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Lesbian Vampires 5: Spanish Sexploitation in the 70s

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So last week, I had planned to cover four films in my ongoing series on the Lesbian Vampire Subgenre, but I really fell down a rabbit hole on the first two selections (Requiem for a Vampire and Alucarda), wrote my longest post to date, and ran out of steam before I could cover the next two. So this week, we’re just going to plow ahead and get some first impressions out there on my next two entries: Daughter of Dracula (1972) and Vampyres (1974).  For all that I loved last week’s films, they only nominally featured “Lesbian Vampires.” The same cannot be said for today’s entries.

As mentioned last week, if you’re interested in the rest of the series, I invite you to check out Part I (Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary), Part II (The Vampire Lovers, Daughters of Darkness, The Shiver of the Vampires, and Vampyros Lesbos), Part III (Nadja, Blood of the Tribades, and Bit), and Part IV (Requiem for a Vampire and Alucarda). Also, perhaps stick around and have a look at some of the other, non-Lesbian Vampire offerings on the site. 🙂

There will most likely be extensive spoilers ahead (also, if you’re in an office or something, there could be a stray nipple if that’s an issue for you), so enter at your own risk…

Daughter of Dracula (1972)

This Jess Franco flick was released one year after his superior Vampyros Lesbos and circles many similar images, themes, and impressions (it was also one of 11 films he directed in 1972 – the man worked). That said, for all that there are elements here worthy of one’s time and discussion, it must be said that this is not the place to start with either Lesbian Vampire movies or Franco’s catalogue. However, I think it does probably encapsulate much of what a Jess Franco picture is like: languid, gorgeous, moody, fleshy, erotic, occasionally absurd or campy, and ultimately utterly unconcerned with clarity, consistency, or even character (alliterate much?). His work is not for everyone – and that is certainly true of this early 70s sexploitation outing.

It is a vampire movie, but I’d be hard pressed to call it horror. The story is hard to follow at best and non-existent at worst. And while it devotes a significant portion of its runtime to the naked female form, during which its nominal “story” screeches to a halt (often a defining trait of ‘exploitation’ work), I’m not even sure that it’s ever particularly “sexy” at least not as conventionally understood.

Franco would reportedly shoot multiple movies at the same time and stitch them together in the editing booth (getting more than one picture on the producer’s dime and only paying actors and crew for one film) and this could result in a disjointed feel – as if the film we’re watching had been assembled out of a couple of different pictures (which sometimes is exactly what he did – it’s one of the ways that he was credited as having directed more than 200 films), and that is certainly the case here – it feels as if the main character is never in the same room as most of the rest of the cast, but is following her own story, separate from the giallo-esque mystery that occupies the rest of the players. And her story is barely even a ‘story,’ so much as it’s just her seductively playing the piano or making love to her beautiful cousin in long sequences which aren’t even always exactly ‘sex’ scenes so much as ‘squirmingly lounging in bed together, naked, slowly flopping about before the fangs come out’ scenes. But hey, they do look like they’re having a good time, which is often more than you get with mainstream sex scenes.

All of this may seem pretty negative out the gate, but I did actually rather like the film, particularly on a second viewing (during the first, I was just too sleepy to put myself in the right headspace to enjoy this kind of movie making). I’ve only seen maybe 5 Franco films so far, but my impression is that to appreciate his talents (and I do believe he was talented and had something artistic to offer the world), you have to watch the films differently than most typical narrative cinema. It’s not the abstract surrealism of Rollin, but it is a step removed from narrative arc, more simply luxuriating in the richness of the seen. While he seemed obsessed with certain themes or images (vampires, Poe, old crumbling castles, the sea, death, the body – particularly women’s), I suspect ‘telling stories’ per se just wasn’t that interesting to him. And it doesn’t need to be. Can’t a film be of value based on a different rubric? Can’t he just make beautifully shot films with gothic themes and loads of nudity because that’s what he loves – and well, there was a market for it?

In this case, the minimal story, such as it is, concerns Luisa Karlstein (Brett Nichols), her name our requisite connection to Carmilla, who comes to her mother’s death bed to be told that the family has long been cursed by vampirism and that the original count can still be found, undead, in the nearby family crypt. Concurrently, there is a police investigation into the many beautiful naked women that are being found with mysterious and fatal neck wounds, seemingly carried out by a perpetrator in a long coat with a wide brimmed hat, face covered with a black scarf, and carrying a cane.

This investigation largely feels like its own separate film and though Luisa is eventually revealed (unsurprisingly as we see her flash her fangs and bite women throughout the film), to be the killer in question, it feels as if she isn’t even in that detective film. Most of her time is spent striking up a sexual/bitey relationship with her cousin, Karine (Anne Libert), a childhood friend with whom she’d always shared an attraction. Also, we occasionally see her eye, in very giallo fashion, through the crack of a door, spying on some unsuspecting woman who’s getting undressed and will soon be bitten.

For all of the issues one could have with this film, no one could say it isn’t a Lesbian Vampire movie (which could be argued about both of last week’s movies). Honestly, on some levels, it is more of one than many much better films that I’ve covered in this series, given how so many of the vampires in question also engage in sexy time with men (Bisexual Vampire erasure is a thing). Luisa, however, is only ever shown to take interest in women, either sexually or as food. But beyond ticking boxes to be thus designated, I do also want to underline the merits of this piece.

First of all, it is simply, beautiful. The on location photography along the coast of Portugal is frequently breathtaking, whether viewing a crumbling castle, seagulls on the beach where a nude corpse will soon be found, or the ornate Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra (which I was excited to spot because I’d been there on vacation a few years back and it really is a very cool, interesting place – it’s always fun to see in person a historical sight used for a Lesbian Vampire movie).

Franco catches light and warmth and texture so evocatively – water sparkles more brilliantly that it does in life, old buildings loom with delicate menace and tired grace, and flesh seems so soft, full of life, yielding, sanguine, and lovely. From the snap zooms and play with focus to the sensuality of night shoots by natural light, everything about the film is just so aesthetically crafted and captured.

Otherwise, there are loads of moments that really click. Some performances are surprisingly effective, such as Alberto Dalbés who plays the inspector with such weary, bemused exasperation, or Daniel White as the current Count Karlstein, who is suspected of the murders, but is really just running around on his wife. And of course, Franco himself plays the cuckolded assistant, obsessed with the looming threat of supernatural danger.

While the narrative is clunky and hard to piece together, there is a unifying theme of attraction-desire-need-betrayal, and the whole piece works as a series of evocative glimpses into these emotional states.

Most striking is the above-mentioned repeated motif of Luisa’s eye in the crack of a door. There are a few extended sequences, obviously targeted at a sexploitation market, of women stripping down in an unhurried, surprisingly non sexual fashion, as they prepare for bed or a bath, before they finally see their assailant and scream as we cut to black. Each time, we jump repeatedly, over the course of multiple minutes, between the image of the nude woman at peace, unsuspectingly going about her business, wholly relaxed, all accompanied by some gentle, easygoing music, to an extreme close up of Luisa’s eye, as open as it can be, appearing shocked (as if she really hadn’t expected what was revealed under various discarded undergarments), along with an intense musical stinger. Then we return to the intimate relaxation of a woman simply taking her time. I find it interesting that the eye does not indicate lust or arousal, but rather being overwhelmed by the immensity of what is seen. This is a film that wants to look, that takes pleasure in looking. And what it sees is often slow and unperturbed (both in terms of sexuality and in the face of imminent death). But if this was being sold to shock and titillate, it tracks that the observing eye would be that image of intensity, of more than what can be expected or contained.

And speaking of ‘more than,’ there are some delightfully campy moments, such as the few appearances of Franco regular, Howard Vernon, as the decrepit, undead progenitor of the family line. Occasionally his coffin lid raises, his eyes pop open, and, if he’s lucky, he manages to sit up, sometimes very suddenly. And that is all he ever does. He never gets out of his coffin. He never has any lines. He never does anything at all. His biggest moment of action is when he just lies there and Luisa drops a topless woman on top of him so he can have something to eat. Then she closes the lid. Can he get up? Is he supposed to be an image of broken age, impotent, but evil, infusing the land with his darkness, but unable to take actions himself? Or did Franco just bring his friend in for a day, slap some fangs in his mouth, film him looking creepy in a coffin a few times and send him home, and this is what he had to show for it? Either way, it is a fun, campy element, which may also carry a touch of something evocatively tragic.

