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Fulci Pt. II – The Gates of Hell “Trilogy”

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Last week I began a dive into the output of Lucio Fulci, prolific Italian genre filmmaker famous within horror circles as a purveyor of extraordinarily gory, creepy, atmospheric, and sometimes not-quite-coherent horror films. I approached his work in search of some heavy “horror” and was surprised to find among his earlier films a very different tone. Sure, there were blood-soaked or nightmarish moments, but these were more thrillers with moments of graphic violence, and sometimes they could even be lyrical, emotional, visually stylish, or even classy in ways I wouldn’t have expected of him. But that is the point of such an exercise – to learn what I didn’t know. Still, I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface.

That said, this week, I’d like to take a look at three of his most acclaimed horror films, all of which I’d previously seen, and all of which embody the grisly, oneiric, often putrescent aesthetic with which he’s most associated: The City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery. Taken together, they are often termed “The Gates of Hell trilogy,” though they are all actually discrete, standalone films with no continuation of story from one to the next, and some actors returning in different roles (at least Catriona MacColl is in all three). While there is no narrative thread between them, other than a weakened boundary between worlds, more than anything else, they share a mysterious, ominous, Lovecraftian vibe and a unique approach to horror cinema. Whereas The Psychic only a few years earlier had been a tightly wound, perfectly constructed supernatural puzzle box, each element fitting into place just so, following his success with Zombi 2, Fulci dove head first into a nightmarishness cut loose from the strictures of narrative, resulting in some of his most acclaimed, most disturbing, and most niche work. It’s an interesting progression. So, let’s get to it, shall we? (This time, given how decentralized narrative is, I won’t be issuing spoiler warnings. If you think you might like to watch these unspoilt, go do so now. They’re available on many platforms.)

The City of the Living Dead (1980)

Catriona MacColl almost turned down her part as she felt the script was just “a series of special effects without a story.” She wasn’t entirely wrong, but I think that if one is willing to go along for the ride, it can be a ghastly good time. This is not my favorite entry in the trilogy, but I think it stands as both a wild, atmospheric midnight movie and a clear transitional experiment as Fulci really tried committing to the horror first and foremost. What story there is feels quite insubstantial, but the series of nightmare images, the horrors upon horrors upon horrors, can be mind-blowingly effective. It’s the kind of movie that might not always frighten so much as disgust, but it’s also trying to crack your mind open, just as its undead figures like to one-handedly tear open skulls, squeezing out the gooey brains within (apparently undeath does wonders for your grip).

If you want classic horror atmosphere, it’s got howling wind, fog, and old rickety houses. If you want something gross, it’s got head drillings, disembowelments, and all the viscera you can stomach (tee hee). If you want crazy, why-is-this-happening moments, it’s got bleeding eyes, storms of maggots, unexplained resurrections, surprise blow up sex dolls, goopy cross impalements, exsanguinating wallpaper, and so, so much more. If you want a compelling story, you should remember one you read some other time because that’s in short supply, but if you want unrivalled, creative awfulness, this movie is for you.

In short, a psychic, Mary Woodhouse (MacColl), at a séance, has a vision of a priest in an old misty cemetery hanging himself, and she goes into a fit, somehow understanding that he has just fulfilled an ancient, 4000 year old prophecy and opened the gates of Hell. The only way this can be reversed is for his corpse to be found and destroyed before All Saints’ Day (a few days hence). Unfortunately, the shock of it all is too much for her and she drops dead. Fortunately, her grave diggers are pretty lazy and leave her coffin in the ground with only a spattering of dirt on top, citing “union hours” such that when she suddenly comes back to life in her coffin (which is never explained) and starts desperately clawing at the interior, shredding her fingers in the process, intrepid reporter, Peter Bell (Christopher George), hears her screams and rather than, you know, opening the coffin by its latch, rescues her by slamming a pick axe into the lid multiple times, almost destroying her face in the process.

It’s intense and scary – her initial terror at coming to in such circumstances, her desperate, self-harming attempts to free herself, and the axe blade coming so close to her head as she is “rescued” by this hard drinking newsman. Anyway, she convinces him of the need to go to Dunwich (a clear nod to Lovecraft, whose work was a clear inspiration for the feeling of all three of these films, though none of them are adaptations of any of his stories), home of the dead priest, and thus, they set off to save the world.

Meanwhile, in Dunwich, odd things start happening. Rotting toddler corpses appear out of nowhere, startling teenage sex offenders. A crack opens up in the wall of the local dive bar, the fresh crevasse possibly leading to otherworldly terrors. A teenage girl is attacked by a mysterious hand shoving rotting, wormy goo into her face, prompting a heart attack. The denizens of the local funeral home start disappearing and turning up in people’s kitchens, I’ve already mentioned the maggot storm, yes maggot storm, and of course, there is the most famous oh-dear-god-why moment of the film (if you can’t take heavy gore, you might skip the next paragraph). Story wise, they eventually close the hell gate…or do they? Duhn, duhn Duuuuhn!!!

