Author Archives: Glen

A Final Girl Feedback Loop

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

So, I sometimes wonder when the term “final girl,” first coined by Carol Clover in 1987 in her essay, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” later collected and expanded on in her influential book, “Men, Women, and Chainsaws,” entered common parlance. The idea was certainly not new when she detailed it, based on her observations of gender-genre tropes in slasher films (primarily of the late 70s and 80s), but rather, she put her finger on something that had arisen naturally out of a confluence of storytelling trends and business assumptions. And it is successful coinage – when someone sees the phrase for the first time, they immediately get to what/whom it refers: the last girl standing in a body count film, who probably didn’t party as hard as all of her friends and is more clear headed and responsible, who we probably haven’t seen have sex, who possibly has been investigating the odd things going on and has thus had to discover the bodies of people she knew, who probably isn’t blonde and might have a gender neutral name such as “Stretch,” “Jess,” “Ripley,” or “Chris,” who has had to run and hide and scream and survive until finally she turns and finds the strength to fight back and kill the killer, though she may end up a broken, traumatized husk by the end of it all – the name carries a lot.

Now, in discussing the trope, I always feel it’s obligatory to point out that Clover had a focus other than just describing a trend in horror, and she certainly wasn’t trying to prescribe how people should be making movies. In short, in my understanding of her text, she questioned why this female character, this recurring role was so foregrounded in a genre conventionally understood to be targeted at young males, a genre often thought to be misogynistic, offering the vicarious thrill of looking through a masculine coded killer’s eyes as he stalks and murders young women (again, this is the common perception, and the data doesn’t support the characterization – men die about as much as women in these flicks). The theory she offered was a case of cross-gender identification, wherein the femaleness of the role allowed it to exhibit traits of vulnerability and fear which would have been uncomfortable for the audience in a male figure, or even rejected and mocked (a supporting example might be Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 2, which features a final boy (Jesse, played by Mark Patton) and which was not well received, Patton being outed and ridiculed for his portrayal). This enables the (male) viewer to masochistically enjoy being terrorized, just as by identifying with the killer, (he) can sadistically enjoy terrorizing. The final girl abstaining from sex meant that the young male audience didn’t have to take the leap of watching their viewpoint character be penetrated before them. Quite the opposite, by the end of the film, she would take the weapon (his symbolic, penetrating phallus) from the killer and be the one doing the penetrating, in her rise to action, to wielding the investigative gaze, to violence, to rage, taking on more and more “male-coded” traits.

Now, this reading of the trope is not without critics. Isabel Pinendo, in her “Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing” from 1997, criticized how in reducing femaleness to traits like terror and victimhood, and ascribing traits like aggression and violence exclusively to maleness, this paradigm results in “nothing less than the impossibility of female agency,” herself seeking to discuss what pleasure experience female viewers can find in this material (which can also take on a sadomasochistic flavor – as Clover had theorized for young males), without having to accept the relegation of all power to the boys. Beyond that, it has been pointed out how some of the elements that make up the “final girl” are not so set in stone. There are many examples (going back to Laurie Strode, the ur-final girl) who drink or do drugs. There are many who are at least in long term relationships and even if it’s not explicitly shown, one can assume aren’t ‘virgins.’ There are many who don’t initially have any hint of coded-male qualities, but just happen to be the last one left – are just lucky to have enough plot-armor to survive to the final showdown.

But the trope does exist (if anything, over the years, the more known the trope is in popular culture, the more fully it has come to embody Clover’s description, even when a given film is purportedly ‘subverting’ the concept), and this brings me back to my initial question. When did horror film makers become consciously aware of the role as such? When did they become aware of Clover’s reading? When did descriptive analysis become inadvertent, prescriptive instruction? I wish I had some data here – I can only guess at people’s intentions and influences.

I assume that in the beginning, it was merely a case of financially motivated imitation. Halloween turned an impressive profit (more than 70 million on a budget of about 320 thousand) and everyone wanted to repeat that success (another obligatory note that Halloween wasn’t really the first of the genre, but it’s success did kick off the first big slasher cycle, running until 1982), launching what might be the most formulaic of horror genres – whereas a ‘vampire movie’ features a vampire and a ‘ghost story’ features a ghost, a ‘slasher’ doesn’t even have to include a slasher killer – but it’s got to stick to the formula: a group of (probably young) people, wanting to party and getting killed off one by one until one girl (probably a girl) is the only one left, who then uncovers what has been going on and dispatches the killer.  In the beginning, I think a lot of people were just seeing that something was selling and they repeated it. Of course, there were variations, and from early on, there were attempts to surprise by disrupting the pattern (for example, the feminist satire of Slumber Party Massacre (1982) or the Scary Movie-esque parody of Student Bodies (1981)), but those disruptions also served to make the pattern more clear (by attempting to wrong foot the audience by not perfectly enacting a formula, it makes the audience think all the more about what that formula would have been, what their expectations are).

And audiences came. Not everything made money like Halloween (and it must be said that most were nowhere near as good as Halloween), but they made money. The more the pattern paid off, the more it was reenacted, and the more audiences came to look forward to certain elements. And sooner or later, academics noticed this and wondered what was going on. Why were filmmakers telling this story in this way? Why was it satisfying enough for a paying public that they kept coming back? Some theories were put forth, perhaps making undue assumptions about who the viewers actually were, and ignoring the potential experiences of viewers who were thus unconsidered. But even if incomplete, this scholarly work helped to illuminate the depth of potential meaning of a genre considered no more than trashy exploitation.

At some point, the academic notion of the “final girl” was folded into the creative process. I don’t know if Kevin Willamson read Clover before writing Scream, but it sure feels like he did, and even if he didn’t, by 1996, Clover’s reading of the ‘final girl’ could have just filtered into the zeitgeist enough to influence the text (and practically everything that came after it in the 90s teen slasher cycle and every post-modern, self-aware slasher/slasher parody that came in its wake). With its explicit presentation of “the rules” of surviving a horror movie, Scream seemed to help make the ‘final girl’ a much more known role (including to a general public who weren’t necessarily horror fans, but who saw this hit movie), even if that name was not applied, was still not in regular use (but I’m not sure the term wasn’t used in any of the sequels – Scream characters are so horror-literate that you’d expect it to come up). For one example of use, I know the term surfaced at least briefly in one of the Scary Movie parodies (released between 2000-2006) as Stacie Ponder, a blogger I’ve been reading for the last decade, uses this image for her blog, Final Girl.

For an example of the conspicuous lack of the term, I recently saw an interview with prolific horror B-movie actress Linnea Quigley from 1999 where she described her professional trajectory moving from being the victim who takes her top off (much of her career) to being the girl who lives to the end. Nowhere in the discussion is the term “final girl” used (and, as mentioned above, it is such a clear term, that once people know it, they tend to use it – it really cuts to the chase).

Or, for a later example, the 2006 film, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, a mockumentary following a slasher in training, is utterly focused on the concept of the final girl, with the killer so certain of her mythic importance to him, knowing they are two sides of the same coin, and manipulating conditions to draw her out, calling on her to become herself so that he can become himself. But he never says “final girl.” In the film, she is always the “survivor girl.” Now was this a conscious decision to avoid an already popularized term, or had it somehow not yet achieved cultural saturation?

The Cabin in the Woods (released in 2011, but filmed in 2009, for the sake of tracking chronology) also leans hard into the concept of certain essential roles (the whore, the fool, the athlete, the scholar, for example) who all must be sacrificed before finally “the virgin” is all that remains. In this case, the people running the show manipulate the players to take on these roles even if they would otherwise be against type, but the ritual of playing out this formula in this way, with the virgin as the only one to see the end, must be faithfully enacted. But still no “final girl,” per se.

