Vampire Ecstasy (4 Stars)

I reviewed this film last year. Click here to read the review. I described the plot in some detail, but I failed to point out something important: it's a German film. I don't think I realised it when I watched it last year. The director is an American, but with the exception of the Swedish actress Marie Forsa all the actors are German. My DVD contains the dialogue in both English and German. The voices are identical, and the English dialogue is spoken with strong German accents, so I can conclude that the original actors dubbed the dialogue themselves. This isn't the only film where this has been done. The famous German film "Das Boot" was also dubbed into English by the original cast, but in that case it was less successful. The German accents were so extreme that the English dialogue is barely comprehensible.

The two main characters are Monika (played by Ulrike Butz) and Helga (Marie Forsa). Marie Forsa is given the main credits on the DVD box. I'm not sure why, because Ulrike Butz is the film's main character, as the reincarnation of Baroness Varga.

I'd like to say a few words about Ulrike Butz. For a brief period she was one of Germany's best known actresses. From 1972 to 1974, when she was aged 17 to 19, she appeared in 28 films. 27 of the films were comedies. This is her only serious role. She plays the part so convincingly that we would have expected a long and successful career for her. That wasn't to be. She was too young to cope with being rich and famous. In 1974 she appeared in the German edition of Playboy. Shortly afterwards she became addicted to drugs and was unable to act any more. After several attempts to give up she made another two films in 1981 and 1983, but that was the end of her career. She died in 2000 at the age of 46. The cause of death was never made public, but I suspect it was drug-related.

This is Ulrike Butz on the cover of the German illustrated magazine Quick in 1975. Her career was already over, but it was common for German magazines to use old photos.

This is Ulrike and her father Hermann in an article from the rather prude German magazine Wochenend in 1974. If you can understand German, click on the picture to read the full article. I wouldn't say it's a good article, because it judges Ulrike's erotic comedies from a very uptight moral standpoint, but it's interesting because it shows how Ulrike was helped and supported by her father in her time of need. Unfortunately he died in 1976, leaving her to fend for herself.

It would be good if I could collect all of the films starring this wonderful woman. I think most of them have been released on DVD, because the German erotic comedies of the 1970's are now considered to be classics. The films I already have starring her are

• Lass jucken, Kumpel (1972)
• Schoolgirl Report 4 (1972)
• Schoolgirl Report 5 (1973)
• Schoolgirl Report 6 (1973)
• Vampire Ecstasy (1974)
• Schoolgirl Report 7 (1974)
• Lass jucken, Kumpel 3 (1974)
• Die unglaublichen Abenteuer des Guru Jakob (1983)

If you look at the link for my review of "Schoolgirl Report 4" you'll see that Ulrike, 17 at the time, appeared on the film poster.

Ulrike Butz
1 July 1954 – 27 August 2000