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.
Welcome (back) to my continuing journey through the somewhat niche sub-sub-genre of “Lesbian Vampire Films” in all their dreamy, artistic, evocative grandeur. For a brief overview of some common traits and discussions of Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary, please check out last week’s post. Today we have another four standout examples to delve into.
I’ve planned this as a short series – two posts on films from the heyday of the genre (mostly the seventies, a bit from earlier) and a final post digging into more recent fare, and that means that I’ve had to make some hard decisions this week, choosing what to exclude. All of today’s entries are from 1970-1971, the period when Lesbian Vampires were most in vogue, and are all essential viewing, but if you like what you’ve seen, I’ll include some suggestions for further exploration at the end of the post. Also, to really examine these films, there will be spoilers, so enter at your own risk. And so, without further ado…
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
This is probably what many first think of when they think ‘Lesbian Vampire,’ and for good reason. Roy Ward Baker (The Monster Club and Asylum, among others, but my favorite of his is the 1952 Marilyn Monroe thriller, Don’t Bother to Knock) kicked off Hammer Studio’s “Karnstein Trilogy” with a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Le Fanu’s Carmilla. While it takes liberties (often sensible ones, both streamlining the narrative and adding new elements to build excitement, intrigue, or titillation), it follows the events of the book more closely than most films featuring seductive female vampires named Carmilla, Mircalla, and Marcilla. My understanding is that even though British censorship laws had recently been relaxed, allowing for the inclusion of more blood and breasts, the censor still objected to the lesbianism, but since the producers could declaim, “it’s in the book!” the literature respecting BBFC had to let it pass.
While this isn’t my favorite example of the genre (compared to what was happening on the continent, it feels a bit reserved and stately, but that is part of its charm), it is surely historically significant, both in terms of this sub-genre, and as I understand, for explicitly featuring a lesbian character in a British film at all. As portrayed by Ingrid Pitt in a well-rounded performance, neither an arch villain, nor a silly sexpot, Carmilla is not coded – she lusts and hungers for other attractive women in diaphanous nightshifts, and Emma, she might even love.
As in the book, Carmilla is in the habit of getting stranded at the estates of Austrian nobles so that she can befriend, seduce, and feed on the daughters of the house, while also going further afield to kill off some peasant ladies too. First we see young Laura meet this fate (the name of the novel’s narrator) and then we see Carmilla move to a new home and start in on Emma, who begins dreaming of being pinned under a great cat and starts suffering from anemia as small bite marks appear on her breast. Furthermore, in a worthwhile addition, while the master of the house is away in Vienna, Carmilla also seduces the governess, Mademoiselle Perrodot, who then becomes her accomplice and maybe also a vampire.
It is in these relations that the film shines: temptation and refusal – an invitation and acquiescence – romantic love declared and friendly love returned. When this turns into a house of mostly women (with one meddling butler), with shifting loyalties, trusts and distrusts, and attractions, it is most alive. (The men end up on a side quest to figure out what’s going on and return to save the day – the movie’s gender politics are, shall we say, dated.) And the three central women bring nicely different qualities. Pitt is gently commanding in the middle of it all. Kate O’Mara’s Mlle. Perrodot gets to transition from suspicious and protecting, through sexual curiosity, into being slyly devious. Finally, as Emma, Madeline Smith is the picture of doe eyed innocence, loving her new friend, but not quite comprehending how that new friend loves her (nor does she notice that her bosom friend keeps biting her, well, bosom).
The film combines a very British respectability and grand, traditional gothic horror settings and atmosphere (old castles, opulent costumes, candles and fog, painted backdrops) with a more frank presentation of sex and sexuality, and additional nudity thrown in because selling tickets is nice. Given its old fashioned style (I don’t mean this as disparagement, but it feels like a pleasant, old timey horror film for a rainy Saturday afternoon), the degree of sexual explicitness can be startling (though relatively tame by today’s standards). Still, it is all pretty matter-of-fact, which I think is essential in maintaining the style of the overall film.