However, at some point something changed: in recent years, there have been many fictional works which revolve around both the role and the term (many of which I hope to write about in the coming weeks): Grady Hendrix’s the Final Girls’ Support Group, Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is a Chainsaw, and from 2015 alone, two films: The Final Girl and The Final Girls. All of these, and many others, focus on the significance of the role – how inspiring and important it can be for some people, how one can live in constant comparison with its ideal. Even if Clover was more interested in why men would identify with this female character, the resilient, heroic final girl has become aspirational for generations.

For my part, I find a couple of things both effective and interesting. On one basic level, something that works for me is that vulnerability, but I wonder if it’s an issue of what (male) audiences (myself included) will watch and respond to, or if it’s an issue of how writers, directors, and producers expect they will react. I cannot honestly imagine that were I to find myself in some terrible, dangerous situation, I would be John McClaning it barefoot through the air ducts, taking out a building full of terrorists. I would probably be cowering terrified in a corner someplace. It is much easier to identify (outside of hero-wish fulfillment, and don’t get me wrong, Die Hard is a blast!) with a “normal” person who is duly scared of scary things, but through whom we get to vicariously rise to the challenge of facing that fear and vanquishing that horror, even if we have to run around screaming a lot first, even if we drop our knife when we shouldn’t and don’t check to make sure he’s really, really dead before we start running away – it’s easy to yell at the screen and claim that we wouldn’t make such mistakes, but I bet most of us would. When we go on this journey with this fragile, very human character, the heroic thrill of overcoming the threat is all the more exciting.

On another level, I find it fascinating how the trope has been so culturally reproduced as to become truly mythic. The first slasher cycle is largely characterized by non-magical assailants – just a crazy guy with a knife, or a pitchfork, or a drill, or a, you get the picture… (later, especially in the second half of the 80s, following the success of Freddy Krueger, and trying to do something new, there were many more supernatural killers). But somehow, the repetition of this simple structure – kids, party, killer, girl-who-lives – has resulted in a significant archetypal figure, one who resonates in people’s imagination – this is perhaps how myths get born.

She was born out of the lust of storytelling and business. She was named by academia, and once identified, the art form in which she lived came to better know itself, becoming more reflexive. She has subverted gendered expectations and she has been used to reify puritanical norms. She has grown into a full-out action hero and she has been fleshed out as a person, allowed to grieve and to grow. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter why a group of film makers first settled on a pattern – now she exists and carries (sometimes contradictory) meaning. She is an inspiring feminist icon. She is a harmful reduction of femaleness – not even female, so much as a man in narrative drag. She is a calculated attempt to sell women’s empowerment to make a buck. She is a re-gendered ‘everyman’ with whom all can identify, with whom all can vicariously journey through hell and return, tempered by the experience.

All of this is to say that as I just spent a couple weeks focused on one sub-genre (the Lesbian Vampire movie), I’m about to spend a bit of time with Slashers and the Final Girl. Check in weekly for more.

Lesbian Vampire Films – Part II

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Welcome (back) to my continuing journey through the somewhat niche sub-sub-genre of “Lesbian Vampire Films” in all their dreamy, artistic, evocative grandeur. For a brief overview of some common traits and discussions of Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary, please check out last week’s post. Today we have another four standout examples to delve into.

I’ve planned this as a short series – two posts on films from the heyday of the genre (mostly the seventies, a bit from earlier) and a final post digging into more recent fare, and that means that I’ve had to make some hard decisions this week, choosing what to exclude. All of today’s entries are from 1970-1971, the period when Lesbian Vampires were most in vogue, and are all essential viewing, but if you like what you’ve seen, I’ll include some suggestions for further exploration at the end of the post. Also, to really examine these films, there will be spoilers, so enter at your own risk. And so, without further ado…

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

This is probably what many first think of when they think ‘Lesbian Vampire,’ and for good reason. Roy Ward Baker (The Monster Club and Asylum, among others, but my favorite of his is the 1952 Marilyn Monroe thriller, Don’t Bother to Knock) kicked off Hammer Studio’s “Karnstein Trilogy” with a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Le Fanu’s Carmilla. While it takes liberties (often sensible ones, both streamlining the narrative and adding new elements to build excitement, intrigue, or titillation), it follows the events of the book more closely than most films featuring seductive female vampires named Carmilla, Mircalla, and Marcilla. My understanding is that even though British censorship laws had recently been relaxed, allowing for the inclusion of more blood and breasts, the censor still objected to the lesbianism, but since the producers could declaim, “it’s in the book!” the literature respecting BBFC had to let it pass.

While this isn’t my favorite example of the genre (compared to what was happening on the continent, it feels a bit reserved and stately, but that is part of its charm), it is surely historically significant, both in terms of this sub-genre, and as I understand, for explicitly featuring a lesbian character in a British film at all. As portrayed by Ingrid Pitt in a well-rounded performance, neither an arch villain, nor a silly sexpot, Carmilla is not coded – she lusts and hungers for other attractive women in diaphanous nightshifts, and Emma, she might even love.

As in the book, Carmilla is in the habit of getting stranded at the estates of Austrian nobles so that she can befriend, seduce, and feed on the daughters of the house, while also going further afield to kill off some peasant ladies too. First we see young Laura meet this fate (the name of the novel’s narrator) and then we see Carmilla move to a new home and start in on Emma, who begins dreaming of being pinned under a great cat and starts suffering from anemia as small bite marks appear on her breast. Furthermore, in a worthwhile addition, while the master of the house is away in Vienna, Carmilla also seduces the governess, Mademoiselle Perrodot, who then becomes her accomplice and maybe also a vampire.

It is in these relations that the film shines: temptation and refusal – an invitation and acquiescence – romantic love declared and friendly love returned. When this turns into a house of mostly women (with one meddling butler), with shifting loyalties, trusts and distrusts, and attractions, it is most alive. (The men end up on a side quest to figure out what’s going on and return to save the day – the movie’s gender politics are, shall we say, dated.) And the three central women bring nicely different qualities. Pitt is gently commanding in the middle of it all. Kate O’Mara’s Mlle. Perrodot gets to transition from suspicious and protecting, through sexual curiosity, into being slyly devious. Finally, as Emma, Madeline Smith is the picture of doe eyed innocence, loving her new friend, but not quite comprehending how that new friend loves her (nor does she notice that her bosom friend keeps biting her, well, bosom).

The film combines a very British respectability and grand, traditional gothic horror settings and atmosphere (old castles, opulent costumes, candles and fog, painted backdrops) with a more frank presentation of sex and sexuality, and additional nudity thrown in because selling tickets is nice. Given its old fashioned style (I don’t mean this as disparagement, but it feels like a pleasant, old timey horror film for a rainy Saturday afternoon), the degree of sexual explicitness can be startling (though relatively tame by today’s standards). Still, it is all pretty matter-of-fact, which I think is essential in maintaining the style of the overall film.

That down-to-earth quality extends to Pitt’s Carmilla. Pitt grounds her nicely, both playing up the evident appetite and playfulness of a predator who has done this time and time again, and the lonely sadness that comes from having done this time and time again. I think her Carmilla, while she can kill off peasant girls heartlessly, is perhaps in the habit of falling in love with her more aristocratic prey, thus living a tragic existence of constantly destroying her loves. Near the end of the film, she tries to take Emma away with her, maybe to start an un-life together, but she’s defeated when the men of the house figure out what’s going on, find her hidden tomb, and bloodily stake and decapitate her.  One nice addition here, not in the book, is that in those final moments, Emma is somehow connected to her; she feels Carmilla die and cries out. A handsome young man, there to rescue her, tries to give comfort, but doesn’t understand what’s been lost.