Ok, so the centerpiece of the movie: two teenagers are making out in the front seat of a car someplace creepy. The girl stops, having heard something, so the boy (Michele Soavi, director of Stagefright, among many others!) turns on the headlights and for a split second, they see the dead priest in front of them, hanging from a noose, his eyes boring into hers. Then he’s gone. Then he appears outside another window and stares her down until his dark magics start to work on her and her eyes start bleeding – first just a trickle, but it becomes a torrent; then her mouth begins to foam and she starts vomiting out her own guts. This continues for quite some time until, I don’t know, a liver or something comes out. I remember the first time I ever watched this, my jaw on the floor. “What is happening? Why is it happening? Ugh! Ew! Wow! How are they doing this? This is incredible. When will it stop? Why won’t it stop?” This time, I could clearly see when this is no longer a real human head, but a bloody, sheep intestine regurgitating dummy, but on first viewing, I was so shocked by the audaciousness of this crazy, awful, disgusting thing that I didn’t even clock the replacement. It is repulsive, and also just so weirdly amazing (and oh, that poor, poor actress – the bleeding eyes alone must have been so uncomfortable).

There are moments in the movie that don’t work – some acting is leaden, the dubbing is typically bad, and there are things that just do not make much sense. Also, Fulci follows some of his artistic impulses to their logical conclusions, which while being inevitable signs of an auteur, doesn’t always result in the most effective choices. For example, he always had a thing about close-ups of eyes – but here there are whole scenes of dialogue where we only see the speakers’ peepers. But, hey – good for him for following his joy. However, the stuff that does work is breathtaking: the pervasive doom of it all, the unexplained, and probably unexplainable horrible occurrences, the fun play with goopy zombie creatures, surprise skeletons, and EC comics inspired lighting – it all results in a non-cerebral, non-narrative play of horror-ness. And while this engenders a certain surreality, I think this first outing in pure horror is just a taste of what was soon to come.

The Beyond (1981)

Having flexed certain cinematic muscles in the last film, here Fulci’s less narrative, more poetic, and still very, very, very gory approach to horror really comes to fruition. Heads are impaled on iron nails, distressing things are done to eyeballs, bodies are dissolved by lye and acid (not at the same time), faces are destroyed by little hairy creepy crawlies, the dead rise, a child’s head explodes, and there are more close ups of eyes than you can shake a bloody railway spike at – but all of this grue serves an end beyond simple spookhouse shocks and disgust – the gestalt effect is bleakly poetic: a mad dream in which everything at first appears menacing but more or less understandable, but by the end of which, reality comes unmoored and you find yourself hopelessly, eternally adrift. It is an odd, chilling little picture and it has plenty of charming, lovably idiosyncratic, though not always successful, elements, but taken as a whole, it is a real masterpiece of the genre.

Liza Merrill (MacColl returning) inherits a run-down New Orleans hotel where 60 years earlier, a sorcerer had been lynched, tortured to death, and walled up in the basement for practicing black magic. Attempting to fix up the place and make it financially viable, Liza encounters problem after problem. One worker falls from a scaffold, startled by a creepy image in a window. The basement is flooded and the plumber called in to check it out is soon found dead, his eyes squished, floating next to a decrepit, much older corpse. The housekeeper’s head ends up impaled on a spike. What a money pit! 

But desperate for cashflow, Liza’s not going to be deterred, plus, as she says, she’s “lived her whole life in New York and if there’s one thing I’ve learned not to believe in, it’s ghosts!” (for any fans of Community, all I can hear is Britta saying “and I lived in New York City!”) So she keeps plodding ahead, surprisingly unbothered by both the weird goings on and the crusty-white-eyed blind woman (who might not actually exist) who tells her that the hotel stands on a gate of Hell and that it’s in danger of opening. She befriends a grumpy local doctor, John McCabe (David Warbeck), whose apparent belief in science is stronger than his ability to reckon with the supernatural weirdness directly in front of him, and together they fall down a rather hellish rabbit hole.

My tone may be glib as, for all that I love this movie, it is full of odd, weird, nonsensical moments. The acting is stiff (and I’m being kinda charitable). The dialogue strains one’s ability to suspend disbelief (such as when a county clerk (Fulci himself in a cameo) explains that he has to leave his office for a two hour lunch because after weeks on the picket line, the union won this concession – in America in 1981? Not bloody likely – it’s just a hilarious giveaway that this was written by a European – still they do understand something about America – the doctor keeps a loaded revolver in his desk, like you do…). The dubbing is worse than usual and though it was mostly filmed in Louisiana, there’s still some great set dressing signage, such as the notice outside the morgue: “Do Not Entry!” Still, all of these elements that may be deemed faults just make me love it more. That and they also add some levity to an otherwise overwhelmingly desolate, dread filled nightmare of a film.

One of the things I love is how I can’t track the moment when things change. When is the gate to Hell opened? When do Liza and John pass its threshold? When did everything completely stop cohering? It’s never obvious, and while this lack of narrative clarity may be deemed a weakness, I think it’s central to the film’s success. At the beginning of the film, there is a hot, sticky, fetid atmosphere of doom, but the story feels more or less straightforward (weird, gross, and badly dubbed, but straightforward). As far as halfway through the story, I felt like events more or less logically followed, but by the end, everything had come loose. Characters may exist, but also may not. We see an item someplace and then it is gone. Nothing makes sense anymore, but the transition from very weird but essentially understandable, to total dream logic is so smooth as to not notice it happening. Furthermore, this is accompanied by a sojourn into dream geography.