That down-to-earth quality extends to Pitt’s Carmilla. Pitt grounds her nicely, both playing up the evident appetite and playfulness of a predator who has done this time and time again, and the lonely sadness that comes from having done this time and time again. I think her Carmilla, while she can kill off peasant girls heartlessly, is perhaps in the habit of falling in love with her more aristocratic prey, thus living a tragic existence of constantly destroying her loves. Near the end of the film, she tries to take Emma away with her, maybe to start an un-life together, but she’s defeated when the men of the house figure out what’s going on, find her hidden tomb, and bloodily stake and decapitate her. One nice addition here, not in the book, is that in those final moments, Emma is somehow connected to her; she feels Carmilla die and cries out. A handsome young man, there to rescue her, tries to give comfort, but doesn’t understand what’s been lost.
All told, this is an interesting transitional film, hearkening back to Hammer’s output of the late 50s and early 60s, all fluttering capes and full bodices and bloodied fangs and the full moon behind a wisp of clouds, while also looking forward to a more libertine 70s with liberalized social mores and more psychologically explored monsters. Based on the earliest progenitor of this sub-genre, it looks to where it will go in the coming years, both in the UK with Hammer’s continuation of the Karnstein films, and across the channel, where Lesbian Vampires were really having a moment.
Daughters of Darkness (1971)
There is no way I could discuss the Lesbian Vampire film without highlighting Harry Kümel’s sublime Leslèvres rouges (The Red Lips) featuring Delphine Seyrig as the subtle, chillingly seductive Countess Elizabeth Báthory. For my money, it is not only great for this sub-genre, but is also just about a perfect vampire movie, and her portrayal should be considered among the Lugosis, Lees, and Schrecks of the world. This is my third mention of this Belgian classic, having previously listed it as a comfort food favorite, and expounded on my appreciation of its groovy score. But this is an opportunity to really dig into what I think makes it so special.
Briefly, Stefan and Valerie, married only one day earlier (but clearly too soon), are waylaid in a grand, empty hotel in the Belgian resort town of Ostend in the off season, on their way to England to introduce Valerie to Stefan’s “Mother.” The only other guests are the glamorous Countess Elizabeth Báthory (claiming to be a descendant of her famous namesake) and her slinky, pouting secretary, Illona. The countess takes the young couple under her wing, seducing and manipulating them both, with her eye on Valerie as a potential new companion (Illona tires of her unlife). By the end, Illona and Stefan are dead, and Elizabeth and Valerie drive off into the sunrise (which, being vampires, does not go well for them). The plot is straightforward, but the film is nuanced in how it plumbs the depths of its simple story, and the film making is just as seductive as its countess.
Central to Kümel’s film is an ambivalence regarding its characters. We have some reason to feel for each, but I don’t think anyone is exactly the protagonist. Valerie is innocent and put upon, pulled between Stefan’s latent sadism and violence (perhaps she could have gotten to know him even a little before getting married) and the manipulation and domination of the countess, but past that, she is a bit blank. Stefan has cruel tendencies and beats Valerie, but we also learn of some heavy baggage he’s carrying (“Mother” is an older, overbearing, powdered and rouged gentleman, and aside from his fascination with violence and cruelty, Stefan seems deeply closeted and self-hating, taking it out on Valerie) – this doesn’t excuse his violence, but does make him a more complex character for whom one could sympathize. Poor Illona just can’t go on in this lifestyle any longer. And finally, Elizabeth may be a devious bloodsucker, but she is a constant treat to be around.
Seyrig brings delicate, playful, beguiling charm to every moment of screen time. The things Elizabeth does are cold, hard, and greedy – carelessly disrupting or destroying the lives of anyone she encounters to take just what she wants and leave what she does not, kicking her once lover into a shallow grave without batting one perfect eyelash. However, the way she does these cruel things is always so warm, soft spoken, open, and somehow innocent. There is always a glint in her eye, a gentle smile on her lips. We get the smallest glimpses of her hardness – we see her manipulations, and yet we, just like Valerie and Stefan are drawn to her, loving her for her elegant, soft power and grace.
