GL84
Arriving in a small countryside village, a novelist fascinated by the local legends begins working at the nearby boarding school finds the other students mysteriously disappearing after a new student arrives and ties it to the local legends forcing him to put an end to their plans.There's a couple of good moments in here, and some really troublesome parts as well. One of the big reasons is that the decision to retain the period Gothic setting is admirable for a late-period Hammer title. The eerie opening, when an abducted village woman is abducted and taken to the castle, has two vampires slice her throat and the blood drips all over a white shroud the covers a corpse in a coffin, not only gives this an impressionable opening but also provides the kind of occult Gothic ritual within the huge elaborate castle which is exceptionally enjoyable. Due to the main vampire running loose in the school under the guise of the students provides this one with some fine sequences that explore this fuller, from the troop going through the ruins of the castle to the scenes of them going off into the night meeting with the vampire unexpectedly biting them. That also means it doesn't miss one possible shot of nudity, especially in the first half hour of the film. The nudity is very tastefully done and isn't at all gratuitous, from the skinny-dipping sequence to the seduction of the other women and the immeasurable amount of topless groping between the girls that occurs here. These measures are done in conjunction with the Gothic flavor, as it adds leaps and bounds to the sensuality of the film featuring both the classy tone as well as the fine nudity. The other big factor for this one is the stellar Gothic ending, which is the grand siege at the castle towards the end has a lot of action with the grandstanding nature of the villagers and the battles with the servants and villagers leading into a series of fire-filled traps alongside the traditional burning-down-the-castle action and some stellar gore thrown in. These make it a pretty decent effort of the genre, but there are some really off moments here as well. The pace here is really the biggest factor since there are a lot of scenes that go on and just stretch out the film without really doing anything. The middle section of the film dealing with the staff and faculty of the school are just long, pointless talk scenes that don't really go nowhere as are the pointless interludes showing him teaching the students which aren't needed due to already knowing the secret identity. It constantly keeps going through those sequences where it feels like something's going to happen only for the conversation parts to continue and that makes it very aggravating. That also limits the action in the film, and other than the beginning and the end as there isn't much of that in the film. Beyond those two elements, the biggest factor against this is the utter cluelessness towards the identity as this one has her have to kill off several individuals who know her secret which obviously doesn't mean it's as well-hidden as it could be if it keeps getting out like it does. These are the main problems with the film.Today's Rating/R: Nudity, several sex scenes and Violence.
lost-in-limbo
Set in nineteenth-century Europe a Finishing School for young ladies enrol a new girl named Mircalla who has some of the new students spellbound and also the new English teacher Richard Lestrange who just happens to be an well-renown author of horror books who takes on this position to be close to her. Incidents start occurring, and the town's folk blame the nearby castle ruins of Karnstein for the disappearances and deaths. "Lust for a Vampire" is one of Hammer's lesser know horror productions and you can probably see why when watching it. It's a solid, if unremarkable film. The tale is about the fatal reincarnated vampire beauty Carmilla (their second attempt of three - "Vampire Lovers" and "Twins of Evil"), seductively played by the hypnotic Yutte Stensgaard with also strong classy showings by Ralph Bates, Suzanna Leigh, Michael Johnson and Barbara Jefford. Director Jimmy Sangster puts plenty of emphasis erotic lesbianism, topless nudity and horrific imagery tied together by the tragic love between the central characters Mircalla and Richard. The script stays interesting in its mystery, infatuation and superstitious framework, although moments do have a chopped about feel to them. It's lushly produced and stylishly atmospheric in its picturesque set-pieces with precisely fluid camera-work. The colour red seems to be vibrantly presented in some gorgeously staged scenes. "There's evil in that castle. And there always will be".