This is certainly a peculiar little film, and I think few would exactly call it “good,” but if you are open to its pleasures, they are there to be had, and I think it’s interesting to take in what might be deemed a ‘lesser feature’ by this intriguing euro-sleaze auteur. But again, don’t watch it yet if you don’t already like Franco. If, however, you do and want to see more, seek it out.

Vampyres (1974)

José Ramón Larraz’s film is a bit of a departure from much of the Lesbian Vampire canon. While it does directly feature women who are clearly lesbians (or at least bisexual) and are also clearly vampires (but maybe ghosts as well?), it strikes a different tone from so many of the other entries on this list. A bit of an early seventies exploitation piece, it is filled with the gratuitous nudity one might expect from the genre, but more than most, it really leans into being a horror film (rather than a moody, somewhat abstract fever dream); and it is a fun one at that. It has ominous, spooky atmosphere, people exploring scary places they shouldn’t, a real sense of threat, and while I feel the audience is situated more on the side of the Sapphic vampires in question, when violence finally strikes, it is brutal and gory, and those pretty ladies are really frighteningly monstrous. It’s all pretty great.

In short, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) rise from their graves every night to go hitchhiking along remote country roads to pick up men, take them back to an abandoned mansion, sometimes bed them (hence the bisexuality), get them wasted on fine (possibly drugged) wine from a ‘remote region near the Carpathian mountains,’ slice them open, and feast on the wet, red stuff within, leaving their naked, bloody bodies in their own crashed cars on the side of the road. Our story centers on one such man, Ted (Murray Brown), whom Fran picks up and decides to keep for a few nights (which makes Miriam nervous), and also a pair of young campers, John and Harriet, who have parked their camper on the grounds of said picturesque abandoned mansion to do some fishing and painting.

We regularly shift perspective between Fran and Miriam, living their best unlives together, seemingly taking great pleasure in their nightly games, and in each other (though they occasionally sleep with these men, it really feels like their only real relationship is with one other – the men are meat); Ted, as he is trapped – sexually, emotionally, and eventually bodily, slowly realizing his own impending doom as his life is sapped away; and the young camping couple, with Harriet as the classic horror movie wife who realizes that scary things are afoot only to be consistently disbelieved and belittled by her husband, or boyfriend as the case may be.

Off the bat (boom, tish), the film really feels like a horror movie. From the double murder in the cold open (more on that later), to Harriet’s immediate discomfort with their campsite, a hand slapping against their window in the night (presumably a victim trying to escape), to Ted’s first morning after sleeping with Fran, waking in an empty bed as she’d disappeared before morning light, feeling weirdly drained and discovering an ugly gash on his forearm.

The music builds tension. There are legitimate jump scares. And there is violent, gory death that, while still sexual in its way, is a far cry from the more artistic offerings in most other Lesbian Vampire pictures. I mean, I don’t want to set expectations too high – this is surely not the scariest movie you’re ever going to see, but it does go for the dread, the terror, and the shock of the body viscerally reduced to flesh and blood.

While I really do like this film, one criticism I can make is that it does drag a bit in the middle, and I think that may be to do with the absence of a clear protagonist to follow, though the shifting perspective does make for a very interesting film. The easiest character to identify with, I suppose, who really feels the most like what we will come to know as a ‘final girl,’ is Harriet (Sally Faulkner). She just wants to have a pleasant holiday with her partner, but creepy things are happening, she notices, and ignored or mocked for her insight, she takes some initiative and investigates. It does not end well for her (understatement), and she has one of the smallest parts in the film.

Then there is Ted. I don’t like Ted. Sorry. I can vicariously get creeped out along with him, going along on his ride into dangerous circumstances, feeling his dread as he senses that all doors are slamming shut around him, but I just don’t feel like rooting for him to live. Interestingly, I’d say this is true of all the men we see taken home and victimized, and he’s just the one we spend the most time with. None of them are shown to be ‘bad guys’ per se – Fran and Miriam are not exclusively preying on rapists or abusers (ala a more recent Lesbian Vampire picture, Bit), but they all feel like people I wouldn’t really choose to hang out with. Entitled, pushy, know-it-all guys, it’s hard not to feel like they all ‘have it coming.’ But then I have to second guess myself – why do I feel that way exactly?

Sure, they meet some beautiful women on the road, give them a lift and it turns out that these lovely ladies want them to come back to their place to drink fine wine and have sex. Nothing is wrong with any of that, right? They aren’t shown to be predators. We aren’t even informed that they are cheating on their wives or anything. And yet, it’s hard to be on their side. While I don’t want to fall into a Reagan-era slasher-esque sex-negative judgmentalism, I just don’t like them and I’m perfectly glad for the girls to drink their fill. Thus, since Ted, our primary male victim, is essentially also our main character, the story loses some drive in the second act due to my ambivalence regarding whether he lives or dies.

Maybe it’s just that the film really does rightly belong to Fran and Miriam, as does the audience’s sympathies (at least mine; I can’t speak for the majority of viewers in 1974). And they are easy to love. Fran has this sardonic, worldly, knowing charm as she lures these men home and it is a pleasure to accompany her in this pursuit. Without being overly arch, her whole character seems to grow out of Dracula’s iconic “I never drink…wine.” In contrast, Miriam just plays everything so genuinely, so sweet. She can really sell her interest in whatever some guy is blathering on about. Light and dark in their respective personas, they make a nice pair. And it is interesting the degree to which they really have no interpersonal drama. No one seems tortured by eternity or the need to kill and feed, and beyond Miriam urging Fran to finish Ted off before he becomes a problem, they seem happy together.

Maybe there is a dramatic flaw in that they don’t seem to especially want anything they don’t have, and they aren’t in any way pressed to change. They like hunting and killing these men – so they do. They like squirming about in bed, naked and bloody, having torn some guy apart and then having sex in the shower. They do that as well. One might expect an element of jealousy to enter the picture – either about Fran’s pet blood cow, Ted, or about one of them seducing Harriet. None of that happens. So while for Ted, there is drama in his capture and torment, and while for Harriet, there is suspense in her investigations, the characters we most enjoy watching (again, I should really only speak for myself) are oddly content.

But, hey – good for them. The movie begins with the two of them making love on a bed before some shadowy male figure barges in and shoots them over and over. At the very end of the film, we hear from an estate agent that this scene had happened many years ago in the house and that the unknown murdered girls had been buried here, such that this old mansion is enticingly haunted. If their inciting event, their bloody, cruel murder, probably by some jealous boyfriend or husband, is what somehow made them into vengeful, misandrist, undead killers, then they deserve a modicum of happiness along the way.

It’s nice that they get to have that with each other. The gentle love and contentment here even sets us up for a shock when we finally see the blood flow – when push comes to shove, they are really and truly scary monsters. This is especially true close to the end, when they dispatch Harriet – not their typical target, but necessary under the circumstances – it is quite a rough scene, especially as it takes on a sexualized component, stripping her as she screams and begs, before slashing her throat.

Whereas the last few entries in this series were simply unconcerned with plot or continuity (and therefore, it felt pointless to pick them apart), this feels more like a conventionally told story and hence plot inconsistencies draw more attention to themselves. Were they actually made vampires when murdered years before? If so, why the implications that they are from Transylvania (the small region near the Carpathian mountains)? If not, were they already vampires when the shadowy figure shot them? Who knows? Why does a hotel clerk recognize Ted from the distant past? It’s almost as if it’s implied that he had been the long ago killer, doomed to return to them – but I don’t think he was; it just feels that way. Why do their victim’s watches all stop at midnight? That’s an intriguing detail that I don’t know from any other vampy content. Maybe that was when they were shot? Also, if every single morning the local police find another dead naked man in a car on the side of the road, someone is gonna get curious. Has this been happening every night for 30 years? Men might stop driving through this region. But all of these questions don’t really interfere with my enjoyment of the picture. Sometimes they offer an enjoyable moment of “hey, what?” But mostly, I’m happy to let them slide right by as the rest of the film is generally so very enjoyable.

All in all, this one comes highly recommended. It really blends much of the atmospheric, sensual pleasure of the Lesbian Vampire genre with an entertainingly sleazy exploitation horror flick, filled with spooky atmosphere, rampant sexuality, fairly rough violence, and solid horror beats.

