"Lust for a Vampire" (1971) d/ Jimmy Sangster

Despite some pretty famous hate from star Ralph Bates, who replaced the elder Peter Cushing, who'd bowed out of the production to tend to his ailing wife, Hammer's last minute swap of directors (Sangster for Terence Fischer), and Mike Raven's laughably dubbed, dollar store Christopher Lee portrayal of Count Karnstein, there's a lot to like about tonight's review, the studio's meaty follow up to The Vampire Lovers(1970), further exploring the ungodly acts and deeds of the Karnstein clan, and showcasing the loverly Yutte Stensgaard, a blonde any red-blooded man'd love to get his fangs into.


"This is one of the worst movies ever made, mate!", scoffs Giles (Ralph Bates).
After seeing a throaty young strumpet provide the red stuff in a sacrificial rite of resurrection, where her blood is poured over the veil-draped skeletal remains of none other than Carmilla Karnstein, we're then introduced to the aptly named Richard leStrange (Michael Johnson),  a writer of lurid horror fiction, who lands himself a cushy gig at a nearby finishing school for girls, just as Countess Arritzen (Barbara Jefford) arrives on the scene, with her blood boilingly beautiful blonde niece, Mircalla (Yutte Stensgaard), in tow. Richard is instantly smitten with the mysterious young girl, as is the dusty headmaster, Giles Barton (Ralph Bates), who seems strangely acceptant when his frolicking young fillies start disappearing, one by one.


That's no stake in my trousers, I'm just glad to see Yutte.
It turns out that Barton is an aspiring student of the Black Arts, and through extensive grimoire research and love-born portrait sketches, he relates to Mircalla that she is, in fact, Carmilla, and pledges his servitude to the ageless predator, even hiding the lifeless body of one of her late night snacks down a well, and ultimately earning a fanged up neck-death for his blind loyalty. Meanwhile, Richard also blindly vows his love and allegiance to the vampire, who lets him dine on her instead of the usual eating arrangements we've grown accustomed to seeing (I'll be humming "Strange Love" the next time I'm performing cunnilingus, for sure). Further complicating matters,  Janet (Suzanna Leigh) the gym teacher has inexplicably fallen in love with Richard, a guy she's barely talked to since he joined the staff. From here, it's bare breasts, bloody neck bites, Bishop-driven lynch mobs, and flaming castle support impalement. Ain't nothing wrong with any of that.


Look, it's Nick Frost, the 1830 variant. Cornetto?
Sadly, Yutte bowed out of the Hammer spotlight after her appearance here, feeling under-appreciated in the genre. Personally, I've always appreciated the Hell out of her small-but-impressive body of work. She'd even make a needlepoint video sexy. Lighter on the on-screen lesbianism than it's predecessor, but heavier with Hammer honeys like Pippa Steel, Lust is packed top to bottom with splashy blood and bursting bosoms, gothic sets you may recall seeing in other movies, like Scars of Dracula(1970), and is a ripper of a time to be had, in general. Twins of Evil (1972), another favorite of mine, came next. If you're on board for a true Hammer terror classic, you won't find it here, for sure, but it's still a classic in my book, exploitatively speaking, and well worthy of three Wops on the rating scale. Next up, I'll be taking center stage over at Theater of Guts to scrutinize some genre material, so you'll definitely want to check that out.


I wasn't down for this particular Count. Like, blah! Blah!

"La Novia Ensangrentada"(1972)d/Vicente Aranda

By 1972, genre filmmakers weren't only making your father's vampire movies anymore, with gothic scenery familiarly chewed by hammy actors with penciled-in widow's peaks and corny accents and women who were little more than busty fang candy or sexy bat-bait.Nowhere was this more obvious than in Spain, where writer/director Aranda had just wrapped this off-beat, surprisingly sexy, uber-violent update on the Sheridan LeFanu vampire short story, Carmilla.Don't let the exploitative international title, The Blood Spattered Bride, ruin your experience with false promise of shlocky fun(despite free 'up-chuck cups' given out at the box office for squeamish and faint-of-heart theatergoers!), this is some potent hardcore imagery here, hauntingly set against a dreary Spanish countryside, and further intensified by the striking beauty of female leads,  Maribel Martin and Alexandra Bastedo, who more than resembled a Spaniard version of Blondie front-chick, Debbie Harry in her prime, at certain angles and under certain lighting to me here, and that's always hot.The original Anchor Bay disc eventually replaced the hulking Gorgon clamshell VHS in my collection(always hard to say goodbye to those, ain't it?), and though it's a bare bones release apart from the uncut widescreen print and the excellent "Berserk at the Bijou" combo trailer, it's managed to satiate my desire to revisit all the graphic genital-hacking, shotgunned nuts, blood-sipping, man-slashing mayhem whenever it arises, which is pretty frequently, to be honest.One of the more timely, thought-provoking vampire movies of the early seventies, fer sure, and one of my favorites.Onward.