Early in the film, Liza finds an old landscape in the hotel which we had seen the tortured warlock painting before he was killed. It shows a barren grey land, scattered with bodies of the dead. Attacked by an undead employee, Liza and John leave the hotel for his hospital, finding the streets of New Orleans now mysteriously empty. So too is the hospital, except for its dead, which have all started to shamble about. This prompts a somewhat ridiculous action sequence wherein the doctor just cannot pick up on the fact that every time he shoots a dead person in the chest, nothing happens, but if he shoots them in the head, they fall down (also, his revolver seems to hold at least 9 rounds – is that a thing?). Stubbornly, he just keeps aiming for body shots until finally, they escape down a stairwell only to emerge in the basement of Liza’s spooky hotel. After passing through an opening in a wall, they find themselves in the desolate landscape of the previously discovered painting with no sign of the former cellar, no means of egress. Looking at this endless, inhuman expanse, their eyes go white and they are frozen in existential horror.

All three films of the “Gates of Hell” trilogy are often labelled “Lovecraftian,” but this has to be one of the best expressions of Lovecraft’s brand of cosmic horror I’ve seen committed to film. An often fair criticism of old H.P. (beyond the unfortunate racism and xenophobia) is that his stories were rarely character driven, but rather, characters found themselves delving deeper and deeper into the bowels of some otherworldly madness, mere witnesses to the horrors within, doomed to be destroyed by that which they uncovered. That is somewhat the case here, but somehow the above described passage from typical spooky reality into full-blown nightmare makes it work, and the film is really chilling at the end – the horror lands. Reality has unraveled so seamlessly that characters’ (often bad) decisions feel more or less natural and you go along with them. And the place they get to at the end is so ethereally awful, with no warmth, hope, or humanity. It is not the Hell of a Christian mythos, but rather a cosmically unforgiving no-place – a state of lifeless, listless hopelessness more than a metaphysical location.

And along the way, the horror beats are just at the top of the form. There aren’t many jump scares, but one at least really got me. The gore is so very over the top and squirm inducing – the sort of stuff that makes you laugh for how strongly you’re reacting to it, such as the scene when an architect falls from a ladder in the above mentioned clerk’s office and an army of tarantulas come out of nowhere, for no clear reason, and proceed to Eat. His. Damn. Face. Gah! For minutes of full on, gross out, fleshy, bloody, crawly, bitey, “dear god, why is this even happening and I’m pretty sure tarantulas don’t work this way, but still, ewww, ick, ugh!” horror fun. Sometimes the special effects are not totally believable and you can spot the moment when there is no longer a real human face (or a real arachnid for that matter), but a bloody prop, but it really doesn’t matter – the extremity of it all is so over-the-top that the very concept of what is happening (not to mention the rivers of the red stuff) just makes my brain scream. It is delightful in its way.

It also must be said that this is a beautiful film: the steamy setting, the mysterious quality of being lost in a fog, the play of light on beads of sweat forming on a man’s brow as he scrambles to survive. There are often comparisons made between Argento and Fulci, especially as they both took a turn for supernatural work around the same time (Argento’s Inferno has some definite similarities to this week’s films). But whereas Argento took an aestheticized approach to occult horror in his “Three Mothers Trilogy,” Fulci’s work, and particularly The Beyond, is no less artful, for all that it is clearly less aesthetic (if that makes any sense – it works in my mind). The framing of the shots, the edits, the lighting, the totally effective gut-wrenching sequences of bodily destruction – all of it is so intentionally and masterfully executed, and absolutely unique.

The House by the Cemetery (1981)

It’s a bit strange to consider this third entry a part of a “trilogy” with the other two as it lacks any gate to Hell and its tone is decidedly less grand, less apocalyptic. Still, as a more intimate “family moves into a spooky house and spooky things happen” movie, it is still bizarre and wild, with characteristically strange (one might even say ‘crazy’) character beats, atmosphere thick as really melancholy butter, very bloody practical effects (though perhaps less over-the top than the other two) and a surreal, dreamy quality that feels akin to that of the first two films. It also might be the strangest of the three, which can make it the most fun or a bit of a slog depending on how you take your weird.

There is a story, but having fully settled into his personal style of bizarre phantasmagoria, Fulci doesn’t seem particularly invested in us really understanding it. Paul, some kind of scholar, relocates his family from NYC to a small New England town to continue the research of a colleague who recently went mad, murdered his mistress, and hanged himself. Along with his reluctant wife, Lucy (Catriona MacColl back again – maybe it’s her presence that makes these three a trilogy) and their young, gratingly dubbed son, Bob, Paul settles into this creepy house where we’ve already seen a young couple (one of whom is played by Daniela Dora who we recently saw bleeding from the eyes and regurgitating her gastrointestinal tract in The City of the Living Dead after similarly complaining to her boyfriend about his creepy choice of make-out locations) brutally murdered and dragged into the basement (she can’t catch a break).

Of course, this is a bad place to bring your family and it ends poorly for everyone. A mysterious ghost girl keeps telling Bob to stay away from the house, but he’s got no say in the matter and sooner or later, everyone falls prey to the dark force below, the enjoyably named “Doctor Freudstein,” a mad scientist, now giant, worm and slime filled, murderous mound of flesh, who had conducted his evil experiments here many years ago and has been prolonging his life by harvesting the body parts of any who make the mistake of darkening his door.

