Dracula's Daughters: The Female Vampire on Film
Author: Douglas Brode; Leah Deyneka
Date: 2013-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Almost as long as cinema has existed, vampires have appeared on screen. Symbolizing an unholy union between sex and death, the vampire—male or female—has represented the libido, a “repressed force” that consumed its victims. Early iconic representations of male vampires were seen in Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931), but not until Dracula’s Daughter in 1936 did a female “sex vampire” assume the lead. Other female vampires followed, perhaps most provocatively in the Hammer films of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Later incarnations, in such films as Near Dark (1987) and From Dusk till Dawn (1996),
Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Dracula’s Daughters

The Female Vampire on Film

Edited by

Douglas Brode
and

Leah Deyneka

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

2014

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Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2014 by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dracula’s daughters : the female vampire on film / edited by Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-9295-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-9296-5

(electronic) 1. Vampire films—History and criticism. 2. Women in motion pictures. 3. Lesbianism in motion pictures. I. Brode, Douglas, 1943– editor of compilation. II. Deyneka, Leah, 1971– editor of compilation.

PN1995.9.V3D73 2014

791.43’675—dc23

2013038343

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

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Once again and as always for Sue.

—Douglas Brode

To my parents, Joe and Judy, and my sisters, Elisa, Larissa, and Tammy. Additional gratitude to Christine Hayes, who climbed all 199 steps to Whitby Abbey with me for the first time, all those years ago. Finally a thank-you to Professor Douglas Brode for creating such a marvelous course and proposing the idea for this anthology.

—Leah Deyneka

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A sisterhood of Satan: In this posed publicity still for The Vampire Lovers , Ingrid Pitt (center) serves as the matriarchal figure to the succubae who would dominate the vampire genre beginning in the early 1970s. Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: “Lamia and Lilith LIVE!” (or at Least Are Undead)

1

Douglas Brode

1 The Lesbian Vampire Film: A Subgenre of Horror 21

Andrea Weiss

2 Sans Fangs: Theda Bara, A Fool There Was, and the Cinematic Vamp

37

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

3 Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique: An Analysis of Set Design, Lighting, Costume, and Music in Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja 45

Paige A. Willson, Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith, and Anthony J. Fonseca

4 A Beautiful Life of Evil and Hate: The Vampire-Witch in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday 69

Lindsay Hallam

5

Blood and Roses (1960): Realizing the Vision of Carmilla 83

Lauren E.Strong
v

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vi

Contents

6 Soft Focus, Sharp Knives: The Projection of Vampiric Fantasy in Jess Franco’s Succubus 95

Jack W. Shear

7 Heritage of Hammer: Carmilla Karnstein and the Sisterhood of Satan

115

Douglas Brode

8 “Your Tale Merely Confirms That Women Are Mad and Vain”: The Uncanny Rendering of Countess

Elizabeth Báthory’s Life as Vampire Legend

139

Janet S. Robinson

9 The Dangers of Innocence: An Analysis of Film Representations of Female Vampire Children

159

Alexis Finnerty

10 The Women of Dracula Films: Brides, Daughters, and Fierce Opponents

173

Carol A. Senf

11 Narratives of Race and Gender: Black Vampires in U.S. Film

195

Giselle Liza Anatol

12

Daughters of Darkness: Vampire Aesthetics and Gothic Beauty

219

Brigid Cherry

13 The Sick Rose: Rabid and the Female Science Vampire 235

Aalya Ahmad and Murray Leeder

14 “You Said Forever”: Postmodern Temporality in Tony Scott’s The Hunger 253

Kendall R. Phillips

15 Liberating the Vampire, but Not the Woman: Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987)

267

Cynthia J. Miller

16 Dracula’s Postfeminist Daughters in the

Twenty-First Century

285

Victoria Amador

Index 299

About the Editors

305

About the Contributors

307

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to Professor Douglas Brode and all of the contributors for their dedication in bringing this anthology to print. I would also like to extend gratitude to the Syracuse University Library and the Inter-Library Loan department, which proved to be invaluable in researching this extensive anthology. Finally, many thanks to Jo Hampshire, who founded the stellar Whitby Gothic Weekend in 1994; this fantastic festival is still going strong after twenty decadent years. — Leah Deyneka All photographs/stills included in this volume were either mailed or hand-delivered over the years to coeditor Douglas Brode in his longtime capacities as both a film reviewer for print and electronic media as well as a film historian creating a series of books on the subjects of cinema studies and popular culture by publicity people working on behalf of the following companies: Gemini Releasing, Maron Films, New World, 20th Century-Fox, 20th Century-Fox Television, Hammer/Seven Arts, R.K.O.

Radio Pictures, Universal, The Theda Bara Estate, Rollins-Joffe Prods., United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Dimension Films, A Band Apart, Galatea Films, American International Pictures, Documento Film, Paramount Pictures, Aquila Film Enterprises, Constantin Film, Argos Films, New Line Cinema, Geffen Pictures, Warner Bros., Bakor Film Investors, Planet Prods., Warner Bros., Village Roadshow, F/M, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, CCC Telecine, Image Entertainment, and Mutant Enemy. In accordance with their wishes, and permissions granted at the time and extending into the future, all of the stills included here are presented to positively present the individual films as well as to allow for the necessary visual accompaniment to the text without which film scholars could not properly study works from a medium that is based on iconic images as well as the written word.

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“Sex and death: The two things that occur once in my lifetime”: In a sequence that did not make the final cut of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), Woody Allen plays a male spider who hungers for satisfaction with a black widow (Louise Lasser) but knows that la petite mort must be accompanied by the Final Reckoning. Courtesy of Rollins-Joffe Prods./United Artists.

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Introduction

“Lamia and Lilith LIVE!”

(or at Least Are Undead)

Douglas Brode

Why should I lie beneath you, when I am your equal, since both of us were created from dust?

—Lilith to Adam, Genesis (the Hebrew Talmud)

Trash masterpiece” is how the late Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic Roger Ebert once described Invasion of the Bee Girls (Denis Sanders, 1973).1 Written by the rightly esteemed Nicholas Meyer ( Time After Time, 1979; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1982), this B movie concerns a sudden rash of deaths among healthy young men in a small California town. A government agent (William Smith) dispatched to discover the source of what first appears a crime spree notes that each man passed from natural causes after suffering a heart attack. Then our hero learns that, aided and abetted by some strange cosmic force, the head doctor (Anita Ford) at a nearby research lab has been employing radiation to empower ordinary women by transforming them into sexual beings of an untold magnitude.

Simultaneously, their modest physical attributes are replaced by great beauty.

Desperate to try and bring such a partner to full climax, a hopeless cause, men expire during the attempt. The poster’s promotional line insisted: “They’ll love the very life out of your body!” Such phrasing reveals the intended Spectator as a male, the same age as those who fall victim to these enchanting predators. Midway through, several suburbanites sit around a sports bar, drinking after work. “The boys,” each an arrested adolescent of thirty-something, discuss the passing of a friend after coupling with one of “the bee girls.” That term references the queen bee’s 1

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obligatory killing of her sex partner during the closing moments of “the act.” Such a natural phenomenon is the source of an old adage: the female of the species is more deadly than the male.2 Essential to appreciating the movie and its subgenre, “the female sex vampire,” is one memorable line.

After considering the combination of pain and pleasure of the experience, a guy remarks, apprehensive yet wistfully: “Just imagine! ‘Coming’ and

‘going’ at the same time. . . .”

Initially, that may appear nothing more than a gag line, vulgar (intentionally so) and ( perhaps less intentionally) “sexist.” As this film was released, feminism achieved crescendo-like status as the great liberal-social cause célèbre of the day.3 Invasion of the Bee Girls, from a 1973 feminist perspective, constitutes an open attack on the movement. The film’s

“message”? Beware of strong women, boys! Particularly when they form a sisterhood planning to take over the planet. During the adventure, the Queen Bee schemes to kidnap loyal wives and secretly turn them into her minions. The bodybuilder hero (a pulp-cinema equivalent to John Wayne earlier and Arnold Schwarzenegger to follow) destroys the menacingly powerful women; their queen included, and then saves his demure blond lover (Victoria Vetri) in the nick of time. In so doing, he reinvents the old rescue myth: freeing the submissive “good girl” from bondage. As for the dominatrix villainess, Queen Bee recalls such earlier pop-culture icons as the Dragon Lady, Catwoman, and the Queen of Outer Space, all evil and alluring.

Such succubus figures are hardly new. They reach back in time to the earliest works by male artists working in the narrative tradition, as well as visual representation and various combinations of the two. Time-traveling back more than twenty-five hundred years of recorded history, and considerably further than that in the oral tradition, there was Lamia.

Queen of Libya (in some incarnations Hecate’s daughter) and mistress to Zeus, she not surprisingly incurred the wrath of Hera, the sky god’s rightful wife. Lamia provided an early incarnation of female vampire as natural enemy of domesticity, sought by the patriarch for her forbidden allure, likely to “swallow up” any man whole. Always, her appetite—for sexual activity and human blood or raw flesh as well—remained untempered by any moral compunction.4

Lamia’s willingness to admit to her male victims that they would be devoured in the process of lovemaking (or, perhaps more accurately, lust fulfillment) only adds to her iconic stature. Men are drawn to her not necessarily in spite of the threat but perhaps because of it, an early artistic invoking of the “desire for the fall” theme.5 Lamia is either the first, or among the first, in a line of femmes fatales that eventually leads, over the millennia, to those contemporary “bee girls.”

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“Lamia and Lilith LIVE!” (or at Least Are Undead) 3

The legends live again! Salma Hayek embodies the feared snake-woman, returned to earth to destroy enamored men as a stripper/succubus, in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s genre-crossing combination of horror and the Western, From Dusk Till Dawn . Courtesy of Dimension Films/A Band Apart.

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That continuum runs directly through Lilith, first wife of Adam in the unexpurgated text of the Judeo-Christian Bible, reduced to Apocrypha over the intervening centuries.6 A key connection (and suggestion that they may possibly have evolved from a single source) has to do with the appearance of a snake in each legend. Just as Lamia takes that form during the process of seduction, so too does Lilith when, to accomplish Satan’s bidding, she tempts Eve, Adam’s second wife, empty-headed if not, like the first, evil incarnate. Able to circle and touch its own tail, the snake appears in old religions as an earth-bound reflection of the moon, this pallid sphere associated with the female owing to constant changes that struck early mankind as parallel to the menstrual cycle.7 Relating Lamia and Lilith to the contemporary vampire female is that those two puncture marks she leaves on the neck of a victim more resemble the bite of a snake than that of a bat.8

Also like Lamia, Lilith is associated with nature. While such forest-females may have represented the ultimate “good” to ancient/pagan people, “Goddesses embodied all that was evil in Judeo-Christian philosophy: they were female, sexual, Pagan, and embraced death as part of the cycle of life. These women were not holy; these women were monsters.”9

As rewritten by the Greeks (once their society had demoted earth-mothers in importance to rather serve a male sky god), and then the Hebrews, “male authority, Adam’s and Zeus’s, is questioned by strong, sexually active females” in works that “depict (the) struggle between men and women for autonomy and authority.”10 In emergent Western culture, such narratives were presented from a male authorial voice in which

“female monsters were created out of a perceived threat to patriarchal order.”11 Over the centuries, such traditionalist thinking would be challenged, though change was slow to come.

Retrospective paintings often presented Lilith as naked, this in defiance of a man’s orders to clothe herself. More often than not she stands by a tree (which in serpent-form Lilith descends from), perhaps bound to that tree by a snake that ties her to this natural object. Here we encounter a shift in symbols that occurred simultaneously with the new order of things circa 1500 BCE. Then, the Mesopotamian-born Abram changed his name to Abraham and set about creating Hebraic codes (or so the Bible tells us) that rejected sexual promiscuity, and did so most emphatically when practiced by the female of the species.12

In modern times, of course, twentieth-century society dared to reevaluate that reevaluation. In A. E. Hudson’s Green Mansions (1904), the male protagonist, Abel, a fugitive from Christian civilization, discovers deep in the jungle not Joseph Conrad’s “heart of darkness,” epicenter of natural evil, but purity and goodness in the form of a natural woman, “Rima the Bird Girl.” In a sense, this constituted going back to the future, for Hud-Brode_WEB.indb 4

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“Lamia and Lilith LIVE!” (or at Least Are Undead) 5
son reached beyond Victorianism to the Romantic era that preceded it.

Twenty-first-century postmodernism takes such thinking further, as, in Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), male hero Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) sets out on a crusade, instigated by capitalism of a patriarchal order, to destroy everything natural (people, plants, etc.) on a distant planet to facilitate mining. But Sully reverses himself after falling under the be-neficent spell of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who, like Lilith and Lamia (and Rima), lives under a tree. No wonder the Vatican came out against Avatar, damning the film as anti-Christian owing to its “deification of nature” in female goddess form.13

Lilith, like Lamia and many other once-revered goddesses, took on the aspects of a sex monster after the Western world embraced the New Religion . This explains the burning of witches, mostly young and beautiful, whom they accused of practicing rites of sexual freedom.14 European religious wars waged between Protestants and Catholics from 1524 to 1648

CE can in part be attributed to the former’s intense distaste for the latter’s placing great emphasis on Mary, mother of Jesus. Such adoration was widely perceived by Protestants as the Catholics’ dangerous reversion to “the old ways” of goddess worship.15 Created like Adam from dust, Lilith demanded full equality even during sex. As such, she had to be sent off into the woods to exist among the beasts. Eve, devised from one of Adam’s ribs, proved dutiful and therefore less objectionable to what became the male order of things. Yet Lilith was not so easily dispensed with. Adam, after the fall, relocated east of Eden, couldn’t resist sneaking away from the apparently boring Eve once the sun set to join Lilith in forbidden secretive acts.16

In time, however, a cult came to surround Lilith and Lamia. During the Renaissance, brazen artists hinted that “a fate worse than death” met by men in an embrace with she-demons might be desired rather than avoided, consequences be damned. French poet Alain Chartier composed in 1424 the first known work titled “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” The impact of that piece proved so lasting that, some four centuries later, John Keats, during the Romantic era, referenced the Chartier work with his own 1819 poem of the same title.

In it, an aged knight, forlorn and soulless, confides to a young observer: I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful—a faery’s child.17

Now old, the knight wanders forever, never able to escape the memory of that brief encounter. True, she sucked away his soul, if not his actual blood, leaving him pallid internally as well as externally. Still, his bones ached for the thrill of it all. . . . That same year, Keats composed a salute to Brode_WEB.indb 5

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Lamia, proffering his own variation on a tale in which young Lycius falls under her spell. Initially, she embraces him with the warmth expected from an apparently gentle creature. Then:

Lamia breath’d death breath . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And Lycius’s arms were empty of delight,

As were his limbs of life, from that same night18

The seemingly girlish sprite, once she holds any man tight, transforms on her wedding night into the Creature. At the precise moment when a man gleefully experiences la petite mort, he also (perhaps with equal glee) succumbs to death itself.

A generation later, England’s Pre-Raphaelite painters seized on Keats’s poems as inspiration for colorful tableaus depicting the succubus having her way with naive and, more often than not, willing male victims. Beginning in 1850, at the height of the Victorian age (1837–1901), with its extreme insistence on sex as something to be treated with more trepidation even than the Puritans had called for, these rebel painters and poets dared depict women with the flush of passion on their cheeks.

Courageous, certainly, at a time when faith was based on a authority: God, parents, elders, betters, upper classes. It had nothing to do with any modern notions of democracy or equality. Most Victorians were not taught to cultivate open minds, to consider all sides of a question. The flexible, searching mind was truly exceptional; most minds were rigid, dogmatic. They feared new ideas; they sensed danger and evil in change and innovation.19

How important it is to note, then, that the aforementioned Hudson novel appeared three years after Victoria’s death. However mildly appealing a fable it may seem in retrospect, here was, by implication, a politicized piece that called for the return of Romantic thinking, silenced for some seventy years. Perhaps Hudson intended his “romance” as an answer to the Conrad work, which, in 1899, had upheld Victoria’s concern that a man of contemporary civilization, however lofty his mind may be, will in that heart of darkness be drawn back down to a despised bestial level, the only possible conclusion of such a cautionary fable insisting: “The horror! The horror!” At any rate, five years after the publication of Green Mansions, John William Waterhouse in 1909 painted Lamia as still dangerous, though the painting does not appear to indict goddess worship. Herbert James Draper offered his version in 1910. Earlier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in “Lady Lilith” (1868), dared to contemporize that scorned woman, emphasizing her narcis-Brode_WEB.indb 6

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sistic concern with beauty as power: she holds a mirror in one hand, a comb in the other.

Here, Rossetti combined the mythic template with actual females referred to then as “The New Women,” an emergent social “type” demanding “sexual equality and self-development.”20 Always, her brain and body were equal in importance, and she dared demand the freedom to do what she wanted with both. Also, her outlook included “rejection of the male egoism implicit in the chivalric ideal,” including the rescue myth, which held that helpless “damsels” ought to wait, no matter how bad their plights, for a bold male knight to arrive and save them, then sweep his princess to a castle, living happily ever after.21

Yet the sensual seductress could wear an alternative mask than that of destroyer of male victims. Earlier, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel” (1800) offered a potent vampire:

Like one that shudder’d, she unbound

The cincture from beneath her breast:

Her silken robe, and inner vest,

Dropt to her feet, and full in view

Behold! Her bosom and half her side—

A sight to dream of, not to tell!22

If the narrative voice discovered here offers an early example of one of Laura Mulvey’s “male gazers,” clearly the succubus Geraldine reveals her object of desire to be not one more foolish man but the eponymous Christabel:

She took two paces, and a stride,

And lay down by the maiden’s side:

And in her arms the maid she took23

Such a situation would in 1872 be presented in narrative form. Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly, an anthology of five fantastical tales organized by a male who, psychiatrist-like, hears each in succession, contains a female vampire narrative, the novella Carmilla. A woman named Laura recalls, many years after victimization by this seductress, that “It was like the ar-dour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheeks in kisses.”24 Offered as a vampire tale, if of high literary quality, Carmilla gradually rose from the status of singular story to something beyond that, its young, beautiful vampire taking on aspects of an icon.

“The structure of genre,” Jorge Waltje has observed, “is closely related to the parameters of myth.”25 No one has more perceptively chronicled the accumulating creation of the female sex-vampire genre as conduit Brode_WEB.indb 7

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for the Victorian-era myth of a woman in search of power and freedom at any costs than Nina Auerbach.26 Clearly, Carmilla was far from the first nineteenth-century vampire to catch the general public’s interest.

Dr. John Polidori had transformed her male counterpart from a red-eyed rat-creature of folklore to an elegant aristocrat in The Vampyre (1819), modeling Lord Ruthven, a cruel, cynical villain, on his lover, George Gordon, Lord Byron. The “Varney the Vampire” serialized penny dreadfuls (1845–1847), attributed to one John Malcolm Rymer, also penned by Thomas Preskett Prest, continued this high-status approach, intriguingly adding just a hint of melancholy reluctance to the emergent icon.

Simply put, throughout the Victorian age, the vampire came to symbolize an unholy union between sex and death. He or she represented the libido that even then Freud was beginning to speak of, a dark “repressed force” that had not, like a good little bad child, slipped away into the night.27 Few works as effectively detailed that drive’s ability to return and belie the best intentions of even the most decent Victorian than The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886), as the best of men finds himself turning bestial. While Victorianism drew to a close, the theatrical version of that book played to standing-room-only audiences. Shortly thereafter, a craze for anything vampiric spread throughout London as, in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula saw the light of day and nothing would ever be the same. Penned by a fellow Dublin native of the now-deceased Le Fanu, the piece drew from exploits of the historical warlord Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes (1431–1476) of Romania and Transylvania. That bloodthirsty figure was combined with the dignified

“Lord Ruthven” of Polidori’s creative imagination. At that juncture, “the modern vampire” was born.

Females figured prominently in Dracula. Still, Stoker’s vision of them (Dracula’s brides, Lucy and Mina) hardly appears flattering. Several ghoul girls suck hapless Jonathan Harker dry (of blood, clearly, and, if vaguely suggested, of semen) while the count is off on a search for fresh prey. Mina and Lucy attempt to, at least in part, become “New Women,”

rendering the girls vulnerable to Count Dracula. Having embraced the dark side, each soon serves “as a metaphor for the liberated and malevolent woman”—actually, the male perception (generalized, with author Stoker serving as willing agent of that patriarchal norm) of women hungry to reinvent themselves, therefore threatening.

The fascination was not constricted to England. In 1894, Edvard Munch’s painting Vampire (aka Love and Pain), had gone on display.28

Joseph Campbell has argued that “mythology is a metaphor for life.”29

The unique mythology of the vampire woman serves as a prescient artistic icon to express men’s fear of women: “Coming and going at the Brode_WEB.indb 8

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same time.” Friedlander insisted that “the active impulse to die is based on a libidinal impulse.”30 “In the unconscious mind,” Ernest Jones wrote,

“blood is commonly an equivalent for semen.”31 Eventually, David Pirie, observing the cinematic equivalent to Carmilla, would argue that “The function of the vampire movie is precisely to incarnate the most hostile aspects of sexuality in a concrete form.”32 That is: Lust, not love.

