Synopsis: Investigative journalist Philippe Guérande and his sidekick Mazamette fight against the terrible criminal organization nicknamed "The Vampires".
Appraisal: This ten-chapter serial is a good entertainment even by today's standards, but one must not look for what it cannot offer, and plot coherence is not one of its main concerns. In fact, the plot has more holes than a Swiss cheese, and an equal number of loose ends and inconsistencies. If you are capable to put that aside, there is plenty to be entertained with, since each episode has a great variety of events, concocted with a good deal of imagination. The best moment in my opinion is the train chase on the ninth episode, a truly spectacular one by the era's standards; but there are plenty of others that are also good.
I would like to make just two more remarks for truth's sake. It has become mandatory for reviewers of this film to mention the "poetic imagery" and other expressions using the adjective "poetic". Well, this is insane. There is not a single atom of poetry in this film. It was conceived as cheap entertainment, and the best one can say about it is that it succeeds at that. Imposing some poetic character to it is even a betrayal to its author.
The second mandatory item in a review of this film is a mention of how Irma Vep is a symbol of feminism and the first liberated woman on the screen, and how she is extremely sexy, an so on. Again, all of that is nuts. She was a gang moll, that's all. She was not even the head of the gang, and although she took active part in the criminal acts, she had virtually no power. Anyway, to call that feminism is really insulting to feminists. And one last thing: she is not sexy at all. But of course that is a matter of taste.
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