The Vampire Lovers

 

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

Dir. Roy Ward Baker

Written by Tudor Gates, "adapted by" Harry Fine, Tudor Gates, Michael Style, from the novella by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Starring Ingrid Pitt, Madeline Smith, Kate O’Mara, Peter Cushing

 

I threw this on thinking I was going to be getting some kind of Jean Rollin-style Euro-sleaze thing. Turns out to have a marginally more prestigious pedigree: it's actually an AIP/ Hammer co-production, with a role for Peter Cushing, no less!

 

In retrospect, I actually knew all this; though I didn’t immediately recognize the somewhat generic title, I was already aware of Hammer’s so-called “Karnstein trilogy,” which has the reputation as marking the point where a floundering Hammer, unable to compete with the boundary-pushing violence of the horror imports from Italy and America, shifted its business model from producing classy gothic horror to tawdry softcore with a thin veneer of classy gothic horror. 

 

Having seen VAMPIRE LOVERS, the first of that trilogy, I can’t exactly take issue with that assessment. Nonetheless, the veneer of classy gothic horror is not quite as pro forma as I had assumed, nor is the tawdry softcore quite so vapid. I knew the trilogy was said to be based upon J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 vampire novella Carmilla, an early bit of vampire fiction which predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by a full 26 years.* No surprise there; much of Hammer’s classic catalog is based on venerable horror literature, at least in theory. What I had not expected is that this first film, at any rate, is actually a surprisingly faithful adaptation, retaining most of the novella’s structure and characters, and acceding to the hoped-for tawdry sex angle only by drawing the already-present lesbian subtext from Le Fanu’s novella ever slightly further into the explicit forefront, about as far as you possibly could in 1970 (which is to say they take their tops off a few times, mostly in a sexy but not directly sexual way). If it’s tawdry --and it is tawdry-- it’s because the source material, an unimpeachably classic bit of Victorian literature, is perfectly tawdry in its own right. (I’m guessing the sequels are of a decidedly less faithful tenor, because VAMPIRE LOVERS covers the entire plot, and doesn’t leave a whole lot of loose ends to sequelize).

 

 

Carmilla is also, I should say, much more than a simple bit of repressed Victorian sublimated erotica; it is a compelling and creepy little yarn, showcasing Le Fanu’s characteristic gift for slow-building tension and uncanny atmosphere. Impressively, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS also marshals these qualities, though with a slightly different bent than the source material, and, I must concede, a rather less sublimated focus on the erotica. Le Fanu’s plot is simple enough: Carmilla (Ingrid Pitt, COUNTESS DRACULA, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD), a wan and eccentric young woman, arrives at the estate of a wealthy Austrian family and becomes a long-term houseguest, much to the delight of Laura, the lonely teenage daughter of the family. The two women bond immediately, but as Laura’s health declines, some of the men around her begin to suspect that Carmilla may be the source of the problem, eventually discovering the truth about her supernatural nature. Amazingly, VAMPIRE LOVERS has a nearly identical plot, differing only in a few details --including, inexplicably, changing “Laura” to “Emma” (Madeline Smith, THEATER OF BLOOD, FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL)—but otherwise following the same basic arc.

 

This structure means that the story is primarily a slow-burn depiction of what today we would probably call a toxic relationship, as one woman literally sucks the life out of the other. Much of the novella is essentially a relationship drama with sinister implications, which makes for an unusually fit for Hammer, whose movies tended to be action-oriented, male-dominated affairs. Little surprise, then, that the main relationship is something of a wash. Madeline Smith’s wide-eyed innocence is so overblown that she starts to seem like she might be more than a little dense, and Ingrid Pitt seems to be leaning more on hotness and the implicit scandalousness of the material than crafting any kind of specific personality. 

 

Surprisingly, though, the vagueness of the relationship ostensibly at the center of this story doesn’t turn out to be as crippling as you might assume. In fact, despite the obvious tawdry appeal of illicit lesbian seduction, the movie is built around a different conflict. Though we enter the story more or less from Emma’s point-of-view, as her health declines the movie gradually shifts perspectives, and Pitt really starts to come into her own as a compelling anti-hero. By the halfway point, in fact, Emma has more or less entirely ceased to be an active character, and the crux of the drama has refocused around whether an increasingly besieged Carmilla will be able to get away with it. She’s a manipulative villain, but she’s also the most charismatic, active, and intriguing character by an order of magnitude, and as she gradually becomes the indisputable protagonist, we start to, if not side with her, at least invest emotionally in the outcome of her efforts.

