The last time I did one of these, I mentioned that my previous entries detailing the sub-genre of the “Lesbian Vampire” film have far and away been my best sellers (if I actually had anything for sale). But as the information I get from Google Analytics is limited, I don’t exactly know why. Are these films simply more popular than others? Do they have a lurid appeal that catches readers’ interest? Do they straddle a line between legitimacy and exploitation, art-house and mainstream horror such that many have heard of them, but not all have watched them, and people want to know more? Are people just looking for girl on girl vampire porn and they stumble onto this blog only to be disappointed (I assume – maybe then they discover a strange artsy movie they didn’t know they’d be into)? Hey – as I’m assuming this post will drive traffic as others have before it, feel free to drop a comment and let me know what brought you here. Whatever it was, welcome!
Also, if you’re interested, you can check out Part I (Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses,The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary), Part II (The Vampire Lovers, Daughters of Darkness, The Shiver of the Vampires, and Vampyros Lesbos), and Part III (Nadja, Blood of the Tribades, and Bit).
In any case, following last week’s pride month – Queer Horror rundown, I thought I might thematically hop, skip, and jump back over to this idiosyncratic (and apparently quite popular) collection of beautiful, rich, weird, atmospheric films, generally run through with nominally LGBT+ characters or themes, but mostly filmed through the lens of a totally cis-het male gaze, and yet which still surprisingly feel quite feminist and revolutionary and artfully decedent. In Part III of this series, I touched on some more modern examples, but really the heyday of this material was undoubtedly the seventies and there are still so many films of note to examine therein. And so, that’s what we’re going to do…
I had planned to cover four films this week, but found that I had rather a lot to say about the first two and decided to just focus on them: Requiem for a Vampire (1972) and Alucarda (1977). Having watched them now, I must say that both are only barely Lesbian Vampire films, but I believe there are enough details to merit inclusion in this series and boy, oh boy are they worthy of discussion. As usual with longer write ups such as these, there will be spoilers, but I genuinely don’t feel that would really ruin one’s appreciation of either of these films.
Requiem for a Vampire (1972)
It was only about a year ago that I finally watched my first Jean Rollin film, The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), which I thoroughly loved. Before that, Rollin had always been a blind spot for me, an artist with whom I was intrigued, but also felt somewhat daunted by. So artsy, so dreamy, so poetic and, for lack of a more descriptive word, so French. But then Shiver really impressed me – weird and artsy, sure, but also fun, funny, sexual, morbid, visually striking, and confounding in a way that enriched the viewing experience rather than detracting from it. Since that time, I’ve caught up with Grapes of Death (1978), Fascination (1979), and The Living Dead Girl (1982), all of which showed a progression towards what might be considered more “normal” narrative horror cinema, while maintaining Rollin’s characteristic visual and textual poetry.
Thus, I was interested what I might find in what he’d called his favorite of his own movies – a film he’d written in a couple of days and then rushed into production before he could second guess himself, a piece he reportedly loved best for its purity: intentionally naïve, a series of events that flow one into the next without even lip service to the demands of commercially friendly story telling (though with enough naked girls that his American producer, $am $elsky (as his name is written in the credits), said he’d still be able to sell the picture – more on that later).
Requiem for a Vampire (AKA Caged Virgins) was Rollin’s fourth “lesbian” (or at least female) vampire film, and though I’ve only seen a handful of his other films, it does feel like a boiled down reduction of the elements and qualities that make his films stand out as undoubtedly his own.
We follow two girls, dressed as clowns, on a high speed chase through the countryside as they trade fire with the police car behind them. They escape, but the man they’re with is killed. They burn him and the car and walk through the tall grass until they find a place to wash off their clown make up. They steal a motorcycle, and then some French fries.
One accidentally gets buried alive after falling into an open grave, but her friend pulls her out. They’re stalked by bats and, mesmerized, led to a crumbling chateau inhabited by bestial men who chase them and try to sexually assault them, two female vampires who try to bite them, and one older male vampire, the last of his kind, wearily hanging onto eternity, though it long ago lost all meaning or him, and at least a little in love with death.