Heyyy, this is even better than that 1853 half-dime love token I unearthed with my metal detector last summer.
We meet a delicious young newlywed named Susan(Maribel Martin) and her husband(Simón Andreu) as they stop off at a hotel for the night during a honeymoon roadtrip to his affluent family's sizeable estate in the thickly wooded countryside.As he gathers and checks their bags, she fantasizes about being strangled and roughly taken right on the marriage bed by a stocking-headed rapist, and is unwilling to consumate their vows or evenspend the night there, by the time he gets upstairs.At the manor, her husband becomes little more than a cartoonishly exaggerated libido, constantly pawing his young bride, and pouting like a toddler in the toy aisle when she manages to resist his advances, even locking herself in a pigeon coop and sending the key off into the wild blue yonder around one of the bird's necks, to keep the wolf-in-groovy-euro-turtleneck at bay.Through his creepy young cousin Carol(Maria-Rosa Rodriguez ), Susan soon learns of her husband's family history and their long-standing hatred of the women, as evidenced by the removal of all female portraits from the estate walls as ordered by Grandfather, and stemming from backward ring-wearing newlywed Mircalla murdering her husband on their wedding night, so the legend goes, and probably a major factor in the excising by knife of the striking blonde's grillpiece from her painting in the basement.Susan's mixed feelings about her octo-partner aren't helped much when he begins to show a cruel, sadistic side(though young Carol comments that Susan likes when he hurts her!), and after discovering Mircalla's defaced painting, she begins to frequently dream about her, and butchering her own husband with the woman's dagger, even removing his blood-pouring jewels afterward.When she awakens hovering over her sleeping spouse, clutching the very same blade from her subconscious, the line between fantasy and reality blur, and she begins to question her own sanity.

Doth Lady Mircalla(Alexandra Bastedo) require the G.P.S. estimate for the center of Stefano's goatee, perhaps?
With Susan's husband engulfed in a hopeless game of keepaway with the dream dagger, he decides to bury it at the beach, where he spots a human hand protruding from the sand nearby, and after clearing it all away, he's shocked to discover Carmilla(Alexandra Bastedo) buried naked save for a snorkel and some swim goggles.Back at the estate, Susan immediately recognizes Carmilla as the woman from her brutal dreams and pencil sketches, but her husband is too diplomatic to listen to her warnings, and by then, it's already too late.A physician trails the women to some dilapidated ruins nearby one night and is shocked by their animalistic cries of passion and the psychedelically sapphic blood drinking that follows.She later demolishes a roll top desk to score the aforementioned dagger for to slash said medical practitioner to pieces, and repeatedly shotgun's Carol's father in the face and groin when he finds Carmilla caught by the ankle in one of his animal traps.Eventually, Susan's husband musters up the sac himself to venture out to the ruins, where he's met by Carol, who's already been bitten on the neck, and relates that the women will come back, no matter what he does.She kneels on the ground and parts her hair for him, and he obliges by blowing the back of her head off with his rifle.He then discovers Carmilla/Mircalla's coffin, where he finds both women sleeping nude like the homicidal lesbian bookends that they are.He closes the lid and pumps the corpse box full o' lead before carving into one of Mircalla's lifeless breasts with a dagger.A newspaper headline declares that a "man cuts out three women's hearts".

"What's the big idea?!I was still using those genitals!"
Apart from a lot of Spanish television work, Martin has also appeared in genre fare like The House that Screamed(1969), and 1973's Bell From Hell.Bastedo, who appeared opposite Sean Connery in 1967 Bond flick, Casino Royale, also turned up in 1975's The Ghoul next to Peter Cushing and John Hurt, as well as a recurring character in Jennifer Saunders' comedy series, Absolutely Fabulous, and even a cameo as a Gotham socialite in Batman Begins(2005).You'll find Andreu in everything from Luciano Ercoli's La morte cammina con i tacchi alti(1971), 1979 white fu flop, Jaguar Lives! with Joe Lewis, Donald Pleasance, and Christopher Lee, and even 2003's Beyond Re-Animator.Aranda remains one of Spain's most renowned filmmakers to this day, tackling complex social issues and filling his lens with love, eroticism, and sadism, frequent favorite themes of his.Novia certainly covers all of those with an artistic flair, breathtaking cinematography, women that are beautiful to witness but dangerous to know, and stylized ultraviolence enough for any gorehounds in the audience.On the scale, it merits three Big ones, and comes recommended.Check it out for yourselves!