All told, this is an interesting transitional film, hearkening back to Hammer’s output of the late 50s and early 60s, all fluttering capes and full bodices and bloodied fangs and the full moon behind a wisp of clouds, while also looking forward to a more libertine 70s with liberalized social mores and more psychologically explored monsters. Based on the earliest progenitor of this sub-genre, it looks to where it will go in the coming years, both in the UK with Hammer’s continuation of the Karnstein films, and across the channel, where Lesbian Vampires were really having a moment.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

There is no way I could discuss the Lesbian Vampire film without highlighting Harry Kümel’s sublime Les lèvres rouges (The Red Lips) featuring Delphine Seyrig as the subtle, chillingly seductive Countess Elizabeth Báthory. For my money, it is not only great for this sub-genre, but is also just about a perfect vampire movie, and her portrayal should be considered among the Lugosis, Lees, and Schrecks of the world. This is my third mention of this Belgian classic, having previously listed it as a comfort food favorite, and expounded on my appreciation of its groovy score. But this is an opportunity to really dig into what I think makes it so special.

Briefly, Stefan and Valerie, married only one day earlier (but clearly too soon), are waylaid in a grand, empty hotel in the Belgian resort town of Ostend in the off season, on their way to England to introduce Valerie to Stefan’s “Mother.” The only other guests are the glamorous Countess Elizabeth Báthory (claiming to be a descendant of her famous namesake) and her slinky, pouting secretary, Illona. The countess takes the young couple under her wing, seducing and manipulating them both, with her eye on Valerie as a potential new companion (Illona tires of her unlife). By the end, Illona and Stefan are dead, and Elizabeth and Valerie drive off into the sunrise (which, being vampires, does not go well for them). The plot is straightforward, but the film is nuanced in how it plumbs the depths of its simple story, and the film making is just as seductive as its countess.

Central to Kümel’s film is an ambivalence regarding its characters. We have some reason to feel for each, but I don’t think anyone is exactly the protagonist. Valerie is innocent and put upon, pulled between Stefan’s latent sadism and violence (perhaps she could have gotten to know him even a little before getting married) and the manipulation and domination of the countess, but past that, she is a bit blank. Stefan has cruel tendencies and beats Valerie, but we also learn of some heavy baggage he’s carrying (“Mother” is an older, overbearing, powdered and rouged gentleman, and aside from his fascination with violence and cruelty, Stefan seems deeply closeted and self-hating, taking it out on Valerie) – this doesn’t excuse his violence, but does make him a more complex character for whom one could sympathize. Poor Illona just can’t go on in this lifestyle any longer. And finally, Elizabeth may be a devious bloodsucker, but she is a constant treat to be around.

Seyrig brings delicate, playful, beguiling charm to every moment of screen time. The things Elizabeth does are cold, hard, and greedy – carelessly disrupting or destroying the lives of anyone she encounters to take just what she wants and leave what she does not, kicking her once lover into a shallow grave without batting one perfect eyelash. However, the way she does these cruel things is always so warm, soft spoken, open, and somehow innocent. There is always a glint in her eye, a gentle smile on her lips. We get the smallest glimpses of her hardness – we see her manipulations, and yet we, just like Valerie and Stefan are drawn to her, loving her for her elegant, soft power and grace.

In one sequence, after Stefan has beaten her, Valerie rushes off to the train station. Elizabeth follows and signals Illona to go to Stefan. After stopping Valerie from boarding her train, the seduction begins in earnest, including a magnetic speech that closely resembles text quoted in discussing The Blood Spattered Bride last week: “Stefan loves (you), whatever (I) may think – of course he does. That’s why he dreams of making out of you what every man dreams of making out of every woman – a slave, a thing, an object for pleasure. So, you despise me? So, I disgust you? Ha! Come, I’ll show you what men are made of.” Clearly, she plans for Valerie to find Illona and Stefan together, but when they return and find that Stefan has accidentally killed Illona, for Elizabeth, it is just as good, even better: Valerie’s fears of Stefan’s brutality have been confirmed.

Elizabeth starts issuing orders to Valerie in cleaning up the crime scene, and after the three return from burying the body, Valerie stays in the countess’s room, waiting for her expectedly (in the same place and position where we had previously seen Illona) to tenderly undress  and bite her. It’s not long before the two of them are sucking the blood out of Stefan’s wrists. We have seen Elizabeth expertly manipulate and dominate Valerie, grooming her to replace Illona. And yet, this success feels emancipatory, liberating.

The joy of the movie is the delicious tension between Elizabeth’s monstrous qualities (which Seyrig consistently plays against, never once telegraphing a drop of cruelty) and the way the film and her performance draw you into her orbit. I heard that Kümel chose the colors for her outfits (which are stunning, each grander and more luxurious than the last), red, white, and black, because he associated them with the Nazis. Perhaps the whole film works as a meditation on the allure of power. Though we see her heartlessness – destructively exercising her quiet power, it and she never stop being attractive.

That said, this film is not a thoughtful reflection about how the sexiness of power can lead to fascism, but rather a mesmerizing, piquant delicacy. The compositions, the trance inducing music, the exquisite play of character beats are all so luscious and creamy – but the darker implications add a hint of acidity to prevent the dish from being over-sweet. Though we take pleasure in Elizabeth’s triumph, the air of melancholy and the bite of harm done complicate that pleasure, and the whole effect lingers in the mind all the more for it.

The Shiver of the Vampires (1971)

So first, I must admit that the French director, Jean Rollin has long been a blind spot for me and this was the first film of his I’ve seen. From all I’ve read about him, I think this, Les Frisson de Vampires, was a good introduction: full of bizarre imagery, circling around the themes of sex and death on which I understand he often dwelt, made with little regard for “standard ways of making a movie,” and rich with a visual poetry and unreality unlike anything else out there, all while still having a rather simple and describable narrative (which will be less true with other films of his).

Once again, we have a newlywed couple, Isa and Antoine, on their way to their honeymoon (so common, it’s basically a trope of the Lesbian Vampire film). They stop to visit Isa’s cousins at their castle, only to learn that they’d died the day before. It turns out they had been vampire hunters until Isolde, a mysterious female, ‘travelling’ vampire bit them, and now they remain on their estate, in all their early seventies, velvet bellbottomed, frilly shirt, hippy-fop glory, biting local girls and staking them so they don’t rise again. In this, Isolde criticizes them as bourgeoisie. The cousins decide to bring Isa into the fold, and plan to turn her. Seduced by Isolde, Isa never consummates her marriage to Antoine, preferring instead to writhe naked on the beach with her cousins until the sunlight makes them all disappear in a puff, an effect right out of an old silent movie. But as is often the case, it’s not about the story.

It’s about the skull in the fishbowl. It’s about Isolde crawling out of the grandfather clock and caressing the nude Isa (who rather than pulling away as one might expect when a vampire exits a timepiece, curiously waits to see what she’s going to do and then gives a gentle smile of appreciation). It’s about the two maids/servants of the vampires walking the grounds naked beneath their sheer violet gowns, carrying candelabras through the cemetery in a haze of red light, or gleefully, innocently laughing and spinning about having destroyed their once master (their periodic joy being a high point of the film). It’s about the rocking electric guitar score, wailing away beneath otherwise languorous action, creating an odd dissonance of sound and image. It’s about the hilarious, eccentric cousins circling around the camera, finishing each other’s sentences in a lecture on the history of the cult of Isis, Satanism, and Vampirism in Europe, before finishing with a flourish and a series of little bows as the maids kneel, topless for some reason, before them and Isa and Antoine wordlessly get up and leave the room without reaction or explanation.  It’s about Isolde murdering Isabelle (former fiancé of both cousins) by embracing her under her cloak, before we see that she had been wearing 4 inch long, razor sharp pastie cones and has stabbed Isabelle through the nipples (now dabbed with chalky orange-red paint). And, on a narrative level, it is perhaps about the pull of family, of belonging, of the past, of attraction being stronger than that of a typical, normative relationship. It all comes together to pull the viewer into a surprisingly engaging dream of old castles, decrepit cemeteries, and erotic death trips.

