Now we’re getting into the real lesbian vampire movies. No subtext here. With this movie we get our third basis for vampiric lore: Countess Elizabeth Bathory, she who bathed in the blood of hundreds of female virgins. How historically accurate the tale is or whether or not Delphine Seyrig’s Countess is really that character at 500 years old is entirely beside the point. The movie uses that historical figure to introduce the concept of a sexy aristocratic woman lusting after blood who’s also interested in other, younger women and off we go. Various reviews mention its debt to Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” but other than the existence of clearly lesbian vampires I just don’t see any real connection.
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| That's a very 1982 font for 1971. |
The movie was directed by Belgian filmmaker Harry Kümel. Not a prolific director, his only previous feature was 1968’s ‘Monsieur Hawarden,’ and directly after this he would direct ‘Malpertuis’ featuring Orson Welles, cut rather to bits and released in the US as 'The Legend of Doom House.’ Producers reportedly wanted Malcolm McDowell for the role of Stefan, but after he turned down the part the director was pressured to cast John Karlen to secure financing, as he was known to American audiences for his roles in the tv show “Dark Shadows,” although Kümel apparently thought he was too old. Relative unknown Danielle Ouimet was cast as his new bride Valerie, and she’s by far the weakest part of the movie. The major star of the movie and arguably most of the reason it’s turned into a cult classic is Delphine Seyrig as Countess Bathory. Seyrig was a giant of French cinema, and directly after this she starred in ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ and ‘The Day of the Jackal,’ so her career did just fine.
Once again we have the classic vampire story of a newlywed couple fucked with by an older, upper class vampire while on their honeymoon. That’s literally the premise of ‘Kiss of the Vampire’ and kinda the premise of ‘Et Mourir de Plaisir.’ It’s not the last time we’re going to see it, and now that I think about it that’s fairly close to what ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ morphs its plot into as well. Vampires seem to intensely dislike monogamy. Here the two lovebirds are Stefan and Valerie Chilton. He’s the son of a British upper-class family brought up in America (to explain the actor’s accent), the two got married rather on impulse while abroad, and he's very anxious about telling his family. Her backstory is that she is a woman named Valerie. They are introduced fucking on a train.
The two soon arrive at a hotel in the seaside resort of Ostend in Belgium, near Bruges. It's mostly vacant due to the winter being the off-season. Valerie has been pushing Stefan to tell his family about her and he is clearly reluctant and keeps putting it off. I’ll just go ahead and get this part of the plot out of the way because I’m not really sure what’s going on here: Stefan puts off phoning his mother or getting on a boat to cross the Channel to see her until he finally does call her at almost exactly the hallway point of the movie, at which point his mother turns out to be a middle-aged effeminate man made up to look what 1971 considered stereotypically gay. He and Stefan have an arch conversation where ‘mother’ says the marriage was pretty stupid but he’s still curious about meeting Valerie. After the phone conversation some stuff goes down that doesn’t so much derail the movie as make it plain how deeply unpleasant everyone involved is and that it’s not going to end well for anyone, but we’ll get back to that. I’m not sure if it’s fifty years of cultural drift making this entire interaction between Stefan and his ‘mother’ seem strange and pointless or if strange and pointless was what the director was going for in an attempt to unsettle the audience.
While the couple kick their heels at the deserted hotel The Countess and her assistant slash secretary slash obvious henchwoman Ilona show up. She is delighted at the sight of the couple, while Ilona wanders around looking pouty and vaguely despondent. She’s played by Andrea Rau and her character is the one that makes the least sense to me in terms of vampiric lore. She both is and is not portrayed as a vampire. She never drinks blood but she seems to occasionally crave it, and her eventual death is by an accidental stabbing with a straight razor. She spends most of the movie squirming in the Countess’ thrall, alternately fawning over her, demanding to be set free, or jealously sulking. She also apparently has a screaming fear of showers, probably just to justify a fight in a bathroom which leads to her very awkward death.
The Countess herself is a rather fascinating figure, very glamorous and obviously styled about forty years out of date, all long red dresses and exact hairstyles. She’s very talkative, borderline babbling, with a kind of airy social obliviousness masking a very exact understanding of power dynamics and an exploitation of social norms that isn’t a million miles away from a more sinister P.G. Wodehouse. She manages to seem like someone who’s basically gotten their entire way for about 500 years.