 

 Pitt and Smith have very little chemistry together, and Smith is such a nonentity it’s hard to understand why Carmilla is so into her (besides the tits, obviously). But this too turns out to matter less than it should, because ultimately THE VAMPIRE LOVERS isn’t the story of a relationship so much as an obsession. Whatever Carmilla sees in her victim, we’re not privy to it, and --after all-- she’s an ageless supernatural being, and maybe it’s actually more interesting that we can’t entirely understand her motives. An unsourced bit of IMDB trivia, in fact, claims that Pitt said she played the role as asexual, which I can actually sort of believe; whatever she is feeling, it is something not quite so human as simple erotic desire.** But even if we don’t understand specifically what motivates her, we can certainly see that Carmilla’s fixation is genuine; in her own twisted way, she does love her victim, and can’t abandon her even to save her own life. Pitt conveys all this with an underplayed sensitivity that’s surprisingly affecting. She’s an interesting character, flinty and merciless but also with the touch of secret vulnerability that inevitably comes from needing someone. There’s a winning resoluteness in her performance which helps to put us on her side, and that comes through first; she exudes a steely, confident power in her sure-footed canniness and her willingness to lie, murder, and seduce her way to staying by her victim’s bedside. But that strength is tempered by a suppressed sadness, too.*** Hers is a lonely life, and Pitt makes you feel both her desperation for connection, and the impossibility of that dream.

 

These qualities come to a startlingly effective head in her relationship with Emma’s governess, Mademoiselle Perrodot (the superb Kate O’Mara, CORRUPTION, THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN), a surprisingly rich character in her own right. She is Carmilla’s greatest adversary, deeply suspicious of the other woman’s motives and instinctively ready to foil her machinations. Until, that is, Carmilla –somewhat in desperation-- turns her seductive powers on her. And, suddenly, the dam bursts, and Perrodot’s own desperate, vulnerable desire pours out, allowing her to be completely subsumed by the other woman. She has not, I think, been suspicious of Carmilla; she has been jealous of her. O’Mara, utterly independent of the rather superficial script (from, uh, the writer of BARBARELLA) paints a vivid portrait of a deeply closeted lesbian, whose iron-clad self control –born of the vital necessity of hiding her true self—is both the source of her considerable power (she is the only character who manages to mount a credible challenge to Carmilla) and her greatest weakness. While she is redirecting her suppressed desire, she is canny, calculating, a worthy adversary.  Shown even a glimpse of affection, though, and her strident opposition crumbles to nothing and she is entirely, desperately, pathetically in Carmilla’s thrall. Once her defenses waver for even a moment, there is no going back, and she cares about nothing but preserving, through any means necessary, this one sliver of expression of her true self, this one flicker of human contact which is not filtered through self-protective artifice.

 

The irony, though unstated, is absolutely palpable: here is a woman who, unlike the prattling, childlike Emma, legitimately desires Carmilla, and, more to the point, seems like a worthy partner, an equal, perhaps even a kindred spirit, who knows all too well both the isolating, calcifying strain of living a lie, and the disciplined, unsentimental power it can produce. And yet, Carmilla does not want her; she is wholly devoted to the weak-willed Emma, desirous only of completing her morbid downward spiral. Despite her own aching loneliness, Carmilla is completely incapable of seeing Perrodot’s eager devotion as anything but a tool, to be manipulated for her own ends. Their final scene together is emotionally complex and genuinely a little heartbreaking, a descriptor associated with the Hammer oeuvre very rarely indeed. Most of the turbulent emotional content comes from the performances –O’Mara’s wrenching, desperate desire, and Pitt’s coldly calculating demeanor softened only by a hint of regret in her eyes, all the evidence we need to see that she understands as well as we do that she is spurning a chance for a real connection in favor of something more ethereal that she is utterly powerless to resist—but it’s worth noting that Ms. Perrodot and her subplot are entirely a creation of the film, with no obvious parallel in the original novella. It’s also the most explicitly lesbian aspect of the film, and one might be tempted to imagine it’s included merely for titillation, except that we have a interesting point of comparison: there is a subplot about Carmilla’s seduction of the male butler (Harvey Hall, minor roles in all three Karnstein films) which is superficially almost identical, but utterly lacking in the same fraught emotional landscape. Men, in the world of THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, are simple creatures, motivated by simple emotions – lust, anger, placidity. They may prevail in the end (it’s a Hammer movie, so yeah, the men are eventually going to save the day) but that doesn’t mean they understand.

