Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we continue our Halloween season exploration of how various horror sub-genres reflect the queer experience with 1970’s The Vampire Lovers.
This week, we sink our teeth—or rather, our fangs—into the history of vampires, particularly as the embodiment of queer desire, eroticism, and one of the earliest and most consistent symbols and icons of lesbianism.
Although Dracula is undoubtedly the most famous vampire in popular culture (with hundreds of appearances, he is the second most portrayed figure in film history, second only to Sherlock Holmes), and most of the preconceptions of what we think a vampire is and acts like derives from him, Drac’s not the first vampiric figure to exist in fiction.
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Before Bram Stoker’s tale in 1897, there were portrayals of vampiric-like characters in poems, weekly penny dreadfuls, and short stories. Most notably, the 1872 novella Carmilla tells the story of a young woman being preyed upon by a seductive female vampire.
Carmilla not only predates Dracula by nearly 25 years, but it is the first embodiment of an archetype that would reappear over and over in film, literature, and other forms of fiction: the alluring and irresistible female vampire that preys over young women and enchants them to either bleed them dry or turn them into one of their own. Throughout horror history, this trope is used as a way to openly portray same-sex attraction, taboo relationships, and otherwise forbidden desires in a way that would trespass codes and heavy censorship.
The Set-Up
There have been a handful of film versions of Carmilla over the years, with varying levels of fidelity in the adaptation of the lesbian themes. But the 1970 film The Vampire Lovers was one of the first to fully embody the sapphic eroticism of the original novel, and is considered one of the prime examples of lesbian vampires in film.
The Vampire Lovers tells the legend of a family of vampires in the late 1700s who rise from the dead and embody human figures to hunt and satiate their thirst for blood.
One of them in particular takes the form of a beautiful and seductive young woman named Carmilla who infiltrates herself into wealthy families to seduce their young daughters, slowly making them sick with anemia (and giving them terrifying nightmares and hallucinations) as she sucks on their blood through their breasts every night. When two gentlemen of separate families realize that the same woman has tricked and killed both of their former girlfriends, they hunt her down to her old family estate and kill her.
Gothic Girls
The film was directed by Roy Ward Baker and stars Ingrid Pitt as the vampire Carmilla, with supporting performances by George Cole, Kate O’Mara and Peter Cushing. It was made as an American and British co-production, as US producers wanted to take advantage of the more relaxed censorship laws in the UK and be able to fully portray the sexuality and eroticism of the story.
The Vampire Lovers falls very nicely into the B-horror and Gothic trend of the ’60s and ’70s, filled with saturated colors, gory practical effects, and sound stage locations of opulent castles, cemeteries, and ballrooms. It’s in line with the work that Roger Corman and Vincent Price were doing at the same time via their Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. The performances are not the strongest (they feel quite stilted, particularly with Polish-born Pitt in the lead role) but there is a sense of over-the-top camp and fun that fits well with the themes of the story.
Sapphic Seduction
But what stands out most strikingly in the film is precisely the reason why the novel and the adaptation were created in the first place. The Vampire Lovers does not shy away from portraying Carmilla as a woman that desires other women; in her first introduction, a young girl is certain that the beautiful woman in the ball is staring at her boyfriend, when she is in fact staring and luring at her. Carmilla uses her sexual charm to befriend these girls and make them dependent on her. She becomes a combination of a lady in waiting, best friend, and lover.
Blood sucking and the mind enchantments that Carmilla plays on these girls are a very clear and overt allegory for the lovemaking and power of attraction that she has over them. She gives them nightmares that only she can alleviate. She makes them sicker each day, which makes them only want her more. And she decides to suck their blood through their breasts (only the men are sucked dry through their necks in this universe). If it feels like the film falls on the verge of sexploitation at times—there isn’t much plot or narrative other than seeing these young girls fade away slowly—but that also seems to be the point of it.
Out For Blood
The Vampire Lovers was actually the first in a trilogy of films deemed the Karnstein Trilogy, all of which openly portrayed these lesbian themes through vampirism, although in varying degrees. 1971’s Lust For A Vampire follows Carmilla’s descendant in the early 1800s as she murders her way through a private girls’ school. And Twins Of Evil, also released in 1971, is an implied prequel to the first one that follows two young girls who have opposing forces of good and evil inside them.
The Vampire Lovers is perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the lesbian vampire trope; not only does it spawn directly from the source material that started and inspired the entire archetype, but it’s one of the few films that was able to accurately and openly portray the themes that were otherwise being implied or outright censored.
Although the traits of these creatures are somewhat reductive and dated when seen fifty years later, it’s also refreshing to see them portrayed with a vibrancy and openness that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It’s great that our portrayals have broken out of the villainy that we were boxed into for so many decades; but sometimes it is more fun to be the bad guy.
The Vampire Lovers is streaming via Amazon Prime Video, Freevee, and Tubi.
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