Somewhere in Central Europe, a busful of people who have been hired to work at an aristocrat's mansion are heading to the town of Bojoni when the driver has a heart attack and dies. A big beefy guy named Ernesto takes over as driver and they decide to stay overnight in the village of Tolnia but the place is deserted, even though the dining room looks ready for diners. They meet Luis, another visitor, who notes that in addition to no villagers, there are no churches. The group make themselves some dinner and sleep in the rooms upstairs, and Luis discovers that he can use a peephole in his room's closet to peep at the lovely Alma, in whom he has already taken an interest. In the middle of the night, the restless Ernesto wanders through the village and winds up encircled and attacked by sinister looking villagers. As we have guessed based on the movie's title, the villagers are vampires. The next morning, the village is full of people (they claim they were all at a midnight funeral) with Ernesto wandering about as if in a trance. Neither the bus nor Luis' car is working and the Countess, the sexy and wealthy chief citizen of the town, insists they stay until they can get mechanical help. Most of the travelers are fine with this arrangement but one by one, they begin vanishing and we discover that the vampires are also cannibals—a finger even turns up in Alma's meal. Eventually Luis and Alma are the last unbitten passengers and manage to escape the village, only to return the next morning with some police to discover that the entire village has vanished.
Yes, this Spanish Eurohorror film ends up being a sort of twist on Brigadoon, the appearing and disappearing Scottish village from the Lerner & Loewe musical. It has its moments but it is directed with little style by Leon Klimovsky and lazily scripted. I do have to say there is a fairly credible reason given for the vampires' ability to roam about in the daytime; the village is in a valley where no sun reaches. The English dubbing is atrocious so it's difficult to evaluate the acting. American actor Jack Taylor is pretty good as Jack; Belgian actress Dyanik Zurakowski is fine as Alma. Few others are differentiated much, though David Aller, as an actor named Cesar, gets a sex scene with the Countess (Helga Line, pictured) during which music with lots of sexy moaning is played, reminding me of the notorious 70s hit "Jungle Fever" by the Chakachas. Otherwise, the musical score is usually ludicrously inappropriate; some online critics assume that the score mostly comes from library music written for other movies. There are bare breasts and a little gore here and there, and the vampire attacks are effective enough. The cannibal aspect seems to arise because the villagers don't actually eat meat but they feel they have to serve meat to the visitors. Which begs the question, why not just kill all the passengers on the first night? There are only about ten passengers versus at least a couple dozen of vampires. There are scattershot pleasures here but don't expect too much. And, BTW, there is no orgy, day or night. [YouTube]
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