In one sequence, after Stefan has beaten her, Valerie rushes off to the train station. Elizabeth follows and signals Illona to go to Stefan. After stopping Valerie from boarding her train, the seduction begins in earnest, including a magnetic speech that closely resembles text quoted in discussing The Blood Spattered Bride last week: “Stefan loves (you), whatever (I) may think – of course he does. That’s why he dreams of making out of you what every man dreams of making out of every woman – a slave, a thing, an object for pleasure. So, you despise me? So, I disgust you? Ha! Come, I’ll show you what men are made of.” Clearly, she plans for Valerie to find Illona and Stefan together, but when they return and find that Stefan has accidentally killed Illona, for Elizabeth, it is just as good, even better: Valerie’s fears of Stefan’s brutality have been confirmed.
Elizabeth starts issuing orders to Valerie in cleaning up the crime scene, and after the three return from burying the body, Valerie stays in the countess’s room, waiting for her expectedly (in the same place and position where we had previously seen Illona) to tenderly undress and bite her. It’s not long before the two of them are sucking the blood out of Stefan’s wrists. We have seen Elizabeth expertly manipulate and dominate Valerie, grooming her to replace Illona. And yet, this success feels emancipatory, liberating.
The joy of the movie is the delicious tension between Elizabeth’s monstrous qualities (which Seyrig consistently plays against, never once telegraphing a drop of cruelty) and the way the film and her performance draw you into her orbit. I heard that Kümel chose the colors for her outfits (which are stunning, each grander and more luxurious than the last), red, white, and black, because he associated them with the Nazis. Perhaps the whole film works as a meditation on the allure of power. Though we see her heartlessness – destructively exercising her quiet power, it and she never stop being attractive.
That said, this film is not a thoughtful reflection about how the sexiness of power can lead to fascism, but rather a mesmerizing, piquant delicacy. The compositions, the trance inducing music, the exquisite play of character beats are all so luscious and creamy – but the darker implications add a hint of acidity to prevent the dish from being over-sweet. Though we take pleasure in Elizabeth’s triumph, the air of melancholy and the bite of harm done complicate that pleasure, and the whole effect lingers in the mind all the more for it.
The Shiver of the Vampires (1971)
So first, I must admit that the French director, Jean Rollin has long been a blind spot for me and this was the first film of his I’ve seen. From all I’ve read about him, I think this, Les Frisson de Vampires, was a good introduction: full of bizarre imagery, circling around the themes of sex and death on which I understand he often dwelt, made with little regard for “standard ways of making a movie,” and rich with a visual poetry and unreality unlike anything else out there, all while still having a rather simple and describable narrative (which will be less true with other films of his).
Once again, we have a newlywed couple, Isa and Antoine, on their way to their honeymoon (so common, it’s basically a trope of the Lesbian Vampire film). They stop to visit Isa’s cousins at their castle, only to learn that they’d died the day before. It turns out they had been vampire hunters until Isolde, a mysterious female, ‘travelling’ vampire bit them, and now they remain on their estate, in all their early seventies, velvet bellbottomed, frilly shirt, hippy-fop glory, biting local girls and staking them so they don’t rise again. In this, Isolde criticizes them as bourgeoisie. The cousins decide to bring Isa into the fold, and plan to turn her. Seduced by Isolde, Isa never consummates her marriage to Antoine, preferring instead to writhe naked on the beach with her cousins until the sunlight makes them all disappear in a puff, an effect right out of an old silent movie. But as is often the case, it’s not about the story.