When we discover the doctor in the end, it is an odd turn, but the film is full of such very strange moments that it doesn’t feel at all out of place. That eerie, menacing, utterly weird quality runs through the whole film. From moment to moment, it’s effective and gloomily unsettling, but it can also feel ridiculous – more so than the first two films this week, I think this really depends on the viewer’s mood and openness to going on this either envelopingly spooky, or absurdly insane ride.

Early on, when they’re still in New York, Bob (a, let’s say, 4 year old boy) has a large framed photograph of an old farmhouse on his wall. Only he can see the ghost girl open the curtains in the photo as she warns him not to go in the house. His mother seems slightly irritated that her son is a bit crazy. Later, of course it turns out to be the house they’re going to – why would it have been on a small child’s bedroom wall in the first place?

One of the more evocative scenes features the ghost girl standing in front of a shop window where she is shocked to see the head fall off a mannequin as its neck burbles up a fountain of blood. When it happens, we don’t know for sure she’s a ghost, but she already feels somewhat unreal and the whole sequence feels puzzlingly hallucinatory. Later in the film, Bob’s seemingly sinister babysitter, Ann (Ania Pieroni, very recognizable from Argento’s Inferno and Tenebrae), who bears some resemblance to the un-headed mannequin, has been sharing odd, menacing looks with others throughout the film (especially Paul – there is a scene that features a volley of close-ups between their respective eyes – and at least one shot of Lucy’s eyes, noticing, as no one speaks but something is happening), and has tried breaking into the forbidden murder basement, finds herself trapped down there and gets her head graphically sawed off. First of all, it’s peculiar that the ghost girl has such a premonition of the death of this side character and not a member of the family she’s trying to warn away (I mean, everybody dies), but it seems stranger to me that this little ghost girl is going window shopping in the first place.

Everyone in the town thinks they’ve seen Paul before, that he had recently visited with his daughter. He denies this and it is never resolved. Had he been here with Ann perhaps? Was it some kind of doppelganger? Was he somehow fated to come to this place? Whatever it is, there is a cryptic feeling of bad portent that hangs over the town and somehow settles on Paul and his family, and he does fall into a kind of obsession, uncovering the truth of Dr. Freudstein. Also, and wholly unrelatedly, he has an epic fight with a fake bat that clamps onto his hand and won’t let go no matter how much he stabs it (seriously, this bit went on for about 25 minutes).

Sometimes characters pick up on the bad vibes and are duly creeped out, but sometimes, they are so blasé about truly disturbing things that it makes you wonder if they see what you have seen, if anything is real. This can add to both the lyrical, looming unreality and the what-is-going-on potential laughability of it all. A favorite moment for me takes place the morning after we’ve seen an estate agent visit the house when no one was home only to get repeatedly stabbed with a fireplace poker and then dragged into the basement, leaving a long streak of blood across the floor. So now it’s the morning and we see creepy babysitter Ann in the kitchen, shot from above, cleaning up what is obviously a huge puddle of blood outside the cellar door, with a look that communicates, “I should probably clean up before someone starts asking questions.” Then Lucy walks in and we shift camera perspective so we see the Ann’s face in the foreground, with Lucy behind her (which means we no longer see the blood). From the previous set up, we know what Lucy should be seeing and it makes sense when she asks, clearly put off by Ann’s dire scowl, what the babysitter is doing. Ann pauses and just says, “I made coffee.” Satisfied, Lucy walks out of frame and a beat later, she’s carrying a tray with coffee service into the bedroom and telling her husband how strange she finds this girl. She never responds to the giant pool of blood. She never mentions the giant pool of blood. Did she actually see the giant pool of blood. Did I?

You can take this as a hilarious mistake, as bad acting, as nonsense, but I feel like giving the benefit of the doubt and calling it intentional. I think we are being wrong-footed at every turn and not in service of some kind of convoluted plot twists as might have been true in an early giallo thriller, but rather in service of a non-rational state that the horror seeks to inculcate. This runs through the film, culminating in a final moment where it seems that Bob alone has escaped Freudstein’s attacks, only to realize that he is now a ghost child himself, walking down the lane with the girl and her mother, now part of the Freudstein family (maybe he was always a part of the family – I don’t know). It is a somber, haunting ending to a delightfully specific film.  

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So those are the “Gates of Hell” films. I’ve watched a lot of horror movies and I swear, there’s really nothing else like them. And while some threads can be found between them and the earlier works discussed last week, they are also so unlike where Lucio began his journey into darker fare. That said, they won’t be for everyone. Some won’t be able to stomach the gore and some won’t have patience for the slow, dreamy non-linearity. But if you have any appetite for such things, especially in such a combination (delivering the most insane, bloody terror along with something poetic and occasionally elegiac), these are just masterpieces: ridiculous, disgusting masterpieces.

Suspiria:  Cinematic Pleasure, Candy Colored Joy

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Following last week’s look at Argento’s output in the eighties, I felt like staying on this train and finally tackling what might be considered his opus, Suspiria (of course, others will argue the point, but that’s what I suppose the internet is for).  Regardless of whether or not it’s his best work (and it very well may be), it is easily his most iconic and recognizable. It was the first of his films that I saw and it surely made an impression (I also expect it was my first Italian horror film way back when, and thus my first exposure to some of the typical traits thereof, such as the characteristic dubbing).

