|
The Vampire Lovers
[Hammer / AIP]
1970; color
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Starring: Ingrid Pitt, George Cole, Kate O'Mara & Peter Cushing
|
|
The Vampire Lovers is the sole collaboration between Hammer Studios and American International Pictures (home to, among other things, Roger Corman's Poe series) and is, in this reviewer's estimation at least, exactly what you'd imagine a collaboration between those two parties to be. The twist in this film though, is that the vampire in question is not Christopher Lee. Or even John Forbes-Robertson. (He played Dracula in The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires, one of the few Hammer vampire films not starring Lee in that role. Forbes-Robertson does briefly appear in this film as well, as the "Man In Black." No, not a vampire Johnny Cash. Just a random horse-riding vampire dude who lurks in the shadows and appears every so often, usually right after someone is relieved of their blood supply.) In fact, it's not even a he. It's a she, and she is none other than sexy screen siren Ingrid Pitt. Pitt doesn't play Count Dracula of course - that would be silly, even for AIP! She plays Mircalla Karnstein, a mysterious lady with a taste for flowy, low cut dresses and the blood of any and all nubile young women that cross her path. She enjoys other parts of nubile young women as well (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The movie kicks off with one of those classically Hammer-esque opening sequences; you know - moonlit night, fog encased castle, as yet unnamed pensive European guy voice-overing about things that will serve as groundwork for everything that's going to happen in the next hour and a half, etc. We even get a brief visit to a right proper English pub and an unrelated case of death by vampire before the aforementioned European guy lures a particularly blond and busty bloodsucker to his lair to give her a proper beheading. Nope, that wasn't a typo & I didn't mean a bedding. He cuts her head clean off (literally, the effect wasn't that extensive) and all of this happens before the credit roll. Ah, the '70s. They didn't make you wait as long for a payoff back then. Anywhoo, as you may expect from the details listed above, this does not follow the Bram Stoker version. It is based on a story by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, and has a whole sapphic angle built into the storyline. (According to Wikipedia, it's publication predates Stoker's Dracula by more than twenty years.) Naturally, the studios exploited this aspect for all it was worth, making this one of the most lesbionic - to coin a Wendy Williams phrase - vampire films in the Hammer cannon. (Although they did revisit the topic with the other two entries into the Karnstein series, Lust For A Vampire and Twins Of Evil.) All of that should be enough to tell you whether or not you would enjoy this movie.
—Bunny
|
|