It’s about the skull in the fishbowl. It’s about Isolde crawling out of the grandfather clock and caressing the nude Isa (who rather than pulling away as one might expect when a vampire exits a timepiece, curiously waits to see what she’s going to do and then gives a gentle smile of appreciation). It’s about the two maids/servants of the vampires walking the grounds naked beneath their sheer violet gowns, carrying candelabras through the cemetery in a haze of red light, or gleefully, innocently laughing and spinning about having destroyed their once master (their periodic joy being a high point of the film). It’s about the rocking electric guitar score, wailing away beneath otherwise languorous action, creating an odd dissonance of sound and image. It’s about the hilarious, eccentric cousins circling around the camera, finishing each other’s sentences in a lecture on the history of the cult of Isis, Satanism, and Vampirism in Europe, before finishing with a flourish and a series of little bows as the maids kneel, topless for some reason, before them and Isa and Antoine wordlessly get up and leave the room without reaction or explanation. It’s about Isolde murdering Isabelle (former fiancé of both cousins) by embracing her under her cloak, before we see that she had been wearing 4 inch long, razor sharp pastie cones and has stabbed Isabelle through the nipples (now dabbed with chalky orange-red paint). And, on a narrative level, it is perhaps about the pull of family, of belonging, of the past, of attraction being stronger than that of a typical, normative relationship. It all comes together to pull the viewer into a surprisingly engaging dream of old castles, decrepit cemeteries, and erotic death trips.
As far as I can tell, though he was prolific, and obviously aware of mainstream film in France and abroad, it is most useful to view Rollin as an outsider artist, or even a Naïve artist – he did not fail to make ‘good films,’ but was working in a form that was all his own. He made a lot of movies (many pornographic, others just jobs for hire) under assumed names which paid the bills and kept the lights on, but everything on which he put his own name, he made in his way, for himself, if nobody else. For all of their nudity and blood, they were non-commercial affairs, far too weird and poetic for the standard horror crowd, and far too rooted in the fantastic, too full of horror elements for the world of French art cinema.
This is no exception. It is a disjointed, ethereal viewing experience, but one that feels grounded in feeling, personal and important to its maker. The performances are sometimes stilted or unmotivated, but choices have clearly been made. There are lots of naked female bodies, but somehow, the camera never leers and instead, it all feels kind of innocent: a genuine, if sexed-up, meditation on death and family and need. There are strange sequences of events and sometimes the logic that has led from one moment to the next is obscured, but it never felt actually nonsensical or boring. I was captivated throughout. I laughed. I was sometimes surprised. I don’t think I really pondered any deeper themes or poetry, but I felt satisfied that someone else was in the process thereof.
I’m sure that with studio notes, this could have been a better “movie,” but were it a clean, sensible Hollywood vampire flick, it would surely be less of a film; it wouldn’t be the idiosyncratic, personal bit of magic that it is. I’m glad I finally sampled Rollin’s oeuvre and I definitely plan to watch more (many of his films can be found on the Kino Cult streaming platform – free with advertisements). The world is a richer place for having his films in it.
Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
I can’t be the first to observe that with Jess Franco’s film, a Spanish-German production filmed in Turkey, you really get what it says on the tin: Vampires. Lesbians. That’s the movie (there’s more, of course, but these are the broad strokes). Franco is often mentioned in close proximity to Rollin and they had many superficial similarities: both were prolific outsider-filmmakers, often funding their unconventional films with pornographic projects; both made Lesbian Vampire movies; more broadly, both gravitated to themes of sex and death and had very characteristic artistic proclivities; both offered a dreamlike viewing experience; and both attained a very strong cult following over the years – but beneath the surface, their work feel dissimilar, each with his own very specific style. That said, I must admit that most of what I know about Franco (as with Rollin) comes from what I’ve read. I had seen this one before, but it remains the only piece of his that I’ve watched.