For the moment, at least, misogyny continued to underscore artistic depictions. During the summer months of the culturally seismic year 1897, The New Gallery, one of London’s best-known venues for edgy-chic works, displayed Philip Byrne-Jones’s The Vampire. His canvas portrayed a radiant woman, dominatingly sitting over the body of a man she has just ravished and killed. (This work was inspired by Byrne-Jones’s having been cast off by actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell after a brief if tempes-tuous affair, serving as an infamous example of public art as personal vengeance.) Having embraced her inner Bee Girl, a female is “completely shorn of her social and moral inhibitions,” beginning with those that concern the society’s attitudes about sex and death.33

Into the autumn months, people stood in line for hours for a brief glimpse of the lurid image, so daring for its time. What did they see?

Perhaps, for men, a fantasy that some seventy-five years later, when such things could be more openly depicted, Invasion of the Bee Girls would illustrate as to the act as well as, shown here, its aftermath. For women?

Maybe a twisted mirror image of themselves, or the hidden self that might, under certain circumstances, be released. If, as Carol Senf suggests,

“The face of the vampire is the hidden side of the human character,”34
then certainly the face of the vampire woman, so alluring and so dangerous, expressed a secret desire in each Victorian girl. Byrne-Jones’s relative, Rudyard Kipling, was inspired to create a poem of the same name that included the lines:

. . . a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,

(We called her the woman who did not care)

But the fool he called her his lady fair—

(Even as you and I!)35

In a telling example of pre-twentieth-century mixed media, a copy of that poem was framed and set beside the painting. The assumed Reader, as Kipling’s words made clear, was a heterosexual male who subscribes to the era’s values, nonetheless finding the New Women tantalizing if terrifying (in essence, a pre-Edwardian). There is no clear element of the supernatural to either work, nor is there in the play A Fool There Was (1909) by Porter Emerson Browne, or the subsequent 1915 film starring Theda Bara.

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Though often referred to today as “the lesbian vampire,” more often than not the female of the species appears as a bisexual; Yutte Stensgaard obviously relishes victims of both sexes in Lust for a Vampire . Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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While all-too-human vamps (Nazimova, Pola Negri, etc.) soon dominated the Hollywood product, the fantastical vampire woman existed onscreen only in a secondary role. Several hovered about (and behind) Bela Lugosi in Dracula (Todd Browning, 1931). The first female vampire with a major role appeared in Vampyre (Carl Dreyer, 1932). A far cry from the beautiful sex-vampire image, here that character is an elderly crone on the order of a seasonal Halloween-style witch. Not until Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer, 1936) did a “sex vampire” assume the lead. Though the tendency in recent years has been to perceive and describe her as the first lesbian vampire owing to a mid-movie dalliance with a young model (Nan Grey), close observation makes clear Countess Zaleska (Gloria Holden) is Variations on a theme: Though the female vampire disappeared from theatrical films during the World War II years, producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur offered a more contemporary shape-shifter in Cat People starring Simone Simon. Courtesy of R.K.O. Radio Pictures.

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bisexual. Early on, she drains a handsome young male in a similar feeding frenzy. Later, the countess competes with the conventional female lead (Marguerite Churchill) for the male hero (Otto Kruger).

Of prime importance is that, compared to Bela Lugosi’s incarnation of her father, Countess Zaleska is not a cackling fiend, but sympathetic.

She appears truly distraught by the deeds that, while under “the influence,” she inflicts on humanity. Words spoken by Werner Herzog about Count Orlak (Klaus Kinski) in that director’s Nosferatu (1979) well describe this female sex-vampire: “so suffering, so human, so sad

. . . desperately looking for love.”36 Despite its popularity, Dracula’s Daughter did not inspire a rash of follow-ups. While real-world vamps, played by Greta Garbo ( Flesh and the Devil, 1927) and Marlene Dietrich ( The Devil Is a Woman, 1935), would flourish during the following decade, the nearest thing to a sex vampire was Simone Simon in Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942). Perhaps the abrupt end of the Roaring Twenties following the 1929 stock market crash and a return to conservatism during the Depression years caused such stuff to be perceived as decadent. During World War II, the pop-culture deadly dames were mostly Axis spies.

But with a brave new world thrust upon us after 1945, in which women entered the workforce in ever-larger numbers, often displacing men from what had traditionally been “their jobs,” the idea of female demons rose in appeal. These included Faith Domergue in Cult of the Cobra (Francis D. Lyon, 1955), Marla English in The She-Creature (Edward L. Cahn, 1956), Gloria Talbott in Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (Edgar G.

Ulmer, 1957), Sandra Harrison in Blood of Dracula, aka Blood Is My Heritage (Herbert L. Strock, 1957), Susan Cabot in The Wasp Woman (Roger Corman, 1959) and (one of the first from England) Barbara Shelley in Cat Girl (Alfred Shaughnessy, 1957). The succubus as shape-shifter snowballed in popularity. As to Cat Girl, any subscription of Shelley’s character to a more open sensuality could be posited as representing

“the power of sexual promiscuity in the late 1950s to subvert the traditional British class structure.”37

Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) can from this perspective be interpreted as a prediction of the Sexual Revolution that initially took form in the fifties, exploding (as did Hammer’s output) in the following decade. The downside of freedom is that all too often, and all too easily, such a positive idea can dissipate into the negativity of chaos, even anarchy. Anthony Hinds, who under the pen name John Elder wrote several Hammer films, has noted that their deeper meaning has less to do with a celebration of unleashed sexuality than the offering of a cautionary fable. Hinds expressed a deep fear that any one of us might, if our guard is let down

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regress to an earlier form of sexuality. . . . The phantasy of loving such a being can therefore make a strong appeal to the sadistic side of the sexual instinct . . . [thus, vampirism, at least in the context of such artistic expression], signifies a reversion to the most primitive aspects of sadism.38

Hinds’s studio’s style conveyed this theme. Following the arch-gothicism that had prevailed for a quarter-century, once Universal laun ched their interconnected saga of dark thrillers in 1930, “Hammer restored the psychological sub-texts and the emotional integrity of the source work,” resulting in a canon “to which psychologists and devotees of Nineteenth Century literature alike could more fully relate.”39 While beautiful women with fangs did appear in Horror of Dracula, becoming more prevalent in Brides of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1960), females would not dominate the screen until that decade’s end. Then, in Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy (1970–1971), female vampires assumed center stage rather than being relegated to the shadows as a male’s hangers-on, merely consorts and playthings.

Why such a sea change? To grasp that, we must take into account what Lane Roth referred to as “each film’s underlying philosophy and cultural matrix”; the derivation of all that is visually presented from the latest authorial viewpoint (be it an individual artist or community effort) with consideration of the time and place when a specific film was produced.

Hammer, as previously mentioned, developed a collective “voice” that permeates their canon, while individual directors and writer also brought their own perspectives to any single work.40 Also, the social context: the women’s movement. Any hostility toward feminism by men, including liberal-minded males who supported the African American civil rights movement, resulted from an antimale bias, perceived and/or real. While liberal feminists (moderates) argued in favor of such nonthreatening issues as gender equality in the workplace and a woman’s right to control her body, radicals (Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone most vocal among them) insisted that feminism and femininity could not peacefully coexist. In 1970, the term bra burning entered our idiomatic English. If such events were more often symbolic than actual, the message came through. Men eager to support abortion rights were made, by a small minority of extremists, to feel threatened, posited as “male chauvinist pigs”

if they so much as dared to enjoy a woman’s attractiveness.

Essentially, being a heterosexual male made one suspect as a likely enemy. Not, though, that every antifeminist was a male. Midge Decter, renowned executive editor at Harper’s, was perceived by the movement as a traitor to the cause and a convert to conservatism following the publication of The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women’s Liberation in 1972.41 In fact, her views were one and the same with the New Women Brode_WEB.indb 13

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of the nineteenth century, who had argued (with full support from the era’s intellectual/enlightened males) that a woman’s beauty (nude or displayed in fashions), far from causing her to be “objectified,” offered a great source of power. In time, even some of the more radical voices came around to such a point of view. “As a matter of principle I stopped shaving my legs and under my arms,” Susan Brownmiller said of her early-seventies approach, “but I look at my legs and know they are no longer attractive, even to me,” admitting her desire (and guilt owing to it) to again “appear feminine.”42 She did not stand alone.

The decline of second-wave feminism during the early 1980s is generally acknowledged to have occurred when American women realized they had been “forced to confront a conflict between a feminist ideology that rejected (all) sexual-objectification and the deeply-ingrained cultural definitions of femininity” and that the vast majority of them considered it a false conflict, contrived by radicals, not (at least not any longer) appropriate for their mainstream goals.43 Why couldn’t they have it both ways?

In fact, they could, and would. Postfeminism emerged in support of all the key social issues raised by feminism while rejecting its dismissive attitude toward nudity, glamour, beauty, even pornography. Here then was a civil rights movement that was “pro-woman without being anti-man.”44 Now, then, a male friendly book could appear: Beyond Burning Bras: Feminist Activity for Everyone.45 From Madonna to Beyoncé, Lady Ga-ga to Taylor Swift, Jane Fonda to Angelina Jolie, the significant icons of strength for women are also sex symbols for men (and lesbian women as well!) They fully embrace rather than reject the bra. Shopping at Victoria’s Secret (for a man, for another woman, or simply for her own self-image) is today de rigueur .

The very title of Victoria Amador’s important essay, “The Post-Feminist Vampire: Heroine for the Twenty-First Century,”46 announced that in this changed order of things the sexy dominatrix female could fully emerge as an icon of empowerment. “Although originally misogynistic,” Bonnie Zimmerman pointed out, such an icon “can be revised and reinterpreted, opening it to use by feminists.”47 More accurately, postfeminists. This appears true since, as Barbara Creed noted, “the female Dracula is masculinized: she is an active, predatory seducer.”48 Lynda Hart agreed: Her

“usurpation of masculine privilege that defined her sexuality” is more important than “her object of choice.”49 Whether heterosexual, bisexual, or lesbian, such an assertive female achieves equal status with men. And while being tagged a “monster” may not be particularly nice, there is no question that it sure beats being considered a “victim”!

As to the creation of precisely what Amador described, the movies were beaten to the punch by graphic novels, and at a time when they were still referred to as humble comic books. Between 1969 and 1983, Warren Brode_WEB.indb 14

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published the “Vampirella” series, extended after that by other companies (and disastrously filmed in 1996 by schlockmeister Jim Wynorski).

Here was a space vampire who, as created by Forrest J. Ackerman in stories more often than not written by Archie Goodwin, the eponymous heroine made it a point to suck the blood of only those earthlings who were evil enough to deserve death (or a fate worse than), setting the pace for TV’s Dexter. Vampirella actually attempted to track down and finish off Dracula, who preyed on the innocent. All of her monstrous capabilities were diverted to “the good,” if in a vigilante sense not so far from Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. And if feminists of the day complained about the “sexism” of Vampirella’s costume, we ought to note first that it was created by a woman (Trina Robbins), and second that this in no way goes against the grain of what Amador argues about the postfeminist sensibility, which incorporates rather than rejects beauty by intertwining that uniquely female strength with brain-power.

As to any gender-transgressive element, the combination of, in a male-created artistic paradigm, real-life lesbianism (as well as bisexuality) with literary-cinematic vampirism “is a happy one (as) both figures are represented in popular culture as sexually aggressive women.”50 In the Francis Ford Coppola version of Dracula (1992), Mina and Lucy kiss in a passionate rather than sisterly manner before either (then both) fall(s) under the male vampire’s spell, though each remains interested in the men in their respective lives. We may find a suggestion that such sexual transgression, specifically for a female, is “normal” to her innate sensibility, not “unnatural” and a result of a patriarchal conquest. The coming state of vampirism for these “girls” only relaxes their inhibitions as to an already existent state. Such reconfiguration is taken further in films directed by women, with its greatest impact so far in Kathryn Bigelow’s hypnotic Near Dark (1987). At last, Von Helsing (or some contemporary equivalent) does not hurry along to kill the female vampire, nor does her mate (heterosexual here) perform as what R. H. W. Dillard has called “the heroic man,” saving her from the dark side. Together, the two, as a team of equals, decide on and bring about their best possible mutual future.51

Happily, male filmmakers have been won over to precisely this approach. In Innocent Blood (John Landis, 1992), the female vampire Marie (Anne Parillaud) assumes center stage from the opening, seizing control of her own narrative. Beginning with its release, “female vampires have moved from the margin to the mainstream.”52 Another means by which the female sex vampire can be reconstituted is a re-viewing of earlier films; now, not through their era’s feminist perspective but the postfeminism predominant in daily twenty-first-century discourse practiced by actual women in the real world. Such thinking allows us to end where we began, with Invasion of the Bee Girls. What if we choose to see the grindhouse item Brode_WEB.indb 15

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not as an epic, in which the macho man (he a tad ridiculous, even four decades ago) defeats the female dragon (the Queen Bee far more appealing than director Denis Sanders may have realized), but as a tragedy? Now, her defeat, in such adjusted spectatorship, strikes us as sad. Then again, we never actually do see her die along with those other gorgeous fiends. Like the undying monster in some old Universal horror film, why can’t she be revived to once again make mischief?

Now, a postmodern audience (members often wear T-shirts sporting images of Elizabeth Báthory, historical progenitor of the fictional female vampire, to black-leather rock concerts) can root for Queen Bee for the reason an earlier audience feared her: “a sexual threat,” according to Carol Senf, “a missionary of desire” who expresses “contempt for authority,” most particularly any attempt to constrict sexual freedom. That was then; this, now.53 If heterosexual males of the twenty-first century still like to gaze upon gorgeous women, more often than not it is Lara Croft, indomitable as Superman, less a “heroine” than a female-as-hero, rather than Lois Lane, the retro girly-girl who, in the Siegel and Shuster comics and most film and TV incarnations, wrangled herself into difficult situations, helplessly waiting to be extricated by the Man of Steel. Of course, there are occasional throwbacks. In From Dusk Till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, 1996), Salma Hayek’s stripper/vampire exists to be gazed at, seduced by, and then killed, with no more of a hint of any full personality than was the case with Grace Jones in Vamp (Richard Wenk, 1986). More often than not, however, today we are more likely to encounter complex women who, though cursed with vampirism, are not in any simplistic way contained by that condition, whether they are, like Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger, comfortable remaining in such a state or, like Jenny Wright in Near Dark, choose (that all important word for both feminist and postfeminist studies) to rebel and redefine themselves, if sometimes with a man, then certainly not by him.

“Watching a horror film,” as genre historians agree, “an audience probes the periphery of its unconscious.”54 This collection of essays will hopefully raise those dark desires that humankind prefers to store beneath the surface of our minds up to its conscious areas. Once relocated there, we can engage in the paradoxical pursuit of studying base emotions, Freud’s frightening libido, from the brain’s most advanced area, our intellect. Any popular-culture icon is worthy of such serious consideration, though the vampire has pushed into a territory more significant than even that. “By now,” Waltje claimed, “the vampire is a . . . myth, and its favored medium is film.”55 In no way disparaging the significant literary canon, this anthology takes as its point of departure a long-ago claim that movies provide the Immediate Experience.56 Considering the cinema’s abilities for direct impact of a populist nature, we can come to bet-Brode_WEB.indb 16

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ter understand the female version of this myth by deconstructing works that, ironically, were for the most part originally offered to us as mere examples of gothic escapism. And, whatever their twenty-first-century implications for feminists and postfeminists, women of straight, lesbian, or bi orientation, as well as men either hetero- or homosexual, with a full understanding that before the still relatively recent turn of a century these were very often works of soft-core pornography, our interest is in analyzing them today as works that form a horror subgenre in what can, original intentions aside, be considered a true art form.

NOTES

1. A phrase employed by Ebert during a discussion of the film with the author of this article while seated next to one another, traveling to California by plane, in 1988. Similar praise for the film appears in various books by Ebert.

2. The line first appears in a 1911 poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The Female of the Species,” expressing his horrified reaction to the era’s liberated “New Women” who preferred their freedom instead of traditional marriage to a man.

3. Ms. magazine, overseen by Gloria Steinem, first appeared in 1971 as a mass-market alternative to the highly successful Cosmopolitan (which suddenly came to seem antifeminist) though Ms. did not reach the height of its circulation until 1973, simultaneous with the modern women’s movement, previously considered to be a cult phenomenon, reaching the American mainstream.

4. J. Gordon Melton, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1994), 272–73.

5. A theme discussed in many books on the director, though the most easily accessible remains John Russell Taylor, Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1996).

6. Raphael Patai, “Lilith,” Journal of American Folklore 77 (October–December 1964): 295.

7. Thoroughly discussed, along with other relevant themes, including social and cultural issues related to religion, in Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick, A History of Pagan Europe (London: Routledge, 1997).

8. Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1993), 64.

9. Pam Keesey, Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Tales (Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press, 1993), 8.

10. James C. Holte, “Not All Fangs Are Phallic: Female Film Vampires,” in Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations (Westport CT: Praeger), 95.

11. Ibid., 97.

12. See: John Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987).

13. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesperson, in a radio broadcast, December 2009; reprinted several times in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican news outlet, during the following weeks.

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14. For a full and rich study, see: Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (Malden, MA: Polity, 2004).

15. For what is perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling among the many books on this subject, see Richard S. Dunn, The Age of Religious Wars, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979).

16. Lauren E. Williams, “Visualizing the Vampire: Carmilla (1872) and the Portrayal of Desire” (master’s thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2009), 7–9.

17. Originally contained in a letter from Keats to his brother George, dated April 21, 1819; first published (in a slightly altered form) in Indicator (May 1820).

18. John Keats, “Lamia,” Part 2, lines 299, 301, 307–8.

19. Don Richard Cox (ed.), Sexuality and Victorian Literature (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 7.

20. Linda Dowling, “The Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890s,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 33 (1979): 438.

21. Alan B. Johnson, “Dual Life: The Status of Women in Stoker’s Dracula,” in Cox, Sexuality and Victorian Literature, 36.

22. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel,” in Three Vampire Tales, ed. Anne Williams (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 32.

23. Ibid.

24. J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, in Three Vampire Tales, ed. Anne Williams (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), 104–5.

25. Jorg Waltje, “Filming Dracula: Vampires, Genre and Cinematography,”

Journal of Dracula Studies 2 (2000): 1

26. Nina Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).

27. Robin Wood, “The Dark Mirror: Murnau’s Nosferatu,” Film Comment 7

(Summer 1971): 46.

28. Elizabeth Cross and Ted Gott, The Frieze of Life: Edvard Munch (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2004), 79–80.

29. Joseph Campbell, quoted in “Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed,” a documentary by Ken Burns (Prometheus Entertainment/The History Channel, May 2007).

30. Kate Friedlander, quoted in: Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to True Blood, 4th ed. (Montclair NJ: Limelight, 2011), 209.

31. For full discussion of this syndrome, see: Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare (New York: Liveright, 1971).

32. David Pirie, The Vampire Film (New York: Crescent, 1977), 4.

33. Gregory Waller, The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 117.

34. Carol Senf, “Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror,” Journal of Narrative Theory 9, no. 3 (1979): 166.

35. Rudyard Kipling, “The Vampire,” lines 3–6.

36. Quoted in Mary Blume, “Shadowboxing with Werner Herzog,” Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1979.

37. Lane Roth, “Film, Society, and Ideas: Nosferatu and Horror of Dracula,” in Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Christopher Sharrett, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2004), 255.

38. Hinds, quoted in Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 126.

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39. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 123.

40. Roth, “Film, Society, and Ideas,” 255.

41. Midge Decter, The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women’s Liberation (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1972).

42. Susan Brownmiller, quoted in Steve Craig, “Feminism, Femininity and the Beauty Dilemma: How Advertising the Co-opted the Women’s Movement”

(paper delivered at the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference at Lubbock TX; January 1998).

43. Craig, “Feminism, Femininity and the Beauty Dilemma.”

44. Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 282.

45. Laura L. Finley and Emily Reynolds Stringer, Beyond Burning Bras: Feminist Activity for Everyone (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010).

46. Victoria Amador, “The Post-Feminist Vampire: Heroine for the Twenty-first Century,” Journal of Dracula Studies 5 (2003).

47. Bonnie Zimmerman, Jump Cut 24–25 (March 1981): 21.

48. Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 59.

49. Lynda Hart, Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (London: Routledge, 1994), 9.

50. Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 59.

51. R. H. W. Dillard, “Even a Man Who Is Pure in Heart: Poetry and Danger in the Horror Film,” in Man and the Movies, ed. W. R. Robinson, (Baltimore MD: Penguin, 1969), 69.

52. Holte, “Not All Fangs Are Phallic,” 108.

53. Senf, “Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror,” 166.

54. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 124.