—

And there we have two films with a fair amount in common, but which are also strikingly different. More so than some I’ve covered, the element of same sex desire and even love is explicitly present, as is the vampirism. Both come from a Spanish director working in another country and another language. Both have a kind of sexploitation charm – clearly including extended sequences of nudity and sex which are not strictly needed for the story telling, but was being sold in the marketing, and as sexuality makes up a pretty large portion of human existence, it’s a pretty legitimate thing to focus on in its own right. For whatever reason (a subject for a future post), I have a soft spot for that sense of good-old fashioned, honest sleaze – there is something charming in its directness. I recently discovered a new podcast I’m enjoying, Girls, Guts, and Giallo, hosted by Annie Rose Malamet, and I really appreciated in her discussion of Hellraiser, her statement to the effect that she hates misogyny, but she hates prudishness more. I can dig it.

But then again, these movies just feel so very different from each other. Franco’s is this languid, gorgeous, weird, erotic art piece, indulging in a death tinged sexual meditation, whereas Larraz’s is a down and dirty horror movie, ticking all the boxes of Lesbian Vampires and of horror, but maybe not really getting into anything deeper than that – an emotional character piece this is not – but it is fun and satisfying.

That said, maybe we’re good on this genre for a while. There are still others I’d like to write about, but I’ve covered 15 so far, and maybe it’s time for a break. I started last post discussing how these Lesbian Vampire posts bring more readers to this site than anything else I’ve written. Exactly why is an ongoing mystery, but I sure do love them myself. That said, there are so many other things I’m looking forward to delving into. Let’s see where we go next time…

Lesbian Vampires 4: “Naiveté in the Seventies” Double Feature

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The last time I did one of these, I mentioned that my previous entries detailing the sub-genre of the “Lesbian Vampire” film have far and away been my best sellers (if I actually had anything for sale). But as the information I get from Google Analytics is limited, I don’t exactly know why. Are these films simply more popular than others? Do they have a lurid appeal that catches readers’ interest?  Do they straddle a line between legitimacy and exploitation, art-house and mainstream horror such that many have heard of them, but not all have watched them, and people want to know more? Are people just looking for girl on girl vampire porn and they stumble onto this blog only to be disappointed (I assume – maybe then they discover a strange artsy movie they didn’t know they’d be into)? Hey – as I’m assuming this post will drive traffic as others have before it, feel free to drop a comment and let me know what brought you here. Whatever it was, welcome!

Also, if you’re interested, you can check out Part I (Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses,The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary), Part II (The Vampire Lovers, Daughters of Darkness, The Shiver of the Vampires, and Vampyros Lesbos), and Part III (Nadja, Blood of the Tribades, and Bit).

In any case, following last week’s pride month – Queer Horror rundown, I thought I might thematically hop, skip, and jump back over to this idiosyncratic (and apparently quite popular) collection of beautiful, rich, weird, atmospheric films, generally run through with nominally LGBT+ characters or themes, but mostly filmed through the lens of a totally cis-het male gaze, and yet which still surprisingly feel quite feminist and revolutionary and artfully decedent. In Part III of this series, I touched on some more modern examples, but really the heyday of this material was undoubtedly the seventies and there are still so many films of note to examine therein. And so, that’s what we’re going to do…

I had planned to cover four films this week, but found that I had rather a lot to say about the first two and decided to just focus on them: Requiem for a Vampire (1972) and Alucarda (1977). Having watched them now, I must say that both are only barely Lesbian Vampire films, but I believe there are enough details to merit inclusion in this series and boy, oh boy are they worthy of discussion. As usual with longer write ups such as these, there will be spoilers, but I genuinely don’t feel that would really ruin one’s appreciation of either of these films.

Requiem for a Vampire (1972)

It was only about a year ago that I finally watched my first Jean Rollin film, The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), which I thoroughly loved. Before that, Rollin had always been a blind spot for me, an artist with whom I was intrigued, but also felt somewhat daunted by. So artsy, so dreamy, so poetic and, for lack of a more descriptive word, so French. But then Shiver really impressed me – weird and artsy, sure, but also fun, funny, sexual, morbid, visually striking, and confounding in a way that enriched the viewing experience rather than detracting from it. Since that time, I’ve caught up with Grapes of Death (1978), Fascination (1979), and The Living Dead Girl (1982), all of which showed a progression towards what might be considered more “normal” narrative horror cinema, while maintaining Rollin’s characteristic visual and textual poetry.

Thus, I was interested what I might find in what he’d called his favorite of his own movies – a film he’d written in a couple of days and then rushed into production before he could second guess himself, a piece he reportedly loved best for its purity: intentionally naïve, a series of events that flow one into the next without even lip service to the demands of commercially friendly story telling (though with enough naked girls that his American producer, $am $elsky (as his name is written in the credits), said he’d still be able to sell the picture – more on that later).

Requiem for a Vampire (AKA Caged Virgins) was Rollin’s fourth “lesbian” (or at least female) vampire film, and though I’ve only seen a handful of his other films, it does feel like a boiled down reduction of the elements and qualities that make his films stand out as undoubtedly his own.

We follow two girls, dressed as clowns, on a high speed chase through the countryside as they trade fire with the police car behind them. They escape, but the man they’re with is killed. They burn him and the car and walk through the tall grass until they find a place to wash off their clown make up. They steal a motorcycle, and then some French fries.

One accidentally gets buried alive after falling into an open grave, but her friend pulls her out. They’re stalked by bats and, mesmerized, led to a crumbling chateau inhabited by bestial men who chase them and try to sexually assault them, two female vampires who try to bite them, and one older male vampire, the last of his kind, wearily hanging onto eternity, though it long ago lost all meaning or him, and at least a little in love with death.

The girls have a bit of time to strip down and gently fondle each other in bed before they are told they need to lure victims to the castle the next day, which one happily does, feeding on him and beginning her transformation, while the other understands that her “virginity” is important for the process and instead finds a man to take it from her, thus sabotaging the plan of the undead. When it is apparent what she’s done, her friend must torture her to find the whereabouts of this man, but in the end the old vampire releases them and locks himself in a tomb to waste away as the girls walk off into the night.

Written out thus, it has a semblance of narrative flow, but this description does no justice to what it feels like to watch the film. Let’s try it this way: two female clowns look at a dying man as the lights fade, when the light returns, their faces are spattered with blood. Water shifts from clear to white to red to brown in stop motion. A girl approaches a roadside food stand and smiles. The proprietor chases her into the forest. He catches her and pins her to the ground, grabbing at her breasts. Bored, she allows him to for a moment before throwing him off, hiding behind a tree, and impishly thumbing her nose.

A girl falls into an open grave which the grave digger keeps flinging dirt into though he should really be able to see her. Then he drinks some wine and goes home. Everywhere the girls turn, bats watch them from the trees, eliciting shrieks of terror, before latching onto their necks and holding perfectly still, like furry bow ties, sapping them of their will. Later a similar bat clamps onto a naked woman’s crotch, making little sucking sounds as she squirms in what is probably terror and pain, but could be read as sexual pleasure.

A striking female vampire plays a grand piano in a cemetery, surrounded by candles (the image Rollin reportedly imagined first and built the rest of the action around). Scenes of gentleness and tender touch between the girls bleed into an extended rape sequence, then into a playful, even goofy, scene of seduction-chase-vampiric feeding, and then finally into another of sexual awakening and genuine pleasure, as fake looking fangs hang loosely from ancient lips, and one friend strips the other and, weeping, whips her, the tortured friend responding only with understanding and forgiveness. But this series of images also fails to capture the feeling.

So, how did I feel watching it? Languid, fascinated, tickled, morose, occasionally (but not too often) bored, amused, indulgent, mystified, softened, delicate, playful, amorous, melancholic – these were some of the emotions that passed over me at some point – does that help at all? If you haven’t worked this out yet, I find it a tough movie to wrap my head around.

It’s easy to toss around the word ‘dream-like’ when discussing a filmmaker like Rollin, but this really is a full surrealist piece. There is little reason for one event to lead to the next, but as it does, it feels utterly natural, the film washing over you in an almost wordless wave of impressions, emotions, archetypal images, and disruptive, chaotic actions, both whimsical and brutal (the film is mostly played without dialogue; this review has 500 more words than are spoken in the whole movie).

The two central girls are often tranquil, accepting each new turn of events without comment or reaction – and yet, they do feel present – our avatars in this tone poem of a film. For all that their bodies are obviously put on display, and the camera takes pleasure in looking at them, I feel they remain a subjective presence, with wants and interests, as much or more as any other figure in the film.

I must admit that on first viewing, I didn’t immediately love it as I had his others, but I could surely appreciate the commitment to a personal vision, the refusal to make anything other than exactly the art-work he felt compelled to capture on film. But on a second watch, I already found it growing on me. Knowing what to expect allowed me to open more to taking in the rich curiosity on offer. It must be said though that this can be a difficult watch, and I don’t recommend it as an introduction to Rollin. It feels a bit like the concentrated syrup you would add carbonated water to in order to produce a different Jean Rollin movie fountain beverage.