As far as I can tell, though he was prolific, and obviously aware of mainstream film in France and abroad, it is most useful to view Rollin as an outsider artist, or even a Naïve artist – he did not fail to make ‘good films,’ but was working in a form that was all his own. He made a lot of movies (many pornographic, others just jobs for hire) under assumed names which paid the bills and kept the lights on, but everything on which he put his own name, he made in his way, for himself, if nobody else. For all of their nudity and blood, they were non-commercial affairs, far too weird and poetic for the standard horror crowd, and far too rooted in the fantastic, too full of horror elements for the world of French art cinema. 

This is no exception. It is a disjointed, ethereal viewing experience, but one that feels grounded in feeling, personal and important to its maker. The performances are sometimes stilted or unmotivated, but choices have clearly been made. There are lots of naked female bodies, but somehow, the camera never leers and instead, it all feels kind of innocent: a genuine, if sexed-up, meditation on death and family and need. There are strange sequences of events and sometimes the logic that has led from one moment to the next is obscured, but it never felt actually nonsensical or boring. I was captivated throughout. I laughed. I was sometimes surprised. I don’t think I really pondered any deeper themes or poetry, but I felt satisfied that someone else was in the process thereof.

I’m sure that with studio notes, this could have been a better “movie,” but were it a clean, sensible Hollywood vampire flick, it would surely be less of a film; it wouldn’t be the idiosyncratic, personal bit of magic that it is. I’m glad I finally sampled Rollin’s oeuvre and I definitely plan to watch more (many of his films can be found on the Kino Cult streaming platform – free with advertisements). The world is a richer place for having his films in it.

Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

I can’t be the first to observe that with Jess Franco’s film, a Spanish-German production filmed in Turkey, you really get what it says on the tin: Vampires. Lesbians. That’s the movie (there’s more, of course, but these are the broad strokes). Franco is often mentioned in close proximity to Rollin and they had many superficial similarities: both were prolific outsider-filmmakers, often funding their unconventional films with pornographic projects; both made Lesbian Vampire movies; more broadly, both gravitated to themes of sex and death and had very characteristic artistic proclivities; both offered a dreamlike viewing experience; and both attained a very strong cult following over the years – but beneath the surface, their work feel dissimilar, each with his own very specific style. That said, I must admit that most of what I know about Franco (as with Rollin) comes from what I’ve read. I had seen this one before, but it remains the only piece of his that I’ve watched.

Somewhat following Dracula, we have an estate agent, Linda (Ewa Strömberg) sent to discuss an inheritance with Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda), a vampire to whom Dracula has left a great deal. Linda had recently caught her, let’s say ‘peculiar,’ nude nightclub act. The routine, which opens the film and is later repeated, consists of the countess, in front of a mirror, removing her lingerie and dressing another nude woman who remains still as a mannequin, until lowering her to the ground and biting her neck. The scene establishes images of doubling and control, but it’s also a pretty weird way to start a film. Still, the audience in the nightclub seems to enjoy it (in a kind of subdued way like one appreciates a painting in a museum), and more significantly, the differences in how Linda and her boyfriend, Omar watch the act are notable. Linda is clearly more than taken with it and is breathlessly aroused by the end, while Omar looks rather like he’s putting up with a tedious art-thing and is surprised to find her so shaken.

Shortly thereafter, Linda visits her therapist, describes this experience in light of the fact that she had already been having erotic dreams of this mysterious performer before seeing her in the flesh, and wants to know what it all means. The therapist simply says that she’s unsatisfied and should “get a lover – or get a better lover.” This she does once she finally meets the beguiling countess.

If the vampire can sometimes be taken as a metaphor for unbound sexual desire, this is an example par excellence. In “exploitation” cinema, sex and nudity can sometimes be seen as “gratuitous,” a ploy to sell tickets. In this case, it is the heart of the piece. Franco’s film does not smuggle in some kind of hidden art beneath its surface of eroticism – the erotic, the sexual is the central artistic preoccupation, and the vampirism carries that theme evocatively. It’s all about bodies being “addicted to” each other; about needs beyond the bounds of the rational; about the liberation of giving yourself over to another; and about yearning for freedom, even from that ecstasy. That may seem grandiose – but it’s not – it is playful, unhinged, fleshy, and riveting. The chemistry between Strömberg and Miranda is palpable; the cinematography is fevered – hot and exciting, full of wide gorgeous shots and snap zooms to incisive details; the editing is delirious, often cutting between the main action and seemingly unrelated images, such as a scorpion on the beach, a kite in mid-air, or blood on the window; and the soundtrack is wild – an intense groove sold years later as “Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party” (though it actually contains music from three different Franco pictures).

It is also just a strange, totally engaging (if you don’t find extended sequences of “artistic” nude performance as laborious as Omar does), far-out little film. While the countess is clearly a vampire, she doesn’t follow many of the “rules” and is more likely to be sunbathing nude on the beach than sleeping in a coffin. Sometimes characters have extreme, baffling reactions, and sometimes something very creepy happens without eliciting much shock, such as when Linda finds a man (played by Franco) in the basement of her hotel torturing and killing a woman – she gasps and runs away, but never mentions it again (in our age of AirBnB and Booking.com, if we followed her example, every hotel would have bedbugs – negative reviews keep us all safe, Linda).

Finally, it does build to a surprising ending that left me a little disappointed, but perhaps it is meant to. Linda, so enraptured with Nadine, seems bound to escape her workaday, pedestrian life, but in the end, Linda kills Nadine, driving a spike through her eye, and she and Omar sail away as if awaking from a strange dream. I was initially puzzled at such a re-affirmation of the previous, unfulfilling stasis, but came across an astute reading in Bartłomiej Paszylk’s The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: An Historical Survey. He writes that it “leaves us with a convincing and complex picture of a woman torn between her sexual needs and the fear of becoming dependent on the person who finally manages to satisfy her.” Thus, I suppose it should feel unsatisfying – Linda chooses free-but-unsatisfied over-happy-but-tied-down; thus, this lusty vampire fever dream ends in melancholy.  The kite comes down to earth.

All in all, this is a singular, carnal, sometimes chaotic, periodically enigmatic, always engrossing movie, and I’ve really got to explore Franco more.

—

And so, that wraps up this dive into the artsy, erotic, sleazy, aesthetic, and rather international world of Lesbian Vampire Films. I think I’ll take a break from them for a bit and cover some other topics I’ve been considering, but eventually, I plan to return for one more post on more modern iterations. But as I promised at the beginning to give some other recommendations…

Vampyres (1974) is good fun, featuring two young women sexually luring men to a castle to feed on them. The sun drenched and surreal The Velvet Vampire (1971) showcases a commanding vampire named Diane Le Fanu driving her dune buggy around the American west and seducing a young couple in their dreams. It’s also the only classic Lesbian Vampire film I know of directed by a woman. I have not yet, but plan to watch more of Jean Rollin’s work. His Requiem for a Vampire (1972) is without dialogue for more than half the run-time and is apparently very imagistic and improvised. Also, the two female protagonists are dressed as clowns, so if that sounds like your cup of tea, have a look. I also really want to try out his Fascination (1979), featuring the iconic image of Brigitte Lahaie with her scythe. Of course, there’s always Tony Scott’s ever so stylish The Hunger (1983), featuring David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve in a bit of a bloody love triangle. Alternatively, if you liked The Vampire Lovers and want more, the second entry in Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy, Lust for a Vampire (1971) features Carmilla haunting a girls boarding school (the third film in the trilogy, Twins of Evil (1971) is, I think, the superior film, but doesn’t actually feature any lesbian vampires…). The list goes on…

—

Finally, a personal note: with this entry, my longest post yet, I’ve now published more than 102,000 words on this blog. I understand that’s a decent length for a novel (Frankenstein, for comparison is about 76,000, and Dracula is about 145,000) and just thought it was a milestone worth marking.