55. Waltje, “Filming Dracula: Vampires, Genre and Cinematography,” 9

56. Robert Warshow, The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture (1962; repr. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

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From the implied to the overt: Whereas in the 1930s a lesbian relationship between older woman Gloria Holden and innocent young Nan Grey in Dracula’s Daughter could only be suggested, by the 1970s the seduction of Madeline Smith by Ingrid Pitt in The Vampire Lovers left little to the imagination. Top image courtesy of Universal Pictures; bottom image courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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The Lesbian Vampire Film

A Subgenre of Horror

Andrea Weiss

The following essay was the first chapter I wrote for my book Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film (1992), but it was written as a stand-alone essay a full five years earlier, in 1987. That was back in the early days of the nascent lesbian and gay film festivals in San Francisco and London, events we now take for granted in most major cities, and in fact they have since become tourist destinations. Both of those film festivals invited me to give lectures drawn from the essay, illustrated with film clips. I recall standing on the stage of the Castro Cinema in San Francisco, looking out at a sea of fourteen hundred lesbians (they had to open the balcony for the overspill, a rare occurrence), all of them waiting with great anticipation, if not for what I had to say, then at least for what I was about to show. I doubt such a lecture would pull even a small crowd today. It was before the dawn of the New Queer Cinema in the 1990s—the phrase was not even coined yet—and as lesbian/gay-created cinema had yet to catch up with lesbian/
gay consciousness, the audience was reconciled to accept whatever lesbian images I had at hand. The cheering, applause and wolf whistles from the audience at the lesbian vampires on-screen should have been a stronger sign to me that given the dearth of other forms of lesbian representation, these images evoked strong positive reactions of camp-identification. I do mention camp in the essay as a viewing strategy for lesbians, not quite as an afterthought, more as a closing argument, but I didn’t have today’s we-are-everywhere cultural zeitgeist as a comparison, to realize how in-credibly sparse the visual repertoire was back then. It is illuminating, what outsider groups manage to recondition for their own purposes.

The lesbian vampire that I mostly focus on in the following pages, that destructive, hypersexualized woman depicted in such Hammer Studio 21

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films as The Vampire Lovers (1970), constructed for the male gaze and expressing male fears of women, had her historical moment, but it was a moment that soon passed. (Although not entirely: she returned from the undead to appear in such utter schlock as Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires

[2003] by Tim Swartz and Lesbian Vampire Killers [2009] by Phil Claydon.) As my essay points out, that archetypal lesbian vampire rose to prominence at the exact point in time when the concept of lesbian identity was first coming into widespread public discourse, namely the early 1970s.

One could argue she was less a figure depicting lesbianism (she was never “coded” as lesbian) than she was a signifier for the instability of the heterosexual social order. Indeed, that particular image of the lesbian vampire represented a displacement of anxiety over the potential for the lesbian feminist movement, gaining enormous momentum from second-wave feminism and the aftermath of Stonewall, to unmask heterosexuality and reveal it as tenuous, unstable, and not at all as natural to human social organization as it purported to be. The lesbian vampire’s fifteen seconds of fame was an expression of that potential, sadly never realized, and of that anxiety, all too soon abated.

As I have maintained, the proliferation of lesbian vampires from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s had to do with the status anxiety straight men must have felt during those years, fearing their cultural hegemony would drown in the deluge of the women’s movement and the gay/lesbian movement. But it turned out that lesbians for the most part wanted what most other people in the United States wanted: marriage, children, and health insurance. Some lesbians have made it into the male bastions of power—one thinks of Rachel Maddow or Tammy Baldwin—but those bastions have not collapsed from within. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the social order was not turned upside down.

Today there are lesbian images on television, in advertising, on magazine covers and to a lesser degree, but still more than ever before, in the movies. Lesbian images turned out to be a clever marketing strategy: advertisers can sell a product all at once to lesbians, to straight women with private lesbian fantasies, to gay men who see the product as “gay friendly,” and of course to straight men who get turned on by lesbian sexuality while congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness.

Lesbian images have become so ordinary that we barely register them anymore; the cultural climate of “tolerance” has led to the lesbian vampire’s near extinction.

Personally I find tolerance overrated. I suppose its alternative is worse, but tolerance is not equality; condescension, social advantage, supercil-iousness are just a few of the unequal qualities that tolerance implies.

Unless and until the former gives way to the latter, it seems inevitable that the lesbian vampire will rise again and return to threaten the social order, this time with added rage for how she has been portrayed. We Brode_WEB.indb 22

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may well have to look to women directors to articulate this new model of radical womanhood; for example, filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger is promising a lesbian vampire film starring Tilda Swinton and Isabelle Huppert that should certainly upend anything we’ve seen before. I’ll conclude with the prediction that the lesbian vampire will one day return, and when she does she will surely avenge her former incarnations.

Lesbians are sharks, vampires, creatures from the deep lagoon, godzil-las, hydrogen bombs, inventions of the laboratory, werewolves—all of whom stalk Beverly Hills by night. Christopher Lee, in drag, in the Hammer films, middle period, is my ideal lesbian.

—Bertha Harris, “What Is a Lesbian?”1

Dracula, that tall, dark, handsome menace, has been given some stiff competition over the years by an even more attractive female counterpart—the lesbian vampire. She has found an enthusiastic medium for visual expression in the cinema, which has resurrected lesbian vampire tales dating far back in literature and legend.

Merging two kinds of sexual outlaws, the lesbian vampire is more than simply a negative stereotype. She is a complex and ambiguous figure, at once an image of death and an object of desire, drawing on profound subconscious fears that the living have toward the dead and that men have toward women, while serving as a focus for repressed fantasies. The generic vampire image both expresses and represses sexuality, but the lesbian vampire especially operates in the sexual rather than the supernatural realm.

In the early 1960s Barbara Steele played a vampire in a number of Italian films with lesbian overtones including Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960), a film that influenced the screenwriter of the English lesbian vampire films produced a decade later, and Castle of Blood or La Danza Macabra (Anthonio Margheriti, 1963), in which Steele’s character kills her lesbian cousin and lover (Margaret Robsham). Jean Rollin directed a series of surrealist French horror films, including La Viol du Vampire (1967), La Vampire Nue (1969), Le Frisson des Vampires (1970), and Vierges et Vampires (1971), all of which sacrificed narrative coherence for shocking sado-masochistic lesbian images. Rollin’s iconography features leather and metal chains, spikes protruding from women’s breasts, scenes of gang rape, and vampires reduced to drinking from their own veins.

Such jarring imagery departs significantly from that of the typical, more romantic lesbian vampire film, which has certain fairly consistent characteristics: Gothic themes and imagery; large empty castles and dark, romantic landscapes; and the arrival, early in the film, of a mysterious, aristocratic figure. With a few exceptions, these horror films were made on very small budgets, with extremely low production values. Their low-budget look gives them an exaggerated, camp quality, which for viewers Brode_WEB.indb 23

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today is often their redeeming feature. They were originally shown in second-rate commercial movie houses or in drive-in theaters, and now a number of them have been resurrected on the home video market.

The association of vampirism with lesbianism is far-reaching and long-lived. As Richard Dyer has pointed out, the literary images of each are closely related and often described in the same morbid language.2 For example, in the 1915 novel, Regiment of Women by Winifred Ashton (pseud.

Clemence Dane), the following description is not of a vampire’s victim but of one woman who has fallen in love with another: “So thin—she’s growing so dreadfully thin. Her neck! You should see her neck—salt—cellars, literally! And she had such a beautiful neck! . . . And so white and listless.”

The connection between lesbians and vampires has not been restricted to the horror genre, but resonates throughout much of the existing cultural representations of lesbianism. In a number of European art films of the 1960s and 1970s such as Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (Sweden, 1965) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (West Germany, 1972), vampirism is suggested through the erotic relationship between two women, in which one woman takes over the personality or soul of the other. Susan Sontag has described the elusive plot of Persona as “two women bound together in a passionate agonized relationship” that “is rendered mythically as vampirism: at one point, Alma sucks Elizabeth’s blood.”3

Lillian Faderman in Surpassing the Love of Men finds that a spate of lesbian vampire novels appeared in the first half of the twentieth century.

Vampire imagery serves as a metaphor for lesbianism in such books as Francis Brett Young’s White Ladies (1935) and Dorothy Baker’s Trio (1943), and Vampir (1932), which was published in Germany under the author’s anagram Ano Nymous. Faderman connects the emergence of lesbianism as vampirism to the pathologizing of women’s relationships of medical and cultural authorities. The vampire metaphor, Faderman asserts, served to enforce the transition from nineteenth-century socially accepted close female relationships to the redefinition of such relationships as deviant in the first half of the twentieth century.4

Although the lesbian vampire image resurfaced in this period, its origins can be traced back to several earlier sources of vampire lore. The most significant of these is the Victorian novel Carmilla (1871) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, which pre-dates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by twenty-five years.

The fictional Carmilla is an aristocratic noblewoman, the Countess Millarca Karnstein, who reappears as a vampire 150 years after her physical death. It is a typical Victorian novel: genteel on the surface, but beneath is the darker side of the spirit. Laura, Carmilla’s “victim,” describes her vampire lover in romantic terms:

[Carmilla] used to place her pretty arms around my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek next to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, ‘Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the ir-Brode_WEB.indb 24

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resistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.”

Carmilla falls in love with her so-called victims; she is characterized sympathetically in that she acts out of compulsion rather than malice.

Gene Damon, writing in the early American lesbian publication The Ladder, claimed that the novel Carmilla has “long been a sub-basement Lesbian classic” but the film based on it, The Vampire Lovers, is “a male movie, for a male audience.”5 What has survived of Carmilla from Victorian literature and worked its way into twentieth-century cinema is its muted expression of lesbianism, no longer sympathetically portrayed but now reworked into a male pornographic fantasy.

Although in the earliest lesbian vampire film, Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer, 1936), the sexuality of the vampire (Gloria Holden) is dis-creetly implied, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, lesbian sexual behavior had become graphically depicted, another titillating, exaggerated characteristic of the excessive B-movie genre. One obvious explanation for this change in representation is the gradual relaxation of the strict censorship laws in the United States and Great Britain in the mid-1960s, which these films further encouraged. No longer hunted by censors, some twenty or more lesbian vampires could be found stalking the silver screen between the years 1970 and 1974 alone. In the early 1970s, Hammer Studio in Great Britain released its trilogy of X-rated “sexploitation flicks”: The Vampire Lovers (Roy Baker, 1970), Twins of Evil (John Hough, 1971), and Lust for a Vampire (Jimmy Sangster, 1971). 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.

This pornographic appeal was a strong motivation for producing most of these films in the first place. Tudor Gates, the screenwriter of the Hammer trilogy, claims that with these films Hammer Studio was deliberately challenging the British Board of Film Censors on the question of where to draw the line on allowable representation.6 By the early 1970s, graphic sexual imagery that elsewhere would be excised by censors was considered more acceptable within the realm of the supernatural. As the 1970s wore on, this imagery became increasingly possible in other forms of cinema, and the lesbian vampire was no longer necessary to circumvent censorship regulations. Still, the figure didn’t completely disappear; she continued to hold an erotic power and fascination beyond her purely pornographic value. Although on the decline since the mid-1970s, it is in her nature to return again.

The Hammer Studio films are invariably set in an ambiguous, mytholo-gized past, when strict gender roles demanded that men be brave and women helpless. Yet the films’ production unmistakably belongs to the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period in which such clear-cut definitions of Brode_WEB.indb 25

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masculinity and femininity were increasingly coming under fire. Bonnie Zimmerman, writing in Jump Cut in 1981, speculates on the relationship between the sudden appeal of the lesbian vampire in 1970 and the initial gains of the feminist movement. She writes:

Although direct parallels between social forces and popular culture are risky at best, the popularity of the lesbian vampire film in the early 1970s may be related to the beginnings of an international feminist movement. . . . Since feminism between 1970 and 1973 was not yet perceived as a fundamental threat, men could enjoy the sexual thrill provided by images of lesbian vampires stealing women and sometimes destroying men in the process. The creators of those images—like the pornographic filmmakers who appeal to male fantasies with scenes of lesbianism—must have felt secure enough in their power and that of their primarily male audience to flirt with lesbianism and female violence against men.7

But a reconsideration of this lesbian vampire popularity more strongly suggests that what the creators of these images must have felt secure about was not so much their male power as the potential box office returns on the low-budget exploitation product. It was, in fact, the huge financial success of The Vampire Lovers that motivated Hammer Studios to continue with their lesbian theme. The relationship which Zimmerman seeks to establish between the early 1970s feminist movement and the appearance of so many lesbian vampire films rests not on the security but on the insecurity that the feminist movement generated in male spectators at the time. Feminists were angrily demanding sexual autonomy from men and control over their own bodies. Strengthened by participation in consciousness-raising groups, many women across the United States and in Europe demanded sexual pleasure and sexual equality with their husbands and boyfriends, and many more left these men and proclaimed their lesbianism. Under such circumstances, men understandably felt their dominant social position to be dangerously threatened.

Although psychic fears and historical circumstances rarely coincide so directly or neatly, and it would be reductive to explain the former as solely the product of the latter, the emergence of the lesbian vampire in this period does, in some measure, symbolize this threat. The lesbian vampire provokes and articulates anxieties in the heterosexual male spectator, only for the film to quell these anxieties and reaffirm his maleness through the vampire’s ultimate destruction. The lesbian vampire is at once attractive and threatening to men, in part because she expresses an active sexual desire, something which men may fantasize about safely in the cinema even while threatened by its prospect at home.

While sexually active, the lesbian vampire is still visually coded as feminine: she has long hair, large breasts, and pale white skin and wears Brode_WEB.indb 26

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floor-length, translucent dresses. Unlike the “masculine” images of lesbians in more mainstream films of the late 1960s and early 1970s— The Fox (Mark Rydell, 1966) and The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968), for example—the lesbian vampire fits the stereotype not of the mannish lesbian but of the white, feminine, heterosexual woman. Her vampirism, therefore, is doubly disturbing, as she appears “normal” by society’s standards for women and yet is not. James Donald has noted that “works of the fantastic insist upon the delusory nature of perception” and “play . .

. upon the insecurity of the boundaries between the ‘I’ and the ‘not-I.’”8

The vampire’s femininity contributes to this insecurity by her ability to

“pass” as heterosexual; she is not visually identifiable as either lesbian or vampire.

The lesbian vampire not only crosses boundaries (through passing), but breaks down boundaries between the male “I” and the female “not-I” as well. While appearing to be excessively “feminine,” she also contradicts and confounds this femininity through the anxious attention focused on her mouth. Christopher Craft, in his illuminating study of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, describes the vampire’s mouth as follows: As the primary site of erotic experience . . . this mouth equivocates, giving the lie to the easy separation of the masculine and the feminine. Luring at first with an inviting orifice, a promise of red softness, but delivering instead a piercing bone, the vampire mouth fuses and confuses . . . the gender-based categories of the penetrating and the receptive. With this soft flesh barred by hard bone, its red crossed by white, this mouth compels opposites and contrasts into a frightening unity.9

Medical case histories in the early twentieth century reveal deep anxieties about the possibility of female penetration. Ridiculously imposing a heterosexual model of sexual behavior onto lesbian desire, medical “experts” actually attempted to measure imagined “deformity” of lesbians’

genitalia and their possibility of female penetration.10 In the lesbian vampire story, this anxiety has been displaced and refocused on the mouth, another “feminine” sexual orifice that combines the “masculine” ability to penetrate, via the teeth. Thus the vampire embodies age-old popular fears of women that have been expressed through the image of the “vagina dentata,” the vagina with teeth, and the penetrating woman. Jean Rollin’s lesbian vampire with spikes protruding from her breasts expresses a similar anxiety.

The fluctuations between desire and fear generated by the vampire seem to require a “strict, indeed almost schematic formal management of narrative material,” as Christopher Craft has demonstrated.11 This management of narrative material is formulaic: the vampire is first introduced in order to disrupt and invert the “natural order” and to provoke Brode_WEB.indb 27

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anxieties in the characters and spectator alike; the vampire then engages in vampirism as entertainment and sexual titillation for the prolonged middle section of the narrative; and finally the vampire is destroyed and the “natural order” reaffirmed. In the case of the lesbian vampire, a more specific narrative formula is often further imposed upon the generic vampire plot: a lesbian vampire and a mortal man compete for the possession of a woman. In this bisexual triangle, the man is aligned with the forces of good, the vampire with the forces of evil, and the woman whose fate hangs in the balance is usually a “nice, sweet girl” with no intrinsic moral value attached to her but who is merely a receptacle to assume the values of either one.

While it may be possible for lesbian viewers to derive some pleasure from the vampire’s sexual escapades, these scenes invariably cater to male heterosexual fantasy. One particularly explicit scene from The Vampire Lovers is a perfect example of male voyeurism and, ultimately, male sadistic impulses. Emma comes into Carmilla’s bedroom while Carmilla is taking a bath. First we see Carmilla in a medium shot, eyes averted off screen and naked from the waist up in the bathtub. Her large breasts are center screen and dominate the shot. Then she turns as she rises, and we have a view of her entire torso from the back just as she drapes a towel around her. These two shots underscore the spectator’s position as voyeur, able to see her body but fleetingly, before she covers herself, and without meeting her gaze. Carmilla walks to the mirror and sits so that her back is to the camera; we simultaneously see her naked back and, in the mirror reflection, her face, neck, shoulders and breasts (the standard myth that vampires lack a reflection is dispensed with here in the service of prurient interests). Thus, at the moment when the lesbian vampire is about to seduce her victim for the first time, her image is rendered less threatening: it is visually fragmented onto different spatial planes through the framing of the foreground and mirror images. This symbolic dismemberment of her body foreshadows her eventful destruction at the film’s end.

In the bedroom scene, Carmilla is telling Emma to borrow one of her dresses, but first to take everything off underneath. Emma’s hesitancy,

“What will my father say?” and Carmilla’s reassurance, “He will enjoy it, as all men do,” further speaks to the pleasures of the male spectator and establishes the context in which to view what follows. A half-naked Carmilla chases a half-naked Emma around the room, and they land conveniently on the bed. We see them embrace, and then for a moment a lamp in the foreground obstructs our view. This obstruction postpones voyeurism, which is a way of heightening and intensifying voyeuristic pleasure. The bulbous, symmetrical shape of the lamp at once shields our view of the women and symbolically re-creates the fetishized breast imagery in the foreground of the shot. Thus voyeurism and fetishism work Brode_WEB.indb 28

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together in this scene to contain and assuage the threat the vampire poses to the male spectator.

Within the narrative, the vampire represents the threat of violence as well as of sexuality. Usually the vampire seduces rather than attacks her victims; this can be seen as a relatively positive attribute in that the lesbian vampire doesn’t seek to destroy her victims, but rather to make them into accomplices. Furthermore, seduction suggests complicity on the part of the victim, indicating the relationship is mutually desirable to a certain extent. But lest we develop too much admiration for this charming seductress, random and gruesome violence is occasionally added to heighten the sense of perversion and destruction that she embodies. That this violence is often directed at women, for whom the vampire has a distinct sexual preference, serves further to link images of lesbian sexuality to depravity.

In a scene from another Hammer Studio film, Twins of Evil, one of the two female twins has just become a vampire. As she begins to attack a local peasant girl (chained to a wall), there is a brief, unspoken erotic exchange between the two women: the victim momentarily responds to the vampire’s advances and they seem about to kiss, when the vampire attacks. We hear a scream and the shot dissolves into a close-up on the face of a male vampire, previously in the corner of the frame voyeuristically watching the encounter, now laughing wickedly. The lesbian sexual overtones of the violence are pronounced, monitored by the male gaze from the edge of the frame, and confirmed by the laughter that expresses his pleasure in looking. Lesbian scenes from the second film in the Hammer trilogy, Lust for a Vampire, are also consistently framed in relation to an on-screen male voyeur: one man watches as two naked women swim and kiss in the moonlight; another listens, calls out, and pounds on the door behind which two women make vampiric love.

An important characteristic of the lesbian vampire is that she relies far more on her sexual powers than on her supernatural powers—in fact her sexual powers are usually equated with supernatural powers. In the early days of the cinema, the word vampire had a meaning similar to vamp: a beautiful woman whose sexual desire, if fulfilled, would drain the life blood of man. This mortal vampire was an extremely popular character in early films. The earliest such film was made in 1910 and called The Vampire; it was reviewed that year in the New York Dramatic Mirror as being about “a beautiful woman who delighted in ruining men.” Between 1914 and 1916, the classic “vampire” was played by Theda Bara in such films as A Fool There Was (1914) and Sin (1915). Theda Bara’s real name was Theodosia Goodman and she was the daughter of a Jewish garment worker, voluptuous and dark; her image was linked to evil sexuality, helping to define and keep “pure” the more common blond virgin image.