The girls have a bit of time to strip down and gently fondle each other in bed before they are told they need to lure victims to the castle the next day, which one happily does, feeding on him and beginning her transformation, while the other understands that her “virginity” is important for the process and instead finds a man to take it from her, thus sabotaging the plan of the undead. When it is apparent what she’s done, her friend must torture her to find the whereabouts of this man, but in the end the old vampire releases them and locks himself in a tomb to waste away as the girls walk off into the night.
Written out thus, it has a semblance of narrative flow, but this description does no justice to what it feels like to watch the film. Let’s try it this way: two female clowns look at a dying man as the lights fade, when the light returns, their faces are spattered with blood. Water shifts from clear to white to red to brown in stop motion. A girl approaches a roadside food stand and smiles. The proprietor chases her into the forest. He catches her and pins her to the ground, grabbing at her breasts. Bored, she allows him to for a moment before throwing him off, hiding behind a tree, and impishly thumbing her nose.
A girl falls into an open grave which the grave digger keeps flinging dirt into though he should really be able to see her. Then he drinks some wine and goes home. Everywhere the girls turn, bats watch them from the trees, eliciting shrieks of terror, before latching onto their necks and holding perfectly still, like furry bow ties, sapping them of their will. Later a similar bat clamps onto a naked woman’s crotch, making little sucking sounds as she squirms in what is probably terror and pain, but could be read as sexual pleasure.
A striking female vampire plays a grand piano in a cemetery, surrounded by candles (the image Rollin reportedly imagined first and built the rest of the action around). Scenes of gentleness and tender touch between the girls bleed into an extended rape sequence, then into a playful, even goofy, scene of seduction-chase-vampiric feeding, and then finally into another of sexual awakening and genuine pleasure, as fake looking fangs hang loosely from ancient lips, and one friend strips the other and, weeping, whips her, the tortured friend responding only with understanding and forgiveness. But this series of images also fails to capture the feeling.
So, how did I feel watching it? Languid, fascinated, tickled, morose, occasionally (but not too often) bored, amused, indulgent, mystified, softened, delicate, playful, amorous, melancholic – these were some of the emotions that passed over me at some point – does that help at all? If you haven’t worked this out yet, I find it a tough movie to wrap my head around.
It’s easy to toss around the word ‘dream-like’ when discussing a filmmaker like Rollin, but this really is a full surrealist piece. There is little reason for one event to lead to the next, but as it does, it feels utterly natural, the film washing over you in an almost wordless wave of impressions, emotions, archetypal images, and disruptive, chaotic actions, both whimsical and brutal (the film is mostly played without dialogue; this review has 500 more words than are spoken in the whole movie).
The two central girls are often tranquil, accepting each new turn of events without comment or reaction – and yet, they do feel present – our avatars in this tone poem of a film. For all that their bodies are obviously put on display, and the camera takes pleasure in looking at them, I feel they remain a subjective presence, with wants and interests, as much or more as any other figure in the film.
I must admit that on first viewing, I didn’t immediately love it as I had his others, but I could surely appreciate the commitment to a personal vision, the refusal to make anything other than exactly the art-work he felt compelled to capture on film. But on a second watch, I already found it growing on me. Knowing what to expect allowed me to open more to taking in the rich curiosity on offer. It must be said though that this can be a difficult watch, and I don’t recommend it as an introduction to Rollin. It feels a bit like the concentrated syrup you would add carbonated water to in order to produce a different Jean Rollin movie fountain beverage.
If you like his work, you’ll probably really like this. If you don’t like it, you’ll probably hate this. If you haven’t seen anything by him yet, this is not the best place to start. However, if you’ve watched a few of his films and find that he works for you, this really is a sumptuous, intriguing, whimsical, disturbing dream to lose yourself in for a time – a melancholic, hypnotic romp through an overgrown meadow of absurdity and death, gender and violence and sex.
But on that front, a warning – as mentioned above, there is a very long rape scene which I personally found trying, not least because it doesn’t connect with anything else in the ‘story’. The girls come to the castle and are taken down to the dungeon where bestial men rape nameless women who are chained up there for what feels like an interminable time. Then we move on and it’s never mentioned again.