Huzzah!

Lesbian Vampire Films – Part I

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Existing within genre cinema writ large, and often struggling with the boundary between a “genre ghetto” and “legitimate cinema,” horror is really tied up in issues of categorization. Something isn’t just a “horror movie” – it’s a ‘slasher,’ a ‘ghost movie,’ ‘body horror,’ a ‘gore flick,’ an ‘Italian cannibal movie,’ a ‘melt movie,’ a ‘werewolf movie,’ a ‘giant bugs picture,’ ‘splatterpunk,’ ‘splatstick’; the list goes on and on, with new permutations, combinations, and subdivisions constantly being birthed. But undeniably, there are some heavy hitters when it comes to the classic monsters around which the genre gets organized, and one of the biggest is “The Vampire Movie,” a set of flicks on which I’ve spent surprisingly little time (so far, I’ve only really covered one). So, I’d like to start delving into a notable sub-sub genre thereof, the “Lesbian Vampire Films.”

It seems strange that this would even be a genre – I don’t know of any strain of ‘gay-werewolf movies’ or ‘pansexual animal attack flicks,’ but there are cinematic elements that tend to run through these films, and there are lots of these films (Wikipedia lists about 60, and I suspect there are more), that seem to tie them together as a type (perhaps O negative, terrible, I know). Not every element is applicable to every film, and the exceptions probably outnumber the rules, but there are enough to make it feel like its own thing, and it constitutes a really interesting, cinematically rich, and often really gorgeous current within the larger world of horror.

Some common traits involve surprising deviations from standard vampire lore. For example, a striking number of these movies feature a lot of daytime footage and often the vampire in question is totally unbothered by sunlight and rather enjoys lounging in the pool, hanging out on the beach, or tooling through the desert in her dune buggy. Also, it’s pretty rare that anyone has fangs. Beyond that, there is a dreamy atmosphere, a seductive, languid, sometimes romantic, and sometimes tragic mood that runs through many, though certainly not all of these films.  And, while loads of these are pretty low budget operations, or are working within a vein (sorry) of cheap exploitation, so many of them are just such aesthetic pieces, putting such care and artistry into their design, into their craft, into beautifully filming beautiful people in beautiful locations, rather than simply trying to make a scary movie (and, to be fair, the films of this sub-genre are almost never actually scary – though some can be intense in other ways).

Vampirism in general often works as some kind of sexual metaphor – consumed by a physical hunger which is socially dangerous, alluring, threatening, and impossible to control, the vampire can represent the disruptive force of repressed desires, and it’s not surprising that they might cross gender lines. However, it must be said that the specific vamps after which the genre is named are almost never exactly ‘lesbians,’ so much as ‘bisexual’ at most (bi-vampire erasure is a thing, I guess) – but I guess that just didn’t have the same lurid marketing bite (sigh – what is it about vampires that makes me pun?). I suppose at the end of the day, for all vampires, regardless of sex, it should really be what’s on the inside that counts, but male vampires on film never had quite the same explicit fluidity as the ladies. 

Finally, I really shouldn’t discuss the Lesbian Vampire without at least briefly touching on J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novelette, Carmilla. Published twenty years before Dracula, it is the literary basis for a huge swath of these films (with many others referencing Erzsébet Báthori, or Elizabeth Bathory). It is also a great little book which, in addition to basically inventing this entire genre, is atmospheric, engaging, creepy, sexy, and sometimes quite funny. It’s also a quick read. Check it out here as I don’t have the space to describe it in great detail, but I do highly recommend it.

I recently fell into a bit of a rabbit hole and have watched more of these films than I can cover in one post, so this will be the beginning of a short series (probably two or three posts in total), detailing some stand-out examples of this odd, compelling collection. Today, I’ll just sink my teeth (really – that’s the last one) into what I’ve watched most recently.

Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

Lambert Hillyer’s direct follow up to Dracula (it picks up the story minutes after the first film ends) is visually stylish, gothic, and cinematic, not to mention, just being a fun, exciting movie (it’s clear how much the medium had progressed from Tod Browning’s 1931 film to this, its first sequel of many). Gloria Holden stars in the titular role as Countess Marya Zaleska, feeding on both men and women and feeling really bad about it. From a modern perspective, the “lesbian” reading is a bit unfortunate as, linked as it is to her unwanted need for blood, her interest in her female victims (with looks that linger far more hungrily, more longingly than with the men) can be seen as the ‘unnatural thoughts’ from which she is desperate to be freed, but it still feels progressive for suggesting that interest at all (and this is after these elements were greatly reduced to appease the censorious Hays Code). Beyond that, this film feels like the progenitor of so many, more modern, vampire films. She is not simply a monster – she is a tragic, yet dignified, heroine. Though some advertisements implored viewers to “save the women of London from” her, she is a very human figure: remorseful, but hopeful – desperate to be free of her father’s curse, but constantly giving into her cravings.

In this, she comes off as quite modern, and the story feels like something from decades later. As opposed to Lugosi’s Dracula, she is the protagonist of her own movie, and she is a sympathetic one. She sees a psychiatrist about her condition, and after a failed experiment with what is basically addiction exposure therapy wherein she sends her servant to find a young girl to model for her, hoping to present herself with and withstand temptation (she doesn’t), she instead chooses to find a companion for eternity. It is regrettable that she chooses the rather irritating (I guess he’s supposed to be charming) male lead for this position rather than his bantering love interest, Janet, over whom she looms for a tantalizingly long time (a scene in which she slowly lowers towards Janet, maybe to kill her before the ‘hero’ arrives, was described by Ellis Hanson as “the longest kiss never filmed”). I can’t imagine how she thinks eternity with this guy is going to be pleasant, but things don’t end well for her anyway, so she never learns what a brat he can be. However, for all of her amenable traits, the film doesn’t lack a sense of threat. People are being killed and she is the one doing it.

And it all really oozes style – from the gothic horror set pieces of the cemetery carpeted with fog where she burns Dracula’s stolen body to end her affliction, to the mid-30s classy London interiors everyone inhabits, to the spooky castle, complete with giant spider web, to the statuesque charisma that Holden exudes. This flair is definitely evident in the filming, for example, the play of light in the young model’s eyes as Marya mesmerizes her before feeding or the smooth way Sandor, Marya’s jealous familiar, slides her hypnotic ring onto her finger as she dramatically poses to be dressed.  Past that, the adventurous parts are exciting and the comic relief lands without feeling out of place. It all comes together so effectively to create a moody, fun early horror classic, which I expect far too few have seen.

Blood and Roses (1960)

With this entry, originally titled Et Mourir de Plaisir (To Die of Pleasure) we move closer to the ‘house style’ of the Lesbian Vampire movie. An Italian-French coproduction, directed by Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman and Barbarella, among others), this dreamy, colorful film lays the groundwork for where the genre would later go. In fact, director Joe Dante called it the “origin of the Euro-horror film,” and I see what he means. While there had of course been horror movies made on the continent before, this is perhaps the beginning of a certain style – combining quite artfully filmed and erotically charged material with horror narratives, in this case, a spin on Carmilla. With little explicitly shown (one bared and bloodied breast), it is such a lavish, sensual, atmospheric outing.

