It is no secret that I love really cheesy, old horror movies, and pretty much anything about vampires.

Recently, I watched the 1979 movie “Thirst”. It had all the makings of a really good, bad-vampire-film. It was directed by Rod Hardy and written by John Pinkey, and the film won “Best Special Effects” at the Catalonian International Film Festival in 1979….

The plot is basically about the last direct descendant of Elizabeth Bathory, a woman named Kate. She is a vampire and doesn’t know it, and other vampires kidnap her away to their secret hideout to have her join them. But first they leave a milk carton full of blood in her fridge.
Kate doesn’t take to drinking blood, and doesn’t want to be a vampire (do they ever? lol). She tries to escape, and the vampires try to brainwash her and keep her captive.
Some parts, including the escape scene and brainwashing horror scene, were quite like some comon nightmares and were quite tense in that respect.

The vampires keep a Blood Farm, in which humans were kept like cattle and herded off in groups to be bled by strange ‘futuristic’ blood-sucking machines. This reminds me of the novel “Piggies” by Nick Gifford, which I read when I was quite young. It was also about humans being kept on a blood farm by vampires, but from the point of view of the humans.

Here’s a screenshot of the blood farm:

Main character, Kate, is suitably disgusted by all this.

Vampires in “Thirst” can walk around in the daylight. They don’t seem to have any superhuman abilities like strength or speed. But their eyes glow red when they’re about to bite someone.
They don’t have permanent fangs.

Here’s my favourite scene from this movie. I like it purely for how memorable it is. Old Lady Vampire!

The glowing red eyes really set off those glasses, don’t they?