But if men projected dangerous sexuality on Theda Bara, female specta-Brode_WEB.indb 29

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tors could find in her role the pleasure of revenge. Bara herself once said,

“Women are my greatest fans because they see in my [role as] vampire the impersonal vengeance of all their unavenged wrongs. . . . I have the face of a vampire, perhaps, but the heart of a feminist.”12 In the first decade of the cinema there were at least forty films about this mortal female vampire, whom men could find sexually enticing while women could fantasize female empowerment.

In The Hunger (1980), the vampire’s power is still purely sexual, even though now she is also endowed with supernatural qualities. In a scene famous to lesbian audiences, the sophisticated aristocratic Catherine Deneuve seduces the more butch Susan Sarandon, and Susan Sarandon is so enticed by the sexual rather than the supernatural that they are already undressed and well under way before we are reminded, through images of a blood exchange, that one of the women is a vampire.

As a measure of this scene’s importance to lesbian spectators, a debate has been generated within lesbian circles as to the “authenticity” of the sex between Deneuve and Sarandon. Some lesbians claim that Deneuve is not actually in the scene, but rather a body double is used in her place, a rumor that is often told with considerable disappointment. However, the truth of the rumor (a body double is intercut with shots of Deneuve) seems less important than its existence in the first place, which suggests that lesbians have spent a lot of time scrutinizing this scene on their home videotapes, giving the vampire relationship a kind of legitimacy as a viable representation of lesbianism, and acknowledging its erotic potential for women.13

The vampire character in The Hunger is not based on Carmilla, but on a second source: the legend of Countess Elisabeth Báthory of Transylvania, who lived in the seventeenth century. From most accounts, she was a sexist sadist who tortured and murdered her female servants and later progressed to local noblewomen before she was caught and brought to trial.

This blight on the Hungarian aristocratic landscape was immediately hushed up by church and state, and the incriminating trial testimony was considered so shocking that it was suppressed for over a hundred years.14

In the absence of historical fact the Hungarian imagination worked overtime to fill the void. The Báthory legend spread like wildfire through villages and towns across Eastern Europe throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. One of the most popular myths about her is that she murdered young virgins because she believed bathing in their blood would restore her youth.

Although this myth provides the plot of the Hammer Studio film Countess Dracula (Peter Sasdy, 1971), in The Hunger the vampire is only indirectly based on the Elisabeth Báthory legend, modernizing the icon of the irresistible aristocratic woman and her ability to keep her youth at her Brode_WEB.indb 30

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victims’ expense. But another lesbian vampire film, Daughters of Darkness, relies more closely on the Báthory story.

The degree of narrative closure largely influences what meanings the lesbian vampire films can generate, and the extent to which lesbians can find alternative or oppositional meanings. In the conclusion of a typical bisexual triangle film— Personal Best, The Bostonians—given an even fight between a heterosexual man and a lesbian, the man will win out every time, thereby restoring the “natural order.” Heterosexuality triumphs over homosexuality and man triumphs over woman. The typical lesbian vampire film concludes by following this same scenario, but the man must invariably kill the lesbian character in order to destroy the threat she represents. Although lesbian characters are frequently killed off in any film’s conclusion ( The Fox, The Children’s Hour), mainstream Hollywood films do not usually allow their lesbian characters to act on sexual desire.

The horror film, in contrast, has an added punishment to mete out: the lesbian vampire is killed because of her active sexuality as well as her lesbianism. Seemingly sexually “liberated” from the restraints of Hollywood, the lesbian vampire film appears to allow for women’s desire but always exacts its punishment. The theorist Raymond Bellour has written: The masculine subject can accept the image of woman’s pleasure only on the condition that, having constructed it, he may inscribe himself within it, and thus reappropriate it even at the cost of its (of her) destruction.15

Linda Williams has pushed this observation further, and found that

“the titillating attention given to the expression of women’s desire is directly proportional to the violence perpetrated [within the film] against women.”16

The typical lesbian vampire film, belonging within the horror/exploitation genre, is an articulation of men’s subconscious fear of and hostility toward women’s sexuality as it traditionally has been defined in the cinema, and links the fear of vampirism with the male fear of women. The vampire’s thirst for blood and the association of blood with menstruation makes mocking reference to female life-giving capacities, inverting them into life-taking ones. The lesbian vampire film uses lesbianism as titillation that is at once provocative and conquerable, and equates lesbian sexual powers with unnatural powers. It appeals to deep, dark fears of the insatiable female, the consuming mother, the devouring mother, woman as monster, the “vagina dentata.” To the extent that seduction rather than violent coercion implies some degree of complicity, it depicts a consensual relationship between two women as inherently pathological, with the self-preservation of the one appealing to the self-destructiveness of the other. One woman’s survival is always at the other’s expense.

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If the lesbian vampire dramatizes men’s fears, anxieties, and hatred of women, is it possible for lesbians to derive pleasure from such films? The lesbian vampire is the most powerful representation of lesbianism to be found on the commercial movie screen, and rather than abandon her for what she signifies, it may be possible to extricate her from her original function, and reappropriate her power.

James Donald has argued that the vampire film does “present the Other as the threat,” but it is not limited to this function. He writes that vampire films “are not just ideological mechanisms for domesticating terror and repression in popular culture . . . [but are] also symptoms of the instability of culture, the impossibility of its closure or perfection.”17 In the lesbian vampire films that fall outside the low-budget horror/exploitation genre, this impossibility of cultural closure is paralleled precisely by an impossibility of narrative closure, which in turn lends itself to alternative viewing strategies by lesbian spectators. Drawing heavily on European art cinema conventions, the films Blood and Roses, The Hunger, and Daughters of Darkness use higher production budgets and well-known actors and directors, and they don’t rely on violence and nudity to hold the viewer. But it is not their art-film status so much as their more ambiguous endings (which is, after all, an art cinema characteristic) that allow for a wider range of readings. In these conclusions, the vampire is still physically destroyed, but the woman whom she seduces becomes a vampire herself through the transmigration of the vampire’s soul. And as the lesbian vampire lives on in a new body, the cycle that is set in motion by her first appearance continues beyond the film’s ending. Because of this, these films can be seen as departures from the genre, as they draw heavily from it. Bonnie Zimmerman has suggested that Daughters of Darkness is open to lesbian reinterpretation because of the romantic, transhistorical appeal of the film’s ending, in which the vampire’s spirit “occupies a new body once it is deprived of the old, suggesting that lesbianism is eternal, passing effortlessly from one woman to another.”18

Lesbians can also find erotic elements in scenes that do not feature direct displays of sexuality. This is certainly true of Dracula’s Daughter, and perhaps Blood and Roses as well. In Dracula’s Daughter, produced in 1936, the spectator’s sympathy is with the vampire (Gloria Holden). With the advent of psychology as a more widely accepted field of science, lesbianism and vampirism are presented as uncontrollable afflictions for which the tormented lesbian vampire herself seeks professional help. The countess tries but fails to escape her family heritage of vampirism; she seduces young women before being destroyed by the doctor who failed to cure her. Gloria Holden is beautiful and the film is elegantly stylized in black and white, elements that help make the film pleasurable for contemporary (if not also historical) lesbian audiences. In Blood and Roses (1960), ex-Brode_WEB.indb 32

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ternal events such as the masquerade ball and fireworks display are used to suggest Carmilla’s inner turmoil; such events are also symbols for the film’s repressed lesbianism, which emerges in only a few very restrained scenes. There may be pleasure for lesbian viewers in the discovery of these subtextual lesbian scenes, and in reading them as lesbian.

While The Vampire Lovers uses the male vampire hunter as a stand-in for the perspective of the male spectator, Blood and Roses uses a similar voice-over narration device, but here it is the voice of Carmilla herself, telling her own story. This shift in the position of the narrator contributes to lesbian spectators’ pleasure in the vampire’s seductions; it is as though she has made a pact with the lesbian viewer, which turns her into an accomplice.

Lesbian vampire films can further encourage a unique reception by lesbian spectators, because of the powerful erotic connotations of the vampire relationship and its expression of a secret and forbidden sexuality. But more commonly, certain problems of representation and spectatorship work against such a reception. The typical vampire and her victim are both visually coded as heterosexual and feminine, even though the narrative sets them up to be lovers. They lack the lesbian verisimilitude that would enable them to “pass” as lesbians; they flirt with men and dress (and undress) to appeal to male desire. If they do not offer the same image of erotic fascination for women that they are intended to provide for heterosexual men, neither do they pose the same threat to lesbian viewers as they do to men. As a result, the lesbian spectator’s relationship to the vampire takes a different form: neither sexually desirable nor sexually threatening, the lesbian vampire is appealing only for the power she wields. Instead of feeling endangered, lesbians can derive vicarious enjoyment from the vampire’s dangerous powers. But due to her unique position, the lesbian spectator doesn’t develop a fear of the vampire. And of course, as a horror film, it then falls flat. Without the element of danger, the film becomes a burlesque, to be appreciated primarily as camp.

Although usually considered to be the province of gay male culture, camp is a frequent component of lesbian spectatorship as well, arising from the relationship between theatrical and melodramatic qualities in the cinema on the one hand, and those perceptions of the world that are informed by one’s gayness, on the other. Critic Jack Babuscio has identified four features basic to the definition of camp: irony, aestheticism, theatricality, and humor. His definition is a useful starting point for understanding the subversive strategies of camp for lesbian spectators.

Certainly this is irony in the lesbian vampire film. The lesbian vampire is incongruous socially; she is not what she seems to be, and her difference is not detected by those around her despite some obvious signs.

This incongruity can be especially appreciated by lesbians who often find themselves in a similar social situation.

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Furthermore, camp identifies itself through artifice and aestheticism, rejecting and opposing puritan morality.19 Since lesbian spectators can dismiss the puritan morality represented by the vampire hunters (good Christian men), they are freer to enjoy the film’s exaggerated, predictable imagery and obvious theatricality, the vampire’s “masking of ‘abnormal-ity’ behind a façade of ‘normality.’”20

The dominant cinema demands that men do the looking and women are looked at. 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 that is empowered rather than victimized? Recent lesbian vampire films by independent filmmakers—such as Bruna Fionda, Polly Gladwin, and Isiling Mack-Nataf’s Mark of Lilith (Great Britain, 1986) and Amy Goldstein’s highly stylized Because the Dawn (United States, 1988)—begin to explore this possibility. The former raises the question of where such a process of reappropriation might lead, while the latter reverses the power relation so that it is the vampire who is desired—the moral woman stalks the streets at night in search of her. But even if such a complete “revamping” of the genre is ultimately not possible, a camp reading provides a powerful antidote. Camp creates the space for an identification with the vampire’s secret, forbidden sexuality that doesn’t also demand participation in one’s own victimization as a requisite for cinematic pleasure.

EPILOGUE

Vampires today are experiencing something of a rebirth, between the enormously successful Twilight films and such recent TV shows as Moonlight, Blood Ties, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries. But in trying to assess how much things have changed in the past twenty-five years since I wrote this essay, I’ve found these next-generation vampires to be almost exclusively, even aggressively, heterosexual. That’s curious, considering how much more “acceptable” lesbianism has become in mainstream culture. I started wondering if there might be an inverse relationship at work.

NOTES

1. Bertha Harris, “What Is a Lesbian?” Sinister Wisdom 3 (1977).

2. Richard Dyer, “It’s in Their Kiss: Vampirism as Homosexuality, Homosexuality as Vampirism,” unpublished paper, 5.

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3. Susan Sontag, “Persona,” Sight and Sound 36, no. 4 (Autumn 1967): 186, 191.

4. Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1981), 341–46.

5. Gene Damon, The Ladder (February/March 1971) 36; (June/July 1971), 47–48.

6. Conversation with Tudor Gates, screenwriter of the Hammer lesbian vampire trilogy, on January 16, 1992, London.

7. Bonnie Zimmerman, “Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampires,” Jump Cut 24–25 (Fall 1980): 23.

8. James Donald, “The Fantastic, the Sublime and the Popular, or What’s at Stake in Vampire Films?” in Fantasy and the Cinema, ed. James Donald (London: British Film Institute, 1989), 237.

9. Christopher Craft, “Kiss Me with Those Ruby Lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Representations 8 (Fall 1984): 109.

10. This fascination with the genitals of female “inverts” in the turn of the century is discussed in George Chauncey Jr., “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance,”

Salmagundi 58–59 (1982): 114–46.

11. Craft, “Kiss Me,” 109.

12. Theda Bara interviewed in Theatre Magazine (June 1917), 246, cited in Lary May Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).

13. This “body double” rumor was first brought to my attention by the writer Michelle Cliff, in conversation in July 1991.

14. The life and legends of Elisabeth Báthory are discussed in Raymond T. McNally, Dracula Was a Woman (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983) and David Pirie, The Vampire Cinema (London: Hamlyn, 1977).

15. Raymond Bellour, “Psychosis, Neurosis, Perversion,” Camera Obscura 3–4

(1979): 121.

16. Linda Williams, “When the Woman Looks,” in Revision: Feminist Essays in Film Analysis, ed. Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp and Linda Williams (Washington, DC: American Film Institute, 1984), 97.

17. Donald, “The Fantastic, Sublime and the Popular,” 247.

18. Zimmerman, “Daughters of Darkness,” 24.

19. Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” in Against Interpretation (New York: Far-rar, Straus & Giroux, 1969).

20. Jack Babuscio, “Camp and the Gay Sensibility,” in Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, ed. David Bergman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 43.

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A Vamp(ire) there was: Theda Bara’s reputation as the silver screen’s first memorable man-eater was more evident in posed publicity stills than in femme fatale films such as A Fool There Was . Courtesy of The Theda Bara Estate.

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2

Sans Fangs

Theda Bara, A Fool There Was ,
and the Cinematic Vamp

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

While ideas about vampires and cinema are both culturally specific and dynamic, one constant that stretches back to the earliest days of cinema is the connection between vampires, liberated libido, and hyperbolic gender. Cinematic vampires insistently teach us what it means to be an acceptably sexual man or woman by showing us what it means to be a “perversely” sexual monster—as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen notes of monsters in general, the “monstrous aberration” of the cinematic vampire reconfirms what is normal, appropriate, and acceptable.1 In film’s first decades, however, the vampire was not a charismatic or hypnotic male seducer, not a suave Bela Lugosi or commanding Christopher Lee stealing our women and turning them into monsters by instilling in them or—more provocatively— awakening in them their slumbering sexuality, but instead a predatory female, the belle dame sans merci, who contravened the laws of nature by actively controlling and debilitating men. This is to say that the first cinematic vampires were vamps: women who appropriated the masculine agency utilized in seduction, who refused to restrict their sexuality to procreative heterosexual monogamy sanctioned by marriage, and who “unmanned” their victims by rendering them passive and dependent—women, in short, who acted like men and who transformed men into characters coded as feminine.

These early screen vamps, including Helen Gardner, Louise Glaum, Valeska Suratt, and the focus of this essay, Theda Bara, established a cinematic pattern of representation supernaturalizing feminine sexuality. Although not actually vampires in the sense of having fangs, drinking blood, and being undead, early screen vamps nevertheless held hypnotic sway over their unfortunate victims, bending them to their will and draining them of vitality. Dark vamps on the silent screen and the femmes fatales 37

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Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
of 1940s and 1950s film noir were generally counterpoised against fair-haired standard bearers of respectable female sexuality—good wives and mothers—and arguably worked to demonize the uninhibited expression of female sexuality, even as they titillated the movie-going public. Post–sexual revolution and second-wave feminism films no longer always present such a stark dichotomization. While the pattern persists in films such as Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987), some films such as Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992) play around with the formula, either by giving the vamp depth and comprehensible motivation, desanctifying the good wife, or both.

In this chapter, I will consider the ways in which the hyperbolic feminine sexuality of Theda Bara’s character, the Vampire, from the silent 1915
film A Fool There Was (Frank Powell)—arguably cinema’s first vampire—
foregrounds male anxieties and exemplifies early cinema’s bifurcation of women into virtuous women and vamps. The “dark shadow of the Victorian virtuous woman,”2 the Vampire in A Fool There Was (similar to Lucy Westenra in Stoker’s Dracula [1897]) condenses and materializes social concern over the turn-of-the-century New Woman’s defiance of traditional gender expectations. Characterized by her irresistible sexuality, the Vampire is a chaotic force of social disruption that “unmans” her victims and dangerously reveals categories of gender to be arbitrary and mutable rather than fixed and essential. After considering A Fool There Was, I will then briefly turn my attention to Basic Instinct to suggest how the vamp continues to play her seductive role in contemporary cinema, albeit in a different social context and with differing political implications.

EARLY VAMPS: THEDA BARA AND A FOOL THERE WAS

David Pirie comments in his study of vampire cinema that early films used the word vampire “simply as an innocuous alternative for femme fatale or vamp.”3 It is not that early films were using the word vampire in place of the existing word vamp— vamp as an abbreviation for vampire, connoting a woman who intentionally attracts and exploits men, was a relatively new coinage in the nineteen-teens (the OED traces it to 1911).

Rather, I think it is more accurate to say that early cinema invented the vamp. Literary history of course is filled with dark female temptresses; however, the vamp as female sexual vampire is arguably a cinematic creation that emerged during the first decade of cinema, and no one had more to do with cementing the association between vampirism and hyperbolic female sexuality than “the screen’s original vamp,” Theda Bara.4

Born Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a Jewish tailor in Cincinnati, Bara starred in more than forty films between 1914 and 1926, is often regarded as cinema’s first true sex symbol, and, as noted above, is considered the original screen “vamp.” In order to capitalize on her

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was photographed in Oriental-themed attire, and a fictional biography was invented for her in which she was the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor who had spent her early years in the Sahara Desert under the shadow of the Sphinx before moving to France to become a stage actress. The name Theda Bara is an anagram for

“Arab Death,” and Melton observes that she frequently appeared in public accompanied by African footmen in a white limousine and pretended not to speak English.5 Although sometimes referred to as the “Serpent of the Nile” (she played Cleopatra in the eponymous 1917 production), her femme fatale roles lead to her also being nicknamed “The Vamp,” a figure she embodied for the American public.6

According to Bara’s biographer, Ronald Genini, 1915’s A Fool There Was essentially introduced the term “vamp” (both as a noun and as a verb) to the American pop-culture vocabulary. While this is a difficult claim to sub-stantiate, the movie—which takes as its inspiration and occasionally quotes from Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 poem “The Vampire” chronicling the down-fall of a man seduced by a woman oblivious to or unconcerned about the consequences of her actions—undeniably cements the association between vampirism and destructive female sexuality. In the film, Bara plays a character simply referred to simply as “The Vampire.” Although she has a lover at the start (Reginald Parmalee, played by actor Victor Benoit), who acts like a lapdog living off the scraps of her affection, the Vampire quickly sets her sights on lawyer John Schuyler (Edward José), who has been identified in the newspaper as having been named “Special Representative of the U.S.

Government to England” by the secretary of state and who is about to embark on a trans-Atlantic journey, leaving behind his wife and golden-haired daughter. The Vampire makes arrangements to join Schuyler aboard ship and, as she steps out of her motor coach at the docks, she is confronted by a clearly destitute former lover who calls her a “hell cat” before being hauled off at her request by the police. Then, as the ship is preparing to embark, she is threatened on deck by her current lover, Parmalee, whom she is abandoning and who brandishes a gun at her. Her response to his threat is simply to laugh in his face, prompting him to shoot himself. In a particularly ghoulish gesture, the cleaned-off deck has barely had the chance to dry when she has her deck chair placed on the spot of her ex-lover’s suicide and directs that the chair of her next victim, Schuyler, be put next to hers.

By the time the ship reaches its destination, the seduction is accomplished and Schuyler is under her spell; indeed, the seduction, which apart from the Vampire’s initial machinations before the ship embarks is never shown, is made to seem both effortless and magical—the Vampire’s power inheres in her ability to release in males their sexual desire, and Schuyler never had a chance. After the ship sets sail, when next we see Schuyler it is two months later and he is seated on the ground leaning against the Vampire, who lounges in a divan in an appropriately languor-ous tropical Italian setting. Schuyler appears drugged; fed cordials by the Brode_WEB.indb 39

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Vampire, he is unable to rise. He has abandoned both his political post and his wife and daughter. Other Americans visiting the same locale, ap-palled by his behavior, refuse to stay in the same hotel and his exploits find their way into the “Town Tattler” section of a New York newspaper, which reports that “a certain millionaire reformer, who was sent abroad as a special ambassadorial envoy some months ago, has fatuously fallen under the spell of a certain notorious woman of the vampire species, not wholly unconnected with the dramatic suicide of young Reginald Parmalee aboard the Cunarder ‘Gigantic’ the day it sailed.”

After being dismissed from his post for dereliction of duty and immoral behavior, we next see a visibly aged Schuyler and the Vampire back in the United States, where they are installed in Schuyler’s urban townhouse.