Somewhat following Dracula, we have an estate agent, Linda (Ewa Strömberg) sent to discuss an inheritance with Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda), a vampire to whom Dracula has left a great deal. Linda had recently caught her, let’s say ‘peculiar,’ nude nightclub act. The routine, which opens the film and is later repeated, consists of the countess, in front of a mirror, removing her lingerie and dressing another nude woman who remains still as a mannequin, until lowering her to the ground and biting her neck. The scene establishes images of doubling and control, but it’s also a pretty weird way to start a film. Still, the audience in the nightclub seems to enjoy it (in a kind of subdued way like one appreciates a painting in a museum), and more significantly, the differences in how Linda and her boyfriend, Omar watch the act are notable. Linda is clearly more than taken with it and is breathlessly aroused by the end, while Omar looks rather like he’s putting up with a tedious art-thing and is surprised to find her so shaken.
Shortly thereafter, Linda visits her therapist, describes this experience in light of the fact that she had already been having erotic dreams of this mysterious performer before seeing her in the flesh, and wants to know what it all means. The therapist simply says that she’s unsatisfied and should “get a lover – or get a better lover.” This she does once she finally meets the beguiling countess.
If the vampire can sometimes be taken as a metaphor for unbound sexual desire, this is an example par excellence. In “exploitation” cinema, sex and nudity can sometimes be seen as “gratuitous,” a ploy to sell tickets. In this case, it is the heart of the piece. Franco’s film does not smuggle in some kind of hidden art beneath its surface of eroticism – the erotic, the sexual is the central artistic preoccupation, and the vampirism carries that theme evocatively. It’s all about bodies being “addicted to” each other; about needs beyond the bounds of the rational; about the liberation of giving yourself over to another; and about yearning for freedom, even from that ecstasy. That may seem grandiose – but it’s not – it is playful, unhinged, fleshy, and riveting. The chemistry between Strömberg and Miranda is palpable; the cinematography is fevered – hot and exciting, full of wide gorgeous shots and snap zooms to incisive details; the editing is delirious, often cutting between the main action and seemingly unrelated images, such as a scorpion on the beach, a kite in mid-air, or blood on the window; and the soundtrack is wild – an intense groove sold years later as “Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party” (though it actually contains music from three different Franco pictures).
It is also just a strange, totally engaging (if you don’t find extended sequences of “artistic” nude performance as laborious as Omar does), far-out little film. While the countess is clearly a vampire, she doesn’t follow many of the “rules” and is more likely to be sunbathing nude on the beach than sleeping in a coffin. Sometimes characters have extreme, baffling reactions, and sometimes something very creepy happens without eliciting much shock, such as when Linda finds a man (played by Franco) in the basement of her hotel torturing and killing a woman – she gasps and runs away, but never mentions it again (in our age of AirBnB and Booking.com, if we followed her example, every hotel would have bedbugs – negative reviews keep us all safe, Linda).
Finally, it does build to a surprising ending that left me a little disappointed, but perhaps it is meant to. Linda, so enraptured with Nadine, seems bound to escape her workaday, pedestrian life, but in the end, Linda kills Nadine, driving a spike through her eye, and she and Omar sail away as if awaking from a strange dream. I was initially puzzled at such a re-affirmation of the previous, unfulfilling stasis, but came across an astute reading in Bartłomiej Paszylk’s The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: An Historical Survey. He writes that it “leaves us with a convincing and complex picture of a woman torn between her sexual needs and the fear of becoming dependent on the person who finally manages to satisfy her.” Thus, I suppose it should feel unsatisfying – Linda chooses free-but-unsatisfied over-happy-but-tied-down; thus, this lusty vampire fever dream ends in melancholy. The kite comes down to earth.
All in all, this is a singular, carnal, sometimes chaotic, periodically enigmatic, always engrossing movie, and I’ve really got to explore Franco more.
