreign-made horror film.

Like the vampire films from England's Hammer Studios, or Ted Nicolaou's "The Vampire Journals," "Eternal" is often gorgeous to look at, lurid, melodramatic and erotic. Extravagant sets and exotic locations are used to maximum effect, and atmospheric lighting and lush colors and costumes abound. Like many of the Hammer films, it also injects elements of sadomasochism and lesbian sex into the story.

"Eternal" continues the infamous tale of Countess Erzebet Bathory, the real-life 17th century noblewoman who was convicted and imprisoned for the sadistic torture and murder of over 650 victims. According to legend, Bathory began her violent obsessions as a brutalizer of her female servants, but ultimately came to be convinced that by bathing herself with the blood of her victims, she could retain the appearance of youth. History records that Erzebet perished after living her last three years in solitary confinement, imprisoned alone in a small room of her castle.

"Eternal" tells a different story, in which the Blood Countess survived through her belief in the restorative power of blood, filling her with the youth of her enamoured lovers. Living under the assumed name of Elizabeth Kane, Bathory is living in an opulent mansion in Montreal's wealthiest neighborhood with her acolyte, Irina, who trolls the internet for appropriate victims. When Irina entices the bi-curious wife of a police detective into the deadly embrace of the Countess, the detective's search for his missing wife leads him into a losing game of cat and mouse with the clever and amoral vamp, Elizabeth. The Countess' nemesis, Detective Raymond Pope, is a secret masochist who indulges his perversions with his partner's wife, a woman who shares his taste for the kind of sex that their spouses don't understand. Pope is Bathory's equal only in the size of his ego, and in his disregard for the law. Where the Countess is all cultured intelligence and style, Pope is boorish and crass. Their counterbalanced attraction/repulsion is meant to fuel the erotic tension of the story, but as played by former kickboxer Conrad Pla, Detective Pope is simply too crude and vulgar to elicit any appeal on his side of the equation. He does however, give reason to cheer the female villain.

As played by Canadian actress Caroline Néron, the Countess is every bit as seductive to her movie audience as she is to her female victims. The supporting actresses are also quite beautiful, and the scenes of sexuality are intense though most will wish they were longer. Countess Bathory, though depicted in Eternal as an amoral and self-absorbed murderer, is not acted as being anywhere near the shocking sadist that she was in real life. Caroline Néron never makes us see real evil in her eyes, and her accomplice is given the task of executing the most shocking murders.

A merely adequate storyline, some poorly written bits of dialogue and some less than totally believable acting slightly mar this otherwise admirable and ambitious film. On-location scenes in Montreal and Italy, plus a fine orchestral filmscore add to the pleasures of this over-achieving film.