If you like his work, you’ll probably really like this. If you don’t like it, you’ll probably hate this. If you haven’t seen anything by him yet, this is not the best place to start. However, if you’ve watched a few of his films and find that he works for you, this really is a sumptuous, intriguing, whimsical, disturbing dream to lose yourself in for a time – a melancholic, hypnotic romp through an overgrown meadow of absurdity and death, gender and violence and sex.

But on that front, a warning – as mentioned above, there is a very long rape scene which I personally found trying, not least because it doesn’t connect with anything else in the ‘story’. The girls come to the castle and are taken down to the dungeon where bestial men rape nameless women who are chained up there for what feels like an interminable time. Then we move on and it’s never mentioned again.

On one level, this was reportedly called for by the producer to have more salacious content, making this possibly impenetrable art film more marketable as sleazy exploitation, but it does also play into themes the film dreamily revolves around. When so engaging with death and sex and violence, this content does not come out of nowhere – in contrast to the placid gentleness of the girls and the exhausted ennui of the ancient vampire, down in the dungeon of the subconscious, there is brutal, corporeal, sexual life – desiring and taking and hurting and fearing and suffering and fighting. While it is indeed hard to stomach, it doesn’t feel accidental that right in the middle of this meditative reverie, there is something so ugly. Still, the fact that these discordant measures do make a kind of musical sense inside of the symphony as a whole doesn’t make them any easier to listen to, or more to the point, to watch.

But that sequence aside, I find the rest of the film a distinct pleasure, and while I enjoy some of his later, more straightforward (but, to be fair, not that straightforward) works, I’m so glad Rollin had the opportunity to craft this specific, singular work of self-expression. It’s not the most “Lesbian-Vampire” of the Lesbian Vampire movies I’ve written about (the girls share some naked caresses and a kiss and vampirism is present, but it doesn’t feel like these features are really the focus of the film, so much as simply being some of the many images of eroticism and death and need that flash before our eyes), but elements are there, and it really is a very special piece worthy of consideration. I look forward to continuing through Rollin’s catalogue.

Alucarda (1977)

Directed by Juan López Moctezuma, this Mexican lesbian-vampire-satanic-cult-nunsploitation movie, also released as Innocents from Hell has been on my watch list for quite some time, and I’m so glad to have finally seen it. I was surprised to realize that I’d already covered one film by Moctezuma, Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary back in my first Lesbian Vampire post, and now I’m eager to check out another film of his, Mansion of Madness, which I know is currently on Shudder.

I’ve had a very interesting experience of watching this twice in the last week. My first viewing, I came away tickled and enamored. It was all just absolutely unhinged: crazy, over the top, glorious excess at every turn. I hadn’t found it to be a work of great technical proficiency, or you know, “good” in the conventional understanding of the word, but it just felt so exciting in its weirdness, in its stylistic maximalism.  Then on second viewing, I found myself watching a surprisingly heartfelt, even angry movie – rich in imagery and feeling – for some reason, the second time I found myself taking it much more seriously. But the takeaway is that, in vastly different ways, both times I loved it.

To give the story in short, Justine (Susana Kamini), whose mother has just died, is brought to a convent that looks like it’s been carved out of a subterranean cave in 1850, somewhere in Mexico. Her roommate, who seems to appear out of a shadow, is an intense, young girl named Alucarda (they are both supposed to be 15, but the actresses are in their upper 20s – for the best, given how often they’re naked). Within moments of meeting each other, Alucarda (Tina Romero) becomes madly intimate and the next thing you know, the girls are rolling around in the woods, giggling, and declaring eternal love.

That shadow in the background will be revealed to be Alucarda. It’s a nice shot.

Almost immediately, they swear a death pact on the grave of Alucarda’s mother, releasing grunting, snorting, heavy breathing spirits into the air, followed by a Satanic ritual (first led by a forest spirit/central European gypsy/travelling tinkerer and later overseen by a goat headed representation of Satan himself) in which their breasts are cut and they drink each other’s blood, kissing it from their lips as outside, the thunder roars, it rains blood, some people have an orgy, and the only nice nun in the convent has a levitating, lightning shooting, blood spattered prayer session.

Shortly thereafter, they start defying god, declaring their love and obedience for the Devil, and generally wreaking blasphemous havoc. The church responds by torturing Justine to death in an exorcism ceremony. She briefly becomes a shrieking, bloody vampire who sleeps au naturel in a blood filled coffin, and Alucarda goes on a Carrie-at-the-prom-esque pyrokinetic revenge streak, igniting most of the priests, nuns, novices, and the convent itself with her vengeful stare, before crumbling into dust out of a sense of guilt and overwhelming grief.

You know, your usual vampire movie stuff…

One of the first things I appreciated was how wildly Moctezuma packs in every possible thing he can – every literary or filmic reference, every shocking display, every effect (special or otherwise), every supernatural element. Le Fanu is listed as one of the writers and there are extended bits of dialogue taken directly from Carmilla, particularly bits around the funeral procession, the tinkerer, and some intense love language (Alucarda comes on pretty strong). “Alucarda” is “a Dracula” backwards and Alucarda’s mother was named Lucy Westenra, Nina’s best friend from Dracula.

The way the gypsy/spirit/tinkerer pops in and out of existence seems like something directly out of a silent movie from the 20s, like Häxan (1922). The scenes of nuns writhing about in the church, going crazy brings to mind many other films, such as Ken Russel’s The Devils (1971) or the Polish film, Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1960), and as I already mentioned, the ending seems a direct rip off of Carrie. And I think it’s all great. Sure – take whatever you can and cram it together to make something personal and special and unlike anything that’s ever been made before. Not every inclusion works, but it feels like nothing is held back – like every idea that Moctezuma had, he included. And this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach, while lacking in Hollywood polish, feels wondrously pure in its unique way.

Perhaps it’s because in writing about Requiem for a Vampire, I read how Rollin had intentionally wanted to make a work of naïve cinema, but I had naïve or outsider art on my mind while watching this, a label which I don’t think could even be fairly applied to Moctezuma (this was his third film and I really don’t know about his career or the Mexican film scene, so I don’t want to presume). But there is a simplicity here that is akin to such work – simplicity of technique, certainly not of theme or style or plotting – it’s full of all of that stuff. There are things that do not “work” (some peculiar synthesized sounds that seem out of place in 19th Century Mexico, the snorting, huffing, possibly flatulent noises that accompany any Devilish influence on the girls, some dramatic reactions such as when the chief priest declares, “We must perform………an Exorcism!” and a hundred nuns gasp in unison), but when these elements surface, my impulse is not to laugh at them as B-movie failings, but rather to clap in delight because it’s just so delicious. There is no “good taste” based shame or shyness holding this movie back and its earnest commitment is infectious.

This quality is even more present in the performances. Tina Romero’s Alucarda is always dialed up to eleven in every emotional moment. She meets Justine and in seconds is sharing all her secrets with her. When she’s angry, she spins and writhes in fury and rage, shouting to the heavens, her dark eyes cutting through and cutting down all she sees. And Kamini’s Justine goes along with it. More subdued than Alucarda, she nevertheless acquiesces to her paramour’s emotional needs. Perhaps she’s not so into the blood play and wishes that Alucarda would stop talking about death all the time, but when, atop her mother’s grave, Alucarda exclaims (with very few interjections from Justine),

“Are you afraid of dying? (…) I mean dying loving each other – dying together so we may live as one forever, with the same blood always flowing through our veins. Darling, darling Justine, I live in you; would you die for me? Oh I love you so. I have never been in love with anyone. And never shall, unless it’s with you! (…) You don’t know how dear you are to me. The time is very near when you will love me as much as I do you! You will make me cruel and selfish, but love is always selfish! You don’t know how jealous I am. You must love me to death! (…) Let’s make a pact – if we ever depart from this life, we shall do it…together,”  

(much of this, I believe, being directly lifted from Carmilla)

Justine simply responds, “Alright, if it makes you happy,” whereas most normal people with a healthy sense of self-preservation would probably have already slowly backed out of the room, terrified by how obsessively crazy Alucarda seems to be. But that isn’t the kind of movie this is. I’m never one hundred percent sure of Justine’s full feelings in all this (sometimes she is hesitant, or screams, or cries – but who doesn’t?), but it’s a filmic world in which she can be open to picking up what Alucarda is laying down.