The bulk of the movie is made up of the deteriorating relationship between Stefan and Valerie and the way the Countess both causes and exploits it. Aside from his reluctance to contact his 'mother,' the first real conflict between Valerie and Stefan comes when they visit nearby Bruges and happen upon a crime scene. A number of young women have recently been found murdered, drained of blood, and Stefan is way into seeing the dead body. This rather disturbs Valerie and they discuss it on the bus back to the hotel. When Valerie points out he enjoyed seeing the dead body he doesn't deny it, replying that she enjoyed telling him about it, thus they’re getting to know each other. She doesn't really seem to know how to respond to this. Stefan’s not going to end up being a great guy.
They meet up with the Countess when they get back to the hotel and this is where the dynamic of the rest of the movie is established. The subject of the murder comes up and Stefan and the Countess get far too worked up about it. She starts describing bloody scenes and rubbing all over his head and upper chest and he’s demonstrably aroused by it, with Valerie getting more and more upset until she storms away. She goes upstairs to take a shower while Stefan and the Countess get their bloodlust on downstairs. Valerie sees a naked Ilona on her balcony and screams, causing Stefan to rush upstairs. They make up, start to have sex, then he gets a little too aggressive and she stops him while the Countess and Ilona watch through the window. The next morning Stefan makes his call to 'mother' and afterwards takes a moment to think, grabs a belt, begins to beat Valerie, and then rapes her.
So the movie has forty five more minutes to go after this.
The rest of the movie is basically just a fallout from this moment. Valerie packs her bags and sneaks out. The Countess follows after telling Ilona to go seduce Stefan. While she does so the Countess diverts Valerie from her train then has a long talk with her about her relationship with Stefan. The cross-cutting makes clear that this is a double seduction. While they're talking Stefan and Ilona have sex, after which he takes a shower and tries to get her to join him. She refuses and suddenly freaks out, which causes her death by straight razor somehow. At the end of their conversation the Countess promises to show Valerie what men are really like, only to find Ilona dead on the bathroom floor in front of a shocked and naked Stefan.
The Countess takes the opportunity to fully put the whammy on Valerie, stopping her from getting any authorities and then kissing her, leaving a small drop of blood at one corner of her mouth. From this point on Valerie has replaced Ilona. They wrap up the body and drive it to the beach, where Stefan buries it. They return to the hotel where Valerie very pointedly sleeps in the Countess’ room. The next day the three of them have a dinner that quickly breaks down, Stefan insisting Valerie leave with him and she refusing. After a very awkward tussle a ceramic bowl breaks exactly in half and manages to slash open both of Stefan’s wrists and the two women drink his blood while he dies.
The two women wrap up the body in plastic, toss it off of the balcony to the ground below, then load it into the Countess’ car before throwing it into a stream and making for the border. Valerie is in rapturous thrall to The Countess, kissing all up on her hands, while The Countess keeps telling her to drive faster and faster to beat the sun, which is suddenly way over the horizon and in Valerie’s eyes, causing her to crash the car. The Countess is thrown from the car and impaled by a branch from a fallen tree before the burning car sets her very firmly on file. The epilogue is set a few months later where we see Valerie in a quasi-vampire cape and very distracting pancake makeup cozying up to a young couple, presumably starting the cycle anew.
A lot of the problems I have with this movie are my fault. I keep trying to work out the vampire rules, the character backstories, scene to scene logic, and it simply isn’t that kind of movie. Not to say that it’s incoherent, far from it, but character motivations, a clear cause-and-effect throughline from scene to scene, and any kind of overall plot are much less important to the movie than individual scene composition, character interactions, and a dreamy kind of atmospheric tension that makes the movie run on a kind of dream logic. Is Ilona a vampire, a thrall, some kind of in between state, and when Valerie replaces her why does she act so differently and seem to be instantly a full vampire? What was the deal with Stefan’s ‘mother?’ Why was there a detective nosing about at the edges of the plot, showing up in various scenes to imply he’s on to the Countess and might even have witnessed the burial of Ilona’s body, only to be hit by her car and disappear from the rest of the movie?
These would be bigger problems if the movie even pretended to care about any that, but it really doesn’t. It’s far more interested in the characters than establishing any kind of lore or coherent backstory. Stefan’s ‘mother’ is probably just to drive home how little Valerie really knows about her new husband. Ilona can’t be a full vampire because she needs to die so Valerie can take her place. The detective is probably there to add suspense but he’d just get in the way of the ending so he’s gotta go. This movie takes what is a pretty standard vampire movie premise, newlyweds get fucked with by an aristocratic vampire, flips the gender of the vampire while still pursuing the female half of the couple, and makes sure to establish that the relationship wasn’t that great to begin in. It’s doing some interesting things with the standard vampire movie and if I don’t think it’s entirely successful it’s at least attempting something.
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