IN "ETERNAL," the vampire is a vamp. And a lesbian vamp at that. Indeed, the film's debuting Canadian writer-director-producers, Wilhelm Liebenberg and Federico Sanchez, are so determined to turn their tale of Ms. Dracula into an erotic thriller, they sacrifice all story logic and character integrity at the altar of bondage, blindfolds, fetish worship, high-risk sex and several literal bloodbaths. Bram Stoker would be, well, horrified.

The filmmakers certainly pile on the atmosphere. There's a dark, forboding stately home hidden away in the woods with bonfires on the front lawn, boudoirs and bathrooms dripping with suggestive decor that mingles the sinister with the decadent, and an orgiastic Venetian masked ball with painted, seminude women. Every female in the movie is dressed to look like a tart or a dominatrix. Occasional lapses in dialogue contain such howlers that one is tempted to treat the movie as camp, but Liebenberg and Sanchez seem to be treating all this with studied seriousness. (Read full review here).