Vampyres

Vampyres 1974
Review by Corinna Tomrley

This is gonna be full of spoilers blah blah blah. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Vampyres is one of those films that I came across and could not believe I had never even heard of it, let alone seen it. How the hell had this passed me by? Dunno.

A British film – originally distributed by Rank, no less – it’s of the soft soft soft porn genre that sprung up in the early 70s on the back of the collapse of censorship. The studios basically needed to make money, and sex and gore – previously creatively and/or prudishly presented – was all the rage and all over the place. Tits and orange blood, basically.

This one is more porny than the Hammer films; that probably explains why the acting is so shit. It’s often billed as an ‘erotic horror’.

Props must go to a great credit sequence of slomo flying bats and a great score by James Clarke.

Starring Marianne Morris, a Mayfair centerfold, as Fran and Anulka, a Playboy Playmate, as Miriam, the women simulate lez sex fairly well considering the constraints, ie they’re not going to actually show mouth-to-puss but they do suggest it in rather lovely angles. It’s more than the usual above the waist mouth and neck kissing with the occasional boob peck that we come to know and love in Hammer. When they do simulate going downstairs, as was usual with early lez sex scenes, it’s ‘handless’. But the eroticism (yes, eroticism is actually there and it’s possibly more erotic than porny if we’re being nuanced about it) comes from the mix of sex and blood lust. Drinking blood comes on the back of sex with their male victims, either alone or together as they drink and fuck. Yummerz.

They’re not traditional fangy vampires, they cut and stab and drink from the wounds. This almost makes it sexier in that it’s more ‘real’, I guess, and certainly amps up the horror. And their victims are suitably terrified (apart from the one who is almost passed out each time it happens to him so he wakes up clueless with a sore arm and strangely lacking a lot of his blood). The vamps’ turn on isn’t from a seductive neck bite but their frenzied attacks fuel their sexual appetites as much as their supping from the wounds.

Still, these are no mortal vampires. And here’s the thing. It seems to be a straightforward story with a bit of a twist. But I couldn’t quite get the link between the opening scene with what is revealed as a twist. So, this is what happens. It opens with the ladies getting it on in their bedroom of this big house. Just sex, no blood. A strangely dressed man enters and shoots them. This bit is never explained in any way. Was he a husband avenging their lez affair? Who the fuck knows. Is he weirdly dressed to suggest olden days (cuz they basically look like two seventies chicks doing soft porn)? Again, WTFK.

So when we cut to a bloke called Ted turning up at a nearby hotel and an old guy saying he remembers him from years ago and Ted is like, no, don’t know what you’re talking about mate, it kind of plot point infers that he’s the guy who shot them..? You’d think…

It’s even more confusing as to whether Ted actually knows what hotel man is talking about when Ted meets Fran and he says she reminds him of someone he knew long ago. So, you wonder if he knows who she is and if he’s enacting revenge or if he’s having a déjà vu thing. But he never brings it up again, so… what the actual is going on with that plot line? There’s a sort of possible reference to it in the final vaguely twisty scene but we’ll come to that.

It should be mentioned that there’s this through plot involving a couple in a caravan, John and Harriet. They see Fran standing by the roadside. But the woman also sees Miriam hiding behind a tree. John doesn’t spot Miriam and thinks Harriet is imagining things. She becomes obsessed with the women and why one was hiding. He is really patronizing and a dick about it.

They park their caravan up near the house, which does little to dampen Harriet’s fixation on the women. She starts to see and hear things (male screams, a bloody hand on the window). He’s a bigger asshole about it all.