Schuyler’s vitality has literally been drained—his hair has gone completely gray; he has dark circles under his eyes; and he appears pallid, weak, and off-balance. In one of the film’s most interesting sequences, Schuyler’s wife and child pull alongside Schuyler and the Vampire’s motor coach on a busy road and his daughter calls plaintively, “Papa, dear, I want you!” Back at the townhouse, the Vampire berates the haggard and distraught Schuyler, chastising him “Why did you act afraid and ashamed? You should have bowed and smiled, as I did.” She then pours him a drink—this is the beginning of the end for Schuyler.

The rest of the film chronicles Schuyler’s rapid deterioration and his subsequent abandonment by the Vampire. As Schuyler drinks more and more, he neglects both his business affairs and his appearance. Six months pass and when we see Schuyler next, he is so drunk he can barely stand. His servants have abandoned him, and the Vampire has taken up with another man. Nevertheless, each time an attempt is made to rescue Schuyler and return him to his wife—first by his friend and secretary, second by his wife and child—the Vampire returns and exerts her irresistible will upon his; even though she no longer wants him, she refuses to allow anyone else to claim him. In the film’s penultimate scene, the abandoned Schuyler crawls down a dark staircase in his empty townhouse, at one point peering and reaching through gaps in the banister railing as if through prison bars, and continues across his parlor, where, in the midst of smashing a bottle, he is stricken and collapses. Quoting from the Kipling poem, the intertitle reads,

“Some of him lived, but the most of him died.” Then we see the Vampire hovering over Schuyler’s prostrate body, smiling and dropping flower pet-als on his face. The final intertitle, again quoting from the Kipling poem, reads “(Even as you and I.)” and then the camera iris closes, fading out on the Vampire hovering ghoulishly over Schuyler.

The Vampire in A Fool There Was is not literally a vampire in the sense of being “undead.” Nevertheless, although her fangs are not visible, her bite remains potent as she constitutes the uncanny irruption of powerful, almost supernatural forces into the mundane life-world of her victims. She is a primal force of unleashed sexuality that holds her lovers in thrall, and Brode_WEB.indb 40

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she embodies the essence of the vampire as a creature that lives off of the life force of others. While she does not drink Schuyler’s blood, she clearly drains his vitality—at the start, he is depicted as healthy and only gray-ing about the temples; at the end, he is decrepit and his hair has turned entirely gray. And her seductive, hypnotic power clearly anticipates the mesmeric gaze of subsequent cinematic vampire representations.

Indeed, what is most uncanny about the Vampire—in keeping with cinematic vampires in general—is that, feeding off the life force of her victims, she is in fact more alive than the living around her. The film concludes by quoting Kipling’s poem, “The Vampire,” with the lines, “So some of him lived but the most of him died—(Even as you and I!).” The import of the “even as you and I” here is that we, the living, are always already partly—even mostly—dead. We are all in various ways “fools”

who fail to live our lives to the fullest. This is the irony that lurks beneath Ellis Hanson’s comment that “The vampire is always more appealing and exciting than the men and women who hunt it.”7 The Vampire in A Fool There Was, without name, family, or social obligation, lives for pleasure alone. She is a figure of excessive—and thus threatening—enjoyment, an uncanny surplus that transgresses social expectations and highlights the precariousness of gender codes.

Weiss suggests that The Vampire in A Fool There Was is sexually enticing to heterosexual men and offers to women a model of female empowerment.

This may be, yet the clear message of the film in keeping with the period of its production is that women such as the Vampire are bad news. Yes, the Vampire is dark, mysterious, and enticingly sexual. But she is also sadistic, selfish, and hedonistic—unredeemable evil. She is a drug more powerful than the alcohol to which Schuyler turns for forgetfulness, and when it no longer amuses her to feed his habit, she simply abandons him. All of this is to say that, in A Fool There Was, the Vampire clearly embodies cultural anxieties about female sexuality. It thus is not difficult to see A Fool There Was—
and some forty other films of the nineteen-teens and twenties that feature predatory female vamps—as manifesting a conservative backlash against the fin de siècle “New Woman” and feminist agitation in the first decades of the twentieth century. As women increasingly chafed against their legal and economic dependence upon men, petitioned for the right to vote, fought for new educational and career opportunities, and aspired toward greater autonomy, they were demonized by social conservatives loudly voicing disapproval at any signs of what could be construed as female licentiousness.

The vamps of the silent screen era—and beyond—offer a clear picture of the dangers “liberated” women represent to traditional values.

Perhaps most interesting about A Fool There Was is that there is no final redemption for Schuyler or punishment for the Vampire. Schuyler does not shake off the Vampire’s baleful influence and re-embrace his wife and child, nor does the Vampire experience contrition or have visited upon her the righteous indignation of the wronged wife; instead, the Vampire’s Brode_WEB.indb 41

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victory is complete. Her grip on Schuyler’s being is so iron-clad that not even the pathetic pleadings of his angelic daughter can shake it loose.

The message seems to be that the Vampire is still out there, searching for her next victim. Men, therefore, should arm themselves as best they can against the predatory vamps of the world by devoting themselves to family, country, God, and industry. And women, if they wish to retain the respect of the world at large, must keep their sexuality under wraps—
confined to the marital bed—and remain (to borrow from Barbara Welter’s 1985 analysis of the nineteenth-century “Cult of True Womanhood”) pious, pure, domestic, and subservient.8

CODA: THE MODERN VAMP— BASIC INSTINCT

Since her introduction at the dawn of cinema in the early twentieth century, the seductive and dangerous vamp has remained central to film, although with political significations that shift with the times. Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 Basic Instinct is a case in point. It is a film that, on the one hand, undermines the conventional cinematic bifurcation of women into the good girl (chaste girlfriend, wife, mother) and bad girl (vamp, whore) categories. On the other hand, male panic over the destructive power of uninhibited female sexuality remains very much in the foreground.

Cut very much from film noir cloth, the film initially seems to situate troubled San Francisco police detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) between the familiar polarities of the good girl and the femme fatale. On the one hand, there is fresh-faced police psychologist Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who appears to love Nick and to be attempting to save his career; on the other hand, there is the wealthy and uninhibited suspect in a murder investigation, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). As in A Fool There Was, the male protagonist of Basic Instinct falls under the spell of the hedonistic vamp and spurns the attentions of the good girl. Nick, despite suspecting Catherine as a murderess and knowing that she is manipulating him, cannot help himself and begins a torrid affair with her. This also precipitates self-destructive behavior on his part as he begins drinking and smoking again, both addictions he had sworn off.

As the film progresses, however, the traditional good girl/bad girl female dichotomy is undermined. Questions are raised about Beth’s character, and it is suggested that she is far from innocent. She confesses to a lesbian one-night stand with Catherine in college; evidence collected by Nick also seems to suggest possible psychopathic tendencies—although little is confirmed by the film, Beth may have stalked Catherine in college, may have cheated on a first husband with other women, and is possibly connected to three murders: a college professor, her first husband, and a colleague of Nick’s.

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known with certainty, we learn that she has been surrounded by death and that she seems genuinely distressed by the death of her own lesbian lover, Roxy (Leilani Sarelle). At the end of the film, Catherine seems prepared to kill Nick, but then demurs, perhaps suggesting a hopeful future.

The primary difference between A Fool There Was and Basic Instinct is that all women are marked as actual or potential vamps: predatory and sexual. There are arguably no “good girls” within the film. The viewer learns that Nick’s wife committed suicide a number of years earlier, both Beth and Catherine are dangerous bisexual manipulators, and the latter keeps company with an ex-convict mother who killed her husband and children for no apparent reason. In this way, the film, perhaps even more powerfully than A Fool There Was, depicts male anxieties over the power of unrestrained female sexuality—a point made abundantly clear in the film’s most famous moment during which Catherine, under interrogation by a group of male police officers, crosses and recrosses her legs, revealing briefly that she is not wearing panties. A quick glimpse of her vagina renders the investigators—male authority figures and guardians of conventional morality—sweaty, tongue-tied, and undone.

What Basic Instinct thus depicts is the hysterical logic underlying the representation of the archetypal cinematic vamp going all the way back to A Fool There Was: female sexuality is vampiric and must be carefully managed and contained. If allowed full expression, female sexuality is a destructive force that not only will release in males their own latent sexual energies—their own basic instincts—but will render men slaves to these desires, deprive them of control of themselves, and drain them of their vitality. Although a titillating representation of female eroticism, the cinematic vamp—like a traditional vampire—is a force of social disruption, a monster that must be tamed or dispatched in the name of “family values” and conventional morality.

NOTES

1. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 7.

2. J. Gordon Melton, The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994), 627.

3. David Pirie, The Vampire Cinema (New York: Crescent Books, 1977), 136.

4. Ronald Genini, Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Film-ography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996), 21–26.

5. Melton, The Vampire Book, 627.

6. Ibid.

7. Ellis Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” in Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, ed. Ellis Hanson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 191.

8. Barbara Welter, The Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985).

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In Dracula’s Daughter , Gloria Holden drew the female vampire away from Theda Bara’s cliché of a smug self-satisfied monster, creating sympathy for a complex woman who loathes her vampiric state, since it debilitates a deep desire for a normal life. Courtesy of Universal.

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3

Alienation, Essentialism,
and Existentialism
through Technique

An Analysis of Set Design,

Lighting, Costume, and Music in

Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja

Paige A. Willson,

Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith,
and Anthony J. Fonseca

DAUGHTERS OF DRACULA, DAUGHTERS OF DESOLATION

Although it is not technically a remake of Lambert Hillyer’s 1936 classic Dracula’s Daughter (Universal Pictures), Michael Almereyda’s 1994, David Lynch–produced Nadja (Kino Link) is typically categorized as one. Both movies serve as sequels to Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and Tod Browning’s 1931 film. In both, the daughter of Dracula is half human, half vampire, and angst ridden, desiring to become fully integrated into humanity, aspiring to a simpler, more pastoral lifestyle. In the opening scene of Nadja, the title character describes this as “getting away” to a place where she can find “a tree, a lake, a dog.” Both Countess Marya Zeleska and Nadja Wojewoda Armenios Ceausescu Dracula seek release from the curse of vampirism, release being a word used by Marya often in Dracula’s Daughter. While Hillyer hints at some of the social aspects of vampirism, such as alienation and a sense of moral desolation (made visual in Marya’s painting in the party scene), the film deals with the curse more literally: For the most part, Marya wants to overcome her obsession, 45

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Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca as Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) calls it in the film. Little does he understand that what he thinks is psychological is actually physiological—the need to drink blood to survive.

In contrast to Hillyer, Almereyda emphasizes psychology, the ennui and angst to which Nadja’s lifestyle lends itself. His casting of Elina Löwensohn as his femme fatale imbues the female vampire character with an emphatically pronounced sadness, an inescapable sense of alienation.

This makes her stand out among a cast of characters who blend into the film’s Manhattan and Brooklyn nightscapes. Löwensohn’s deadpan, stiff acting style—along with her philosophical monologues, cinematographer Jim Denault’s avant-garde filming techniques (such as the use of a child’s PXL-2000 camera to give certain scenes a pixilated look), and the dream-like score by Simon Fisher Turner, with trance songs by Portishead and My Bloody Valentine peppered throughout—serve to emphasize Nadja’s difference.

Both Nadja and Dracula’s Daughter depict the female vampire as an outsider. Hailing from England rather than Romania, like Löwensohn, Gloria Holden, cast as Marya, comes across as Eastern European. Holden, known for her high cheekbones and almond eyes, was twenty-seven, and most of her experience had been not in front of the camera, but on stage.

According to Mark Vieira, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s publicity department marketed her as quiet, artistic, and intellectual. MGM played up her deep, throaty voice, “occasionally given to an uncertain quaver, but one often possessed of an icy authority.”1 In both movies, Holden and Löwensohn steal the scenes in which they appear; their characters are by far more erudite and thought-provoking than their counterparts, both the vampire hunters and their human assistants. Both actresses clarify that Marya and Nadja are completely Other, lacking true engagement with the society in which they attempt to coexist. Both characters, being female, intelligent, and assertive, are isolated as much by their superior intellects as by their supernatural natures, or perhaps because, as Michael Sevastakis points out, the “fatal woman,” especially manifest in the form of the vampire, is relatively new in Western fictional texts.2

Current scholarship on the two films does little analysis of the alienation of the female vampire; the emphasis of most literature is on the lesbianism that drives the films’ sexual relationships. Certainly, lesbianism could be an isolating factor in a patriarchal, heterosexual society, but the driving force behind the alienation is more psychological than sexual: Dracula’s Daughter is an essentialist text, while existentialism, and its relationship to nihilism, informs much of the dialogue in Nadja. Therefore, redemption is possible, in fact realized. Conversely, Jeffrey Garth seems to speak for Hillyer when he states in Dracula’s Daughter that it is too late Brode_WEB.indb 46

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for experiments; change is not possible. Hence Nadja manages to live on, while Marya is destroyed. Nadja successfully redefines herself through her blood transfusion with Cassandra, literally transforming from a stark, shadowy, dark-haired European woman to a light-skinned, red-headed American bride who meets the daylight with wonder. She achieves the release Marya is denied.

SOMETIMES A FANG IS NOT A FANG:

DRACULA’S DAUGHTERS MEETS THE SONS OF FREUD

Dracula’s Daughter was originally conceived as a shocking experiment in cruelty and torture. MGM producer David O. Selznick in 1933 opted a short story from Florence Stoker, which Bram Stoker likely intended as the first chapter of Dracula, as Leslie S. Klinger concludes: “Dracula’s Guest” was ultimately deleted from the original Dracula manuscript.3

Nonetheless, the only similarity between Hillyer’s film and “Dracula’s Guest” was the sex role reversal, which Vieira notes screenwriter John L.

Balderston was determined to exploit. Balderston stated that he felt “sure that so long as it is a woman torturing men, the thing is not too unendur-able, as it would have been had the man Dracula so treated his female victims.”4 Universal eventually did agree to distribute the film, but by then the Production Code had been strengthened, so Balderston’s script was toned down.5 The result was what Ellis Hanson calls “a surprisingly explicit lesbian subtext.”6 The sexuality of Dracula’s Daughter would later attract Ramsey Campbell (writing as Carl Dreadstone) to novelize it in 1977; in his introduction Campbell writes that the movie is “a quietly serious piece of filmmaking, one of the most delicate and understated of all vampire films.”7

Despite its technical brilliance, scant attention is paid by scholars to Hillyer’s use of music, design, lighting, or costume. The emphasis of the literature is the implied lesbianism and Marya’s overall assertive sexuality. Vieira offers a helpful historical analysis, chronicling the film’s creation and contemporary reception, as well as its overt sexuality and covert lesbianism. Hanson takes a much more psychological approach, arguing that the film is a conscious dialogue with Freudian theory. He argues that Jeffrey is imperious to the “neurotic ladies” with whom he is obsessed (Marya and Janet), making him inept in both his personal life and his psychiatric practice.8 The gist of Hanson’s analysis is that the film is a study of how incestuous feelings and paternal identification can lead to an overt lesbianism in Freudian theory, represented in Dracula’s Daughter as “the metaphor of lesbian vampirism.”9 Sevastakis views the Brode_WEB.indb 47

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Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca film also through the lens of psychoanalysis, arguing that it is a portrayal of the battle between the inner and outer consciousness of Marya and the science of psychoanalysis, featuring a tortured villain-hero who desires to be like humans.10

While alienation and Otherness are briefly mentioned in passing, the scholarship on the film does not examine the concepts in depth, never considering the implications of the essentialism or existentialism of the texts, nor how the technical aspects of the film visually emphasize Marya’s related sense of alienation, a missed opportunity given Hillyer’s eschewal of the gothic: He uses Carfax Abbey and Castle Dracula only as bookend framing devices in the opening and closing.

The remaining scenes emphasize modernity. The concept of alienation is central to both Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja, in nearly every historical sense of the word. Raymond Williams explains the word’s modern legal sense ( alienation of affection), its roots in Medieval French ( alienationem), its Latin root ( alienare/alienaus), to estrange/belonging to another person or place, from the root word alius, meaning Other. The word was then used in English from the fourteenth century as meaning estranged from God.11 Williams adds that “the most widespread contemporary use is that derived from one form of psychology, a loss of connection with one’s own deepest feelings and needs,” leading to a sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, and self-estrangement.12 Both Marya and Nadja express these feelings, and both are involved in triangles that threaten to alienate affection.

The problem presented by Dracula’s Daughter is the antagonistic relationship between psychoanalysis and female vampirism, especially given Hillyer’s and Holden’s interpretation of Marya. Hillyer intends for her to be the focal point; Holden is a commanding (and in command) presence until she is blindsided by her jealous assistant Sandor (Irving Pachel).

Sevastakis argues that in this female vampire is tragic. She evokes pity and envy. He writes that “it is little wonder that the countess is the real tragic heroine. She is like a goddess among very foolish mortals.”13 Both directors seemingly intend to tie alienation to difference, and this difference is not enclosed within the films. Both films were panned because critics and audiences felt that they were too intelligent for the horror genre, a telling fact given that both have a female lead.

In Dracula’s Daughter, an intelligent, strong-willed woman who wants to control her own life is the perfect challenge for psychoanalysis. Freud’s early theories of the unconscious link sexuality and subjectivity; the idea of self is influenced by unconscious drives and symbolic structures. Bordering on a belief in essentialism, this theory negates individual agency.

Given this basis for understanding the human mind, Jeffrey’s responses to Marya’s inquiries are as predetermined as he believes her failure to Brode_WEB.indb 48

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change will be; he dismisses her as an aberrant personality, and his responses are neither thoughtful nor critical. They are just learned, formulaic dismissals. Hanson points this out in “Lesbians Who Bite,” emphasizing the irony that Marya’s intelligence makes the doctor ineffective, even clownish:

Like Freud, Jeffrey is imperious and aggressive. . . . As the bearer of patriarchal authority, however, Jeffrey is hopelessly inept. He is annoyed to discover that he is dependent on Janet to tie his bow ties. His clinical interest in the Countess evolves into flirtation and unconscious obsession. The masculine gaze becomes the vehicle of its own entrapment.14

Nadja has the advantage of being a postmodern text, one that Karen Pike categorizes as a camp film, in that it insists on exaggeration, artifice, and extremity, combined with a basis in the reworking of previous texts, in this case of Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), the surrealist novel Nadja (André Breton, 1928), and Dracula’s Daughter. Nadja even engages in some self-parody, in scenes where Nadja’s philosophical monologues are accompanied (and undercut) by disco balls, dance music, and actual onscreen harp playing.15 Nadja, as a postmodern text, rethinks the notion of a

“coherent and essential subject.”16 As such, it opens the text for existential possibilities; hence, Nadja has an advantage over Marya in that both are products of their films’ philosophical meanderings. Nadja escapes essentialist modernism. Where Dracula’s Daughter is a black-and-white text, Nadja revolves around and resolves with shades of gray.

OUT OF THE SHADOWS, AND INTO THE LIGHTS:

THE INFLUENCE OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja exhibit a common lineage to German Expressionist Cinema.17 Most notably, Dracula’s Daughter is full of techniques that allude to the films of F. W. Murnau, best known for Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) and The Last Laugh/The Last Man (1924); Robert Wiene, best known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919); and Paul Wegener with Stellan Rye, best known for The Student from Prague (1913).

In Nadja, Almereyda also uses similar techniques, as well as filming practices, as did Walter Ruttmann in Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and Fritz Lang in Metropolis (1927). Dracula’s Daughter features framed arches and passageways reminiscent of Murnau’s signature camera techniques that, according to Kenneth S. Calhoon, “explore a spatial depth that seems always to convert itself into the phantom.”18 Like Nosferatu, Dracula’s Daughter includes camerawork that focuses on neckwear, gothic Brode_WEB.indb 49

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Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca architecture, and sets, as well as the use of scenes that are crafted to appear as tableaus.19 The last is an attempt to create bourgeois or domestic subject matter, perhaps hailing back to bourgeois melodrama.20 Though the sets are not nearly as visually expressionist as those in Caligari, Dracula’s Daughter emphasizes the vampire’s limitations. This is perhaps a nod to Stoker, whose monster, as Christine Ferguson points out, is a victim of relentless limitations that render him even more ineffective, once his occult nature is understood, than a mundane petty criminal. Vampirism has given him supernatural strength and transformative powers, but has also subjected him to a series of prohibitions which often curtail these powers when they are most needed, such as at the moment of his death.21

In addition, Hillyer’s choice of a female vampire as monster recalls slightly earlier German expressionist film, Weimar Cinema, in which gender oppression and representation were of growing interest. The Doppelgänger is important in Caligari, Student from Prague, as well as in Dracula’s Daughter, with its interest in popular psychiatry manifesting itself in Marya’s psychic split, a split between her desire to be normal and her obligation to carry on the family name as the daughter of Dracula.