The connection to the source material is relatively thin (which is often true). At a stylish Italian Villa, the cousins Carmilla and Leopoldo, as well as Leopoldo’s fiancé, Georgia, entertain guests in advance of their coming nuptials. Long ago, their ancestors, the Karnsteins, had been believed vampires and the locals had risen up and staked all but one, Mircalla, who could not be found and whose grave remains empty. After her disappearance, it was noted that any woman who became engaged to her former fiancé (and cousin) had a habit of dying before her wedding. Just as Mircalla seemed to have jealously guarded the affections of her cousin, so too, in the present, does Carmilla seem to yearn with unspoken and unrequited love. Though Leopold, Carmilla, and Georgia seem intimately close, Carmilla is clearly desolate due to the upcoming wedding.

Then, on the night of a grand (and beautifully filmed) masquerade ball, which Carmilla avoids, drunk in her room, before coming down dressed as her anagrammatic ancestor,  a fireworks display blows up a portion of the family crypt. Carmilla is drawn to investigate and afterwards, she isn’t quite herself. Perhaps she is killed and the vampiric Mircalla takes her place. Perhaps the spirit of Mircalla takes control of her living body. Perhaps she experiences a mental break and creates Mircalla to allow herself to act on darker impulses. It is mostly not clear (though a final shot suggests one reading).

Either way, it becomes clear that there had clearly been something between her and Leopold in the past, and he’s not really over it, as evinced in a moment when he and Georgia put an either drunk or newly vampirized Carmilla to bed – they undress her and the way he unabashedly stares at Carmilla while standing right next to his fiancé seems like it should probably concern Georgia more.  While Carmilla still seems to carry a torch for her cousin, it is now clearly Georgia for whom she really thirsts (plus, a poor servant girl turns up dead with mysterious holes in her neck). One might wonder if Mircalla had truly been killing her cousin’s brides out of jealousy, or simply out of lust. Sadly, after expressing her feelings one rainy day in the greenhouse and kissing some blood off Georgia’s lips, who doesn’t exactly reciprocate, but also doesn’t pull away, things do not go well for Carmilla/Mircalla (often a theme here), and (spoiler alert, but hey, it’s a vampire movie, this can’t be too much of a surprise) she ends up artfully staked on a tree branch in the dawn light.  

The permutations of the story take a back seat to mood and effect, but what effect – eerie and rich in its deeply saturated technicolor splendor, peppered with surreal dream sequences and breathtaking shots. There are moments of threat and suspense, but mostly this is a sad, enveloping presentation of the vampire as a powerful and free, yet doomed need, a sensual hunger. I have some trouble keeping the plot straight in my memory, but the sensory-emotional experience lingers, and the visual languor sets a roadmap for where the genre would go in the next decade or so.

The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

A fantastically rich and intriguing Spanish film, Vicente Aranda shot it late in the Franco regime and it can be rewardingly read as an allegory of life under such paternalistic fascism. A young woman, Susan, is newly married to a childhood friend, whom the credits name only as “husband,” and after a brief stop at a hotel in which she has a vision/fantasy/premonition of being raped when alone in the room, her wedding dress torn, they move on to his family home, a grand Castillo, somewhat gone to seed. That night, consummating the marriage, he rips her dress, just as in her vision, and from that point on, their new relationship is a minefield. He can be tender and considerate or violent and assaultive. But, more than anything, he is controlling and patronizing, treating her more as a child than a partner. It’s also a red flag that the portraits of all the women of the family are stowed away in the basement, and one, that of Mircala de Karstein, who killed her husband on their wedding night, has had its face cut out.

Susan has dreams of a beautiful veiled woman coming to her in the night, leading her to a dagger and imploring her to kill her husband, in one sequence, gorily castrating him. This dream woman is a dead ringer for the mysterious, naked Carmila that “husband” finds buried on the beach, breathing through a snorkel (it’s a bit odd) and brings home. There is a spark between the two women and “husband” somewhat fades to the background. By the end of the film, Susan has joined Carmila/Mircala in a sexually emancipatory ritual of blood-letting and drinking, and the two of them kill off a few local men, and attempt to run off together. As is a consistent theme here, it doesn’t go well for them.

Aranda undertakes some thought-provoking shifts of viewpoint. The beginning of the film belongs entirely to Susan: her fear and mixed feelings of attraction and revulsion. Oddly though, before the halfway point, right after she has admitted to hating her husband, the perspective moves to him for almost the remainder of the run time as he investigates strange goings on and implications of the supernatural. It isn’t until Susan has tried and failed to stab him that we return to her perspective. The viewer is pulled between two poles of identification and two different kinds of horror. Susan is in a horror film of domestic and psychological abuse, haunted by the violence of her dreams – her desire to free herself. “Husband” is in a horror film where a lesbian vampire is preying on his wife, and he must defeat this fiend. Overheard by a doctor friend of his, the words the women repeat in their blood ritual seems like what men’s rights activists think feminism is all about (if they were only so poetic): “Say it with all your heart – I hate him! – He has pierced your flesh to humiliate you – He has pierced my flesh to humiliate me – He has spat inside your body to enslave you – He has spat inside my body to enslave me.” More than a decade before Andrea Dworkin was mis-read as stating that “all heterosexual sex is rape,” this chant would seem to imply such a sentiment, and this seems to feed the husband’s fears and subsequent violence.

At this point, be warned: to describe what really makes this all work so well, I’m about to utterly spoil the ending.

At the end of the film, the two women have stopped to rest and maybe make love in Carmila’s coffin, where the husband finds them lying together, naked and serene. He shoots the coffin again and again until blood gushes out. A young girl, who had been in contact with Carmila, arrives and says the women will rise again before kneeling down before the husband. He shoots the child in the head, opens the coffin, brings a knife to a breast, and the film cuts to a newspaper headline that proclaims a man arrested after cutting out the hearts of three women. It is a brutal ending and I think its abrupt cruelty suggests the film maker’s position. The domineering, if sometimes kindly ‘lord’ may present himself as a caring, reasonable protector – he may be the one framing the story, offering the only available narrative, but that paternalism and control is a form of violence and he will not balk at ruthlessly destroying anyone who threatens the continuity of his power. It’s a shocking, chilling conclusion to a curious and provocative film, the quashed sexual revolution on screen (probably reflecting how Franco had so utterly stripped women of their rights) calling for a more complete socio-political upheaval off screen.

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary (1975)

This is an peculiar one. Filmed in Mexico by Juan López Moctezuma, this follows some of the patterns of the Lesbian Vampire film, while also going in some other directions, notably, a serial killer film and a B-movie action/cop procedural, complete with car chases (and cars that really like to blow up). Mary is an American artist bumming around Mexico in her ramshackle van, seemingly living a free-love, artistic, vagabond lifestyle, painting, embarking on relationships with men and women, and sometimes poisoning them and stabbing them in the neck with a hairpin before ravenously lapping up their blood. Also, she’s being chased by a creepy man in black whose face is always covered by a black scarf.