And yet, for all that it holds a place of honor among fans and critics, I think there is sometimes a kind of snooty gatekeeping reaction against it. “Oh sure, you like Suspiria. But everyone’s seen that; you can’t really call yourself a serious horror fan until you can comment incisively on Jenifer (an Argento-directed episode of the anthology TV show, Masters of Horror) and the collected works of Umberto Lenzi, Bruno Mattei, and Joe D’Amato.” Additionally, given the divisive nature of its 2018 remake (which I really love and have written about here), I think many fans of Guadagnino’s film (criticized by some for how it differs from the original), have thus taken a defensive posture against the original, or at least, have cooled on it. While I understand that emotional response, I’d encourage anyone in that camp to revisit Argento’s film. Having re-watched it a couple of times recently for this post, I can attest that it holds up as a very special movie and is worth watching with fresh eyes. So, let’s get into it…

Suspiria (1977)

I may not watch it so often, but every time I do, I get immediately excited. The opening scene is just such a thrill (in which not much really happens, but the way it doesn’t happen is so cinematic and magical). Our main character, Suzy, arrives at an airport in Germany late at night, and it is immediately the most gorgeously shot airport I’ve ever seen (not a gorgeous airport mind you, but gorgeously shot). As she walks towards the exit, every time the automatic doors open, a storm rages outside and the musical theme creeps in, only to cut out the second the doors have closed.

It’s as if she’s in this liminal space of travel, still between worlds, still protected within its walls, but outdoors, a gale of menacing supernatural force howls. Finally outside, buffeted by the wind and the rain, she eventually succeeds at hailing a taxi and has a hilarious interaction with the driver, familiar to anyone who’s spent much time abroad – she says the street she’s going to multiple times and he just shrugs, not understanding and not caring; finally she shows him the address and he goes “Ah, Escherstraße,” pronouncing it, to my ears, identically to how she had been saying it, and starts to drive. Now moving, her face is bathed in ever changing colored lights. It’s not realistic – I don’t think she would be lit this way by actual florescent signs and streetlights, but it feels real while it is happening and this disorienting chromatic play beautifully situates her as a small, wet, fragile being alone in a very foreign, incomprehensible, and unforgiving land.

When the taxi pulls up at her destination (the dance academy at which she has come to study), the deep red and gold building looms like a monster above her and the rain comes down in buckets, highlighted by an improbably bright light, just out of view. She sees a girl shouting in the doorway and running off into the night, but is denied entry herself by the voice on the intercom and has to return to the impatient driver to be taken to a hotel for the night.

In the car, she catches a glimpse of that girl, terrified, running through the woods from some unknown threat. We then follow that girl into a shockingly gorgeous art deco interior where she will shortly be murdered in the next scene (and that murder will of course be a visual spectacle – gory, scary, and stunningly composed, every rich streak of blood in its place).

I’m not going to describe every frame of the movie, though almost every shot could be framed, so consciously and artfully has it been crafted, but I wanted to give some sense of how strong it starts, of its atmosphere of overwhelming audio-visual elation.

Sometimes Suspiria is dismissed as style over substance, as that colorful movie, as an exercise in empty visual excess, but at the end of the day, what is the medium of cinema? It’s just light, brighter or darker, in different hues, accompanied by sound; thus, I think it short sighted to discount work which gives so much attention, so much care to exactly those elements, lovingly, joyfully, successfully crafting a sensory experience unlike any other (which still delivers other cinematic value as well) simply because the story is simple.

Suspiria is basically a fairy tale. A young girl (Suzy Bannion) goes to a mysterious dance academy in the middle of a dark forest. Everyone there is strange and standoffish, and the teachers are demanding. Struck by a light reflecting off a crystal in the hallway, Suzy falls sick and is forced to board at the school against her will while she recovers. Her diet is controlled and it’s implied that the wine is drugged or enchanted. There are odd disappearances and deaths; those who displease the instructors meet bad ends. Suzy feels compelled to investigate and comes to learn that they are a coven of witches, led by the often invisible old crone who is perhaps leeching some of the young students of life. Having killed the witch and broken her power, Suzy escapes the school as it burns, the other witches screaming within. Technically, these are spoilers, but in a fairy tale like this, I really don’t think it matters.

There are some absurdities along the way and things that just don’t make sense (it seems obligatory to ask why any dance academy, even one run by evil witches would keep a room filled with razor wire – also, in one scene the pianist who provides music for classes seems to be playing an orchestra – we see him at the piano, but we hear a string section and perhaps some woodwinds until he stops playing), but the simple story actually plays out with consistency, and serves as a structure to hold glorious images and spectacular sequences of dread, suspense, and optic extremity.

And the quality of those images really cannot be oversold. Leaning hard into the fairy tale of it all, Argento instructed the cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, to base the colors of the film on those of Disney’s Snow White, and utilized the same Technicolor film printing process that had been used on The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, thought outdated at that time (after printing Suspiria, the last Technicolor equipment in Italy was dismantled). Furthermore, Tivoli mostly eschewed typical colored gels, instead creating screens of colorful velvets and tissue paper which he used to paint the light, intending a greater tactile effect, which I feel he achieved. For more on Tivoli, I recommend this fascinating exploration of his work.