"Make way, the meat for this sappho-sammy just cracked your crusted coffin lid, you dames, you!"

"Twins of Evil"(1972)d/John Hough

The third installment in Hammer's Karnstein trilogy,with the least resemblance to Le Fanu's "Carmilla",adds a witchfinder element and contrasting good and evil personalities in Playmate twins Mary and Madeleine Collinson to the familiar vampire tale.It merited an X rating in dear old Blighty for the onscreen display of loverly bristols and some of the usual vamp-violence we'd come to expect from the lads at Hammer.Though not as polished as the first Karnstein picture,"The Vampire Lovers"(1970),it's still pretty enjoyable all around.

Frieda and Maria...or is it Maria and Frieda? Does it matter?
Maria and Frieda(the Collinson twins)are identical twin sisters sent from Venice to live in Karnstein with their puritanical witch-hunting uncle,Gustav(Hammer heavy hitter,Peter Cushing)and his wife.While striking a blow against Satanism with his boys,"The Brotherhood",Gustav abducts young female villagers and burns them alive in the name of God.On the flipside of the coin,we have Count Karnstein(Damien Thomas),who,while in the favour of the Emperor,has immunity from the Brotherhood while he dabbles in the black arts in his sinister castle.After a particularly naughty bit of witchcraft one night,invoking the name of his wicked ancestors and sacrificing a local strumpet,Karnstein is visited by Countess Mircalla(Carmilla?) who fancies a bit of awright with him,abruptly chomping on his neck and turning him into a vampire.The twins are both put off by Uncle Gustav's starchy god-fearing ways,but it is Frieda who actually concocts a plan to escape the long arm of the bible.In a nutshell,Maria is basically good while Frieda is actually fun.

Count Karnstein does his best to try to listen to what Frieda has to say without being all pervy.It don't work,do it?
The Count takes notice of Gustav's nieces and Frieda,excited by tales of the randy Count and his exploits,steals away to the castle while Maria covers for her.At the castle,Karnstein invites the buxom twin to punish his maid Gerta with him.She obliges,and becomes a vampire after the Count bites her.He then offers poor Gerta up to Frieda as her first vampiric meal,which she also obliges,having a bite of one of the maid's golden bozos.When Frieda returns home,she forces her twin sister to continue covering for her every night as she now needs to sneak off in the dark,ruled by blood hunger,and fearful she may attack her own sister(which would have been hot,eh?).Maria's taken a shine to Anton,the handsome young teacher,who has his eye on Frieda,because,frankly,she's mysterious...and actually fun.Anton's got this hokey belief in something called "superstition"(rubbish!),denouncing Gustav's nightly raid parties,yet advising him on proper disposal of vampires(after his sister gets sucked dry by one) with the obligatory wooden stake through the heart,rather than burning them at the stake which could be quite messy,indeed.

"Nobody throws the first torch on the woodpile until I signal...even if they have said Jehovah!"
One night Frieda bites one of Gustav's witchburning buddies,he captures her and throws her reflectionless ass in jail.As the Brotherhood debates the young slapper's fate,Karnstein and his servants abduct Maria and exchange her for Frieda in the jail cell,hoping the men burn the good one while the fun one goes undisturbed,a-biting all over the countryside.Anton goes to see Maria(who's really Frieda now)who breaks out her sweater mates and tries to coerce Anton into joining her for a proper shag,but when he sees no reflection in the mirror,he gives her the cross instead of his cobblers.The teacher rushes off to save Frieda(who's now Maria) from burning at the stake,insisting they're about to burn the wrong girl.They give her a cross,which she kisses,proving her innocence and making Gustav drop a pile in his knickers at the thought of condemning an innocent girl to a fiery death.The witchfinder,the teacher,and their mob of do-goodniks storm Karnstein castle,where the Count and Frieda learn the villagers are armed with crosses,axes,and wooden stakes,and try to sneak out through a secret exit.Gustav is waiting,axe in hand,lopping off his own niece's vampiric domepiece,which Maria feels telepathically through twin mental hoodoo and pops off to find her sister.The Count grabs Maria,forcing Gustav to challenge him to a battle,which he loses,dying,but giving Anton the opportunity to stake the bastard in the pumper,securing a happy future for he and Maria(the good one).

"Arrrrggggh!It's a fair cop."
So yeah,check this one out,it's not half bad.And for those who thought I was gonna shrink at the opportunity to give the readers a bit of awright here,I give you this:

"Cor,dahlin',you've a loverly pair of bristols,'aven't yer!"