And I couldn’t talk of this movie without getting into the subject of religious horror. I have mentioned before how religiosity is one of my least favorite currents in horror fiction. So often, stories of possession and devils and exorcisms just come off feeling like advertisements for the church, as if they are trying to convince me to tremble before the terrible threat of radical evil, and open myself to ‘The Lord’ as my only hope of salvation. It’s a big turn off.

When I watched this the first time, I was puzzled at how much the religious elements didn’t put me off, and I chalked it up to the film being just so crazy that I couldn’t help but love it in spite of its content and thematics. But on second viewing, I just connected so much more strongly to how angry the film feels. Like with many works of ‘nunsploitation,’ the dominant horror of the piece consists in the actions of the ‘good people’ of the church. The film shows the “satanic” elements to be ‘evil,’ sure. But the crimes of the priests and nuns by far seem worse. And it is in the kinky and/or sinister ceremonies of the church that the film has some of its most effective staging, that it shows the most stylistic flair.

For example, after witnessing the girls acting so impiously, the whole convent has a giant orgy of flagellation. The main priest is in the center of a circle of nuns, and everyone’s clothes are torn open at the back. All of the nuns whip him with flails, and in turn, all of the nuns are whipped by an outer circle of monks. Compare this with the satanic orgy that happened in the forest and only one is drenched in gore (there’s also a pretty funny moment later when a doctor comes to investigate the disappearance of Justine’s body – the nuns explain that no one noticed the reanimated corpse get up and walk away because they were all too busy flagellating themselves – it makes you think, “well, next time, don’t do it, and you don’t have to get whipped,” but the thing is, they really like getting whipped – and hey, that’s fine – no judgement, but they could do it while murdering fewer teenagers). All of the nuns wear very characteristic habits, more like the white wrapped bandages of mummies. When we first meet them, it’s puzzling why they always look so dirty and unevenly red. Later, you realize that they’ve been stained with blood the whole time, because they are doing this sort of thing non-stop.

Even on a much lighter level, the church does not seem like a good place. The first time we see a service, the priest is going on about damnation and hellfire and all these young girls are crying and screaming, terrified of what is going to happen to them, of how doomed their souls seem to be. Sure, when Alucarda and Justine start talking about Devil stuff, it is creepy, but everyone’s response of getting terrified and running away screaming only happens because they’ve already been well primed by the priest.

And then there is the exorcism ritual, with both girls, one in white and one in black, strapped to giant crosses, surrounded by hundreds of candles, ominous black robed holy men, and blood soaked nuns, writhing on their knees as the holy spirit animates them. Alucarda lashes out, vowing to kill them all until she’s knocked out. Then Justine’s clothes are ripped from her body and the priest drives a long needle into her flesh again and again, until finally, he finds her heart and she expires – you know, cause these are really ‘good people.’

On the other side, you know, with the “Devil,”  we saw, um, a dramatic, naked ritual with the two girls and a goat headed devil and kissing and, sure, a bit of blood, and stuff, and we saw some people having sexy times in the forest. Later, after Justine rises from the dead, the only kind nun in the convent finds her vampiric, blood filled resting place and Justine initially lashes out at her, clawing at her face. But after a beat, she registers who it is and ceases her attack, only for the ‘good guys’ to start throwing holy water at her, causing her, in her suffering, to rip out the throat of the only person at the convent to have shown her any kindness, Sister Angelica.

Then the first and only time we see the Satanic powers causing real violence is when Alucarda takes her pyrokinetic vengeance out on the monastery. And who could fault her? These people murdered her love (before she fell for a cute blind girl, but she also died – like I said, Alucarda moves fast). I think the film’s heart is really with the girls – there may be irreligious creepiness in all the devil stuff, but the moralistic institution is the real monster – and its cruel wielding of power could be metaphoric of any dominating authority – church, state, or otherwise.

But then again, it is hard to say, and that kinda makes me love it all the more. Is this an anti-clerical, anti-authority film, decrying the bloodthirsty hypocrisy of those who would police our morality? Is this a religious horror movie about two young girls being corrupted by evil forces and going on a killing spree, with heroic churchmen doing the hard things that must be done? Is this a folk horror masterpiece, revealing deep cultural truths? Is this a cheesy B-movie with terrible special effects, melodramatic acting, and bizarre soundtrack choices? Is this a sleazy sexploitation flick, foregrounding what are meant to be seen as young girls as they are stripped and sexualized and tortured? Is this a madcap, insane spectacle of cinematic excess and joy? The answer to all of that and more is probably, “yes.”

—

And there we have it: two films that, if we are to be honest, only barely fit into the genre of the Lesbian Vampire film, but both of which seem really important and great in very divergent, and yet somehow related, non-Hollywood ways. Both walk a line between exploitation and high art. Both center the relationship between two young girls. Both have a smattering of vampirism here and there.  And both are, well, pretty weird.  They’re both also pretty special and unique little features.

As I said at the beginning, I had chosen 4 films for this week, but this is already quite a long post, so the next two (which are, without a doubt, 100% Lesbian Vampire movies) will have to wait until next time. A couple months ago, I fell into a routine of publishing bi-monthly, rather than once a week, but I think I’m on a roll and I should be able to get this next post up sooner than that. So please join me next week as we continue this series… See you soon.

Lesbian Vampires Part III – More Modern Examples

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So here’s a little look behind-the-scenes on ye old blog. Since starting this thing, I’ve been compulsively checking Google Analytics to see if anyone is reading it.  Most weeks I get about 15-30 visits. On a low week it can hit single digits and on my best ever, I managed 77. And so I have some sense of what visitors seem to respond to. One other interesting metric I check is how often different posts have been viewed over time. It’s here that I came upon something interesting the other day. Back in August, I did two posts on the often artsy, sometimes exploitative, always beloved subgenre of the “Lesbian Vampire” film. Far and away, “Lesbian Vampires – part II” has somehow gotten more action than anything else I’ve written (far more, for some reason, than part I).

Well, as all the films I covered in those two posts were from the seventies or earlier, and I had long been planning on returning to check out some more contemporary fare, I’m going to follow what seems to be the will of the people and dig into a few more Lesbian Vampire movies – this time, all from the 1990s or later. These will all be first time watches for me, so I’m curious about a few things. Something I love about the films previously discussed is how they take place at what I think Stacie Ponder (of the blog, Final Girl, and the podcast, Gaylords of Darkness) termed the ‘intersection of arthouse and grindhouse’) – at once gorgeous, deeply felt art pieces and trashy b-movies peddling flesh and blood. Does that enticing aesthetic still carry into future endeavors? Most of the older work clearly falls within the bounds of ‘exploitation cinema’ and however much those films may (and I think they often do) carry out a progressive/feminist/emancipatory project, they were all clearly made by men for the titillation of a presumably straight male viewership. In more recent times, does the work still maintain that typical perspective of a ‘male gaze?’ Does it somehow upend it? Can you actually find a good Lesbian Vampire movie written/directed by at least one LGBT+ female-identifying person (I want to cast as wide a net as possible), and if so, beyond it being good for people to be given the room to tell their own stories, does it change anything in how those stories are told?

So, let’s find out…and, as always, there will probably be some spoilers, so be forewarned…

Nadja (1994)

This one had been on my radar for quite a while and I’m glad to have finally checked it out. But I’m also relieved I didn’t do it before last summer when I wrote about Dracula’s Daughter as it is a direct remake. Really, it’s an interesting case in terms of looking at film history, and specifically this subgenre. Written and directed by Michael Almereyda (and with David Lynch tellingly signed on as an executive producer – he also has a small cameo), this is a surprisingly faithful retelling of a film from the 30s, which embraces the dreamy qualities of a subgenre from the 70s, but is so much a product of its time – an early 90s black and white arthouse picture, frequently talky and surreal, some of it shot on a lo-res toy camcorder (when not really striking high contrast cinematography), alternatingly dwelling in genuine existential angst and cool ironic detachment. It is groovy and surreal, philosophical and pretentious, dreary, dreamy, and often quite funny. It’s a little bit of everything.

And generally, I’ve got to say it works, though in the beginning, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. Especially the first time there was an ultra low-res sequence (they seem to coincide with moments when a character is under vampiric influence), I wondered if I had it in me to get through the whole thing. But somehow it is really very watchable, even captivating – striking a delicate balance between its circuitous but deeply felt philosophizing and its offbeat sense of humor. It’s atmosphere is just as rich as any of the beautiful seventies pictures that come to mind when I think of Lesbian Vampires, but it is a different kind of richness: more a heroin chic fugue state, the mind impossibly trying to muddle its way through essential questions of death and love and hate and attraction, trailing off and staring into the middle distance for a time, before sardonically joking it off and lighting another cigarette.