From moment to moment, especially exploring the luscious interiors of the academy, or the building where Pat is killed, my breath catches in my throat. There is really is something to the deeply saturated colors; this is as true of the crushed velvet on the walls as it is of the light coming through the stained glass in the ceiling, or of the bright red, paint-like blood trailing down a victim’s body. The whole film is a sensory delicacy, a delight.

And light and color are not the only sensory elements of significance. In this, their second collaboration with Argento, Goblin crafted an inimitable, dominating score. It features the synth-prog groove one would expect of them, but is also just really aggressive – sometimes discordant, sometimes jarring. Thus, it brings certain scenes to life, adding a sense of the arcane even to moments which lack other markers of danger – such as when Suzy speaks with two psychiatrists about witches (like you do) in a bright, modern, sunlit courtyard. Between the music and the camera’s ever shifting position, Suspiria never lets you forget you’re watching a horror film, even while listening to some doctors whose specialty seems to be expository dialogue.

But regarding that exposition (probably one of the least gripping aspects of the film), I do appreciate something about the lore. Inspired by a prose poem by Thomas De Quincey, describing an opium dream about three ‘mothers of sorrow,’ matching the three fates, or the three graces, the screenplay by Argento and his partner, Daria Nicolodi posits witches as powerful, menacing, and malicious, but doesn’t bring any typical Christian mythology into it. Satan’s never mentioned, nor is sin. I love when we can have supernatural threats that linger just beyond our understanding without having to buy into something that feels like an infomercial for the church. It is nice not to be plagued by religiosity in an occult horror film, but beyond that, I think it’s just more interesting, more evocative. This world has its own mythos and we catch only the smallest glimpse of it, letting it loom that much larger in the shadows. This will be satisfyingly expanded on in Inferno.

Even when it feels obvious that story beats have been crafted primarily to set up the next visual payoff, that payoff never disappoints, such as when the maggots falling from the ceiling (thanks to meat kept in the attic, which has spoiled, presumably due to its proximity to evil witches and not because it was being stored, unrefrigerated, in an attic) results in all the students and teachers having to sleep in a large dance studio, the boys, girls, and teachers divided by white sheets. The lights are turned off and suddenly, all of the screens are backlit in red and I go, “oooh, cool!” Behind Suzy and her new friend Sara, ghostly silhouettes flit across the screen, until one particularly decrepit figure beds down exactly behind them and starts to snore in a gasping, rattling, unsettling fashion.  Sara feverishly whispers to Suzy about how that must be the school’s true headmistress, said to be away. Nothing really happens here, but it is an intense scene, visually striking, and heightening the story’s sense of mystery and threat.

One other key to the film’s success which could not be overstated is the center provided by Jessica Harper, who plays Suzy. Apparently Argento had originally wanted the dancers to all be children no older than 12, but the producer (his father) was concerned that censors wouldn’t pass a film with such violence if it featured kids (the script, however was never changed, which explains some of the childish interactions of the clearly adult actresses – also, to maintain the feeling of children, all doorknobs on the set were placed at about Harper’s head level).

Slight of frame, with big, gently curious eyes, Harper brings a childlike quality to the role, without at all behaving immaturely. She instead carries an awareness, a self-assurance throughout as she questions the stern headmistress about the killings, interviews psychiatrists about witchcraft, or squares off against the ancient occultist behind the curtain. Her stature and costuming implies vulnerability and youth, but her character is willful, steady, and intelligent.

Furthermore, Harper plays every moment with a kind of quiet sincerity, lending credence to the sometimes wild turn of events around her. Sometimes characters don’t seem to realize that they are in a horror movie, but Suzy seems to from the first time that the airport doors slide open and the sounds of mysterious threat starts screaming at her through the pounding rain. She can’t hear the soundtrack, but it feels like she is properly unnerved by it nonetheless. Without her at the film’s core, the often mad, if beautiful, pageant of aesthetic horrors might really not hold together (a criticism that could be levied against Argento’s follow up, Inferno).

Finally, it would be an oversight not to give any attention to the violence of the film, which is also unique, stunning, and potent. As is often the case with Argento, it is in the kill scenes that his cinematic flair most comes to play. Pat’s face pressed through the window, the knife seen entering her still beating heart, her friend dead on the floor of this grand lobby, a pane of glass splitting her face, the blind pianist threatened in the wide open, empty town square in the middle of the night, fascistically imperial monuments on all sides, only to be attacked from a totally unexpected direction, Sara in the razor wire, before the blade is pulled, graphically across her flesh, Markos with the crystal peacock feather pressed through her rotting neck; each kill is preceded by a sustained, tense game of teasing suspense and shock, and with few exceptions, each death is seductively beautiful.

Even in its brutality, the violence of the film is artful. I feel like each drop of blood, each pin in an eye, each shard of glass piercing the skin has been placed with great care, balancing horror movie scares that can startle or disgust with visual compositions that the eye doesn’t want to look away from.

Are there moments that don’t work? Sure (a certain bat attack and fake dog mouth come to mind). Does my attention sometimes wander a bit until the next extraordinary visual or sequence is presented? Yeah, I’ll admit it. But for me, those things just don’t matter so much. It is a unique monster of a film, the product of a singular vision, and a tremendous success. Though the tale is one of murder and horrors, full of hostility and brutality and unsettling moments and gore, the total effect for me is one of delight, every frame filled with the obvious joy of artists making exactly the thing that most excited them, and doing it so very well.