Jamie Sexton, discussing the critical reception of Nadja in Cinema Journal, writes that the film meets the definition of what he calls a U.S. Indie, in that it has a greater tendency toward narrative experimentation. This includes a very loose cause-effect chain of events, an emphasis on characterization and psychology, a variety of quirky, often introverted and marginalized characters, and a self-reflexive approach. Almereyda’s film is informed by a self-conscious reinterpretation of the vampire trope, through an acknowledgment of film ancestry, such as the use of inserted footage of Bela Lugosi in White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932) and visual references to expressionism.22 Expressionist themes of foreignness, alienation, and distanciation recall Dracula’s Daughter. Nadja literally stresses the foreignness of its main character, her intense feelings of alienation not being normal. The distance or difference between the female vampire and all other characters is dealt with here through the expressionist narrative, unlike Hillyer’s classical Hollywood editing in Dracula’s Daughter. Nadja employs various expressionist narrative editing devices, such as cutting to continuity by using fragments of images and extreme shots. Filmed in black and white, Nadja recalls Murnau’s arches and passageways, and like Nosferatu and many films and television projects of David Lynch, it incorporates scenes informed by striking geometric floor patterns that draw the watcher’s interest. Almereyda also includes, in his New York City scenes, abstract lighting patterns, as Brode_WEB.indb 50

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Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique 51
well as abstract filming of buildings, mist, and reflections of water; these are reminiscent of Ruttmann and Lang.

DESIGNED WOMEN: THE IMPACT OF PRODUCTION DESIGN

An analysis of production design must always take into account the eras in which films are produced. Both Nadja and Dracula’s Daughter are products of their times, as the decades in which they were filmed, the 1930s and 1990s, respectively, determine production techniques and values, as well as audience cues. Designers of scenic lighting and costume incorporate many influences, personal, cultural, and psychological, into their work. They look at production details through a historical lens, keeping in mind the visual literacy of the contemporary audience, as well as what is appropriate for the script and plot, all to highlight, isolate, and give a sense of a cohesive world that becomes a character itself. The art direction and set decoration for Dracula’s Daughter was done by Albert S.

D’Agostino, the art director for two 1935 Stuart Walker films, Mystery of Edwin Drood and Werewolf of London. Both clothing and scenic design are of course specific to character portrayal, and for that reason Marya’s hairstyle is more associated with her Romanian ethnicity and cultural history than it is with current fashion, but he also gives her gowns that help her fit in with current society, making her seem as if she exists outside of time. Her hair contrasts the shorter, cropped and waved hairstyle of her costar, Marguerite Churchill, who plays the more modern woman, the American receptionist Janet. Janet’s costuming indicates that she is in fact a little fashion forward, which sent many American women to their seamstresses.

In addition, lighting and set design are used to foreground the difference between the female leads and other characters. In the scene where Marya kidnaps Janet and returns to Castle Dracula, Hillyer appropriately uses scenic design reminiscent of designers such as Jo Melziner, one of the

“uncles” of modern scenic design (the “fathers” being Edward Gordon Craig, Adolf Appia, and Robert Edmond Jones). It differs entirely from the rest of the film, echoing back to the opening credits, which look like the design renderings for the Transylvanian Castle. What is intriguing is that Marya, once she returns to the gothic trappings of her familiar surroundings, gains strength. Being in her own environment—the dark, cobwebbed, and labyrinthine castle—lessens her sense of alienation, something that could not happen on the streets in London she hunts, even though those streets share some of the same eerie qualities. In the London scenes, Marya seems awkward, out of place, especially when surrounded by scenery that is highly prescribed and neoclassical, down Brode_WEB.indb 51

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52

Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca to its details, such as the symmetrical placement of the décor. The high degree of contrast in the London and Transylvanian scenic designs mirror the dichotomy of her psychology, highlighting and often amplifying her fears; along with costume, this reifies her psychological state: Her mind is filled with contrasting images of light versus dark, commented on in the script’s clever exchange in the much-discussed piano scene between Marya and Sandor.

Production design for Nadja is much more cinematographic. Almereyda has the advantage of shooting on location, instead of in studio, as Hillyer had to do; this, of course, allows Almereyda to stylize the film’s landscape with props and set décor that identify the setting specifically as New York City, resulting in a sense of realism in a film that is, for all practical purposes, surreal: In Nadja, there are very few establishing extreme long shots; rather, the movie is full of close-ups. Both films isolate the female vampire lead by the use of shading, foregrounding her with dark shades and smooth, textured fabrics. Their alienation is emphasized in the overall visual tableau. In Dracula’s Daughter, Holden is lit to stand out against her environment. Löwensohn, conversely, blends into the physical landscape of Nadja, despite her isolating herself from people with both her heavy accent and her articulation of ideas. Löwensohn spends a lot of her screen time in verbal observation of her relationship to her physical environment. In both films, lighting techniques serve to isolate the female vampire, while illuminating eyes, face, and silhouette. Lighting is far more stylized in Almereyda’s hands; it is fractured, textured, and directional. In Hillyer’s hands, lighting is similarly used only in scenes where Marya is with a victim, the brightness further alienating her by emphasizing how dark she is (in most scenes without a victim, characters are evenly lit). In films, the lighting and makeup design highlights the eyes of the female vampires. Reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphics and other depictions of ancient characters, this gives viewers a sense of the omnipotence, the god-like stature, of the characters.

MARYA AND NADJA: CUT FROM THE SAME CLOAK?

In the 1930s, film was an unintentional source of fashion, creating clothing and accessory trends, making Hollywood a marketing tool. Granted clothing for film is character based, but as Edith Head, costume designer at Paramount Studios once stated, “a motion picture costume designer

[is not] necessarily a fashion creator because we do what the script tells us to do. . . . If we do a period piece, then we re-create fashion that was done before and if we have a character role, we do character clothes. It is only by accident, if a script calls for fashion, that some beautiful clothes Brode_WEB.indb 52

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Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique 53
will emerge.”23 Deborah Nadoolman Landis writes that film of the 1930s gave millions of women and men their sense of dress, even if the clothes were out of vogue.24 The production design of Dracula’s Daughter is lush, especially considering that the movie was made during the Great Depression, allowing for a luxurious departure from difficult times: The gowns worn by the lead actresses were designed by Brymer (Louise Brymer), Universal Studios’ costume designer from 1933 to1937. Contrasts between the lead and other characters are made visual through costume: Marya’s clothing is the darkest, as is that of Sandor, who emulates her. Human characters are defined by mid-range earth tones, which in a black-and-white film seem to be different, subtle shades of gray. Janet serves as Marya’s foil, as she wears the lightest colors, indicating her innocence, despite her being the spunky American heroine possessing a sense of freedom for which Marya longs. Marya and Janet exist as two extremes on the psychological spectrum, and both women intrigue Jeffrey, who is always superbly dressed, incorporating both the light and the dark, seemingly synched up to match whichever of the two women with whom he shares a scene. Despite his domineering male presence, he needs Janet’s help in scenes like those in which she ties his necktie; this also gives viewers a dichotomous, symbolic, intimate moment featuring the trust of tidying a loved one and the threat of hands placed close to the vulnerable throat area. As a contrast to these scenes, Marya gets her victims to reveal their vulnerable throat area by mesmerizing them with her ring, an allusion to her family wealth (Nadja comments on the exploitation which produces such wealth in the opening scene of Nadja). Their necks are left unprotected, leaving them a prime target for the vampire.

The costume design of Nadja, by Prudence Moriarty, plays up the contemporary styles of 1994. Its younger characters, Lucy (Galaxy Craze) and Jim (Martin Donovan) are attired in what can best be called grunge casual. Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) wears clothes that are reminiscent of an earlier era of fashion, making him seem out of phase with his contemporary surroundings: He is most often seen in a fastidiously buttoned tweed Norfolk suit, which serves as a contrast to his slightly longer than shoulder-length gray hair, almost giving the impression of a mane. Nadja herself is a true collage of characters, a blend of looks, with a 1920s bob hairstyle (which is masculine), yet very feminine makeup that makes her seem a throwback to the 1940s in its sense of drama. Other characters are attired in softer, more muted tones. Nadja herself is defined by dark colors, playing up the sense of mystery, adding to her allure. Renfield (Karl Geary) and Edgar (Jared Harris) sport a darker version of the 1950s Beatnik look. They seem philosophical, closed off to the world around them yet possessing an acute understanding of it and their place in it.

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54

Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca In both films the use of color, or more specifically, how colors signify or read in black-and-white film, helps establish character, playing off of the viewer’s natural psychological reactions. Fabric texture and pattern therefore play a large role in hinting character subtleties, without tipping the director’s hand (to avoid melodramatically expressing who the villains and heroes are). The costumes carefully reveal personality traits, yet conceal the surprises that are delivered as the plot progresses.

Hillyer and Almereyda both choose to attire their female vampires in cloaks, a multipurpose garment used for centuries. In both cases, it adds a sense of mystery, but Marya uses it to even further make herself seem Other, draping it across her face. On one level, this ties her to the father figure, Dracula, as portrayed by Lugosi in Browning’s 1931
classic. Because she is female, there is an added meaning to the gesture of her hiding her face behind a garment, using the hand on which she wears the hypnotic ring and making her eyes the mesmerizing focal point. Such a visual representation calls to the viewer’s mind the exoticism of the Indian niqub, or the burka. Nadja wears her cloak as a traditional outer garment, but it does make her stand out in the streets of New York City. It also serves the pragmatic purpose of making her one with the shadows.

To highlight color/shade contrast, Almereyda introduces the bar scene, where Nadja meets Lucy. Lucy wears masculine, oversized clothing that disguises her shape. She wears almost no makeup or jewelry; and her blond hair is cut short, almost butch, giving her an androgynous, boyish look. The fabrics of her clothing are soft and textural, and her blond hair and fair skin contrast with Nadja’s light/dark starkness. Lucy’s clothing is always layered, adding bulk to her frame.

It comes across as a defense mechanism, as if she is attempting to wrap herself against life. Nadja is, ironically, more feminine. She wears flowing fabrics that have sheen to them, and her cloak lining contains an intricate pattern that signifies her complicated psychology and complex life. Her earrings hark back to Victorian adornments and add a bit of re-finement. Her hair is worn pulled back; this gives her an air of gravitas.

Later in the film, after Lucy has become one of Nadja’s zombie slaves, her clothing is loosened, to reveal a striped T-shirt underneath, perhaps indicating, in a parodic, cliché fashion, that she is imprisoned—in her own mind by Nadja. At this point, Nadja wears the cloak’s hood over her head and fully closed, giving her appearance a cocoon-like emphasis, although the safety of her cocoon is challenged when she is slapped by Cassandra (Suzy Amis) and the hood of the cloak flies back to reveal that Nadja is bald, a shocking moment that plays up her vulnerability and ties her to Noseferatu.

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Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique 55

WHAT MUSIC THEY MAKE: THE SOUNDS OF VAMPIRISM

In addition to lighting, set design, and costume, both films employ music as an alienating device for the title characters. With the exception of Chopin’s Op.15, no. 2, and one Transylvanian wedding song, a folk song composed by Heinz Roemheld, Dracula’s Daughter uses a film score, composed by Roemheld. At times, as Randall D. Larson observes, Roemheld’s score differs from what is expected of a Classical Hollywood film score: Roemheld’s score was a subdued one, melodic in approach and enveloping the film in an overall mood of eeriness, punctuated by occasional musical excitement, as in the furious Agitato heard during the telegraph montage and Garth’s later flight from Croydon Airport [to Transylvania]. But the somber, almost dreary mood prevailed, and Roemheld captured a passionate, intimate feeling through the use of many cues scored for solo woodwinds and strings—avoiding a stereotypical horror approach in preference of an underlying emotional resonance, almost scoring against the action.25

From 1925 to 1929, Roemheld, a German-speaking American born to German immigrants, worked for Universal Pictures in Berlin. In 1929, Carl Laemmele appointed him as staff composer at Universal in Hollywood, so that, Roemheld became the most prolific Hollywood composer in history, contributing to over six hundred films.26 Larson points out that Roemheld was as significant as Max Steiner for the development of film music at Universal; in late 1931, Universal’s entire music staff was eliminated, but Roemheld returned as a contract composer in 1933.27 After Franz Waxman, who was originally hired as the film’s composer, left Universal for MGM, Roemheld composed original music for Dracula’s Daughter.28 Though the title character is accompanied by a fanfare leitmotiv, characteristic of the Classical Hollywood film score, the music generally accompanies the film’s action in a straightforward manner: music is compartmentalized per scene, and every scene is scored with music that contrasts with the music of the previous and following scenes.29

Nadja’s music track differs from that of Dracula’s Daughter because it has previously recorded music, often as source music, and Turner’s original film score. As an English vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, producer, and composer, Turner had a past that included performing and writing indie pop, glam rock, ambient music, and experimental music. From 1981
to 1982, Turner was a guitarist and vocalist of the alternative/post-punk band The The. Prior to Nadja, he scored five films directed by Derek Jarman, Nadja falling toward the middle of his output. Turner’s film score for Nadja consists of sampled sounds (including the theremin), improvised cello and piano accompaniment, and electroacoustic instruments. His Brode_WEB.indb 55

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56

Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca song “Orchestral Gravel” was composed specifically for Nadja. The previously composed songs in the film, recorded by indie bands, include My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” and “Lose My Breath,” Portishead’s “Strangers” and “Roads,” The Verve’s “One Way to Go,” and Spacehog’s “In the Meantime.”30 In contrast to Dracula’s Daughter’s compartmentalized score per scene, Nadja’s scoring consists of layering that at times straddles songs beyond many scenes. The camera cuts in the film generally are independent of the music.

Neither Dracula’s Daughter nor Nadja credits a music supervisor, the person responsible for overseeing the use of music in the films. For Nadja, sound engineer Stuart Levy is responsible for music mixing and sound engineering. The same holds true for the soundtrack released on CD. Almereyda served as de facto music supervisor, attending all sound recording sessions and working with the film’s music department to oversee the selection of indie songs, in addition to selecting Turner as the film’s composer.

The depth of the alienation, foreignness, and distanciation of Marya in Dracula’s Daughter is accented by its score. A dark leitmotiv, somewhat reminiscent of the first four notes of the “Dies Irae,” distinguishes Marya from the film score. The music track of Nadja is more complex, not driven by a leitmotiv for the main character. The source music, in this case popular songs, are generally employed while Nadja reaches out to the human world or when she expresses loneliness. The film score is more representative of her thoughts. Bow pressure and a sampled theremin, both sounding like high-pitched metal on metal, add eerie music to scenes in which she kills, suffers bouts of off-kilter thinking or philosophical pondering, or in scenes that relate to her home in Transylvania or her family.

NORMAL MUSIC, NORMAL LIVES:

PIANOS, THEREMINS, AND CELLOS

In both Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja, the piano represents normalcy and thus stability. The films’ piano scenes take place shortly after the official death and burial of both Marya’s and Nadja’s fathers, with each scene involving the women playing piano and engaging in conversation with Sandor and Renfield, respectively, set against a backdrop that includes candles being used as a technique to create an artificial division of the viewing screen. Both scenes employ similar motifs: Both women must address the psychological implications of ancestry; both scenes employ a character based on Stoker’s Renfield; both are set against a backdrop where the directors stay true to their source material, including characters based on Van Helsing, Lucy Westenra, and either Jonathan Harker or Brode_WEB.indb 56

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Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique 57

Arthur Holmwood; and Almereyda seems to have made it a point to find an actor to play Lucy who bears a physical resemblance to Hillyer’s Janet.

Visually and cinematically, the piano scenes reveal the deepest connections between the two films; musically, no connection at all exists. Marya and Nadja both play the piano on-screen, creating the two scenes’ source music. However, the purpose of this music is vastly different in Nadja, especially in respect to how the music itself alienates or distanciates the main character.

Tables 3.1 and 3.2 offer an analysis of the visual, sound, and music tracks of Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja, respectively. Both tables are detailed, but not exhaustive shot-by-shot descriptions, since some shot-reverse-shots used in conversations between Marya and Sandor, as well as between Nadja and Renfield, can be grouped together. Counter indications (hours:minutes:seconds) are included to clarify each film segment.

The column marked visual track contains information on the kind of shot, camera editing, and image. The column marked “soundtrack”

consists of dialogue and sound effects. That marked “music track” is a listing of both source music and film score. The distinction between the two is that source music derives from a device or instrument that is played either onscreen or off screen, with its source being clarified by the image. For example, when Nadja dances at a nightclub, the screen image makes it obvious that the music has a source—it is coming from a stereo.

Another distinction is that a film’s characters will acknowledge that they are aware of source music, as in the two piano scenes, all characters both hear the piano and respond to it. Film score music, in contrast, often exists as an overlay of sound, and characters are seldom aware of its presence.

Sevastakis discusses briefly the music at the beginning and end of the film and more extensively the scene in which the piano becomes source music in Dracula’s Daughter.31 However, only when writing about the piano scene does he describe the musical passage in terms other than instrumentation and narration, and though he correctly identifies the piano piece as “Chopin’s Nocturne in F-Sharp Major,” he misses the scene’s subtext.32 When Marya begins to play this piece, she misidentifies it as the

“Cradle Song,” a piece known as a Berceuse, which functions as a lullaby.

Sandor is absolutely correct: The musical piece is not one of the releases she craves; rather it is a nocturne, evocative of, or inspired by the night.

Op. 15, no. 2 (composed in 1832), is in 2/4 meter and in ternary form (ABA’).33 The initial A section of the piece, marked Larghetto, is used here to underscore what Marya desires: serenity after the death of her father, represented by a floating right-hand melody. As she approaches the B
section, she becomes agitated. The B section contains more scales and is more transitional sounding than the A section. While she plays, words that become the focus of her and Sandor’s conversation are twilight and Brode_WEB.indb 57

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The
w
s Op. 15, no. 2, at

A baritone horn solo
yed on piano.

ys an ascending scale.

. Bassoon takes solo.

w strings.

a pla
ws.

register
by lo
follo
chestr
dialogue becomes the foreground.

00:15:40 pla

Music Track

Film score enters. Clarinet in lo

Clarinet solo returns, accompanied

Or

First notes of Chopin’

”

re
he
ou’

. Think
ys, “T
ell, y
yed, his
w

W
y normal

”

ou?

ou looking at me
en pla
t y
s destro

”

”

. Listen.

y are y
acula’

ain
ay?

aiting.

hink this night will be like all
s in ashes, the spell is broken.

ve a normal life no
ag

Dracula’s Daughter
a: “Wh
a: “T
y’

night is here.

that w

And w
the others, don’

wrong. Dr
bod
normal things. Ev
music

Soundtrack

Silence and then Sandor sa

Mary

Sandor: “I’m remembering last night.

Mary

“I can li

After he
wn.

a looking
es.

ards him, w
ks the man to

.

a sitting at the
ac
wing “Brooks
e to medium shot of
alks in with a
a tr
a and sets it do
anes, sho

. Dissolvw
ys it.

a and Sandor
es. She leans to
eal newspaper stand.

a cr
neighborhood with man lighting
lamp. Camer
rev

Bookshop” sign and apartment
windo

Mary
piano. Sandor w
candelabr
talks, she opens her ey
youthful.

and candles (right screen).

(left screen) near the piano. He is
standing (right screen).

her ey
almost smiling. She goes to piano
and pla

Visual Track

Establishing shot: Chelsea

Camer

Medium shot of Mary

Closer medium shot of Mary

Medium shot of Sandor (foreground)

Medium shot of both. She is sitting

Closer medium shot of her widening

Visual, Sound, and Music Tracks for the Piano Scene in Table 3.1.

Counter Reading

00:14:57

00:15:04

00:15:08

00:15:16

00:15:18

00:15:24

00:15:31

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a
chestr

(continued)

y.

yed on
a enters,

” More scales.

s melod
ws.

chestr
erfect authentic cadence

The new section starts ”

ying the piano. Or
hes crescendo and then stops.

piano.

on “twilight.

on “Long shado
doubling the piano’

reac

First section of the piece pla

The piano pauses and then completes
the section. P

Section ends. New section begins.

At 00:16:40, the or

She stops pla
y
sang

”

”

a:

ws.

”

”

she
ws.

wilight.

t speak of

’ a song m
ws on the

”

”

aid?” Mary
sleep as

You disturb
to
eaceful shado
ou afr
ou . . .

adle Song,

” Sandor: “T
y are y
hat music doesn’

he Cr
king me

” Sandor: “Evil shado
he wings of bats.

”

Roc

Twilight. Long shado
a: “No, no. P
a: “‘T
a: “Quiet, quiet.

a: “I forbid y
a: “Stop! Stop!”

mother once sang to me long, long
ago.

in the twilight.

me.

hillsides.

Mary

The flutter of wings in treetops.

I’m not. I’m not. I’m on release.

Sandor: “T
release.

Mary

Mary

Sandor: “T

Mary

Sandor: “Wh

Mary
a

.

a
ks her ac
wingly
hile she
alks in
a tr
ho takes a seat
a (upper right

, w
a at the piano
wer left screen).

k (lo
erse-shots of Mary
versing w
ying.

The camer
ks Sandor

.

ac
ys. Sandor stands next to her
a tr
wer left screen), Sandor (center

(still right screen). Close-up of Mary
at the piano at 00:15:45. Medium
close-up of Sandor sitting and
listening at 00:15:50.

