By Cheryl Eddy

'THE TRUTH IS , I hate the sun!" exclaims Diane (Celeste Yarnall), the titular menace in Stephanie Rothman's The Velvet Vampire. Oddly enough, Diane dwells in the desert, donning a wide-brimmed chapeau to protect her near transparent complexion from the rays. Why a creature of the night would be caught dead (undead?) strutting through the sagebrush at high noon matters not; the point is, Diane's domain is so isolated it makes The Hills Have Eyes look overpopulated and is therefore the perfect setting for camp-erotica high jinks.

The MadCat Women's International Film Festival screens The Velvet Vampire as part of its opening-night festivities, touting it as "the first vampire movie ever directed by a woman." The film is also a relatively early-issue female vampire flick (other examples can be found in the realms of Hammer and Jess Franco) and a vamp tale with a contemporary setting (the bloodsucker drives a dune buggy, not a black carriage). Last year MadCat unspooled another Rothman-helmed New World Pictures exploito-classic, 1970's The Student Nurses, a surprisingly forward-thinking tale of four roommates struggling with their complex personal lives (not to mention lighter enticements, like sex with doctors and the wonders of LSD) en route to graduation. Released the following year, The Velvet Vampire is set in the same free-love milieu but doesn't quite convey the underappreciated-and-ripe-for-rediscovery feeling.

That said, the pleasures of The Velvet Vampire are many. For Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fans, they begin precisely when the film's male lead – Michael Blodgett, a.k.a. "Lance Rocke" of the leopard-skin skivvies – first appears, and they continue every time his singular acting talents struggle to set the mood. Los Angelenos Lee (Blodgett) and wife Susan (Sherry Miles, no great thespian herself) meet sultry Diane at a sculpture exhibit titled (ahem) "Night Vision." Within minutes, possibly even seconds, Lee and Diane are off together at the bar; he's murmuring, "Hey ... I laaaaahk you!," and she's inviting the couple to stay at her desert retreat.

Aside from that whole vampire-under-the-blazing-sun thing, the characters of Lee and Susan are the movie's most illogical conceits. It's clear Diane is after Lee; in case the tête-à-tête in the gallery wasn't enough, a dinner conversation laden with awesomely bad double entendres offers irrefutable proof. Still, Susan – who has two states of being: petulant jealousy and the ardent pursuit of a suntan – easily agrees to the trip. Inconsistency rules; in the very scene after Susan is bitten by a rattlesnake, she announces, "I'm beginning to like it here!" Then, shortly after Lee and Diane get it on (Diane: "Why fight it?"; Lee: "Fight what?"; Diane: "The animal in you!") and are observed mid-thrust by a blank-faced Susan, Lee suddenly decides Diane is up to no good. "You're really down on her," Susan observes; for no apparent reason, she becomes Diane's biggest champion.

Over the course of the story, it's revealed that Diane's last name is LeFanu – a nod to J. Sheridan LeFanu, author of Carmilla, the pre-Bram Stoker tale that inspired countless films in the Vampyros Lesbos vein. Though The Velvet Vampire attempts to offer up equal-opportunity love connections, Diane's main objects of desire are her dead husband, whose mummified body she visits religiously, and boneheaded Lee. Still, Yarnall (whose other credits include severed-head shrieker Beast of Blood and Elvis vehicle Live a Little, Love a Little) proves a smoldering focal point, even as she straddles a coffin, wafts through a soft-focus dream sequence, and slurps down raw meat while wearing a pink, feather-trimmed bathrobe.

The remainder of MadCat's selections – 93 films in all – are broken down into programs of mostly short films, grouped according to themes as varied as "How to Fix the World" and "Growing Up Is Hard to Do." Fans of experimental films are especially stoked this year, with works like local duo Joell Hallowell and Jacalyn White's "Neptune's Release: Shot in the Dark," a sound and image collage of educational films, found footage of dogs and other more curious subjects, and vaguely creepy relaxation tapes; and Yael Braha's statuesque meditation "The Waves." Personal stories are woven to great effect in films such as Gretchen Hildebran's "The Smallest Space"; Kami Chisholm and Elizabeth Stark's "A Conversation with Elizabeth's Dad"; and Krescent Carasso's "Lucy." The program dubbed "The Truth of the Matter" collects several timely pieces, including Lori Hiris's "The Invisible Hand" (an animated attack on corporate crooks); Julia Meltzer and David Thorne's government secret-busting "It's Not My Memory of It"; and Diane Nerwen's "The Thief of Baghdad," which uses sound samples from films like Giant and Lawrence of Arabia to turn "an Arabian fantasy in Technicolor" into a viciously funny takedown of George W. Bush.

MadCat Women's International Film Festival runs Sept. 14-Oct. 3. Venues are El Rio, 3158 Mission, S.F.; Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia, S.F.; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, S.F.; and Parkway Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. For ticket information ($6-$20) and a full program list, go to www.madcatfilmfestival.org.

'The Velvet Vampire' screens Tues/14, 8:30 p.m. (free barbecue: 6:30 p.m.), El Rio, 3158 Mission, S.F. $7-$20. (415) 282-3325.