"Daughters of Darkness"(1971)d/Harry Kumel

Let me start by saying that,in a vampire sub-genre engorged with performances by accomplished stage and screen actors like Bela Lugosi,Christopher Lee,Peter Cushing,Gary Oldman and a plethora of others over the years,THIS is my favorite vampire movie of all time.Basically an updated re-telling of Sheridan Le Fanu's short story "Carmilla",Kumel mixes together a surreal arthouse feel,solid performances by all actors involved(the late Delphine Seyrig is nothing short of breathtaking as the Countess),and a screenplay that serves up liberal amounts of top notch dialogue and plot twists,to make a superior genre entry that has aged nearly as well as the Countess herself.If you're looking for bloody fangs,wooden stakes,crucifixes,or other generic nosferatic staples,you're in the wrong place here,friends.Instead sit down to this movie and drink it all in,as one would do looking at art in the Louvre,because what you've stumbled upon is just that.A true stylish masterpiece.

"You must be nice to me. Soon you will love me as I love you now,"says the Countess Bathory(Delphine Seyrig).
Valerie(Daniele Ouimet,a former Miss Canada) and Stefan(John Karlen of "Dark Shadows" fame)lie in bed together,eloped newlyweds aboard a train in Europe.She asks if he loves her and he smirks "No...and you?".Valerie is adamant about meeting Stefan's mother and telling her of their marriage,but he is just as adamant in deftly skirting the issue."She already hates you without even knowing you exist,"he tells her matter-of-factly.The couple takes a room in a huge,ornately decorated hotel in Belgium,empty but for the concierge in the off-season.A limo pulls up outside,containing the beautiful and extravagant Countess Bathory(Delphine Seyrig) and her female understudy(Andrea Rau)with huge eyes and a permanent pout.The concierge cannot believe his eyes when he looks upon the Countess,certain she is the same woman he saw as a small boy some forty years earlier,seemingly ageless over all this time."My mother perhaps?" she parries,with a hypnotic smile.She instantly takes to the married couple,engaging them in drinks(she pours hers into a potted plant) and conversation.

"Don't lie to yourself. You were pleased. It gave you pleasure. You actually enjoyed seeing that dead girl's body."
While sightseeing in Bruges,the couple stumbles upon a crime scene,as a young girl's body is carried out,drained of blood.Stefan goes berserk,pushing through the crowd to get a better glimpse of the corpse,hitting his young bride to do so.Back at the hotel,Valerie is frightened by his sadism,his lust for brutality,to which he shrugs off as "getting to know each other" which she accepts,trying to unbuckle his pants and spur him on to make love to her,which he coldly declines.She then pushes for her husband to at least call his mother and inform her of their nuptials,which he reluctantly does.Unknown to his bride,his "mother" is really a flaming homosexual,who baulks at the thought of his young lover unrealistically marrying a woman.Stefan,humbled by his "mother's" words,thrashes his wife with a belt in anger.That night the Countess joins them for drinks when Stefan relates the tale of the scarlet countess,Elizabeth Bathory,who bathed in maiden's blood to remain forever young.The gruesome story arouses him,and the Countess begins to finish his sentences,caressing his shoulders,equally aroused.But she is not interested in the young man,instead she wants his bride.She sets up a liason between her protege and Stefan,who willingly obliges the mysterious girl.They make love,but when Stefan tries to pull her into the shower with him,the sight of running water panics her,and in the struggle she falls,impaling herself on his shaving razor.At first,the Countess demands that Valerie help Stefan dispose of the body in the sand of the beach,but the events have driven Valerie into the Countess' arms,and she spends the night in her room.They share a kiss,and when Bathory pulls back,there is a single drop of blood on her lips.

The next night Stefan joins them in the Countess' room,but when he demands his wife back a struggle ensues where both women smother him with a glass bowl that breaks and manages to slice both his wrists.The two sup on his blood.Though the night is waning,they drive to the same secluded spot on the beach to dispose of Stefan's body,then race against the rising sun to return to the safety of the hotel.What happens in the film's conclusion is both hauntingly mesmerizing and memorable.

"Love is stronger than death...even than life."
Both Anchor Bay and Blue Underground have released restored versions of this film on dvd,which is an absolute must for your collection.Once it has taken its rightful place upon your shelves,I can guarantee you'll revisit Delphine over and over again,and marvel at her abundant talents as an actress; surrounded by beautiful scenery,she dominates every frame she appears in, making you forget her surroundings,drawing you in much like the couple in the film.When she flashes one of her many genuine smiles,you'll mourn the great loss(she died of lung disease in 1990)of a true star.