Although the couple are kind of central to the plot in that they interact with Ted when he comes to them for help (not telling them that his wounds are from sex with his new gf up at the house) and Harriet’s obsession and voyeuristic fascination with the women and their house draws the audience in (except we know what’s happening up there, she doesn’t) it doesn’t really go anywhere either. Fran and Miriam come across her once and Fran suggests they’ve been waiting for her but that doesn’t really lead to anything. For a lot of the film we forget about the couple and then, oh there’s a shot of the caravan or them having it off or her walking around in a woolly hat, nosing about. I expected her to happen upon Ted enslaved and bloodless on the bed. But she doesn’t nose that closely. Instead, she does a painting of the house.  All this vagueness makes it even more shocking when the couple are killed. When John’s killed, sure, that’s a convention. It makes her terror greater. And he deserved it, the dick. But when Harriet is slaughtered, it becomes reminiscent of the kind of killing you’ll see in later period horror than that of the early 70s. One of the ‘innocents’ usually survives, especially a woman. Her death is really full on ‘real’ too. Still can’t quite get over it.

This brings me to the other murders and blood drinking in the film. Bodies of men are being found all over the place and even though the police are obviously involved we don’t see them investigating. You know, is it a coinkidink that all these men are found on a stretch of road where two birds are hitchhiking every day. For that’s why Fran and Miriam are hanging about on the side of the road, you see. Sometimes Fran will get picked up on her own (with Miriam lurking behind the tree), Miriam will pick someone up or they both will. It has to be said that this makes the tree-lurking even weirder. Why don’t they both always do it together or maybe the other one have a lay-in? What guy is going to be put off by two hot chicks wanting a ride? Yeah, sure, you can get in but your nubile lesbian gf with her tits showing will have to walk…

So, anyway, they pick them up and smile at them and, not surprisingly, by the time they get to the house the guys are up for sex and wine. Cuz the girls have a cellar full of amazing wine. If hot chicks won’t pull you, then a nice vintage will. They get the men so drunk that by the time the girls are thirsty for blood the men have no chance. Perhaps it makes the blood nicer, too. You know, like with a stew.

Fran picks up Ted and takes him to their house. Ted asks if she does this with all of her ‘dates’ inferring she’s a sex worker but he basically becomes her bf or bleeding sex and blood slave for the rest of the film. Because this one she doesn’t kill. He wakes up with a massive gash on his arm and blood on the bed, feeling really weak. But instead of going, oh shit what happened I must get away, he hangs around. He waits for her all day (she’s nipped off to bed in the graveyard), sitting in his car. He’s pissed off and moody when she returns but she’s like, oh shit sorry I had to nip out, and he goes alright and goes back in the house with her. They did seem to have pretty hot sex (even if his wet tongue was quite gross to watch), so no wonder really. But I assumed he was hanging around because he’s onto who she is and he’s like a Van Helsing or something. Oh no. He just goes back for more and more, getting weaker and weaker and gets pissed off with her disappearing and bringing other blokes back – one of whom he sees dead in his car on that stretch of road – but still he stays. But then she’s a vamp and she’s hot and he’s getting some and in the end he can hardly move anyway.

There’s a bit where Fran and Miriam are having a shower together, washing off the blood before they nip back to their grave. Again, not trad vamps as running water is a definite fatal no-no, btw. Instead, they have sex with Miriam going down on Fran. The camera POV is as if they’re being watched through some plants and I thought we were to assume that it was Ted. But we don’t get a shot of him and if it was he’d know what their game was. So it would seem that this bit of camera work suggests that the voyeurs are us. I think this is probably just a porn trope because we’re voyeurs for the whole bloody film and the camera’s not suggesting lurky peepers for the rest of the movie.

Miriam (whilst going downtown) admonishes Fran for not killing Ted outright and it’s never really explained why she doesn’t. Is it cuz she’s getting good sex? Is she relishing weakening him and having a play toy on hand? Is it because he’s the male lead and we get to see them having it off a lot and it is after all an ‘erotic’ film? And one is usually bled dry whilst the others die outright in a vamp film plot…

Ted somehow finds the strength to leave the house and goes to the couple for help. They get killed and he drives away. But the sun is coming up so the vamps have to get back to their graves. It’s either they perish in daylight (presumably, though the film is playing fast and loose with vampire tropes and they hitch in the day time so who the fuck knows anymore?) or he gets away.

