lesbian vampire chick flicks!
They are erotic, they are powerful, they are seductive, they are enticing, they go for women, they destroy men, they have unbridled desire. What’s not to love?
For me - and i don't apologise if this is cliche (cliche sometimes has a visceral consanguinity thus denial would only be through self-consciousness and snobbery, so there) - there is something so deeply erotic about the whole vampire thing. What i remember most from all those hammer flicks (for they are the bench mark obviously) is that when a wench/virgin saw him they came over all sexualised, and i think that is the power - the sexual awakening of women who in that time, would not have been tolerated (and by this i mean the time in which it is set, but if you want to talk contextuality - which i know you are all dying to do - this was also a time of sex unleashed and fear of the consequences as well as fascination and titillation – what happens when you REALLY get a girl going? etc etc).
How do I love these vampires? Oh let me count the ways…Of course, there is the whole lesbian vampire thing: again the forbidden sexual awakening, the powerful woman seducing and dominating the young lady - and with hammer, exposure of delightful seventies boobies and semi-naked chases round the bathtub.
The neck, of course, is such a powerfully erogenous zone - one of the best that you don't have to cover up or be arrested...and there IS an art to it - if you can give good neck, you are onto a winner...
And then there is the bloodletting and all the symbolism there...
oh i could go on and on. And i have.
lesbian vampire nostalgia
"by the late 1960s and early 1970s, lesbian sexual behaviour had become graphically depicted, another titillating, exaggerated characteristic of the excessive B-movie genre [...] No longer hunted by the censors, some twenty or more vampires could be found stalking the silver screen [...].
"The Vampire Lovers establishes the narrative formula that subsequent films, with slight deviations, take up, and helps define the genre by fully exploiting the pornographic value of the relationship between the vampire and her victim" - Andrea Weiss (she was hot when i met her): Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in the Cinema.
Ok. I must confess this is a major flash back for me. I used to have a HUGE thing for vampires. They were a big part of my psyche, but not in a goth way – a kitsch, camp inflected erotic way. If that is possible. Hey it is! Cuz I had it! Anyway, in my film school days I got to make two vampire flicks and wrote a script for a third that would have been fab but I went another way down the path of life and it was never to be….ah the vampire trilogy that never was...
For me, Lust for a Vampire was always a more significant film than The Vampire Lovers, which seems a tad bizarre because the bedroom/bathtime scenes between pitt and smith in Lovers are very sexy. But to my young budding lesbo-ish self at about 13, 14, there were scenes in Lust that BURNED into my psyche.
Oh, it may be the tracking shot through the boarding school bedroom where various seventies-boobied ‘school girls’ are washing each other’s hair (while topless, natch), etc etc and the first victim finds herself alone with the weird blonde vamp. She seduces her by giving her a shoulder massage and the schoolteacher (very prim and repressed and yum) walks in at the moment when her nightie just happens to accidentally fall off her shoulders to reveal – yay! Seventies boobies!!!!! Don’t get better than that for a lesbo-ish girlie in the making!
This is such camp erotic fun. And there is power here. You just have to forget that there is a male vampire behind it all. You didn’t have that in The Vampire Lovers of course. Ingrid’s vamp is the queen. Still, for a large part of Lust for a Vampire, the blonde anti-heroine is in complete control of her femme victims. The sexy scenes involving the school mistress still make my heart beat a bit stronger at the thought.
In Daughters of Darkness the beautiful ‘companion’ of Elizabeth Bathory (seyrig) comes to a nasty end in the shower. It involves glass but you get to see her delightful seventies boobies, so you kind of get over it. Look at her. Look AT HER FACE. That is my kinda gal.
bloodsucking witches
The Malleus Maleficarum (1486), a guide to identifying and prosecuting witches and their familiars, many of whom were accused of sucking the blood and other vital fluids of their enemies. According to the Malleus Maleficarum, “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust which in woman is insatiable.” http://www1.minn.net/~pkeesey/
Amen.
I would like to offer you another quote from Miss Weiss:
"The dominant cinema demands that men do the looking and women are looked at [my note: for the record, i think this is generalised bullshit; see below]. The lesbian vampire breaks through this cinematic relationship and actively looks. She remains the object of male desire but also becomes the agent for female desire - dangerous, excessive, lesbian desire. This contradiction begs the question: Can cultural myths about the 'dark side' of women's sexuality be reworked into a framework, which is empowering rather than victimising."
The reason i disagree with the whole 'male gaze' theory is that it excludes any possibility of female desire outside of the obvious lesbian centric desire. Women who were considered there for the male gaze (ie clara bow, jean harlow, marilyn, bardot, etc etc) are pigeon holed as 'men's women' and seen to have a sexuality threatening to women, and therefore not desirable to women (marilyn is an obvious, interesting exception/complication: her marketing was certainly for men and the fact that she broke through this to become a strong female icon given her raw sexuality, and vulnerabilities is a complex, yet fascinating subject). i believe the male gaze theory is far too exclusive, presuming that women would only be attracted to 'butch' women, 'strong' women, lesbian icons (dietrich, garbo etc etc) and limits desire for women to strictly 'lesbian' desire. This is a convenient theory and doesn't allow for female desire (of any sexuality), pure sexual desire (as opposed to 'role models', empathy, heroine-aspirations), and visceral reaction.
However, i think this quote is interesting in that it speaks of the lesbian vampire in terms of unbridled female sexuality - in a similar way to the Malleus Maleficarum which i quoted earlier. Still, to see portrayals of women, as a polarity of victim or empowerment is again a sterile, unrealistic & convenient binary opposition that denies the complexities of human nature. Women, whether character portrayals, or 'gazers' (and, hey!, men too!) can't be summed up in such a simplistic, neat way. For me, the 'active looking' of the lesbian vampire and the victim-empowered woman complexity is the interesting element here: it BLURS rather than dichotomises.
copyright corinna tomrley 2005