Filmove Studio Barrandov, 1970
starring: Jaroslava Schallerová, Petr Kopriva, Helena Anýzová
directed by: Jaromil Jires

the plot: Valerie (Schallerová), a young Czech girl, embarks on an odyssey of sexual awakening that seems to take place during a dream. Her small town and its denizens appear to be from the 19th century, and the place is peopled with perverse priests, vampires and sexual voluptuaries of every stripe. As Valerie avoids the clutches of Tchor, a particularly repugnant ghoul, the story evolves into her quest to save her beloved brother Orlik (Kopriva) from death and damnation.

why it’s good: Along with Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers” (1967) and Neil Jordan’s “The Company of Wolves” (1984), this is one of those rare horror films that doubles as a fairy tale. (In fact, “Wolves” screenwriter Angela Carter admitted “Valerie” heavily influenced her own script.) Like Joyce’s novel “Finnegans Wake,” the narrative purports to be a dream, taking place during the young heroine’s first week of puberty. Based on a 1935 novel by Czech socialist poet Vitĕzslav Nezval, it’s as if director Jires took equal portions of Lewis Carroll, Freud, Bram Stoker, Catholicism, and the Marquis de Sade and poured them into a Waring blender. Instead of incomprehensible glop, the result is a surrealist masterpiece, dripping with menace and eroticism. The then 13-year-old Schallerová possessed the pouty sensuality that Slavic genes seem to produce so effortlessly. Valerie voyeuristically watches the sex-play of adults and has a less-than-pure crush on her dashing older brother. She seems both attracted to and repelled by her sexy young grandmother’s (Anýzová) lesbic, lingeried vampirism, and the local priest’s pagan ephebophilia.

why you should own it: This is a beautiful, colorful picture-book of a film, shot in the timeless Czech fortress town of Slavonice, which conjures up the Brothers Grimm, as the open-air coupling summons the pastoral sensibility of D.H. Lawrence. “Valerie” skillfully evokes the erotic elements of vampirism (as Stoker and Coleridge did) without resulting in “Twilight” numbness. Images of dust and cobwebbed clockworks, rodent-fanged vampires wielding torches, drops of menstrual blood on flower petals, and Valerie’s own Jeanne d’Arc masochistic episode at the stake do not easily fade from memory. This film was unavailable for 30 years (I was lucky enough to see a screening in Boston with the director in attendance in the 1990s). The 2004 Facets Video boasts a digitally remastered print, with extras including a recent interview with Valerie herself. —Kenneth Butler