He’s found by an estate agent almost passed out in his car with an empty bottle of wine. TWISTY TIME!!!!!!! The estate agent is showing an older American couple around the estate. It’s empty and up for sale; DUH DUH DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! They ask about ‘the rumours’. Estate agent is like, oh yeah two women were brutally murdered and it’s made it hard to shift the place. There’s fear the killer will return and their ghosts are said to haunt it but it’s obviously bullshit, of course. The older couple are delighted. How cute to have an English pile with a ghost! Oh, how lucky for them that two chicks were shot to death there. Fun!

And that’s it. Bloke gets away but who’s gonna believe him, I guess? Despite the tons of dead bodies everywhere. Although will he tell? He hasn’t before. AND WAS HE THE ONE WHO SHOT THEM AT THE BEGINNING? WHO THE FUCKING HELL KNOWS????? Is that the inference to the killer returning? It’s so vague and, really, this is so hit you over the head with everything else that I don’t think vagueness is part of the aesthetic.

Btw – the lady of The American Couple is Bessie Love who goes back to silent days, pretty much worked up to her death in the 80s when her last film was another lez vamp flick – The Hunger. This is my fave picture of her.

So, yeah, Vampyres.

Great lez sex and blood drinking film though so this film gets a very bloody vampy thumbs up from me despite plot holes and shit acting. Actually, that adds to it all really. Two bloody thumbs up.

Lesbian Vampires: Vampyros Lesbos

By Corinna ‘Gaze This’ Tomrley

As part of the series on lesbian vampire films I analyze one of the more notorious of the genre, the wonderous Vampyros Lesbos. WARNING: THIS THING IS FULL OF SPOILERS! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT AND DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE PLOT, STOP READING. THEN QUICKLY GO AND WATCH IT AND COME BACK. THANKS!

Vampyros Lesbos (1971) stars Soledad Miranda and Uwa Stroemberg. Both are solid, wonderful, magnificent to look at lesbian vampire stars and both would go on to make other horror films with the director, Jesús Franco. Franco himself has an uncredited cameo in the film as the super creepy torturer and killer of women, Memet. It’s a good example of that movie animal – the European co-production. It’s a Spanish-German film shot and set in Turkey, the script in German, the stars Swedish, Spanish and English (old Ealing stalwart, Dennis Price crops up as the doctor). Miranda plays a Hungarian Countess  and Stroemberg an American. Fun fact: Price, bankrupt by the late 60s by gambling and drinking, would star in 5 of Franco’s films. He also made a few Hammers, including lez vamp film, Twins Of Evil.

Vampyros Lesbos is one of those films that has an almost mythical status. Many have heard of it without seeing it. When a compilation of music from the director’s horror films was released in the 90s as Vampyros Lesbos – Sexadelic Dance Party, the film became a further cult on the back of the success of the CD’s sales. A trippy, psychedelic jazz score (co-written by Franco), the soundtrack is one of the best things about Vampyros Lesbos. It’s actually incredible. But even though the film itself tends to get less than favourable reviews, I would argue that it’s actually a really decent example of the lesbian vampire genre. If taken as it was presumably intended – a European soft porn art film – it is actually great.

I first saw this film in the mid 90s, like everyone else after hearing the soundtrack (that a boyfriend had), and then I simply had to get the video. And oh, my, but that was a very pleasant viewing experience. I hadn’t seen it since and watched it almost fresh for this review. I have to say, I really love this film. It’s right up there with other great lesbian vampire movies.

It looks stunning, it’s compelling and although I’ve read the acting being described as ‘wooden’, that’s a whole part of the genre! Get with the programme, people. Embrace these things for what they are. Are you entertained? Yes. Are you titillated? Hells, yeah. Well then. What more can you ask for?

What’s more, even though I can hear the screams of ‘male gaze’ from the ghosts of feminist film critics past (and present, let’s face it) –  as I will for most of the lesbian vampire films I review for Ethel – I argue that there is a queer subversion to these films that while they were undoubtedly produced for the pervy male gaze, can be reclaimed by a queer agency. Shock announcement: women look too.