In terms of plot, it is very similar to its source, but there are some modernizations, some additions, and some subversions along the way. Among other things, the attraction between Nadja (the titular daughter of Dracula) and Lucy is able to be explicitly acted on in a way that would not have been possible in 1936 (the MPAA rated it R for “bizarre vampire sexuality”). Lucy is married to Jim, the nephew of Van Helsing, who (as in the original) starts the film having just been arrested for driving a stake through the heart of this seemingly harmless immigrant from Transylvania (using public domain shots of Lugosi from White Zombie).

Lucy also describes how she has lost all contact with her family as they didn’t “approve of her lifestyle” but now she’s married so they should be ok with her. She and Jim, especially under the heightened emotions of hunting and being hunted by the undead, repeatedly declare their love and need for each other, but their marriage feels barren and empty. In one night of real attraction (if not passion), she gets bound, physiologically and emotionally, to the magnetic, soft spoken Nadja, striking beneath her cowl, who happens to be into a bit of menstrual blood play. Not entirely happily (no one in this film is ever really “happy” – it’s not that kind of picture), Lucy falls under her spell.

And the film as a whole casts a mesmerizing spell as well, especially in terms of its look and sound and feel. It can be just so sumptuous sometimes, inky blacks and ivory whites cast into stark relief. Visually, it harkens back to its 1936 progenitor while also prefiguring A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (maybe I’m overstating it and it’s just that all three are b/w movies about a vampire girl in a cowl). But also, the toy camera sequences which had initially distanced me can be very effective, creating a hazy, deeply pixelated effect, which is ugly and modern, but produces a visual fog familiar for a contemporary viewer. It’s utilized in moments when a character is not in control of their mind, of their perception, and it successfully pulls the viewer into that muddled, frustrated headspace. It’s not “pretty,” but it is effective.

Returning to comparison with the 1936 film, though more explicit, this feels less focused on the element of sexuality. In that film, Countess Zaleska was driven by her relationship to (and abhorrence of) her vampirism, and her blood lust was clearly a metaphor for other desires that might have been deemed ‘unnatural’ at the time. The implication of her attraction for the fairer sex dominated the film – both forbidden and alluring – never directly spoken of, but so, so present, and her whole focus was freeing herself from her ‘curse.’

In this more recent outing, Nadja goes home with this woman who probably never should have married a man and their relationship doesn’t need to be coded. Even though Lucy speaks of past trouble with her family, in the eyes of the film, the sexuality of their encounter feels more commonplace and therefore less significant, less dominating. When her father dies, Nadja speaks of being able to make a fresh start, but I never really get the sense that she wants to stop being a vampire – or to stop being attracted to women. It’s nice that she doesn’t have to be a tragic closeted person, desperate not to be herself, but there is an erotic charge missing – being tempted by the forbidden. I wonder if in our more enlightened times it is still as possible to generate the allure of the taboo. In Nadja, we rather dig into the allure of ironic cool and poetic ennui. Ultimately, Nadja perhaps gets a better ending than Zaleska – she at least lives, but in the body of her brother’s lover, her identity now subsumed into that other woman’s. Maybe continuance is worth it, and maybe it would have been better to be murdered by her familiar and die as herself.

Ultimately, I don’t know that this moody, poetic piece really caused me to plumb the depths of our modern listless existence, but I did rather appreciate the viewing experience. Just as much a reflection of the time and place in which it was produced as Vampyros Lesbos or The Vampire Lovers, this is both a solid 90s experimental film and a surprisingly fun little vampire flick.

Blood of the Tribades (2016)

This ultra-low budget feature (approx. 20,000 USD) from Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein took me a bit by surprise. Clearly an homage to the work of Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, and Hammer Studios, it is a crowdfunded labor of love, full of crumbling stone edifices, diaphanous gowns,  bloody breasts, and gendered violence. It may not succeed on every level, but its love for the source material is obvious and the filmmakers do a lot with what they have. As described on their Kickstarter page, the intention was to embrace the style and atmosphere of the early 70s subgenre, while including explicit socio-political messaging. Generally it is successful on both counts. It is also one of the very few examples I’ve been able to find of a Lesbian Vampire flick (co-)directed by a woman.

The film’s premise is that 2000 years ago, the vampire Bathor established a small town of vampires as a kind of utopia and then went off to conquer the continent. Since then, the undead residents have lost their way, dividing along gender lines and seemingly having purged the village of racial others. A group of men (who all drink from a fountain of Bathor’s blood, which seems to actually be making them sick) have started hunting down the women for causing their illness, being irreligious harlots, tempting them with their flesh, and not giving them sufficient offspring. For their part, the council of women’s leaders underplay the threat and try to keep the peace, though their members keep getting crossbow bolts in their hearts whenever they disrobe. Finally, two women escape the carnage with some outcasts (who I believe had been excluded based on race), and we learn that one of them can actually read the ancient words of Bathor and return the community to its founding values (if she doesn’t get staked first).

Socio-politically, it’s not subtle (men, and at least one woman, motivated by religious zealotry, attacking women for their sexuality, murdering them for making them feel inadequate – a (white) women’s movement, which fails to include women of color and pushes for a kind of moderate incrementalism, thus enabling the men’s violence – religion being corrupted and weaponized to subjugate minority populations and punish sexual/gender expression), but it more or less works. One thing I would take issue with though is the implication that the political element is a novel addition. I think the filmmakers behind the classic 70s Lesbian Vampire films may not have brought very intentional messaging to their films, but regardless, the films themselves were deeply infused with politics, often expressing feminist sentiments, even if a given director was just trying to make something lurid to sell tickets, or simply indulging in his own personal peccadillos. For example, the climax here is directly political in its language, but at the same time, it seems to directly recreate the blood ritual of The Blood Spattered Bride, a film whose politics may have been ambivalent, but no less urgent – the politics was always there.

The question this prompts for me is how much weight should be given to intent. If Franco or Kümel created something just because they wanted it to be beautiful or sexy and along the way it happened to communicate emancipatory feminist ideals, is that less valuable than a work where that was the intention from the get go? Or is art more ‘pure’ when made without seeking to make a statement (even though a statement can so freely be read therein)? I honestly don’t know.

If anything, the film’s body politics is given increased parity. For example, while there are plenty of bosoms on display, there is easily as much male nudity. The vampiric men’s rights activists have a tendency of assailing one of their own for being insufficiently fervent in his misogyny, stripping him down, strapping him to a large bondage X and whipping him bloody with roses. It all has a vibe of repressed desire being redirected into a kind of homoerotic sado-masochism, and along the way, there are rather a lot of penises (one even flies through the air, impaled on a crossbow bolt).  On the other hand, until the final, more bloody, sexual, and tragic-romantic ritual between the two remaining ladies, while the women are often nude, there was surprisingly little suggestion of eroticism (the “tribades” of the title being an archaic word used before the inhabitants of Lesbos became unanimous with the idea of female same-sex attraction) – rather, there is a lot of child-like frolicking about. Now, did this circumvent a male gaze, freeing the female vampires from objectification (though when in this state, there are usually leering male figures, waiting to kill them) or does it infantilize the women, robbing them of sexual agency? I’m not sure, but it is a change, one which many critics focused on, stating that the film ‘subverted the sexist tropes’ of its progenitors.

One other difference is the lack of seduction. A recurring trope of the earlier films is the older Lesbian Vampire (often Carmilla) luring the young ingénue to the dark side of both vampirism and sapphism, along the way, turning her against the (often abusive) man in her life. While seductive and freeing, this could also be read as presenting an older, predatory lesbian, preying on and turning younger women. That element is wholly lacking in this case, particularly as every character in the film is already undead. There is perhaps a political merit to this, but I regretted the absence of temptation.

I came to rather like this one, but I think it’s important for a viewer to comprehend its budget in advance and therefore temper expectations. I was initially put off by what I’d deemed the “cheap” look of the film – there is some exterior photography that’s quite attractive, aided by the available locations, but the interiors suffer, particularly the men’s headquarters in which the walls are just covered with sheets, masking whatever modern space they had to work in. Past that, reading the performer’s bios, it seems that most came out of the local Boston art community, specifically, the burlesque scene, and that few had much previous film acting experience. However, knowing more about the project, I appreciate its successes more and can more easily overlook its failures. To be fair, many of the early 70s films also had quite low budgets, but benefitted from working in Europe, where there’s a desolate castle around every corner, and shooting on grainy film, which can cover shortcomings in an artful haze. It’s harder to pull off this kind of picture in the States on high def digital.