I will say that this did not strike me as strongly as the other three entries today, but it is still an interesting, unique case, even if the film making didn’t rise to the greatest heights. The most notable detail is how different Mary’s character is from many of the other female vampires of the genre. Even when some version of Carmilla, for example, is fated to a lonely un-life, unhappy in love, and probably gets killed by the end, she still feels powerful, dangerous, and alluring. She feels in control – she is the gravity of the film, pulling everything to her center – lovers, death, meaning. By contrast, Mary (and in this, she echoes Marya from Dracula’s Daughter) is cursed to crave blood thanks to her parentage (it’s obvious long before it’s revealed that the creepy guy following her is her dad), she is bad at killing (there is a great scene when, even having poisoned his coffee, she really has trouble finishing off a local fisherman on the beach – it’s awkward, tense, and fumbling, but she does finally do him in), and she is so upset and scared for much of the run time – by what is happening to her, by what she, herself is doing. Somehow, she is both the monster and a powerless, terrified victim. Unlike some others, she survives her picture and goes on to travel and kill and drink – but perhaps that is the worst fate for her, so it is hardly a happy ending – things do not go well for anyone.

Along the way, there are some scares and effective moments. The presence of the mysterious man chasing her (and killing his own victims along the way) flavors this more like a ‘horror’ movie than a dreamy-Euro-sensual death trip. Her lack of overpowering strength or mesmerism when killing brings to mind Romero’s Martin, who shares this quality – and occasionally the killings carry a kind of horror as they are not clean and sensual, but rough, out of control, and always in danger of failing, thus getting her caught and arrested. Also, one death is really quite sad as she finds herself in the bath with Greta, a woman who has brought her home (in a reversal of the pattern, it is the vampire who has been seduced), and she obviously doesn’t want to poison and kill her, saying that she’s never before chosen someone she knew, someone she cared about, but she cannot stop herself – tears are in her eyes as she brings the pin to Greta’s neck.

Compared with the other films today, it is not so visually striking, but the old, grainy film stock can be really quite forgiving, and it is certainly something different and worth checking out.

—

So, with that, I think we’ll wrap up this first installment of my Lesbian Vampire rundown.  While these films don’t tend to be very scary, I think they represent an interesting corner of the genre. Something I often love about horror movies is feeling ensconced in an atmosphere, however unsettling – it’s a quality I don’t associate with many other kinds of films, and these are all about atmosphere – moody and otherworldly, with the nominal monster often holding the most appeal. It’s a rich place to dwell for a while.

Also, one warning that I hate to have to give – many of these are inexpensive European movies and when venturing into that territory, it’s important to know that animals were sometimes ill-treated in the filming (no ASPCA on site). If that is something that will ruin a movie for you, you should check first. I’m not happy to end a post about some films that I really do like on this note, but I’d be remiss not to.

Polish Horror Series #5 – The Lure

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

So it’s been a few months since my last entry in this series. I guess I’ve just felt intimidated at the prospect of working my way through the films for which no English subtitles are available. However, that day is not here yet. Today’s movie, The Lure (Córki Dancingu) is readily available (with English subtitles) and is really worth taking a look at, especially in terms of genre in general and horror specifically in Polish cinema.

When I started this series, I pointed out how there were rather few local horror films in this country in which I’ve come to live. Today’s film, a horror/fairy tale/art-house/mermaid/siren/heart eating musical set in and around a Warsaw nightclub in the 1980’s, offers a fascinating case study, especially in terms of the differences between its release domestically and internationally. If you watch the International trailer below, it is mermaids, mermaids, mermaids, sharp teeth, a bit of choreography, and the nightclub setting:

If now, you watch the Polish trailer, all you get is the nightclub and sexy times:

CÓRKI DANCINGU - oficjalny zwiastun nr 1

The respective posters tell the same story. Even the titles imply different films. “The Lure” sounds connected to fishing, and hence, fish – and their tails, but also something alluring, lured towards some kind of trap. “Córki Dancingu” directly translates as “Daughters of the Dance-Party”; it is a movie about girls at a nightclub. Nothing supernatural here.

I can only assume the Polish distributer felt there wasn’t a market domestically for a mermaid-horror-musical and decided to lean hard into the cool sexiness of the nightlife. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t do great in its home country as people bought tickets for one film and got quite another. Internationally, distributors leaned into its weird-genre-hybrid charms and this ambitious, fascinating, admittedly not-entirely-successful-but-still-essentially-likeable oddity found its audience. It’s on Netflix here in Poland and I wonder if, having been around for a while, the people coming to it now are more aware of what they’re getting into, and are thus more satisfied with what they get.

The Lure (2015)

Narratively, the film is inspired by a number of sources. The parents of both Agnieszka Smoczińska (the director) and Barbara and Zuzanna Wronska (Ballady i Romanse, the band who did all the music for the film) were part of the Warsaw nightclub scene in the eighties (as a club owner and performers respectively) and the three women, having grown up in similar circumstances, reportedly wanted to engage with their shared childhood experiences. The local legend of the “Mermaid of Warsaw” (more on this below) also figures into things. Finally, the most structural narrative influence is clearly Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” (a story that was explicitly written to give children something gentler and kinder to read, with a nice happy ending, but which to modern eyes, is incredibly dark and sad), which really shapes the main thread of the plot.

In short, two mermaids, Złota (Golden) and Srebna (Silver) surface in the Wisła river (which runs through Warsaw) and find the three members of a band, “Figs and Dates” (who may also be a family – it’s not entirely clear) grilling and singing on the river bank. Srebna is instantly enamored of the handsome young bass player so they come ashore and join the band at a nightclub. In this version, they have legs as long as they’re dry, but what they lack will play into the story soon. The owner of the club is wowed by what the band has found and having overcome very brief concerns of having seemingly underage girls in his club, puts them to work as backup singers and strippers (after having some private time to sample their wares for himself – in a way that, though we don’t see exactly what happens, seems to have clearly been abusive). The customers are amazed by their tails which appear once wet and their beautiful voices, and they are an instant hit. But the central story is how Srebna falls for the young bass player and how her sister tries to pull her away from this doomed love which will eventually destroy her. What follows is only a spoiler if you haven’t read the Andersen.

So, in Andersen’s story, the mermaid must sacrifice her voice in order to get legs so she can go on land to meet her prince. She does this under the condition that if he marries someone else and she doesn’t kill him, she will die and turn to sea foam. So, in this version, she has legs if she wants them, but only has sexual organs on her fish tale. As the drummer/father(?) of the band presents them to the club owner, “They’re smooth, like Barbie dolls.” Thus, her relationship with the bassist can only go so far and he’s pretty turned off by the whole fish sex thing. And so, she undergoes an illicit, underground surgery where her tail is sawed off and presumably given to the woman whose lower half she then has sewn on. In the process, she loses her ability to sing, the girls lose their positions at the club, the band kind of falls apart, and the bassist still doesn’t love her.

Before you know it, we’re on a wedding boat, he’s married, and Złota is begging her sister to eat him before the sun comes up. In the end, Srebna goes to him, they embrace, her teeth turn sharp and scary, and at the last second, as the sky goes all golden, she just hugs him, loves him, and dissolves into foam. Złota rips the guy’s throat out and runs off into the sea. You know, it’s a story for kids!

Now, when you think “mermaid” I doubt horror is the first genre that comes to mind, but I think a linguistic issue comes to play here. In Polish there is only one word for ‘mermaids’ (beautiful women with fish tales that lonely sailors have spotted since time immemorial – though they’re usually just manatees or something similarly pretty) and ‘sirens’ (evil women from Greek mythology – who originally had bird parts – who would sing beautiful songs to lure sailors into crashing on the rocks and drowning). As it is one word in Polish, the two creatures are combined in one, and the two mermaids in this movie are also sirens (a kind of monster) with a habit of luring men with song and sometimes ripping them apart and eating their hearts. We only see this once or twice, but I think it’s enough to justify classifying this as ‘horror’ insofar as it is a “monster movie” of sorts, though perhaps a bit closer to the old Universal classics in that the monsters are the most sympathetic characters – and are simply misunderstood, mistreated, and taken advantage of by the human protagonists.