And there is no better example of this than in the opening to Vampyros Lesbos. No, not the trippy titles with Soledad Miranda on her back gesturing towards the camera as guttural, demonic psychedelic jazz blasts out. Although she is inviting us and holding our gaze. It’s only presumed that this is for men.

Because, no, I’m referring to the first scene is in a club. Is this a strip club or progressive dinner theatre? We’re not sure but what we watch is more than a little on the ‘arty’ side as much as it is on the porny side.

A woman, who appears to be imitating a mannequin (and who at times is very convincing. Only they’re not built like that) stands naked at the side of the stage. Another woman (our vamp antihero) looks into a mirror (she has a reflection!) and dances a bit and caresses herself a bit. She rolls around on the floor (nice ass) and then approaches the ‘mannequin’. The dance becomes a strip and reverse strip as the vampire dresses the mannequin in her own lingerie, caressing the mannequin’s body as she does so. When her object of lust is fully dressed the vamp embraces the mannequin who jerkily/animated mannequinly embraces her.

All the while we focus on one couple in the audience who are watching. This is a usual vampire movie trope – the young, beautiful, seemingly hetero couple. We see that the woman is compelled; her subtle eye widening and mouth twitches suggest arousal. And, actually, wooden my arse; this is the most convincing bit of being turned on by watching that I’ve seen in one of these things.

Her boyfriend is not aroused: he’s perplexed by her response and very unnerved by it. This is the first subversion of the male gaze. She is the one getting erotic pleasure from this spectacle.

Although the audience is fully mixed of men and women, mainly couples (and weirdly look like they’ve come out for a nice meal in a bistro and are slightly amused by the show), she is the one who is the most obviously affected here.

The two dancers fall to the floor and the vamp symbolically bites the mannequin’s neck.

The performance is symbolic, period. It is the dance of a lesbian seducing a ‘straight’ woman and of a vampire seducing a mortal. She appears as a mannequin because she is hypnotized to respond; perhaps we cannot see her going willingly or that would really upset the hetero state of things. She has no choice but to succumb to the succubus. But succumb she does. As does our blonde, watching heroine, Linda.

We next learn that Linda has been dreaming about this dancer night after night. She tells this to her therapist. But she had never seen the dancer in waking life before the night she saw the show. She’s been having intense erotic dreams that she’s called by the mysterious woman and as they embrace, Linda wakes up, cumming. Her therapist dismisses it as sexual frustration and suggests she get herself a lover. ‘A better lover.’ Bitch, please! Was that therapy in the 70s? Hmmm, actually, maybe they were on to something. No one mentions the bizarre coincidence that her dream woman happened to appear in a strip show Linda got to see, where she seduces a woman on stage. It’s one of many occurrences of a man dismissing what she’s saying. We even see that instead of making notes about her session, he’s doodling stick people and box animals.

But we will know that what she’s saying is valid. We’ll always know. It is the men who are ignorant, dismissive, unwilling to face what is happening to the woman who is asking for help and support. Fuck me, this could almost be argued to be a feminist film!

It turns out that Linda (who, incidentally looks like a cross between Diana Dors and Geri Halliwell. It’s uncanny, darlings) works for an insurance company and has to go to see a Countess about an inheritance. Guess who that is? And we will find out that the inheritance is bequeathed to the Countess by the estate of Count Dracula; twist!

As she goes to the island to visit the Countess Nadine Carody, Linda sees things that were in her dream:

a red kite in the sky,

a trapped butterfly,

a scorpion,

mauve and red (paint/blood?) dripping down glass.

It seems the dreams were premonitions of this visit. We will be battered over the head by that bloody symbolic white butterfly and the scorpion. I’m surprised they didn’t give the scorpion a little brunette wig to really hammer the point home.

Anyway, when Linda sees the paint/blood, she freaks and goes to run away. But with a simple ‘hello/guten tag’ this is reversed and the butterfly is caught in the net.

Within seconds of meeting the hot countess convinces her to skinny dip. Well, it would be impolite not to.