On one level, this was reportedly called for by the producer to have more salacious content, making this possibly impenetrable art film more marketable as sleazy exploitation, but it does also play into themes the film dreamily revolves around. When so engaging with death and sex and violence, this content does not come out of nowhere – in contrast to the placid gentleness of the girls and the exhausted ennui of the ancient vampire, down in the dungeon of the subconscious, there is brutal, corporeal, sexual life – desiring and taking and hurting and fearing and suffering and fighting. While it is indeed hard to stomach, it doesn’t feel accidental that right in the middle of this meditative reverie, there is something so ugly. Still, the fact that these discordant measures do make a kind of musical sense inside of the symphony as a whole doesn’t make them any easier to listen to, or more to the point, to watch.
But that sequence aside, I find the rest of the film a distinct pleasure, and while I enjoy some of his later, more straightforward (but, to be fair, not that straightforward) works, I’m so glad Rollin had the opportunity to craft this specific, singular work of self-expression. It’s not the most “Lesbian-Vampire” of the Lesbian Vampire movies I’ve written about (the girls share some naked caresses and a kiss and vampirism is present, but it doesn’t feel like these features are really the focus of the film, so much as simply being some of the many images of eroticism and death and need that flash before our eyes), but elements are there, and it really is a very special piece worthy of consideration. I look forward to continuing through Rollin’s catalogue.
Alucarda (1977)
Directed by Juan López Moctezuma, this Mexican lesbian-vampire-satanic-cult-nunsploitation movie, also released as Innocents from Hell has been on my watch list for quite some time, and I’m so glad to have finally seen it. I was surprised to realize that I’d already covered one film by Moctezuma, Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary back in my first Lesbian Vampire post, and now I’m eager to check out another film of his, Mansion of Madness, which I know is currently on Shudder.
I’ve had a very interesting experience of watching this twice in the last week. My first viewing, I came away tickled and enamored. It was all just absolutely unhinged: crazy, over the top, glorious excess at every turn. I hadn’t found it to be a work of great technical proficiency, or you know, “good” in the conventional understanding of the word, but it just felt so exciting in its weirdness, in its stylistic maximalism. Then on second viewing, I found myself watching a surprisingly heartfelt, even angry movie – rich in imagery and feeling – for some reason, the second time I found myself taking it much more seriously. But the takeaway is that, in vastly different ways, both times I loved it.
To give the story in short, Justine (Susana Kamini), whose mother has just died, is brought to a convent that looks like it’s been carved out of a subterranean cave in 1850, somewhere in Mexico. Her roommate, who seems to appear out of a shadow, is an intense, young girl named Alucarda (they are both supposed to be 15, but the actresses are in their upper 20s – for the best, given how often they’re naked). Within moments of meeting each other, Alucarda (Tina Romero) becomes madly intimate and the next thing you know, the girls are rolling around in the woods, giggling, and declaring eternal love.
Almost immediately, they swear a death pact on the grave of Alucarda’s mother, releasing grunting, snorting, heavy breathing spirits into the air, followed by a Satanic ritual (first led by a forest spirit/central European gypsy/travelling tinkerer and later overseen by a goat headed representation of Satan himself) in which their breasts are cut and they drink each other’s blood, kissing it from their lips as outside, the thunder roars, it rains blood, some people have an orgy, and the only nice nun in the convent has a levitating, lightning shooting, blood spattered prayer session.
Shortly thereafter, they start defying god, declaring their love and obedience for the Devil, and generally wreaking blasphemous havoc. The church responds by torturing Justine to death in an exorcism ceremony. She briefly becomes a shrieking, bloody vampire who sleeps au naturel in a blood filled coffin, and Alucarda goes on a Carrie-at-the-prom-esque pyrokinetic revenge streak, igniting most of the priests, nuns, novices, and the convent itself with her vengeful stare, before crumbling into dust out of a sense of guilt and overwhelming grief.
You know, your usual vampire movie stuff…
One of the first things I appreciated was how wildly Moctezuma packs in every possible thing he can – every literary or filmic reference, every shocking display, every effect (special or otherwise), every supernatural element. Le Fanu is listed as one of the writers and there are extended bits of dialogue taken directly from Carmilla, particularly bits around the funeral procession, the tinkerer, and some intense love language (Alucarda comes on pretty strong). “Alucarda” is “a Dracula” backwards and Alucarda’s mother was named Lucy Westenra, Nina’s best friend from Dracula.