It must also be said that I do dearly love Guadagnino’s 2018 remake as well. They are such very different films, but each revels in a kind of excess (Argento’s being a maximalist aesthetic trip and Guadagnino’s being so overfull with ideas and history and character), and each creates a space in which I love to dwell. I think in a case like this, they need not be in competition and a fan need not take sides. You can love all your kids, but maybe you love some of them in different ways.

Horror Holiday 2022– Slovakia, Austria, Italy, Czechia

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No matter what you do, however important it is, however much you may love it, if you don’t take a break occasionally, things get heavy – you can get worn down, burned out. This is a perspective I only acquired after moving to Europe, where holiday time is really valued, and over the years, I finally learned to value it as well.

This is all to say, that for the last two weeks, I haven’t watched a horror movie and I haven’t written a post (hooray for working ahead and automating postings) – I also haven’t taught any classes or proofread any texts (which is how I earn my pay) or had any rehearsals or shows (which is what I do for pleasure). I’ve been on a much needed and long looked forward to vacation. But I haven’t totally abandoned my responsibilities – as I’ve been gallivanting about, relaxing and playing tourist, I’ve managed to visit a few locations significant to the genre (thanks to my patient and generous wife who isn’t a horror fan, but was game to shape some of our vacation around it) and I have returned with a few photos worth sharing. I know, I know – looking at someone else’s vacation photos can be pretty dull, but I think you might like these. So, without further ado, here is my “horror holiday.”

Orava Castle (Slovakia)

I’ve been living in Kraków in southern Poland since 2008, and I just recently learned that the castle used for Murnau’s Nosferatu is only about a 2.5 hour drive away, so we started our trip there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch a shot of the film’s most iconic view of the castle as it was only visible from the winding road and there was no safe place to pull over and take a picture, but it was really exciting to come around the bend and get to see it – lots of pointing and going “ooh, ooh, ooh!”

And the castle itself is really worth checking out if you’re ever in the neighborhood.  It’s up on some craggy rocks and consists of many levels, climbing the cliff face. Ascending the many steep staircases, I really felt sorry for Murnau’s crew, lugging heavy 20s film equipment up all those steps. There are cavernous tunnels when you first enter, which do feel appropriate for the film, and the castle itself is really quite pretty and impressive: interestingly stratified, surrounded by forests, and topped with wooden shingles.

Plus, I got this fun fridge magnet.

Graz (Austria)

Ok, this is rather a stretch, to be fair. Really I just went to Graz because I’ve driven though it on the highway many times on the way to other places and heard it was pretty (plus, I’m tickled by its highway signs, such as “Graz to meet you!” and “Graz you later” (imagine them voiced by a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator) – what’s not to love?). BUT Styria (the state that Graz is in) is where Le Fanu’s Carmilla is set (which came up again and again in my recent posts on Lesbian Vampire movies), and General Spielsdorf at one point relates how a more experienced doctor was sent for from Graz to treat his ward for her affliction (this doctor was sadly unsuccessful at treating being-bitten-by-a-vampire). So the city isn’t really connected to the book or its many adaptations, but it is lovely and it can give some flavor to inform the imagination when reading Le Fanu. I found this hilltop garden beneath the city’s clock tower to have a kind of Carmilla vibe.

The Tomb of Dante Alighieri (Ravenna, Italy)

Most of the vacation, we were driving around Italy, and while we went to Ravenna to see the 5th and 6th century Byzantine mosaics, when I realized it also featured Dante’s tomb, I thought that could be worth a visit. It’s a tomb. I guess Dante’s in there.  Ok, it’s not that much to look at really, but I figure that though he was not a “horror author,” per se, the amount of time he spent detailing the horrors of the underworld with great creativity and vividness qualifies him for inclusion. Plus, it’s kind of striking that Inferno is really the only thing people ever talk about – when’s the last time you heard Dante’s Purgatorio or Paradiso referenced? I remember reading and enjoying Inferno in high school and I think for pretty much everyone, wading through the endless, poetically apt tortures of the unjust is just more fun than whatever he gets up to in Paradise. Maybe he shot himself in the literary foot by starting his trilogy with what was ironically the most enjoyable part.

Villa Adriana (Tivoli, Italy)

Now, this was special on a number of levels. We chose it as it’s where the exteriors for Vadim’s Blood and Roses (which I wrote about here) were filmed, and it was certainly cool to find locations from the film, but it’s also just a really impressive site from antiquity (from the 2nd century AD) which is worth seeing in its own right. Furthermore, while it is only a half hour’s drive from Rome, it is rather off the beaten path and it’s rare to find a site like this that isn’t swarming with other tourists. 

It’s a pleasure to so peacefully explore its vast grounds, with extensive ruins of a massive villa built as a pleasant retreat for the emperor.

More significantly for the purposes of this blog, it’s just so rewarding to find the gorgeous locations used in Vadim’s rich, sensual film and be able to take in their charm and atmosphere without the hubbub of a thousand other people around you.

It’s easy to visualize Carmilla/Mircalla floating through the olive groves or chasing after a peasant girl. The reflecting pool is still intact, if a bit murky, and the wall to the estate is easily identifiable, but I couldn’t figure out which ruins exactly had served as the tomb. Anyway, it is a beautiful place which can still evoke the atmosphere of the film. If you ever visit Rome by car, it’s really worth the detour.