When they do, they are watched by a man. This is a familiar trope; the lesbian frolic being observed by a man, unseen by them. In this way, it can be argued that this is all for the male gaze, for men to watch, whether the women know it or not. It happens in a similar way in Lust For A Vampire, but in that case it is the controlling male vampire who is watching. It turns out the watcher here is a minion to the Countess, Morpho.

But we will learn that Countess Nadine hates men. She gave her neck to Dracula but that was all. She craves women. So Morpho may serve her, but she’s a full on homo and he is made impotent. He can only watch.

After a drink of ‘wine’, Linda gets an instant headache then passes out. The Countess helps her to ‘recover’ by stripping her, having a bit of a go, then bites her neck.

Here we see the offspring of Diana Dors and Geri Halliwell.

Here in the seduction, Nadine mirrors the straddling that the mannequin did in the dance; is this an indication that the ‘victim’ is as powerful as the ‘attacker’? Or that roles are slippery when it comes to lesbian vampire seduction?

And I have to say, bright scarlet aside, this is one of the best blood drinking scenes I’ve ever witnessed. She really seems to be gulping it down and pulls away leaving a convincing trail of blood and spit.

Linda wakes to find Nadine floating in the swimming pool with blood on her face.

She presumes she is dead and faints, waking in a ‘private clinic’ where another blonde, female patient raves about a woman who possesses her and who will return to be inside her. She won’t reveal the name of this woman to her doctor but we know who she means. This woman is at once like Renfield and Lucy in the Dracula story. Oh and she has this weird wooden clown doll thing that looks like a horrific dildo.

Nadine tells Morpho about how Dracula made her a vampire and that she then went on to possess and take over women victims. Only now Linda has really got to her and she feels like she’s the possessed one. Oh shit, we’ve all been there, right? Jeez, I know I have. ‘I must initiate her into our circle,’ says The Countess. The sewing circle, perchance?

In a reverse of the hetero watching the lez sex, Nadine and Morpho visit Linda’s hotel and watch her being fucked by her bf. Nadine isn’t enjoying it though.

Linda ‘recovers’ but is simultaneously drawn to Nadine and tries to resist her. They share a drink from a big vase and Nadine says, ‘you know that’s blood, right?’

Then they have sex, with Linda taking the lead.

Linda goes to the clinic doctor for help. He’s kind of like Van Helsing but confusingly called Dr Seward who is another character in Dracula. Wow, they’re messing with the referencing a lot. Is Linda Jonathan or Meena? Is her boyfriend either or both? Anyway, Doc comes clean that he’s not a psychiatrist but he’s actually a vampirologist and that if she doesn’t want to give in to Nadine she must kill her. No steak through the heart though – she is to be killed by an axe splitting the brain or a spike stabbing it. Bloody hell, that stake is sounding pretty damn good right about now, eh?

Linda’s bf goes to watch the show again and we see a longer version of the stripdance with a groovier bit of the weird score. Instead of symbolically biting the mannequin’s neck she actually goes for it, killing her. But somehow she manages to leave the gig without being arrested. And the bf just stands there watching and smoking. So it’s all a bit redundant. And we don’t even have a good explanation as to why Nadine killed the girl. If she needed blood, why do it publicly? But, hey-ho, we got to see the dance again so I am not complaining.

Nadine turns up at the clinic where the doctor says he actually wants to be a vampire but when she refuses he gets all Latin-god-spouting and so she gets Morpho to kill him.

Linda goes to Nadine’s house and walking under this AMAZING red tassel chandelier thing on the ceiling (the art direction in this movie is fucking stunning). She finds The Countess laying on a modern modular bed couch deal saying she’s dying and that drinking Linda’s blood is the only thing that will save her.

We want Linda to give her the drink, don’t we? But we know she won’t because, as with all femme fatale films of certain periods, the vampire must die. Linda tells her that she can’t have her.

But instead of just straight out killing her Linda at first drinks Nadine’s blood and then stabs her through the eye with a spike.

Morpho kills himself with the spike but when Linda’s bf and psychiatrist turn up, Nadine and Morpho’s corpses have vampirically disappeared. Bf tries to convince her it was all a dream but she knows better. We know better.