(lo
screen), and candelabr
screen). She becomes gro
agitated.

and Sandor con
continues pla
then around.

as she leans bac

Sandor stands and then w
front of her

Camer

Medium shot of Mary

Series of shot-rev

Same shot as 00:15:54.

She still pla

She stands up.

Medium shot of her turning to him,

00:15:41

00:15:54

00:16:14

00:16:25

00:16:28

00:16:48

00:16:52

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ass
ys
y clarinet and
wed b
w strings.

w strings enter at 00:17:05. Brlo and winds fanfare after he sa “death” at 00:17:10.

Music Track

Film score returns. Horn enters at

00:15:59, follo

Clarinets.

Cello and lo

New score begins. Strings and oboe.

What
es?” Sandor:

y ey

, look at me.

”

ou see in m
a: “Sandor
do y

“Death.

Soundtrack

Mary

Bell tolls twice.

wing her

, and his
a.

a shots sho
ard on them and
apped in cloak

, listening to her
a dollies forw
e of her close-up to medium
alking to get her cloak.

face, Sandor
w
him, then turns to let him put on her
cloak. She crosses her hand and he
puts on her ring.

then a close-up of Mary
shot of her wr
outside.

Visual Track

Sequence of camer

Medium shot of both. She gazes at

Camer

Dissolv

(Continued)

Table 3.1.

Counter Reading

00:16:57

00:17:16

00:17:18

00:17:30

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hed sound.

.

ying interrupts the film

The film score returns.

ys piano again.

score.

chords.

Music Track

Film score enters with soft drone,
chimes, and a high-pitc

Film score continues softly

Film score continues.

Her piano pla

Piano stops.

Film score enters. It includes ringing and
a theremin.

She pla

She punctuates her sentences with

Piano continues.

Piano stops.

kle.

,
s
ac
w

”

s dead.

”

e he’

ve a new
ou kno
y life.

.”

s there in the

”

as born.

.”

e. I look (laugh) and

. But, y
hange m
ver

”

kle subside.

t quite believ
s like he’

y ey
hen I w
y.”

s not that easy
ac
ant to c
ou sure?”

hings will be different. He’

Nadja
s like I can expect to look up and
s not there. . . .

It’

see him. It’

corner of m
he’

she died w
gone. I’m free”

life. I can start o

I’ll be happ

Soundtrack

Sound effect of fire with some cr

Fire and cr

Nadja: “I can’

Nadja: “My mother

Nadja: “I w

Renfield: “It’

Nadja: “Shut up.

Nadja: “T

Renfield: “Y

Nadja: “I’m free and I can li

Nadja (off screen): “I’ll find someone.

s

alks
ard
a
w
ying at
ys the
ves the
e to more
wers his
s question
hom she’

They both
ying at
wl with incense
alking to

The camer
hanges its angle.

ying.

ve, Nadja pla
wer Renfield’

ard and c
ard. Renfield lea
el, but then he lo
ho has died for w
ys the piano again.

getting lit. It burns at 00:10:90 and
looks like a snake. Dissolv
burning incense at 00:10:21.

leaning on a piano. Candles are
behind him. He lights up. She w
to him at 00:10:44.

dollies forw
piano. Nadja and Renfield sit at the
same lev
head. She nods at first to count the
beat.

00:11:24 and then resumes.

about w
cared and stops pla
smoke.

shot.

a painting.

00:12:11.

Visual Track

Close-up of incense bo

Close-up of Nadja sitting. She smiles.

Medium shot of Renfield smoking and

In same shot abo

Same shot. She stops pla

She turns to ans

Same shot. She puts out her cigarette.

Same shot.

Nadja pla

She leans forw

Long shot of Renfield w

Close-up of Nadja. She stops pla

Medium shot of Renfield.

Visual, Sound, and Music Tracks for the Piano Scene in Table 3.2.

Counter Reading

00:10:01

00:10:33

00:10:37

00:10:49

00:11:20

00:11:29

00:11:44

00:11:49

00:11:51

00:11:55

00:12:02

00:12:06

00:12:20

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Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca shadows. As this conversation escalates, it becomes clear that there is no way for her to finish the piece. The orchestra (thus the film score) takes over the melody. This gesture indicates that she is no longer in control of the conversation—or her situation. The score’s continuing the Chopin piece, as it takes over from the piano, indicates that the piece, as well as Marya, have lost their containment. She screams for Sandor to stop his contradictory responses to her musings; this also stops the Chopin. As it becomes obvious to her that her life will not be normal, that a nightly kill is inevitable (as Sandor suggests), the score is heard again, completing the scene. The music then accompanies the two, as Sandor gets up to retrieve her cloak. She goes to him to ready herself for her kill.

In Nadja, Renfield is approached by Nadja, who is already slouched on the piano bench. Unlike Sandor, who usually occupies the screen above Marya, Renfield sits at the same level as Nadja. Her chords on the piano open their conversation. She expresses amazement that her father is dead and that she can change her life. Renfield, like Sandor, questions her. In contrast to Dracula’s Daughter’s use of Chopin, Nadja expresses no thoughts on equating the music to having a normal or a new life. Nadja’s piano piece is somber, used to punctuate her pensive-ness, and seems less studied, more improvised. Like Marya, she recalls her mother, who died when she was born. At this point, she has stopped playing the piano, and the film score enters with a contrasting ringing, likely being produced by a combination of a sampled theremin with heavy bow pressure or a sustained harmonic note on a cello. When Renfield comments that a new life will not be easy, Nadja stops and brushes against the piano and insists she will succeed. Here the film score returns; much darker than the piano. Its eerie sound used in this context suggests that Renfield may be right, or it may be a foreshadowing of events, or a musical reification of Nadja’s state of mind—the latter being an expressionist film scoring technique.

In both scenes, Marya and Nadja address their foreignness, alienation, and distanciation by expressing a desire to start a new life. Marya, repeating the word normal, does her best to play what she imagines every normal person would play at a piano. Nadja, in contrast, plays a piece that maintains the film’s gloomy atmosphere. In both films, score music is used in code-laden ways to suggest both characters’ agitation with the inability to be normal. The piano scene in Dracula’s Daughter is self-contained, clearly coming to a close. In Nadja, music blends into the next scene, beginning at 00:12:25, with its contrasting indie music. Film score and pre-composed indie music are layered in this connecting scene. Shots of Nadja’s dancing are juxtaposed with shots of her walking by herself.

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in this scene’s establishing shot, with a cut to a close-up of Nadja’s face as the score is briefly heard, and wind can be heard in the soundtrack.

At 00:12:34, a new song begins. This is Portishead’s “Roads.”34 Nadja’s appearance echoes her sadness on the lyrics “I feel, no more.” Advertisements in store windows appear in the background. Ironically, the word biting is seen as she cries and covers her face. This is the song that plays as she enters the bar to meet Lucy. The music fades when Lucy speaks to her. The following (transitional) scene answers what Nadja will do with her night as she aims for that new life. Dominique Nasta explains that connective scores “are meant to comment upon silent passages and to encourage narrative continuity, while being totally justified by images.”35

The same function holds true with the indie music used in Nadja; it is layered with Turner’s original film score. The continuation of “Soon” in this scene evokes memories of Nadja’s previous night in New York, as well as her first kill. The shift to the Portishead song with a title that suits Nadja’s moment of transition suggests that her state of mind is still connected to her remark in the previous piano scene, when she states emphatically that she wants a new life.

EXISTENCE TILL THE END, OF THE BEGINNING:

THE TRANSYLVANIA SCENES

Both Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja have final scenes at the ancestral home, the castle in Transylvania. Music accents alienation via foreignness, executed slightly differently in each film. Dracula’s Daughter uses source and scored music; Nadja employs Fisher Turner’s original score only. The scene opens in Dracula’s Daughter with a map. The caption Transylvania opens the scene and orchestration is the same as that used to accompany the newspapers announcing Janet’s disappearance in a previous scene.

Folk music plays as soon as the caption appears, and the camera lens blurs and then brings into focus an establishing shot featuring people in Romanian folk costumes, dancing and standing. A medium shot of a Transylvanian trio appears at 01:58:00, featuring a violin, clarinet, and cello. This is an approximation of an authentic Transylvanian trio, which would have a violin or a braci (a harmonizing violin that is slightly larger than the usual violin), a taragot (a single reed instrument similar to the clarinet, but with a sound that is more like a combination of soprano saxo-phone and English horn), and a double bass. Though the costumes and sets indicate a Romanian wedding, the music played sounds more like Bavarian Schuhplattler than traditional Transylvanian music. The scene is visually authentic, but its musical inauthenticity underscores Marya’s Brode_WEB.indb 63

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Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca Otherness: Roemheld opts for a Bavarian sound, omitting traditional Romanian or gypsy violin, producing a sound associated with cultures located west of Transylvania. The musical irony is that even in her home, Marya remains foreign, as the music is not of her culture.

The camera tracks the music director as he walks to a table, and the piece briefly shifts to another section in a minor key, before returning to a major key. After a medium shot of the bride and groom, off screen howls cause everyone to look towards the castle. The next establishing shot is of the casket’s opening, accompanied by orchestra with ominous low strings, clarinet, and bassoon. As soon as Marya’s hand appears, the strings play tremolo, a sound that is often utilized in traditional Transylvanian and Romanian/Hungarian music (although it was not used at all in the earlier trio scene). The use of tremolo is the score’s stinger announcing the vampire. The camera cranes down and Marya’s leitmotiv, the horn fanfare, sounds as the camera reveals a long shot of her standing, at 01:02:55. She walks towards a window, accompanied by military-style drums. An extreme long shot of the light in one of the castle’s windows, followed by more shots of the Transylvanians reacting to the light, take place. As a man shouts, “she’s come back” and a woman begins to run, a cymbal crashes. The agitated orchestra and chaotic crowd noises compete with each other in the soundtrack. The music continues until a horse and carriage containing Jeffrey and Van Helsing arrive at the scene.

In Nadja, a map of Transylvania recalls Dracula’s Daughter. A toy vampire Halloween ornament seen in an earlier scene is superimposed, its oscillating noise sharing the soundtrack with the film score. Nadja’s Transylvania scene begins with a dissolve to a dark hillside, with a garbage can on fire. A toddler with a Mickey Mouse hat walks around on his or her own. The establishing shot outside shows Transylvanian woods, as well as the castle, in ruins. Whereas the Transylvania scene in Dracula’s Daughter is shared between outdoor and indoor shots, in Nadja more of the action takes place inside the castle. At 01:14:04, a long shot of Nadja wrapped in a long gown is shown, with Nadja’s voice explaining that

“America was getting somehow too confusing.” The film score accompanies her ten seconds later as she converses with Renfield. Wind enters the soundtrack, and an electric guitar plays as Nadja continues, “Too many choices. Too many possibilities. Here you have to narrow yourself.

You have to decide what’s really important.” As the camera shows Cassandra lying on the bed, the soundtrack consists of thunder. A Roland piano plays with the theremin. Nadja tells Renfield that she sent Edgar “a psychic fax.” The Roland plays as Nadja explains to Renfield that she is getting tired and too old to continue on as Dracula’s daughter. She reassures him that Edgar is coming. In the meantime, Van Helsing and his entourage have arrived. The film score as well as Cassandra’s voice-over Brode_WEB.indb 64

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accompanies them as they approach the castle. In contrast to Dracula’s Daughter’s use of what is supposed to be Romanian village music, Nadja uses the film score much like it did in the earlier piano scene, to indicate her mental state. The film score announces her presence, much as Roemheld’s leitmotiv did for Marya. In this context, the theremin in the film score is reminiscent of wolves howling—images that are part of both Nadja and Marya’s world. Film score is used throughout Nadja’s Transylvania scene, with no use of indie music—music that represents Nadja’s shared world with others. Here, the film score isolates Nadja even in her own world. She can survive only by possessing Cassandra’s body and as Cassandra, pursuing an incestuous relationship with Edgar. Marya is simply destroyed, even though the closing shot of Dracula’s Daughter comes across as a tribute, emphasizing Holden’s beauty.

GETTING A NEW LIFE, LITERALLY

Ultimately, Nadja overcomes her alienation, loneliness, ennui, angst, and foreignness by literally claiming a different body. Read metaphorically, the text argues for an existential redefinition of self, one in which the old self is lost but present. Nadja’s willingness to join the world of her pursu-ers, which stands in contrast to Marya’s insistence that Jeffrey join her in her world, makes her redemption possible. Almereyda’s version of the final image of Dracula’s Daughter—the camera’s close-up on Marya’s dead face as the men comment on her beauty—is an alternating shot of Cassandra’s and Nadja’s faces, surrounded by water (ostensibly Cassandra/

Nadja is floating on her back after the wedding). Nadja’s black hood has been replaced by a white swimming cap. Significantly, the voice-over is not commentary by men; rather it is Löwensohn’s trademark philosophical questioning of existence. This scene, a coda to the Transylvania scene, reveals a new music: The film score fades out with its improvised solo cello and is ultimately replaced by a soundtrack of birds and a dog bark-ing.

NOTES

1. Mark Vieira, Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic (New York: Harry N.

Abrams, 2003), 89.

2. Michael Sevastakis, Songs of Love and Death: The Classical American Horror Film of the 1930s, Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, no. 37 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 163.

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Paige Willson, Melissa Goldsmith, and Anthony Fonseca 3. Bram Stoker, The New Annotated Dracula, ed. Leslie S. Klinger (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 503.

4. Vieira, Hollywood Horror, 87.

5. Sevastakis, Songs of Love and Death, 165.

6. Ellis Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” in Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, ed. Ellis Hanson and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 197–98.

7. Ramsey Campbell, cited in S. T. Joshi, Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 147.

8. Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” 197.

9. Ibid., 201.

10. Sevastakis, Songs of Love and Death, 167.

11. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 29–31.

12. Ibid., 32.

13. Sevastakis, Songs of Love and Death, 167.

14. Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” 199.

15. Karen Pike, “Bitextual Pleasures: Camp, Parody, and the Fantastic Film,”

Literature/Film Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2001): 13.

16. Ibid., 11.

17. According to Jamie Sexton, Nadja employs footage of Bela Lugosi in the American film White Zombie (1932, directed by Victor and Edward Halperin).

Sexton also recognizes the film’s expressionist visual characteristics, particularly with shadows and lighting. See Sexton, “U.S. ‘Indie-Horror’: Critical Reception, Genre Construction, and Suspect Hybridity,” Cinema Journal 51, no. 2 (2012): 72.

18. Ibid., 644–45.

19. Kenneth S. Calhoon, “F. W. Murnau, C. D. Friedrich, and the Conceit of the Absent Spectator,” MLN 120, no. 3 (2005): 633.

20. Ibid., 634.

21. Christine Ferguson, “Nonstandard Language and the Cultural Stakes of Stoker’s Dracula,” ELH 71, no. 1 (2004): 230.

22. Sexton, “U.S. ‘Indie-Horror,’” 71–72.

23. Edith Head, cited in Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 75.

24. Ibid., 76.

25. Randall D. Larson, Music Fantastique: 100 Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Film Music: A Historical Appreciation and Overview: Book One, 2nd ed. (Sierra Madre, CA: Creature Features, 2012), 54.

26. Ibid. Larson cites William H. Rosar, “Music for Monsters,” Library of Congress Quarterly (fall 1983), 390. Rosar gave him permission to consult his research on background facts of Universal’s horror music from 1930 to 1936. See ibid., 87n1.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 55.

29. Larson describes Roemheld’s theme for Marya as a “baleful, tragic leitmotiv.” See ibid., 54.

30. “Soon” is the final track on My Bloody Valentine’s alternative rock and shoegazing album Loveless (1991) and “Lose My Breath” is the second track on Brode_WEB.indb 66

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their alternative rock and shoegazing album Isn’t Anything (1988). “Strangers”

and “Roads” are tracks three and seven, respectively, from Portishead’s trip hop and electrotrance album Dummy (1994). “One Way to Go” was originally the Bside of The Verve’s alternative rock single “All in the Mind” (1992). It appears again as track seven of their compilation album of B-sides and outtakes No Come Down (1994). “In the Meantime” is track one on Spacehog’s alternative/space rock album Resident Alien (1994).

31. See Sevastakis, Songs of Love and Death, 170 (on the opening), 172–73 (the piano scene), and 176 (wedding festival scene in Transylvania).

32. The word “sharp” is misprinted as “Sharple” in this article. See ibid., 172.

33. Op. 15 was a set of three nocturnes originally composed between 1830 and 1833 and published in January 1834. Chopin dedicated this work to Ferdinand Hiller.

34. The song’s introduction is omitted.

35. Dominique Nasta, “Music and Sound: The Code and Its Transgression,”

chap. 2 in Meaning in Film: Relevant Structures in Soundtrack and Narrative, Regards sur L’image 4: Esthétique et theories de l’image (Berne: Peter Lang, 1991), 57.

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Combining vampire mythology with legends of witchcraft, Mario Bava cast American actress Barbara Steele as a woman bound for more glory than even she can imagine in Black Sunday . Courtesy of Galatea Film/American International Pictures.

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4

A Beautiful Life of

Evil and Hate

The Vampire-Witch in

Mario Bava’s Black Sunday

Lindsay Hallam

Although the cycle of Italian gothic horror is said to begin with Riccardo Freda’s 1957 film I Vampiri, it was Mario Bava’s 1960 directorial debut La maschera del demonio ( Black Sunday) that really captured audiences and established the traits associated with Italian horror. The film’s scenes of torture and horrific violence were imbued with a perverse and unsettling sexuality, hitherto unseen (and unfelt) in other horror films from the time. Although Hammer horror films were flirting with the sex and death connection, Italian horror films embraced it wholeheartedly, embodying this dark eroticism in the figure of the female vampire. Surprisingly though, despite the fact that both I Vampiri and Black Sunday feature female vampire protagonists, these vampires differ slightly from traditional representations. While the vampire from I Vampiri uses mad science in her quest for eternal youth, the vampire in Black Sunday is frequently referred to as a “witch,” a transgressive woman who has turned to black magic as a means to enact a powerful revenge. Black Sunday’s mix of graphic violence and sensual beauty set a precedent that was to be followed by many other Italian horror films, which also combined a popular generic formula with stunning visuals and ambivalent representations of female power and sexuality.

Over time, the film Black Sunday has become a horror classic, and its lead actress, Barbara Steele, has become one of the most recognizable

“scream queens” associated with the genre. However, the female vampire in Black Sunday, although iconic and influential, is also unique in 69

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that she is not a vampire in the traditional sense. The character of Asa is a vampire, but she is also a witch, and through the combination of vampire and witch traits a truly transgressive representation of femininity is created. Asa transgresses the boundary of life and death, as all vampires do, but she also transgresses other cultural taboos that restrict female sexuality. The label of “witch” has traditionally been attached to women who do not conform to cultural and societal constraints, and who find alternative ways and means to gain power and knowledge.

Thus, Asa is not just a vampire; she is a vampire-witch: like a vampire she must consume the blood of the living to sustain her, but like a witch she can summon supernatural, and “un-Christian,” powers to control and manipulate others. Asa is able to dominate with her gaze, with the film constantly emphasizing her eyes and the power of the look.

At the center of Black Sunday is Barbara Steele’s performance as both the vampire-witch, Asa, and her descendant, Katia. At the beginning of the film we see Asa tied up and tortured: a brand is burnt onto the skin of her back, and then, horrifically, a spiked mask (a “mask of Satan”) is hammered onto her face. Such awful torment is inflicted upon Asa as she has been accused by her brother of being a witch and a vampire, and of having “monstrous love” for Igor Jatuvich, a “serf of the devil.”

Thus, Asa is being punished primarily for her sexual transgressions, as well as for her alternative religion. In retaliation, Asa vows terrible revenge on her brother and their descendants: “My revenge will strike down you and your accursed house in the blood of your sons and the sons of their sons. I will continue to live, immortal!” Asa is burnt on a stake and “covered in unconsecrated Earth,” then buried in the family tomb. The film then continues on two hundred years later, as Asa is brought back from the dead and seeks to take over her descendant, Katia.

By taking on these dual roles, Steele portrays two very different embodiments of femininity. Although Asa and Katia look the same, their personalities are very different. Although she is a force of good, Katia is mostly passive and melancholy, wrapped up in her own sadness and seemingly resigned to her fate. In contrast, Asa commands attention, in spite of, and yet also because of, her compromised beauty. Asa is returning from the grave, but the process is not an instantaneous one, her face still carrying the indentations from the spikes of the mask. When her body is first found by two travelling doctors, Andre Gorobec and Thomas Kruvajan, they remove her mask to reveal a face that is surprisingly intact, but with some signs of decay and decomposition. Her eyes have rotted away, with Kruvajan commenting that, “those empty eyes seem to be looking at me.” Even with no eyes, Asa still seems to be “looking,” to be drawing Brode_WEB.indb 70

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people in with her gaze. The doctors are then startled by the arrival of Katia and Gorobec is instantly smitten with her, Kruvajan remarking that he is “spellbound.” Gorobec replies that Katia has “sadness in her eyes.”