The way the gypsy/spirit/tinkerer pops in and out of existence seems like something directly out of a silent movie from the 20s, like Häxan (1922). The scenes of nuns writhing about in the church, going crazy brings to mind many other films, such as Ken Russel’s The Devils (1971) or the Polish film, Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1960), and as I already mentioned, the ending seems a direct rip off of Carrie. And I think it’s all great. Sure – take whatever you can and cram it together to make something personal and special and unlike anything that’s ever been made before. Not every inclusion works, but it feels like nothing is held back – like every idea that Moctezuma had, he included. And this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach, while lacking in Hollywood polish, feels wondrously pure in its unique way.
Perhaps it’s because in writing about Requiem for a Vampire, I read how Rollin had intentionally wanted to make a work of naïve cinema, but I had naïve or outsider art on my mind while watching this, a label which I don’t think could even be fairly applied to Moctezuma (this was his third film and I really don’t know about his career or the Mexican film scene, so I don’t want to presume). But there is a simplicity here that is akin to such work – simplicity of technique, certainly not of theme or style or plotting – it’s full of all of that stuff. There are things that do not “work” (some peculiar synthesized sounds that seem out of place in 19th Century Mexico, the snorting, huffing, possibly flatulent noises that accompany any Devilish influence on the girls, some dramatic reactions such as when the chief priest declares, “We must perform………an Exorcism!” and a hundred nuns gasp in unison), but when these elements surface, my impulse is not to laugh at them as B-movie failings, but rather to clap in delight because it’s just so delicious. There is no “good taste” based shame or shyness holding this movie back and its earnest commitment is infectious.
This quality is even more present in the performances. Tina Romero’s Alucarda is always dialed up to eleven in every emotional moment. She meets Justine and in seconds is sharing all her secrets with her. When she’s angry, she spins and writhes in fury and rage, shouting to the heavens, her dark eyes cutting through and cutting down all she sees. And Kamini’s Justine goes along with it. More subdued than Alucarda, she nevertheless acquiesces to her paramour’s emotional needs. Perhaps she’s not so into the blood play and wishes that Alucarda would stop talking about death all the time, but when, atop her mother’s grave, Alucarda exclaims (with very few interjections from Justine),
“Are you afraid of dying? (…) I mean dying loving each other – dying together so we may live as one forever, with the same blood always flowing through our veins. Darling, darling Justine, I live in you; would you die for me? Oh I love you so. I have never been in love with anyone. And never shall, unless it’s with you! (…) You don’t know how dear you are to me. The time is very near when you will love me as much as I do you! You will make me cruel and selfish, but love is always selfish! You don’t know how jealous I am. You must love me to death! (…) Let’s make a pact – if we ever depart from this life, we shall do it…together,”
(much of this, I believe, being directly lifted from Carmilla)
Justine simply responds, “Alright, if it makes you happy,” whereas most normal people with a healthy sense of self-preservation would probably have already slowly backed out of the room, terrified by how obsessively crazy Alucarda seems to be. But that isn’t the kind of movie this is. I’m never one hundred percent sure of Justine’s full feelings in all this (sometimes she is hesitant, or screams, or cries – but who doesn’t?), but it’s a filmic world in which she can be open to picking up what Alucarda is laying down.
And I couldn’t talk of this movie without getting into the subject of religious horror. I have mentioned before how religiosity is one of my least favorite currents in horror fiction. So often, stories of possession and devils and exorcisms just come off feeling like advertisements for the church, as if they are trying to convince me to tremble before the terrible threat of radical evil, and open myself to ‘The Lord’ as my only hope of salvation. It’s a big turn off.
When I watched this the first time, I was puzzled at how much the religious elements didn’t put me off, and I chalked it up to the film being just so crazy that I couldn’t help but love it in spite of its content and thematics. But on second viewing, I just connected so much more strongly to how angry the film feels. Like with many works of ‘nunsploitation,’ the dominant horror of the piece consists in the actions of the ‘good people’ of the church. The film shows the “satanic” elements to be ‘evil,’ sure. But the crimes of the priests and nuns by far seem worse. And it is in the kinky and/or sinister ceremonies of the church that the film has some of its most effective staging, that it shows the most stylistic flair.