However, what is unclear to us is the answer to this question: is Linda actually a vampire now? After all she drank from the blood of a vampire before she killed her. Isn’t that how it works? Is this supposed to be ambiguous or is it a plot hole? Whatever, I’m going to take it that she is a full-on, card-carrying vamp now and she will find herself a little vamp gf and leave the boring, non-believing stupid bf who can’t make her cum and she’ll have centuries of happy life sucking blood and having lesbian vampire orgasms, the end.

And, you see, I can do this because I am not paralyzed by the male gaze. I can watch and absorb and identify. Part of my sexual formation was watching lesbian vampires. Women on screen who were created to titillate men titillated me instead. And helped me to realize that I’m queer, like femmes and have a penchant for blood and vampires. And because I have this agency as a viewer, like Linda watching the show, I can watch and get turned on, I can then choose whether to go along with the story or, like Linda, make my own. This trippy, porny narrative can actually allow that.

And anyway, women are the ones with all the power in this film. First The Countess, to seduce and possess and to evade capture and finally Linda, to choose her own fate. And the power shifts constantly between the women. They have the gaze for each other and we have the gaze for them.

Lesbian Vampires: Blood & Roses

By Corinna ‘Merm’ Tomrley

The first in an occasional series about Vamps I Love. Some will be vampires in films I’ve loved for years, others that are new to me. But it’s all gonna be deeply personal so live with it. I’ve got great taste so it should all be good.

These things are FULL of spoilers! So do not read this if you’ve not seen the films discussed and don’t want the plots ruined. But please go away and watch them quickly and come back and read it. Thanks!

This vamp I’m writing about is a new-to-me vamp. I’ve known of the film for decades but only just got around to actually seeing it. She is Carmilla in Vadim’s Blood And Roses, played by Annette Strojberg (then Annette Vadim).

Before I watched I was already a big Carmilla the Vampire fan because the source material for Blood and Roses is Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella, Carmilla. Le Fanu wrote a wonderful vampire tale about the fictional  Karnstein family, riddled with vampires past and present. They are reincarnations of a main vamp and these chicks have names that are all anagrams of each other: Carmilla, Mircalla, Marcilla, Millarca … and there are others that I can’t work out or remember now. Arcllima? That doesn’t seem right. The stories were also the source material for my favourite vampire films (and ones that are hailed as the worst of Hammer by some, the best of Hammer by me), the Tudor Gates penned trilogy Lust For A Vampire, The Vampire Lovers and (lesser loved by me because there are less lezzies. Well, there’s one boob bite) Twins of Evil. And it’s also the source for the sublime Vampire Circus and the wonderful queer web series Carmilla. I will come to those another time, believe me, darlings.

For the record, Sherry was first with his vampires, predating fellow Irish writer Bram Stoker by 26 years. Sherry’s original vamp is a lez chick who only takes women as her victims/lucky things. What’s not to love?

So, I’ve literally just watched the film Blood and Roses. I’m instantly in bloodlust with this one. I’m writing this without reading up on it. I’m gonna write from my own brain and vampire loving stake-free heart. I would have read about it once upon a time because I first heard of it through the wondrous (though flawed) book Vampires and Violets by Andrea Weiss (I’ll write about that book too, sometime). But that was ages and ages ago, like over twenty years, so I’ve completely forgotten anything about it. The stills in V&V of two beautiful, 60s, European actresses with plump lips smoldering at each other were – for some unknown reason – enough for me to know I should eventually see this thing.

First impressions are that it is very watchable, charming, compelling, haunting and has one of the best sequences in cinema ever. And I was not expecting any of that, actually.

One woman too many? That makes no sense in any context. 

Lez desire is depicted but it’s not quite as full on as Hammer. However, there is a lot of attempted (and realised) seduction and many beautiful moments around that. It is queered far beyond this ‘simple’ girl-on-girl desire as well.