 

I do not, of course, mean to imply that THE VAMPIRE LOVERS is some masterpiece of sensitively observed psychodrama. It’s a Hammer film, and not even one of the more handsomely appointed ones (I never thought much of director Roy Ward Baker [ASYLUM, THE VAULT OF HORROR], who tends to make dull, flat-looking movies with too much turgid chit-chat), and it mostly offers everything you associate with that pedigree; dry ice around gothic castle sets, bright red blood, heaving bosoms, a very committed Peter Cushing performance in a role which doesn’t necessarily turn out to be very interesting, a blandly handsome young man named “Carl” (Jon Finch, Hitchcock’s FRENZY [!]). But there’s enough going on under the surface here to convince me that someone –be that Baker, or screenwriter Tudor Gates (who wrote all three of the “Karnstein trilogy”), or just the actresses themselves—were not completely unaware of the more complex emotional possibilities lurking within the exploitation-ready story.

 

 “This film was given an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America due to the vampire bites inflicted on the women's bosoms,” says IMDB, matter-of-factly, which is by itself a full-throated endorsement of the artistic heroism of the film’s creators. That was all it needed, and all I was expecting. That the film also managed to produce one of the very few interesting female characters in the entire Hammer canon was most decidedly not expected, but by the end of the runtime, I confess that I was pondering Carmilla’s mysterious inner life more than her propensity for bosom-biting. I very much doubt that trend will continue with the sequels (LUST OF A VAMPIRE, TWINS OF EVIL – neither of which feature Pitt, who would go on to COUNTESS DRACULA for Hammer, but apparently declined an offer to return as Carmilla), but at least here, briefly, something a little more interesting was able to harmoniously co-exist with the requisite sleaze.

 

 

*Though even setting aside folklore, the vampire had been a consistent character in European fiction since Polidori’s The Vampyre in 1819, though Carmilla has been cited as enormously influential in its own right, particular upon Dracula. Also, while I have you down here, I should mention that Carmilla was first serialized in the literary magazine The Dark Blue starting in 1871, and first published in book form as part of Le Fanu’s collection In A Glass Darkly in 1872, hence various sources differing between 1871 and 1872 as the publishing date.

** The same trivia also proffers: “The director claimed that, after reading the novella Carmilla twice, he didn't get a sense of any lesbian content.” Which, if true, means that he and Jack Sholder from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 really need to hang out sometime. But if he really missed the lesbian “subtext” of the book, I feel quite confident that his producers enlightened him to it with some gusto.

*** I’m not sure where else to say this --or even if I should say this in the context we find ourselves in here—but Pitt, born Ingoushka Petrov, was a Holocaust survivor (she was imprisoned at Stutthof concentration camp, where ~65,000 of the 110,000 people who passed through it during the course of the war perished). I don’t feel comfortable speculating whether or not she brought that perspective to this trashy lesbian vampire character, but she does seem to have been pretty open about her wartime experience; in 2011, she was part of a short animated film –supervised by Bill Plympton, no less!—which dramatized her recollection.

 

What, you really though I was gonna be able to resist sneaking a Peter Cushing pic in here?

 

 CHAINSAWNUKAH 2020 CHECKLIST!

The Man Who Queue Too Much

 

TAGLINE	IF YOU DARE… taste the deadly passion of the BLOOD NYMPHS! Good advice.
TITLE ACCURACY	Strictly speaking, there’s a number of grammatical ways to interprepret that title. If we interpret it as multiple vampires who are lovers, it’s not very accurate, as we see only one during the course of the film. If it’s meant to refer to multiple lovers of vampires, that makes a little more sense, but probably most accurately refers to the Hammer execs who couldn’t let their flagship monster die.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Yes, of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla.
SEQUEL?	Followed by two extremely loose sequels which only seem to share a vague vampire-related premise and the name Karnstein.
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	England
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Vampires!
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	No
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Peter Cushing, and to a lesser degree probably Pitt and Roy Ward Baker, and I suppose Le Fanu, who remains well-respected among aficionados of Victorian horror lit, among whom I happily count myself.
NUDITY?	Quite a bit of toplessness from most of the female cast members.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Carmilla’s depredations certainly qualify, though they contrast starkly with the typical sleazy male rape shit that they usually cram into this sort of thing. #Feminism?
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Although there’s not much of a puppet or anything, Carmilla does turn into a giant cat.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	No, just vamps
POSSESSION?	Not really, although there is maybe some mild suggestion that Emma is hypnotize or something
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	Nah
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Carmilla is implied to transform into a cat, although we don’t really see it
VOYEURISM?	Nothing notable
MORAL OF THE STORY	Houseguests, like fish, will begin to seduce your daughters and drain them of blood after three days