For example, after witnessing the girls acting so impiously, the whole convent has a giant orgy of flagellation. The main priest is in the center of a circle of nuns, and everyone’s clothes are torn open at the back. All of the nuns whip him with flails, and in turn, all of the nuns are whipped by an outer circle of monks. Compare this with the satanic orgy that happened in the forest and only one is drenched in gore (there’s also a pretty funny moment later when a doctor comes to investigate the disappearance of Justine’s body – the nuns explain that no one noticed the reanimated corpse get up and walk away because they were all too busy flagellating themselves – it makes you think, “well, next time, don’t do it, and you don’t have to get whipped,” but the thing is, they really like getting whipped – and hey, that’s fine – no judgement, but they could do it while murdering fewer teenagers). All of the nuns wear very characteristic habits, more like the white wrapped bandages of mummies. When we first meet them, it’s puzzling why they always look so dirty and unevenly red. Later, you realize that they’ve been stained with blood the whole time, because they are doing this sort of thing non-stop.
Even on a much lighter level, the church does not seem like a good place. The first time we see a service, the priest is going on about damnation and hellfire and all these young girls are crying and screaming, terrified of what is going to happen to them, of how doomed their souls seem to be. Sure, when Alucarda and Justine start talking about Devil stuff, it is creepy, but everyone’s response of getting terrified and running away screaming only happens because they’ve already been well primed by the priest.
And then there is the exorcism ritual, with both girls, one in white and one in black, strapped to giant crosses, surrounded by hundreds of candles, ominous black robed holy men, and blood soaked nuns, writhing on their knees as the holy spirit animates them. Alucarda lashes out, vowing to kill them all until she’s knocked out. Then Justine’s clothes are ripped from her body and the priest drives a long needle into her flesh again and again, until finally, he finds her heart and she expires – you know, cause these are really ‘good people.’
On the other side, you know, with the “Devil,” we saw, um, a dramatic, naked ritual with the two girls and a goat headed devil and kissing and, sure, a bit of blood, and stuff, and we saw some people having sexy times in the forest. Later, after Justine rises from the dead, the only kind nun in the convent finds her vampiric, blood filled resting place and Justine initially lashes out at her, clawing at her face. But after a beat, she registers who it is and ceases her attack, only for the ‘good guys’ to start throwing holy water at her, causing her, in her suffering, to rip out the throat of the only person at the convent to have shown her any kindness, Sister Angelica.
Then the first and only time we see the Satanic powers causing real violence is when Alucarda takes her pyrokinetic vengeance out on the monastery. And who could fault her? These people murdered her love (before she fell for a cute blind girl, but she also died – like I said, Alucarda moves fast). I think the film’s heart is really with the girls – there may be irreligious creepiness in all the devil stuff, but the moralistic institution is the real monster – and its cruel wielding of power could be metaphoric of any dominating authority – church, state, or otherwise.
But then again, it is hard to say, and that kinda makes me love it all the more. Is this an anti-clerical, anti-authority film, decrying the bloodthirsty hypocrisy of those who would police our morality? Is this a religious horror movie about two young girls being corrupted by evil forces and going on a killing spree, with heroic churchmen doing the hard things that must be done? Is this a folk horror masterpiece, revealing deep cultural truths? Is this a cheesy B-movie with terrible special effects, melodramatic acting, and bizarre soundtrack choices? Is this a sleazy sexploitation flick, foregrounding what are meant to be seen as young girls as they are stripped and sexualized and tortured? Is this a madcap, insane spectacle of cinematic excess and joy? The answer to all of that and more is probably, “yes.”
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And there we have it: two films that, if we are to be honest, only barely fit into the genre of the Lesbian Vampire film, but both of which seem really important and great in very divergent, and yet somehow related, non-Hollywood ways. Both walk a line between exploitation and high art. Both center the relationship between two young girls. Both have a smattering of vampirism here and there. And both are, well, pretty weird. They’re both also pretty special and unique little features.
As I said at the beginning, I had chosen 4 films for this week, but this is already quite a long post, so the next two (which are, without a doubt, 100% Lesbian Vampire movies) will have to wait until next time. A couple months ago, I fell into a routine of publishing bi-monthly, rather than once a week, but I think I’m on a roll and I should be able to get this next post up sooner than that. So please join me next week as we continue this series… See you soon.