In Blood and Roses we meet a couple of the Karnsteins in the present day (so, the 60s) in the form of young(ish) cousins Carmilla and Leopoldo. Leo describes the luscious Carm as his ‘first cousin and childhood playmate. The last descendant of the Austrian branch of our family’. She fancies him rotten and this is obvious from the start. But Leo is engaged to Carmilla’s friend, the equally gorgeous Georgia. But does Carmilla want Leopoldo… or Georgia… or both?

Leo tells the group of people gathered for the impending wedding that they have vampires in their family but not to worry, none have been knocking around for centuries. Carmilla disagrees and tells them that Millarca is still around. Leo says this is mythical pishtosh that the villagers tell (class issues in these films really needs to be written about at some point). Strangely enough, Carmilla looks the spit of a painting of Millarca that she shows flirtily to Georgia. She tells the tale of Millarca who just happened to be in love with her cousin, Ludwig. Oh dear… And although Millarca ‘died’ her body disappeared. As did Ludwig’s three fiancés… Oh dear oh dear.

“If Millarca was to return, how would she feel about me?” asks Georgia. Oh, honey, you’re gonna find out soon enough.

To cut a (not actually very) long story short: Carmilla is obsessed with Millarca, puts on her wedding dress and goes to her tomb and gets vamped (we never see Millarca, just here her and things get misty). Vamp Carmilla has a go at village girl, Lisa, (who dies. because she’s lower class…) and then sets her sights on Georgia. In the meantime, everyone realises that Carmilla has the hots for Leo… but it becomes very clear to Georgia that Carmilla pretty much fancies her too.

Oh, and after Lisa dies, Carmilla looks in the mirror and sees red blood on the bust of Millarca’s white dress. The blood is only in the mirror image, however. This fresh blood stain is a recurring motif.

The men in these things are usually very by the by and so dull but Mel Ferrer (ex Mr Audrey Hepburn), as Leopoldo, does very well. He’s pretty, doesn’t seem to think he’s above the material but is not being precious with it, is very sexy and you actually get why Carmilla fancies him. Oh, those cheekbones.

But our main interest is in Carmilla buzzing around Georgia and her unquenchable bloodlust for women. She doesn’t even once attempt to bite Leo (even though she’s surmised that Millarca has come for him) but she’s constantly attempting to nibble Georgia.

She almost succeeds in seduction a few times, but they are always interrupted. The most erotic is when they are in a greenhouse, caught by a storm. Georgia wants them to make a break for the house but Carmilla begs her to stay there with her. The women are already wet and look exquisite for it. Georgia tells Carmilla that she knows she’s in love with Leo and offers her confessional friendship. This is a rather generous position for her to take, considering, but also provides a lot of different layers of subtext. If she’s ok with it is she hoping to diffuse it by having it out in the open? Or is she – oh my – hoping for some kind of ‘arrangement’ where everyone is happy?.. Whatever permutations that may work out as. That’s what’s going on in my mind, anyway.

Good eyeliner game, Georgia

Georgia is told, rather enigmatically that ‘Carmilla is dead’ but she doesn’t understand what she is telling her. Instead, she offers Carmilla a rose of friendship which she clutches, meaningfully. Georgia holds another rose to her face and it makes a small cut on her lip. A teeny bit of perfectly placed red blood shows and Carmilla (and we) are entranced by it. Millarca’s voice in Carmilla’s head says it is not enough, she will want more, as Carmilla goes in to taste the blood from Georgia’s lip. Georgia doesn’t stop her. It is a soft kiss. But it is then they are interrupted, found in the storm and taken back to the main house.

Georgia is disturbed by what has happened but can’t stop thinking about Carmilla’s lips on hers. I mean, you know?

Then we come to an astonishing piece of cinema. Carmilla/Millarca goes to Georgia’s room explaining in voiceover that she is going to possess her. Georgia is finally being got by vamp Carmilla/Millarca and in doing so goes into a bit of a hallucinatory dream sequence thing. The colour film goes black and white and not only does it give it an otherworldly dream feel but it means that when she sees Carmilla and red ‘blood’ spreads across her white dress, it is all the more vivid and crazy amazing. This – presumably – animated sequence is beautifully executed as Carmilla just stands there looking stonily seductive and magnificent.