The only criticism, I would really make is that there is rather a lot of world building (the whole history of the vampire village, its founder, the religion, etc.) and I think a strength of the originals was their disinterest in logically explaining anything, instead dwelling in a space of Eros-Thanatos psycho-sexual tension. While this film commits to its inspiration’s vibe, often succeeding far better than the toy crossbows might suggest, I think the exposition undercuts some of its potential power.

Still, this was a charming watch – doing so much with limited resources, and evincing an understanding and love of what made those 70s films so special. The passion that went into the project feels somehow more palpable than with many more polished, higher budget creations.

Bit (2020)

Brad Michael Elmore’s film is just tremendous fun. If I was missing the element of seduction in the previous film, this one has it in spades. However, it is less about the allure of some mysterious woman (though there’s a bit of that), than it is that of vampirism, of power, of ‘the night’ – and the night life. Temporarily leaving aside the “Lesbian” part of the equation, something I always appreciate in my “Vampire” content is fun. I remember slogging through Interview with the Vampire, irritated with Louis’s constant moaning, only to then pick up the second book, The Vampire Lestat and feel such a breath of fresh air – Lestat loved being a vampire – it’s sexy and powerful and a really good time and he wasn’t complaining about having those things. Elmore’s movie takes a similar tack, also bringing to mind such films as The Lost Boys and The Craft.

As in those two examples, the film centers around a young person, Laurel (Nicole Maines), who comes to a new city and falls in with a gang of exciting, young supernatural types (in this case, a group of radical, feminist, lesbian vampires who (mostly) hunt predatory and/or irritating men). We understand that Laurel has been through a hard time, particularly during her just completed, final year of high school. But it’s never exactly stated what that hard time was. I’d assumed coming out, but having read later that the actress is trans, I suppose it could have been transitioning. Either way, it’s clear that leading up to this, things had been emotionally and psychologically hard and that, unsure of the direction she wants to go in her life, she needs to take some time (in this case, crashing with her older brother in LA) to find her way.

When Laurel finds herself a vampire, and further, in a like-minded community, it is thrilling and empowering – it’s also just fun. Sure – she’s a protagonist of a teen vampire movie, so she’s reluctant to kill people and comes slowly to the whole blood drinking thing, but being a part of this group just feels so good. There’s a lovely scene where after some bad stuff has gone down and Laurel has had her first kill, thus completing her transformation, she’s on the roof with the leader of the group, Duke. After filling Laurel in on some personal history (and essential exposition for the narrative), Duke offers to show her one more thing. Laurel declines, saying she can’t handle any more changes tonight, but Duke insists, saying something like, “you’ll like this – everyone likes this.” And then she shows her how to fly. And it is so sweet. It’s Lois and Superman. It’s Peter Parker swinging around the city for the first time. It is a young person who’s been through such difficulties feeling lifted and free and strong.

And before this, I have to say, I actually loved the exposition (not a sentence I often write), which was all presented in a kind of disco dance sequence as we learn of Vlad, Duke’s sire. An ancient vampire, he’d held her, and a bevy of other ‘wives,’ in his thrall for decades before she was finally able to overcome him and free herself. I loved how lame he seemed. We keep cutting to Vlad on the dance floor, surrounded by his collection of sexy ladies who have been magically made to love him, with their costumes changing periodically over the years, and he just never looks cool. There is no way he could be surrounded by women without magic. On one level, it’s just funny, but on the other, it underlines the domination, the slavery at work – which is at the heart of Duke’s socio-political drive. She’s learned the hard way that power is not safe in the hands of men.

Of course, there needs to be a story, so as in The Lost Boys and The Craft, our protagonist has to be thrust into conflict with the leader of the pack, in this case, Duke. I would rather that hadn’t been necessary, but where the story goes is still enjoyable, so ok – I’ll take it. And I appreciate how the arc of the vampire storyline is rooted in emotional character issues. Laurel struggles to balance her need to find and live her truth and fulfill her responsibilities. We learn of past suicide attempts and know that she’s had a support system of family and at least one close friend. But there is a tragic inability to do right by those that have stood by her if she is to go off and become her own complete person.

Caught up in the joys of her new un-life, she irreparably fails a dear friend. Reluctant to give into her newfound bloodlust (not letting herself fully be herself), she tries to repress it and accidentally strikes out at those she wouldn’t have normally chosen, ultimately hurting a member of her family. In refusing to hunt as Duke and the others do (going after, e.g., rapists, right wing internet trolls who tweet at young girls to kill themselves, and pretentious faux ‘allies’ who talk a big feminist game for cultural cache), Laurel inadvertently ends up breaking the key rule of ‘bite club’ and turning a man (the biggest no-no for Duke – who has a nice line about how nice it would be ‘to make every woman a vampire and let men be scared to jog at night’), which pushes the story into its final act conflict. While I would have loved to stay in the space of joyful power and sexy discovery, I do like that this turn really grew out of the character in emotionally significant ways.

Another aspect I really enjoyed is that though efforts were made to film the women and their relationships and attractions without a lecherous ‘male gaze,’ the film does not feel neutered. There is still an element of desire and sexuality. Elmore is able to establish and dwell in a space of sexual tension, playing out the flirtation and seduction without it feeling like the camera is leering. It’s a tightrope walk and I think he’s quite successful.

This is a crowd-pleasing (for the right crowd) take-back-the-night party, and it does as well by its vampirism as it does by its diverse LGBT+ characters. It’s also striking the extent to which it manages to wear its socio-political viewpoint on its sleeve without ever feeling preachy or propagandistic. Balancing the emotional truth of its protagonist, the dictates of its narrative, and its progressive perspective, it successfully delivers an equally entertaining and moving, contemporary Lesbian Vampire picture.

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So, there we have a few ‘modern’ examples of the genre. To answer my question from earlier in this post, I didn’t really find any made by a female and LGBT+ identifying person, which is a shame, but I’m glad I did watch these three. Still, I know I’ve skipped a great deal and there is still more homework to do. There is a huge gap between 1994 and 2016. I have the impression though that the Lesbian Vampire kind of disappeared into a general late night Cinemax “sexy vampire” for a stretch of the 90s and early 2000s (and many of those flicks just don’t look that interesting/good); however, she’s somewhat resurfaced of late. Also, recently, between social advancements opening doors for more people to tell their own stories, and the extent to which digital has made filmmaking so much more affordable, leading to a boom of micro-budget independent work, there is so much more explicitly ‘queer horror’ (though, for whatever reason, still vanishingly few “Lesbian Vampire” movies made by out-queer women). I wonder if this sub-genre, with one foot forever in 70s exploitation cinema, has much of a place in the current filmmaking landscape, or is it only approachable as something to either subvert or homage? I don’t know, but there are still a few other examples from the last 15 years I’d like to check out. But I’ve also watched very little Jean Rollin, and life is so short…

Polish Horror Series #6 – I Like Bats

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Really digging into horror cinema (or any cinema) means engaging with all kinds of work. You’ve got masterpieces that are both entertaining and artistically profound. You’ve got cheap B-movies that aren’t “great works of art” but evince a love of the creative process and feature some worthy ideas. You’ve got utter trash that is all the more lovable for just how trashy it is. The highest highs and the lowest lows both have their pleasures.

But sometimes a work can be hard to classify. There are ideas there. There are moments, elements, a look, a shot, a concept that intrigues, a performance that holds your attention, but it doesn’t exactly come together for you. Sometimes you don’t know if you’re encountering an artistic choice, where filmmakers have really taken a chance on something different (narratively, in how a film is cut, in a non-naturalistic style of performance) or if it is frankly just ineptitude. Are the themes and ideas of a given film complex and nuanced, ironically presented and rich in their ambiguity, their seeming ambivalence in fact the point, or has an intended message just been muddled, having haphazardly thrown together actions, events, character choices, and images, resulting in a film that fails to achieve cohesion?

Continuing my intermittent journey through the relatively limited terrain of Polish Horror (See others here), today’s entry is just such a film. From moment to moment, I found it quite watchable, and there were elements to enjoy, but I’m still not quite sure what to do with it and I suspect some of its more puzzling aspects may simply represent failures of good storytelling. But maybe they are intentional subversions of standard narrative conventions and expectations. Either way, I don’t think my role here is to judge “quality,” but to discuss whatever of interest may be found in a given work. So, without further ado, here we go…

Lubię Nietoperze (1986) (I Like Bats)

Polish film posters from the 70s and 80s are a trip!