Beyond the notes of horror, particularly when hearts get munched on, the dominant tone is that of a fairy tale in that these ‘monsters’ are totally of the world of the story. No one’s mind is blown that mermaids exist; it’s just extraordinary to have caught a couple of them. And it is obvious that, as sirens, they could be dangerous – one of the first things the club owner asks upon meeting them is if they bite, but the drummer/father says they’re still young (he’ll learn how wrong he was later). Sometimes in fairy tales, things just happen and they are accepted by the characters within without shock. That passivity is featured here. Also, I find it interesting that almost no character in the film gets a name, but just a role. In the end credits, the members of the band, all prominent in the story, are simply “Percussionist,” “Bassist,” and “Vocalist” just as in a fairy tale, the characters will be “The Prince,” “The Shoemaker,” or “The Witch.”

So, regarding fairy tales, another one is very important here. In Poland, it’s quite common for some legendary creature to be associated with a given city. Wrocław has its gnomes, Kraków (where I live) has got a dragon under the hill, and Warsaw has a mermaid – she’s even on the official crest of the city. The story of the Warsaw mermaid is that she came to the banks of the river and at first the local fishermen were upset that someone was eating all their fish, so they made plans to catch her, but when they heard her sing, they loved her and allowed her to stay. However, one greedy merchant decided to take advantage of the situation, caught her in a net, and took her around to fairs and markets, displaying her beauty and monstrosity for a price. But, fortunately, the fishermen heard her cries and came to rescue her. Ever since then, armed with sword and shield, she has been there to protect the city.

What this story brings to the mix, besides a historical link between the city and mermaids/sirens, is the theme of exploitation, a significant undercurrent of Smoczyński’s film. Just as the Warsaw mermaid was captured and put on display, Srebna and Złota are, almost immediately upon entering human society, brought into the sex industry. The drummer has them strip for the club owner to show off their oddly featureless groins before splashing them with water and inviting him to digitally explore the slits on their tails. Satisfied, the owner wants some time alone with them. It’s interesting how impassive they are through this process. The director has stated in interviews that she intended a parallel with the immigrant experience, and the exploitation inherent within. At least at the beginning, the girls are unperturbed by the requests these humans make of them. However, after being left alone with this sweaty, sleazy older man, they are found unconscious, naked (in human form) and seemingly hurt by the experience. Even these magical creatures of uncertain age and experience can be exploited.

This extends into scenes with the family/band. In a late scene, the girls ask why they never play Frisbee, or go get ice cream, or get paid. In short, they are not family – they are not treated with love and care as children, and at the same time, they are not employees, paid for their services. They give of their bodies and their love and their voices and are afforded no respect or care or remuneration in return. In fact, upon realizing that they may be responsible for a man murdered by the river bank, the drummer/father abruptly punches them in the face, knocking them out, and the band rolls them up in carpets and throws them off a bridge. Złota responds to this upon return by eating his thumb (so, they do bite) and Srebna responds by having her tail chopped off so she can finally ‘be a girl’ for the bassist and they can have sex.

Sex and the (nude female) body loom especially large over the proceedings, and it is interesting how much it feels like this is a film made by a woman. While so many characters may leer at Srebna and Złota, the camera doesn’t. The body is a (super)natural thing and there’s nothing remarkable about someone walking around with no clothes on; the two of them are often unclothed, but they don’t seem quite naked – they wouldn’t normally be wearing clothes anyway – and their matter-of-fact manner is striking. There is also attention given to the clammy, scaled corporeality of their fishiness, the most natural thing for them, but something gross and/or fascinating for others. Similarly, physical desire is a strong presence, whether in terms of a bloody hunger for men’s hearts, a sweaty late night hook up, or Srebna’s desperation to have a full female body with which to consummate her love, and finally feel her affections fully returned.

It’s striking to me that, for all that Srebna meets a tragic end, she is really the only character in the film who is ever actually happy. However ill-advised her love is, she does feel it and the moment before turning to foam, she is at peace, glowing with joy. Złota is distraught throughout by her sister’s choices. Triton makes a few appearances and tries to talk sense into her. The handsome bassist isn’t into the tail and once she’s had her surgery, is uncomfortable in new ways. And every other denizen of this vodka fueled nightlife world, in spite of the surface level hedonism, seems suffused with emptiness and regret. The film is sometimes frenetic and wild, and sometimes libidinous, but more than anything else, it is sad. I assume that these notes are the most autobiographical elements of Smoczyński’s feature.

Which brings me to the songs. It is a musical and some of the music is quite good. However, it is in the musical numbers that I think the film sometimes feels less successful. Many of the songs seem to exist to primarily express a feeling, a concept, and rarely if ever link directly to the action of the narrative. Thus, they bring the story to a halt most of the time and while there is artistic and lyrical value to them and their filming, they give the film a disjointed quality that doesn’t always serve. I think there is a 75 minute, tight, dramatic, effective story tucked away inside of this sometimes shambolic film.

However, I think it’s a less interesting approach to focus on how something doesn’t work rather than considering what these other elements contribute, even if I might find them frustrating. I suspect the director didn’t really want to make a straight narrative film, and that these other tastes of life that suffuse this world express something of her own personal childhood experience of this scene. I could be wrong, but it feels as if there had been a lot of openness in the filming, filling every nook and cranny with character and theme and expression in often unscripted ways, and that it really was brought together in editing. If anything, rather than the songs and ancillary action interfering with the flow of the story, maybe the strength of the central story stands in the way of the film working as a more stream of consciousness-abstract piece. My mind just wants to lean on narrative as it is the easiest thing; it’s what I’ve been the most conditioned to focus on.

In the song sequences, and also in much of the negative space around the central story, there are so many little details, glimpses of the lives and failures and betrayals of various characters. This night-time world is full of lived-in character nuance, clearly meaningful to Smoczyńska. In an interview, she described how it was in her mother’s nightclub that she had her “first shot of vodka, first cigarette, first sexual disappointment, and first important feeling for a boy.” For example, we see the relationship between the Drummer and the Vocalist fall apart and we don’t really know why. The film isn’t telling their story, but they are afforded their own lives in which significant things happen even if we aren’t paying attention to them. In the end, when the Bassist has been killed, I still wasn’t sure if he was their son or not. They were at the wedding, miserable and avoiding each other – do they now have this grief to deal with as well?

There are so many little pieces like this. In one aside, Złota is picked up by a woman presenting herself as Militia (what the Police were called during communism). The Milita woman claims that Złota had eaten “a member of the public who was out on the town” (which she had), and in song, they flirt, pretend to point guns at each other, and eventually go back to the Militia lady’s place for a spot of piscine sex. At the end of all of this, the woman puts a gun to Złota’s head and Złota looks like she’s about to rip out her throat. What happened next? We don’t know. I feel like this is here to see the difference of how the girls interact in human society. Złota can satisfyingly hook up with someone without needing to turn to sea foam (and then maybe kill her). Triton can front a punk band and garner a bit of worship, but still just be here ‘on holiday.’ Srebna, on the other hand, is trapped in her love, in wanting what she can’t have.

The final effect is wistful, lost. We have been through this fairy tale, and while the little mermaid is happy in her death (which is kind of true in Andersen’s story too in its strange, creepy coda), there are no happy endings for anyone else – just blood and loss, and the open sea. It’s a unique, odd little movie, and while I can’t claim that it entirely works for me, I’m glad it exists, and I’m curious what else Smoczyńska will do.