Next Georgia sees dead Lisa at the window who is calling to her. Only the outside of the window is water like a vertical pool from above but side on. If that makes sense. Hell, it’s a dream. Georgia opens the doors and instead of the water flooding in, she falls into the pool. Next, she moves out of the water past odd dancing couples outdoors and then finds herself in what seems to be hospital grounds. This part of the dream is one of the most ‘ordinary’ bits of the sequence and is the most surreal because of that. It’s the most vérité thing in the whole film. She walks past women sitting, looking at her, and is then dragged off by two nurses.

They take her into a room that is an operating theatre. We are now seeing colour film but we only know that because the doctors and nurses in the room (all women) are wearing thick, red rubber gloves. Everything else is bright white including their faces. A woman lays strapped down and spread-eagled on the operating table, naked, her breasts are bared, her crotch and face covered by cloths. A surgeon does something to her neck with a medical instrument. Georgia looks into the surgeon’s eyes and realises that it’s Carmilla. Only it’s not. She tells Georgia, ‘I’m Millarca. Carmilla is dead.’ And pulls the cover off of the patient’s face to reveal a dead clonelike, Carmilla.

They then go into spinny dancing in blackness and Georgia screams as she is bitten by the vampire. She wakes, screaming.

This sequence is trippy and immaculate, as exquisite a dream sequence as in all of cinema. I would say it’s even more stunning than Dali’s eyes sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. And that’s a damn fine dream sequence. It’s better than the surrealness of La Belle et La Bête that is not a dream but still otherworldly and extraordinary. I think the effectiveness comes partly because Blood and Roses is otherwise a matter of fact by the numbers film. A supersexy by the numbers film but there’s been little this trippy so far.

Carmilla/Millarca’s death is not drawn out. A demolitions team (because a boring part of the story) blow stuff up and it pushes her so that she ends up handily impaled on a stake-like fence post. The composition of the shot is gorgeous (and was paid homage to in Daughter’s of Darkness). And we see her blood-stained dress is the same as she saw in the mirror and similar to that which Georgia saw in her dream. So instead of those moments showing the blood of her victims, it is instead a premonition of her own bloody death.

The epilogue of the film has Leo and Georgia going off on a plane to their honeymoon. However, all is not ‘happy’ in the sense of the vamp is dead so all the norms can go on being norm and boring. Millarca’s voiceover tells us she is not dead but in Georgia now. Her possession of Leopoldo’s bride was successful. That is the only way that Carmilla could really be with him. So it’s a twist and a kind of heteronormative one but there’s still something incredibly subversively queer about what’s gone on. And an almost threesome between them all.

There were times in the film where some kind of poly arrangement seemed to be an almost possibility. Leopoldo shows his desire for Carmilla but she prevents it going further. Georgia tells Carmilla that she knows she’s in love with Leo and doesn’t seem threatened by it. Oh if only they all got together and no one would have had to die! Oh well.

There’s also the small fact that this obviously means that Carmilla’s death didn’t free Georgia of her vampness. It’s still there. So presumably she’s gonna be snacking on some dames on her holiday in the Caribbean…

Vadim was famously a shit to his women and there’s lots of dodgy stuff in his marriages and relationships like he forced them to sleep with other women and he moulded them so that they all looked alike (much like John Derek and his clone wives). But it’s one of those awful conflicting things because as horrible as he was as a person he produced some amazing stuff and often with his wives. Think And God Created Woman with Bardot and Barbarella with Fonda. (The latter’s script penned by one Tudor Gates…)

Annette Strojberg in B&R is not as charismatic or memorable as Bardot, Fonda or Deneuve but she is an adequate and watchable and fanciable lead. She doesn’t do much but then there’s not much to do in such a role. She sulks, she seduces, she gets blood on her. And she does it all beautifully.

Although this doesn’t have the wonderful campiness of the Hammer Carmilla films, it has instantly become one of my favourite vamp films ever. I wanted to watch it again, immediately, told everyone I could about it and obsessively looked for images online. And I can’t stop thinking about it.