This film is from a particular period when the Ozploitation movement was winding down/gearing up. You could say it was winding down because genre movies like Mad Max were gaining international acclaim and lifting the movement out of its red headed stepchild origins, or you could say it was gearing up because – with the attention of the world on Australian genre movies – they were becoming mainstream and as such didn't really belong in the grubby exploitation movement any more.

But this is a strange hybrid of government sponsored dramatic fare and ultracheap genre thrills of The Chain Reaction and Midnite Spares.

It was directed by Rod Hardy, a prestige filmmaker who'd go on to make Daniel Radcliffe's Post Harry Potter drama December Boys from 2007. It was funded by the New South Wales and Victoria Film Corporations, bodies that had probably been sinking my parents' tax revenue into movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli until then.

But the lurid box cover art and poster from the time promise a feast of sensuality and blood, and it is after all about a vampire cult trying to recruit a beautiful young woman as a member.

Cantal Contouri is Kate, a successful young woman who runs a business, owns a beautiful house and has a boyfriend who's so cool you just know he has a polyester leisure suit (it is 1979).

But a shadowy organisation of people who consume blood, believing it keeps them eternally youthful, kidnap her and take her to their stately home compound. As they explain to her, they believe her to be a direct descendant of 16th century Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory (a notorious killer, if you didn't know), and if she joins them it'll ensure they continuation of their movement for generations because of her power.

Kate wants none of it, particularly because they keep hordes of barely conscious human cattle, brainwashing them so they don't escape and 'bleeding' them in a small industrial facility like a milk production line.

The story is basically about her trying to reject the life they're trying to convince her to adopt, with only the understanding Dr Fraser (Brit acting powerhouse David Hemmings) insisting they're going too fast and are going to break her psychologically, becoming her only ally.

It's a vampire film, but kind of not. It's not really a horror film and you're never really sure if it's dealing with vampirism or just a bunch of quasi-religious crackpots, although there are some supernatural elements when those who belong to the order (or submit to it) have eyes that glow menacingly in the dark or canine teeth that grow slowly into fangs.

Depending on what you're hoping for, the story might add to or take away from the vampire tale you're expecting. It adds a few psychological themes (see it as a rumination on the ethics of farming animals for meat if you like), but while it's moody and well designed, it's not very scary and there's not much of the iconography or mythology from vampirism you might be expecting.