James Hitchcock
The lesbian vampire was invented in 1872 by the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu in his novella "Carmilla". Of course, Victorian codes of literary propriety forbade direct discussion of sexual matters, so the lesbianism in his story is implied rather than explicit, but anyone reading it will be left in no doubt that Le Fanu's anti-heroine is romantically attracted to her own sex. It was, however, to be nearly a century before the cinema could take advantage of his invention. Victorian values persisted long after the end of the Victorian era, with the Hollywood of the Production Code being one of their last bastions, and until the 1960s making a film about lesbian vampires would have been as unthinkable as making a film about lesbian anything else. Cinematic vampires were generally male and sexless; I doubt if anyone ever regarded Bela Lugosi as a sex symbol. With the coming of the permissive society, however, things changed. Cinematic vampires no longer had to be gaunt, cadaverous, Transylvanian Counts but could now be sexy, voluptuous young ladies with a fondness for other sexy, voluptuous young ladies. ("Fangs for the Mammaries"....) Hammer's "The Vampire Lovers" from 1970 is a film of this type. This blend of horror and eroticism was popular at the box office so hammer decided to make a sequel. The fact that Le Fanu had not actually written a sequel to "Carmilla" proved no drawback, and the studio concocted a plot in which Carmilla Karnstein, having been restored to life through the use of diabolical magic, becomes a pupil at a girls' finishing school under the name "Mircalla", where she proceeds to wreak havoc among the other pupils, the staff and the inhabitants of the nearby village. Hammer were later to make a third film in the so-called Karnstein Trilogy, "Twins of Evil", although this film does not feature either lesbianism or the character of Carmilla. Miss Simpson's academy is the sort of fantasy girls boarding school beloved of erotic film-makers- it operates a strictly selective admissions policy, with selection taking place on the basis of looks rather than academic ability, the students are allowed to stay at school until their late twenties rather than leaving at eighteen, the gym mistress is as youthful as any of her pupils, and the school uniform (improbably, given that the action is supposed to take place in 1830) consists of the flimsiest, most diaphanous robes imaginable. The sex scenes are fairly tame, although there is plenty of toplessness and a couple of brief scenes of full nudity.Today there is a tendency in literature and the cinema to make vampires sympathetic. If "The Vampire Lovers" were to be remade today it would probably resemble a Sapphic version of "Twilight" with Carmilla, now a heroine rather than anti-heroine, portrayed as a soulful, sensitive, misunderstood creature, deeply in love with her mortal girlfriend Laura. This tendency, however, had not yet got going in the seventies, so the vampires in the Karnstein trilogy, although sexy, are still portrayed as evil, murderous creatures in league with the devil. Indeed, they are more evil than they were in Le Fanu's story, where Carmilla is portrayed as morally ambiguous. "Lust for a Vampire" does not feature any of Hammer's major stars. Ingrid Pitt, who had played Carmilla in "The Vampire Lovers", was offered the same role here but turned it down, possibly because she realised that, at 34, she would not make a very convincing schoolgirl. The part went instead to an otherwise obscure Danish actress named Yutte Stensgaard. Peter Cushing was forced to withdraw from the film because of his wife's illness. Christopher Lee does not appear here (or, indeed, in any of the trilogy), but Mike Raven, better known as a radio DJ, does a sort of Lee impersonation as Count Karnstein. The film's best-known actor is Ralph Bates, something of a horror specialist, who is given top billing even though his is only a supporting role and his character dies early on. The film was popular when it first came out, largely because of its erotic content, but today it looks like the weakest of the Karnstein trilogy. "The Vampire Lovers" at least had the advantage of being a reasonably faithful adaptation of a literary classic, albeit the lesbian theme far more explicit than in the original, and Pitt is splendidly seductive in the main role. "Twins of Evil" has its faults, notably the casting of the talentless Collinson sisters, but it does have a good performance from Cushing and raises some surprisingly pertinent points, for a Hammer horror flick, about religious fanaticism and the nature of evil. "Lust For a Vampire", by comparison, is poorly acted with a cliché- ridden and rather silly plot. Yutte Stensgaard, although striking- looking, had neither the talent nor the charisma of Pitt, and it is easy to understand why her acting career was so brief. (Having a name that was unpronounceable to anyone not fluent in Danish probably didn't help. Indeed, given that "Yutte" was a partial anglicisation of her real Christian name, Jytte, even Danes might have been at a loss as to how to pronounce it). Michael Johnson as the main male character Richard Lestrange is bland and uninteresting. The film still enjoys something of a cult following, chiefly among those who judge a film's artistic merits by the number of scantily-clad girls on display, but judged by any other standards "Lust For a Vampire" is a disappointment. 4/10 A goof. Arthur Biggs (a character who appears only in one scene) introduces himself as an "avant-garde writer", even though the phrase "avant-garde" was not used in this sense as early as 1830.