Villa Sciarra (Rome, Italy)

Tucked away in a small city park in a residential neighborhood of Rome is the building and garden used for exteriors of the fashion house in Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. It can be a little bit of a hike to get to (especially if you make the same series of wrong turns that we did and go the long way round, on a really hot, sunny day, up lots of stairs, lacking water), but when you arrive, it is a peaceful, pleasant little park and if you’re a fan of the film, the fountain is just iconic.

Interestingly, the park is also filled with statues of chases (satyrs and such trying to catch one comely lass or another) which feels appropriate for Bava’s early, gory, and ever so stylish body count film. I recommend it, but if you ever think you might go, message me and I’ll walk you through the route not to take.

Capuchin Crypt (Rome, Italy)

There is no connection to any film here, but ye gods, what a creepy, creepy place.  So this is a “skull chapel,” a site sometimes found in monasteries, where bones and skulls have been artfully arranged to create contemplative sites in which to meditate on mortality, to be confronted with death and thus be compelled to better consider life’s choices.

Photo by Dnalor_01, Wikimedia commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Now, I’ve seen a couple of these before and while it is morbid how they are filled with bones, they tend to be pretty solemn, serious places. This was different. A combination of something from Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and the scene in Alan Parker’s The Wall where Pink has gone mad in his hotel room, obsessively arranging trash, matchbooks and drugs into mandalas on the floor before shaving off his eyebrows and his nipples, this felt like the compulsive, whimsical, insane, driven work of a crazy person, toiling away in these rooms with a big bag of baby rib cages, making his art.

Photo by Dnalor_01, Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Sadly, you’re not allowed to take photos, so I’m sharing some images collected online, but take my word for it: it’s a crazy, artful, creepy place (and it may not be for everyone – even if you appreciate pretty dark stuff, it can be disturbing seeing such peculiar work done with actual remnants of (a lot of) dead bodies).

Profondo Rosso (Rome, Italy)

This was one location that I couldn’t possibly skip. In fact, when we first arrived, it was closed due to holidays and we had to reschedule the second half of our trip to return to Rome for it later. Co-owned by Dario Argento (and named after one of his best flicks) and Luigi Cozzi (of Contagion and Paganini Horror), who is usually behind the counter, this tiny neighborhood book shop is a real Mecca of horror not to be missed by any fan. Ok, most of the books (and so many look really interesting) are in Italian, so if you can’t read Italian, you’ll be stuck just looking at the pictures, but there was a small selection in English too (I picked up one retrospective of Giallo films and another on Lucio Fulci) and a nice collection of t-shirts, magnets, tote bags and records (all of which I also dropped some euros on).

Past that, the store is filled to the rafters with old film posters and also a bunch of rubber masks, greasepaint, and monster costumes such as you might find at a Spirit Halloween store. I don’t know how much they move the rubber masks, but their inclusion somehow adds to the store’s charm.

Furthermore, in the basement, for a well-spent 5 euros, you can check out a small, bizarre, kind of informative, kind of hokey, thoroughly lovable museum, featuring some props from films that Argento directed and/or produced (e.g., Demoni). It’s got a kind of house of wax / spookhouse vibe, and features narration taking you through some description of the different tableaus on offer. There are some specific props that are fun to see, but mainly, it’s just a really lovely, sweet, somewhat grotty experience. These little leftovers are so obviously treasured by the proprietors and the guests, and that lends it all a kind of magic.   

Generally each display centered on one particular film, such as Phenomena (1985),
Opera (1987),
or Demons (1985).

The Haunting of Night Vale (Prague, Czechia)

This was something a little different, and a delightful way to cap off the trip. On the way back to Poland, we made a detour towards Prague to catch The Haunting of Night Vale, a live performance of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, currently touring Europe.  I went to college with Cecil (the voice of Night Vale and also the co-host of Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No 9, which I recently had the pleasure of guesting on) and was so happy to get to visit with him briefly and see the show.

If you’re a listener of the podcast (which takes the form of a local public radio events calendar for a small town where everything is spooky and weird), it is an absolute treat to see the live performance. Just witnessing the animation and character of it all is a great pleasure, and everyone involved is doing great work. And if you’re not a regular listener, it doesn’t matter – you’ll be able to appreciate the story of “a house being haunted before it’s been built” all the same. As far as horror content goes, this is not a horror piece, so much as it trades in horror elements for comic, literary, and emotional effect.  They’re still touring a while longer, so if you’re in one of their upcoming cities, I really recommend checking it out.

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And so, that is that.  No movies, but I think following the star of horror led me to some really wonderful little experiences along the way on this trip (also, we didn’t only do horror stuff – there was plenty of time for Etruscan ruins, lovely hilltop towns, and endless wine and good food). I hope wherever you are, you get some chance to take a break and catch your breath. But now, back to work with me…

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Also, this post is going up on this blog’s one year anniversary. One year and 71 posts in, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve done so far and some plans I have for the future. I think occasionally I’ve managed to corral my thoughts into shape and it’s an honor that anyone at all would choose to read them. Whoever you are, thank you for lending me your attention for a bit. I hope you find something among these pages to be of value.

Lesbian Vampire Films – Part I

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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.

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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.