The first act of Krystyna Kofta’s and Grzegorz Warchol’s sometimes evocative, sometimes blackly comic, and sometimes narratively obtuse and meandering I Like Bats is quite an enjoyable vampire flick. Izabela, or Iza for short (Katarzyna Walter), is a modern, independent vampire in a small town, who is regularly hounded by her aunt and the ghost of her grandfather (who expresses his wishes by making his absurdly angry looking portrait fall from the wall) to finally settle down, get a man, and stop vamping around.

But Iza doesn’t want to hear about it. She seems happy living her life her way and rolls her eyes at her aunt’s entreaties. She spurns the advances of one pushy, entitled local creep and seems to take pleasure in hanging out with her bats, making pottery for her aunt’s curio shop, and apparently preying solely on unpleasant men, often those who first try to prey on her.

Her un-lifestyle seems quite satisfying and she resists her aunt’s insistence that it’s time to start acting like a ‘real woman.’ I think the film is most gratifying in these early scenes of her presenting herself as vulnerable (sometimes dressed as a prostitute, sometimes simply being a woman walking home alone at night) only to turn the tables on some sleazebag, and sometimes getting to be fully badass, walking away from exploding vans, luxuriating in the rain and the night, and indulging in quality time with her beloved, shrieking, chattering bats.

But then a guy comes to the curio shop, buys a tea set and the main story starts in earnest, as does the narrative and thematic ambivalence. Basically, she falls in love (for some reason) with this psychiatrist and has herself committed to his institution to be cured of her vampirism (does she really want that cure or does she just want him – it’s not clear). He doesn’t believe her and treats her for delusion, but eventually, he comes around, falls in love and, after a bout of artfully filmed sex (her first time), ala Pinocchio, she becomes a ‘real girl,’ seeing her reflection for the first time, and they get married and have kids. But in the final moments, it’s revealed that the vampirism has passed to her young daughter.

But this middle stretch gets difficult because the motivation for so many character choices and the moments when a character actually feels something and changes somehow all felt like they happened off screen. The film maintains a light, ironic tone, often set to the playful score by Zbigniew Preisner (who scored a few Hollywood films but would be best known internationally for his work with Kieślowski, e.g., Red, White, Blue, or The Double Life of Veronique), and there is no real sense of urgency to the proceedings. It’s hard to fathom what she sees in the psychiatrist (named Professor Jung – perhaps there’s something to read into this – maybe we are to take all these figures as archetypes and not characters as such), and his journey from skepticism to passionate love feels unearned. The world of the film is one where nothing has stakes (argh – sorry) or happens for a clear reason. Cars crash and no one notices. Kids break shop windows and come in to retrieve their ball and no one mentions the window. A woman in a bar gets bored, takes off her top and starts dancing and no one bats an eye (again, I can’t help myself). Things just are. And then they are something else.

All the same, it is disappointing when this cool, self-possessed character, who seems to rather enjoy her vampirism, suddenly sees a pretty boring guy, gets immediately love sick and starts pining after him; worse still, in the end, she’s somehow happy to have so dramatically changed. It all feels so disheartening that, given the ironic elements, I wonder if this is intentional. Are we meant to view her change as a fairy tale happy ending (the virginal dead girl gets “kissed” by the prince and “comes to life”) or are we perhaps supposed to see the inherent personality erasing loss of self in this recurring narrative?

Fairy tales often progress in an unquestioning mode. Things simply are the way they are. Whether a fish talks or a bean stalk grows into the clouds, characters accept everything as natural; nothing is ever shocking and I Like Bats does lean on some fairy tale elements. No one really questions the existence of vampires (they only deny that Iza could be one as apparently in this world, all vampires are men – is this some comment on how a certain kind of sexual desire is perceived?). The cinematography (which is really quite attractive) is often dreamy and artful. The location used for the institute is Moszna Castle, a palace with 99 turrets sometimes referred to as “Polish Disneyland” (also – and I wonder if this was meant to function as a kind of visual pun given that the castle is quite well known in Poland, and there is a strong theme of sexual desire running under the vampirism – “moszna” in Polish translates as “scrotum” – so take that as you will).

Furthermore, the film seems to take place in some unspecified time with some modern sensibilities but costuming and cars that seem from a more distant past. Similarly, the setting seems to be deliberately unfixed – signs are in Polish, but in one scene, they visit an institute where vampires are imprisoned in cages on the beach at “the ocean” (while Poland is on the Baltic Sea, it is nowhere near the ocean). There are many advertisements (for cigarettes mostly) in English and Iza’s small town seems surprisingly multi-cultural for my (perhaps incorrect) impression of Poland in the 80s. This all comes together to imply a dreamlike no-place and no-when, peopled by odd characters who sometimes act for no-why.

This had been on my radar for some time just because it is a Polish vampire movie (and there aren’t many if any others exist at all), but I recently got the chance to see it with English subtitles because the Severin Films remaster just came to Shudder (sadly, it’s quite difficult to do screen captures from Shudder – so the pics here are from an inferior print – the newly remastered version really looks so much better) as part of a set of movies accompanying the second edition of Kier-La Janisse’s fascinating House of Psychotic Women (the first edition of which I wrote about here). Her focus is on films that present “female madness” and I’m very curious how she frames this one. Though it is her explicit reason to be in the clinic, Iza’s vampirism does not read as any kind of mental illness. She seems quite happy with it and the way she lives. If anything, her insistence on the attention of this man seems like the unmotivated compulsion. Maybe therein lies the madness?

She seems constantly surrounded by sleazy, irritating, or pathetic men, and she seems to exclusively feed on those who in some way hunt her, who desire her, sometimes acting on that desire violently. Professor Jung doesn’t seem much interested in her at all, either because he doesn’t like women, or he doesn’t want any distractions from his work (two explanations he gives), or he just doesn’t like her. Is his indifference the magic spell that infatuates her so? She is only upset that he doesn’t take more interest. And in the end, when finally he comes around, rescues her from the beach-vampire-cage institute, and takes her off to go skinny dipping/make love to her until she’s human, she seems very happy in her “normal” human family life. If anything, the reveal of her daughter’s fangs (and penchant for killing gardeners) plays as a darkly comic twist – that even though Iza has put her dark past behind her and settled down into civilized life, this unruly female desire resurfaces in her offspring. Does the film want us to be happy for Iza in her newfound “normalcy” and to laugh at how the “problem” persists or does it want us to mourn for Iza’s loss of identity as she disappears into bland conformity and to laugh at how good it is that her lost vivacity continues in her child? Un-life will find a way.

It is a consistently watchable (and again, the look and feel and sound of it all is striking and expressive) and frequently enjoyable film, which still puzzles in its often confounding character beats. Is this an issue of poor editing and half-baked writing, or is it instead successful in ironically telling us a fairy tale that we should view as facile and even harmful, its disjointed, apparently unmotivated qualities supporting that reading? It’s hard to find much analysis on it in either English or Polish (thus, I’m particularly curious to see what Kier-La Janisse has to say). The short English descriptions online present a quirky vampire romance (but I found no real analysis or criticism beyond user reviews saying “weird, great movie” or “weird, boring movie”) and much of what I’ve found in Polish either describes it as a bit of superficial, erotic schlock produced late in the communist regime as a kind of ‘bread and circuses’ to keep the public entertained and thus pacified (attacking it as regrettably ‘low art’) or uses it as an example of how Polish cinema really didn’t respect and therefore didn’t succeed at genre film (attacking Polish film culture for being over-snobbish when it comes to matters of ‘low’ and ‘high’ art). Hey, if any Polish readers know of more insightful readings out there, please let me know – I’m very curious and limited by my embarrassingly weak Polish skills.

For my part, I watched it twice in a couple days and enjoyed watching it both times, but I can’t say if I think it’s good or not. It has been interesting to consider and it’s certainly got moments that shine. It’s fascinating how sometimes watching something from a culture you didn’t grow up in (even if you’ve lived there for a while – I’ve been in Poland for 14 years at this point), you can be more forgiving of faults, more open to reading what seem like very strange choices or even mistakes in a more charitable light. I often feel like maybe there’s something culturally informing all this that doesn’t land for me, that just goes over my head. It makes for a rich and sometimes mysterious viewing experience. If you’re not in a hurry, and you’re in the mood for an odd little piece of off-kilter vampire cinema from a specific time and place (trying to be no time or place), perchance this one is for you.