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And so, that wraps up this dive into the artsy, erotic, sleazy, aesthetic, and rather international world of Lesbian Vampire Films. I think I’ll take a break from them for a bit and cover some other topics I’ve been considering, but eventually, I plan to return for one more post on more modern iterations. But as I promised at the beginning to give some other recommendations…
Vampyres (1974) is good fun, featuring two young women sexually luring men to a castle to feed on them. The sun drenched and surreal The Velvet Vampire (1971) showcases a commanding vampire named Diane Le Fanu driving her dune buggy around the American west and seducing a young couple in their dreams. It’s also the only classic Lesbian Vampire film I know of directed by a woman. I have not yet, but plan to watch more of Jean Rollin’s work. His Requiem for a Vampire (1972) is without dialogue for more than half the run-time and is apparently very imagistic and improvised. Also, the two female protagonists are dressed as clowns, so if that sounds like your cup of tea, have a look. I also really want to try out his Fascination (1979), featuring the iconic image of Brigitte Lahaie with her scythe. Of course, there’s always Tony Scott’s ever so stylish The Hunger (1983), featuring David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve in a bit of a bloody love triangle. Alternatively, if you liked The Vampire Lovers and want more, the second entry in Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy, Lust for a Vampire (1971) features Carmilla haunting a girls boarding school (the third film in the trilogy, Twins of Evil (1971) is, I think, the superior film, but doesn’t actually feature any lesbian vampires…). The list goes on…
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Finally, a personal note: with this entry, my longest post yet, I’ve now published more than 102,000 words on this blog. I understand that’s a decent length for a novel (Frankenstein, for comparison is about 76,000, and Dracula is about 145,000) and just thought it was a milestone worth marking.
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.
It’s a big world of horror cinema out there and I think it’s always interesting to explore work from different regions. Not only can you find a variety of new stories or folkloric sources, but you can often find new approaches to tone, to styles of acting. Having seen at least a few examples of his work, I find Park Chan-Wook’s handling of tone quite fascinating. Comedy, brutality, sentiment, and naturalism co-inhabit his films in a way that, were they from Hollywood, I would criticize, but in his hands, they seem to heighten each other and really serve the work. This is just such a film.
Thirst (2009)
This South Korean vampire feature from Park Chan-Wook (director of Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden, among many others) feels surprisingly fresh. It hits many common tropes of the vampire tale, but consistently strikes a unique inflection—at once, teeming with life, often hilarious, and also quite grounded and corporeal. While being stylish and nice to look at, it is not particularly stylistic or atmospheric. However, the film comes to life in its scene work—in character interactions and the genuine relish with which the characters and the film experience each moment.
Based on Émile Zola’s 1868 naturalist novel, Thérèse Raquin, the story follows a priest, Sang-hyun (Kang-ho Song, recently of Parasite) who feels dissatisfied with the degree to which he is actually anyone helping through his work. He chooses to take part in a vaccine trial for the deadly leprosy-eque Emmanuel Virus, which he is not expected to survive. And he doesn’t. But, perhaps thanks to a blood transfusion from an unknown and never disclosed source, he happens to become a vampire and comes back to life, though still with the virus, the symptoms of which only ease up when he feeds. (None of this, surprisingly, was in the Zola text)
Sang-hyun’s resurrection is heralded as miraculous and the terminally ill flock to him, seeking his blessing. One such supplicant is Lady Ra (Kim Hae-sook), the mother of Sang-hyun’s permanently sickly childhood friend, Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun). Having prayed for him, Kang-woo’s cancer apparently disappears and Sang-hyun is invited round for dinner where he meets another childhood friend, all grown up, Tae-ju (Kim Ok-bin), Kang-woo’s miserable wife.
Tae-ju had been taken in by Lady Ra as a child and brought up as her daughter/servant, before coming of age and being married to the endlessly sniffling, shivering, dripping, and infuriatingly, if moderately goofily endearingly, dependent Kang-woo, thus shifting from daughter/servant to daughter-in-law/caretaker. There is an immediate attraction between Sang-hyun and Tae-ju and it isn’t long before, Sang-hyun feeling a bit freed from his priestly vows by the whole vampirism thing, they begin a passionate affair, eventually murdering Kang-woo (as Tae-ju gives Sang-hyun the false impression that Kang-woo beats her), and eventually turning Tae-ju into a vampire.
As is often the case, as our original vampire protagonist is quite careful and conservative in how he feeds, never having killed anyone who was unwilling before Kang-woo, his progeny is wild and kills with abandon. Having lived so long under the thumb of another, Tae-ju embraces her newfound power and makes a bit of a mess (you just know when someone paints every surface in their home white that sooner-or-later, there will be blood).
This leads to inevitable conflict between them, culminating in Sang-hyun driving the two of them to fields atop a barren cliff where there is nowhere to hide from the coming sunrise. Tae-ju initially fights to live, but in the end, acquiesces and they sit on the hood of the car to watch the sun come up before turning to ash.
But again, the plot, while there are some nice turns along the way, is largely what one expects from a vampire story. But that really doesn’t detract (much) from the joys of the movie. The first thing that sets it apart is its aforementioned tone. I suppose it might not be classified as a comedy, but it is persistently very funny. Much of that exists in small moments, a reaction shot here, a snide comment there, but it can also fill larger set pieces. After Kang-woo’s murder, both Sang-hyun and Tae-ju are initially haunted by what they’ve done and for a time, they lose the vigor in their relationship. This is largely down to the fact that both keep hallucinating the drowned Kang-woo (in all his drippy, snotty, idiot grin glory), especially whenever they try to have sex and he lies, clammy and dribbling between them. This kills the mood, somewhat.
Another tonal element centers on the pure joy of new power. There is a stretch that could have come from any super-hero film when Tae-ju first learns what Sang-hyun has become and gets him to show off for her (in a sequence that suggests the first time Superman takes Lois for a flight in the 1978 film). It’s telling that she is the one who is excited by it. He hadn’t really thought to explore the extent of his new abilities, but she is thrilled to have him leap from tall buildings or bend coins to demonstrate his strength. Of course, when she has turned, this excitement continues.
And then there is the Zola based kitchen sink melodrama of it all: two people succumbing to desire, their thirst if you will, going down a rabbit hole of murder, co-dependence, recrimination, and depravity, ending in somewhat mutual suicide. The oddest juxtaposition in the film is really not between this mid-19th century narrative and the tale of a vampire priest in South Korea. Rather, it is between the weight of the original subject matter, the crushing downfall of two broken degenerates, and the light touch of the filmmaker as we follow two characters who are both very likable in their ways: our melancholic protagonist who is genuinely trying to do good in his (un)life, or at least to minimize harm, and his more sanguine paramour whose greedy lapping up of every pleasure is quite infectious.
In his preface to Thérèse Raquin, Zola wrote that his intention was “to study temperaments and not characters” and apparently (I’m going from Wikipedia here—I haven’t read it) this resulted in a cold, clinical presentation of the story which influenced the early naturalist literary movement. Here, those temperaments survive, but Park Chan-Wook really gives us characters to accompany them: sometimes ridiculous, sometimes tender and shy, sometimes thoughtful, and sometimes unable to control themselves, though they sometimes want to. It is anything but cold.
Sang-hyun goes on a significant journey over the course of the film. At the beginning, he is lost. Unfulfilled in his role as a priest, he takes his life in his hands, volunteering for the trial vaccine. He in unable to, in any way, live for himself. By the end of the movie, he becomes a kind of leper, a monster, an adulterer, a murderer, an abuser, by all counts, a sinner, but he also becomes someone who can genuinely smile.
Right before driving to the cliffs at the end, he stops the car by the camp of people outside his monastery who now worship him as a miracle worker. There, he gets intentionally caught with his pants down, looking like he was attempting to rape one of his faithful. They turn against him, throwing rocks, chasing him away. As he flees, his elation is clear. He is free from their love and expectations. And they are free of their devotion. He can live his own life and choose his own death.
For a movie that features a nice old blind priest being stabbed in the heart, blood being vomited through the holes of a recorder, leprous boils and pustules, self-flagellation, liters of mucous, and a prodigious quantity of peeled off fingernails, the total effect is honestly surprisingly light and uplifting without being at all glib or parodic. It’s quite a piece of work.