The scene then ends with a tracking shot back to Asa’s coffin, dissolving to an extreme close-up of her face, her eye sockets now overtaken with crawling insects. After Katia’s breathtaking entrance, the scene ends with a shot designed to shock and disgust the spectator. Within this scene both Katia and Asa have enchanted with their eyes, with one attracting, the other repulsing. This attraction-repulsion response is evoked throughout the film, with Steele’s performance as the horror film monster combining the monster’s threat with overwhelming sex appeal.

THE WITCH-VAMPIRE IN ITALIAN CULTURE

At different points throughout the film Asa is referred to as a witch, at other times as a vampire. As Tim Lucas asserts, “the movie confuses the two.”1 Over the film’s opening shots, the voice-over narration states:

“great was the wrath against those monstrous beings thirsty for blood, to whom tradition has given the name VAMPIRE,” as the camera tracks through the mist revealing Asa tied to a stake. However, at the end of this scene as Asa is buried, the narration then refers to her as “Asa the witch.”

When her body is found by Doctors Gorobec and Kruvajan they again speak of Asa as a “condemned witch,” but it is a drop of Kruvajan’s blood that brings Asa back from the dead. The transference of blood between the dead and the living certainly fits in with traditional representations of the vampire, and Asa returns the favor by seducing Kruvajan, implor-ing him to “Come, kiss me, my lips will transform you. You will be dead to man, but you will be alive in death.” Although Asa appears to “turn”

Kruvajan here through her kiss rather than by drinking blood from his neck, other victims, such as Boris the servant and Katia’s father, Prince Vajda, are shown to have the familiar puncture wounds on their necks.

Yet, while it may seem confusing that Black Sunday switches between references to Asa as either a vampire or a witch, when looking at historical representations of witches in Italian culture there is also a conflation of the two. According to Peter Burke, there are a cluster of terms which might be translated “witch,” most notably strega and stria (masculine strigone), lammia and fatuccbiera. These terms referred to people, mainly women, who did harm by supernatural means without rituals or spells and sometimes without even meaning to do so. A woman with the evil eye could harm children simply by looking at them.2

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Asa in Black Sunday certainly conforms to this description, as she uses her supernatural powers to cause harm to her descendants. The mention of the “evil eye” is also pertinent to Black Sunday for, as aforementioned, Asa controls others through her gaze. Burke goes on to examine a text written by Gianfrancesco Pico in 1523, which takes the form of a dialogue between three men and a strix, a woman who participates in witchcraft. The strix at first confesses to sexual debauchery, but goes on to confess other more malicious deeds: “She causes thunder and hail by drawing a circle; she kills babies by pricking them with needles and sucking their blood; and she uses this blood in her magic ointment.”3

With the drinking of blood, the strix begins to resemble the vampire.

Burke also makes this comparison, citing a quote from Ovid in which he describes a striges, which is a being that transforms from a woman into an owl. Ovid mentions that these creatures “have their throats full of the blood they have drunk,”4 and Burke states that: “Ovid’s treatment of the theme of the ‘vampire,’ as we may call it, is close to the confession of Pico’s strix.”5 Thus, the witch and the vampire share many similarities, with texts from throughout Italian history combining their traits.

Bava himself was influenced more by tales of the “fattucchiere,” or

“powerful witches,” than by traditional vampire tales, since “vampires and supernatural monsters do not exist in Italian folklore.”6 Unlike immortal and undead vampires, witches are mortal women who transgress societal and cultural norms, who participate in pagan rituals (which often involve nudity) that are completely antithetical to the rituals (and repression) disseminated by the Catholic Church. For Andrea Bini, the fattucchiere “represent an alternative culture and are therefore a menace to a patriarchal society whose values are symbolized above all by the Catholic Church (the male institution par excellence).”7 Asa, too, presents such a menace to the patriarchy and its institutions, particularly the church.

Specifically, she is threatening because of her unbridled sexuality: she is tortured and killed because of her “monstrous love,” and even among the family portraits in the Vajda castle Asa is represented in the nude.

In his DVD commentary Tim Lucas mentions that this portrait is yet another signifier of Asa’s pagan transgressiveness, illustrating that she was too sexually liberated for her time.8 Although as one of the undead Asa becomes powerless against crucifixes, a symbol of the Catholic Church, Bini goes on to assert that Asa “resembles a witch much more than a

‘normal’ vampire.”9 As a vampire she has conquered death, yet her real power and allure comes from her casting off of patriarchal repression and her embracing of pagan perversity, which are traits that she formed in life and by choice. The character of Asa, a witch-vampire, was thus a Brode_WEB.indb 72

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new form of female representation previously unseen in horror cinema to that point, and one that went on to influence further representations of female monsters. What is significant about this character is that she is horrific and monstrous, with her face full of holes and a body that is still going through the process of regaining its flesh, but yet she is still highly appealing.

THE GAZE OF THE WITCH-VAMPIRE

Through the combination of vampire and witch traits, Asa’s sexuality and seductive power is highlighted. She uses these powers to control men, and it is only when she seeks to overpower another woman that her plans fail. The power that Asa wields, though, is not a power that is physical or violent; she manipulates and controls through her gaze. For much of the film Asa is lying in her coffin, unable to move as she slowly recovers her physical body. Yet, despite her immobility she controls the majority of the action.

What becomes clear is that Asa does not need to move, she just needs to look. The film constantly emphasizes the significance of the eye and the act of looking. A connection is made to the spectator watching the film, highlighted through certain shots that are taken from different characters’

points of view. In the beginning scene, just before the mask is put on Asa’s face, there is a close-up as a man picks up the mask, turns it to show the spikes, and proceeds to walk toward the camera. Leon Hunt quotes Carol Jenks’s assertion that “the spiked mask of Satan is carried forward into the camera to pierce the gaze of the spectator.”10 We must look, but we are at risk. There is a cut to the mask being put on Asa’s face, but then there is another shot from her perspective as the man raises the hammer and hits into the camera, directly toward the spectator. Putting the spectator in Asa’s position renders the next shot, where we see what is done to her, even more shocking. An extreme close-up of the side of Asa’s masked face shows clearly the hammer striking her face, the spikes causing blood to spurt out around the mask.

In his article “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera: Notes on the Italian Horror Film,” Leon Hunt identifies this image of the mask being hammered onto Asa’s face as the first of two images (the other being an image in Dario Argento’s Opera [1987], in which the protagonist has needles taped under her eyes so she is forced to watch a murder) that tell the “‘history’

of Italian horror,” as these two scenes “seem to confirm everyone’s worst fears about the horror film as a sadistic and misogynist treatment of violence rendered into ultrachic spectacle.”11 Hunt sees Italian horror as Brode_WEB.indb 73

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having a “concern with gender,” that the two images cited above engage with, but in ambivalent terms.12 Both images are about violence directed toward women, but rather than just reveling in this violence these images ask questions about our desire to see such images. Hunt points out that these scenes interrogate “the relationship between the gaze of the woman in the text, the gaze of the spectator, and the violence committed against both. If these films are sadistic and/or masochistic, then for whom and under what conditions?”13 Although Italian horror films take a more graphic approach to horror, a trait that has traditionally been linked to

“bad” cinema that relies solely on sadistic (and misogynistic) violence and exploitation, these films complicate matters by also utilizing what Hunt calls “strategies of art cinema,” as well as “raising provocative issues in horror spectatorship.”14 Italian horror films such as Black Sunday present a mixture of high and low cultural aesthetics, creating a form of

“art-horror.”15

In her book Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Joan Hawkins identifies a crossover between high and low cultural forms.

Hawkins explains that “high culture trades on the same images, tropes and themes that characterize low culture,”16 while “low genres, too, can be analysed for serious content and purpose.”17 The Italian horror films made from I Vampiri onward have traditionally been considered as low culture, due to their graphic violence and derivative narratives.

Hunt cites Carlos Clarens’s 1967 book An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, commenting that: “Clarens’s book epitomizes longstanding critical orthodoxy—‘good’ horror movies do not show much actual horror (Universal, Lewton, Torneur) but ‘bad’ ones do (Hammer, the Italians) because they lack imagination, taste, and restraint.”18 This idea about

“good” and “bad” horror, with “badness” being equated with a lack of plot and character development but an abundance of gore, has changed over time. Initially, Bava was considered nothing more than a journey-man genre filmmaker but there has since been a reevaluation of his work. As well as being the subject of Tim Lucas’s exhaustive tome Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark,19 Bava’s films, especially Black Sunday, have been analyzed extensively in academic publications,20 and in 1993
the Cinémathèque Française held a retrospective of his work. Whereas before Bava’s use of shocking and graphic images led to his films being banned and vilified, it is precisely these images that have led to many now applauding Bava’s artistry. As Sam Ishii-Gonzales notes in his profile of Bava for the “Great Directors” series in the journal Senses of Cinema: “If Bava manages, more often than not, to transcend the limitations of his material it is because of the strength of his imagery, as well as the evident pleasure he derives from exploring the expres-Brode_WEB.indb 74

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sive potential of the medium itself.”21 Thus, the images in Black Sunday that have become (in)famous, such as the hammering of the mask onto Asa’s face, or the reveal of Asa’s skeletal body underneath her robe, have transcended exploitation and become ripe with meaning. Bava’s directly addressing the spectator through the use of point-of-view shots is now perceived as a Brechtian device that forces us to question our relationship with the images onscreen—a technique that is often associated with art-house and counter-cinema.

Having a female vampire at the center of Black Sunday’s narrative is a trait that again connects Bava to high culture. According to Franco Moretti, the female vampire is found primarily in high-culture texts: What is the sex—in literature, naturally, not in reality—of vampires? Vampires, unlike angels, do have sex. But it changes. In one set of works (Poe, Hoffman, Baudelaire: “elite” culture) they are women. In another (Polidori, Stoker, the cinema: “mass” culture) they are men.22

Although Moretti states that cinema primarily shows the vampire as male, he is referring mainly here to Hollywood films. In the cycle of Italian gothic horror films, which started with I Vampiri and ran until 1966, the female vampire came into prominence. Although inspired by the success of Hammer studio’s releases of gothic horror films, Leon Hunt comments that, “The style of Italian horror was radically different from the British tradition’s relatively restrained, comparatively realist, and male-centred focus.”23 Italian horror films instead put the female monster center stage. Hammer horror itself produced a trilogy of female vampire films,24 but in these films the female vampires seemed to be controlled by an unknown man who is occasionally glimpsed watching the action. In contrast, Asa in Black Sunday is the one who watches and controls. She summons her lover Jatuvich from the grave so that he can do her bidding, and enslaves Dr. Kruvajan. Her seduction of Kruvajan is also directed at the audience, for as she cajoles Kruvajan to kiss her there is a cut to a shot from his point of view, with Asa walking toward the camera until her mouth is in close-up, her lips parting for a kiss.

The female vampire’s dominance over story and spectator, as established in I Vampiri and Black Sunday, went on to be a key feature of Italian gothic horror. Maggie Günsberg states: “Female vampirism is the key concern of the films. The female vampire is either the initial and dominating vampirizing force . . . or takes over the narrative trajectory and/
or dominates visually in terms of camera time, then in a way sexually exploitative of the female body.”25 Günsberg argues that despite this dominance in the narrative “the portrayal of femininity in horror reproduces traditional patriarchal strategies of problematization and containment.”26

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Furthermore, Günsberg suggests that Italian horror indulges in a “‘poet-ics of gynophobia,’ traceable to the historical, oppressed role reserved for women in Italy as codified by medieval witch hunts.”27 Such witch hunts

“aimed to pre-empt any attempt by women and any other social groups to step outside their narrowly prescribed role.”28 Certainly, Asa’s fate at the beginning of Black Sunday depicts this persecution of women who refuse to submit to patriarchal oppression. Yet, Günsberg sees a similar form of oppression at play in Italian horror, claiming that the “suggestion regarding the ideological, gendered subtext masquerading as religious persecution in the Middle Ages can be transposed to an examination of the patriarchal subtext of the cinematic portrayal of femininity” in Italian horror films.29 Günsberg’s reading of representations of female vampires in Italian horror as slaves to a partriarchal agenda is pertinent in bringing to light the history of female persecution, particularly the persecution of women who seek to transgress patriarchal norms and laws. Even Barbara Steele said of her characters:

The women that I played were usually very powerful women and they suffered for it. You saw these powerful women, usually adulteresses, full of lust and greed, playing out all this repressed stuff, and in the end I always seemed to get it. There was always this sort of morality play, this sort of final pay-off, and that was very consoling to everybody.30

As Steele states here, although she portrayed female characters that were powerful and rebellious, they were ultimately punished for their transgressions. The evocations of the witch and the witch hunts throughout Black Sunday are therefore apt in providing a historical context for the oppression of transgressive femininity, although for Günsberg these films are actually tools for the patriarchy to continue their oppression.

As well as referring to historical events, Black Sunday also deals with contemporary concerns about changing gender roles. Flavia Brizio-Skov declares that in Italian gothic horror films: “Instead of traditional male monsters and villains, sexually active women (vampire-witches) become the forces menacing the patriarchal system. The female monster is the out-come of a crisis experienced by a rural society uprooted by the economic boom and the frantic modernization of the 1950s and the early 1960s.”31

The vampire-witches taking over Italian horror were expressions of the different attitudes toward these social changes. The cycle of Italian gothic horror came about just as women were starting to explore their new freedoms. Andrea Bini writes: “Despite having won the right to vote and to have access to parliament in 1946, women remained subordinate until the end of the 1950s when they finally began to break free from the ties Brode_WEB.indb 76

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A closer view of a bound Barbara Steele in Black Sunday . Courtesy of Galatea Film/

American International Pictures.

that had bound them to their traditional roles, gaining rights previously denied them.”32

Made in 1960, Black Sunday arrives just as Italian women are casting off their traditional roles. Clearly there is some anxiety about this newfound female liberation, as the woman who flouts convention, Asa, is evil and threatening. Added to this is the fact that the people that Asa Brode_WEB.indb 77

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is terrorizing are her descendants, so she is effectively trying to destroy her own bloodline. She is attacking the family, the institution that lies at the heart of patriarchal society. Troy Howarth maintains that: “Asa’s actions are made all the more perverse by her blood-ties to Katia. One of the established norms of society is solidarity of the family unit: family members are supposed to look after each other in all situations.”33

Howarth goes on to state that the family is often compromised in many Bava films, such as La frusta e il Corpo ( The Whip and the Body) (1963) and Shock (1977). By attacking the family, Asa again is illustrating her transgression of traditional female roles, and affirming her status as witch and monster. Asa’s ultimate vanquishment at the hand of a mob of villagers can be seen as a restoration of the patriarchal order, yet there is something unsettling about the joy and revelry that occurs as Asa is burned before them. Sam Ishii-Gonzales asks of this conclusion: “rather than produce a sense of closure Bava’s emphasis on the joyful sounds of the villagers gives us pause: there is a little too much pleasure in this act of destruction and death. Isn’t this simply Asa’s ‘beautiful life of evil and hate’ in another guise?” Once again, Bava is drawing attention to those that watch and are spectators to scenes of violence. He is giving us the happy ending that is required, the transgressive woman is receiving her punishment, but Bava complicates, and implicates, with this ending.

Although the film asks questions about desire and violence, and our need to look at such scenes, there is a space for our spectatorship of Black Sunday to be examined in a way that widens the discourse on patriarchal norms of gender and sexuality. In her article “Barbara Steele’s Ephemeral Skin: Feminism, Fetishism and Film,” Patricia MacCormack writes of Barbara Steele’s face, particularly the image of her as Asa with holes in her face from the spiked mask, as the image “that haunts the history of Italian horror cinema more than any other.”34 For MacCormack, this image of Steele embodies her idea of “cinesexuality—sexuality of and for the cinema.”35 The sight of Steele’s face covered in holes excites us as an image, inciting desire beyond existing categories of sexual orientation: The strangeness we feel, especially in reference to sexuality and specifically cinesexuality as deconstructing notions of gender and sexuality themselves is enhanced when things that are even loosely conceivable as “sexy” are exchanged for things that in most other possible worlds are rarely, if ever, sexy—holes in the face, creeping flesh, witches, necrophilia, ghosts. We want to flee in terror and explode with an albeit strange kind of joy.36

As MacCormack elucidates here, the image of Steele with holes in her face appeals and affects all spectators, regardless of gender or orienta-Brode_WEB.indb 78

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tion, precisely because there is a collision of beauty and strangeness, of something that scares us but yet holds our gaze intensely. The image of Steele in Black Sunday, her undead and punctured face rendered beautiful in dreamy black and white, can only exist in film, and therefore the response it provokes does not relate to outside systems that seek to categorize desire. As MacCormack states: “We can ask ‘what is it you have sex with’? The answer ‘male’ or ‘female’ is imagined as a stable enough term to explain sexuality. But if we answer ‘cinema,’ questions proliferate beyond, rather than refer back to, a pre-established system of desire.”37

This notion of cinesexuality devised by MacCormack opens up a new discourse in which to explore further the pleasures of the horror genre, and the unique connection that dedicated fans feel and experience when consuming images that provoke fear and desire. Rather than being images used to oppress women and female sexuality, as Günsberg argues, the application of MacCormack’s notion of cinesexuality actually unlocks new avenues for desire and engagement with the cinema image. Rather than submitting to the patriarchal gaze and the ideology that is attached to it, spectators can connect with the screen in a way that casts off these enforced categories of gender and sexuality and become an act that is creative, rather than oppressive.

Much has already been written on Mario Bava’s classic Black Sunday, which features an early representation of the female vampire. Yet, by looking deeper we can see that the female vampire in this film is a vampire-witch, a transgressive woman who presents an affront to established norms of femininity. By referring to medieval witch hunts that took place in the past, the film engages with the history of female persecution, while also commenting on changes in female roles that were taking place at the time the film was made. Furthermore, the film also interrogates the idea of the gaze as a force that controls those who are looked at. Placing the gaze with the female vampire-witch means that the very person that we are watching meets our gaze, forcing us to examine our own relationship with the violence and sensuality that is shown onscreen and felt within our own bodies.

NOTES

1. Tim Lucas, “Audio Commentary,” Black Sunday, DVD, directed by Mario Bava (1960; UK: Arrow Films, 2013).

2. Peter Burke, “Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and His Strix,” in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft, ed. Sidney Anglo (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2012), 34.

3. Ibid., 35.

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4. Ovid cited Ibid., 37.

5. Ibid.

6. Andrea Bini, “Horror Cinema: The Emancipation of Women and Urban Anxiety,” in Popular Italian Cinema: Culture and Politics in a Postwar Society, ed.

Flavia Brizio-Skov (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 57.

7. Ibid.

8. Lucas, “Audio Commentary.”

9. Bini, “Horror Cinema,” 57.

10. Carol Jenks cited in Leon Hunt, “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera: Notes on the Italian Horror Film,” in The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (London: Routledge, 2000), 325.

11. Hunt, “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera,” 325.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 335.

15. Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

16. Ibid., 3.

17. Ibid., 6.

18. Hunt, “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera,” 326.

19. Tim Lucas, Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark (Cincinatti, OH: Video Watchdog, 2007).

20. Articles on Mario Bava films have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, for example: Colette Balmain, “Mario Bava’s The Evil Eye: Realism and the Italian Horror Film,” Post-Script 21, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 20–31; John Berra, “Deep, Deep, Down: The Social Satire of Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik,” Film International 10, nos. 4–5 (October 2012): 44–51; Sam Ishii-Gonzales, “Mario Bava,” Senses of Cinema 31 (2004), http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/bava/ (accessed February 8, 2013).

21. Ishii-Gonzales, “Mario Bava.”

22. Franco Moretti, “Dialectic of Fear (Extract),” in The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (London: Routledge, 2000), 157.

23. Hunt, “A (Sadistic) Night at the Opera,” 329.

24. Commonly referred to as “The Karnstein trilogy”: The Vampire Lovers (Roy Ward Baker, 1970), Lust for a Vampire (Jimmy Sangster, 1971), Twins of Evil (John Hough, 1971).

25. Maggie Günsberg, Italian Cinema: Gender and Genre (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 155.

26. Ibid., 134.

27. Ibid., 135.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Barbara Steele quoted in Danny Shipka, Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960–1980 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 37.

31. Flavia Brizio-Skov, “Introduction,” in Popular Italian Cinema: Culture and Politics in a Postwar Society, ed. Flavia Brizio-Skov (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 11.

32. Bini, “Horror Cinema,” 60.

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33. Troy Howarth, “Review— The Mask of Satan,” The Mario Bava Web Page n.d., http://mariobava.tripod.com/sunday.htm (accessed February 8, 2013).

34. Patricia MacCormack, “Barbara Steele’s Ephemeral Skin: Feminism, Fetishism and Film,” Senses of Cinema 2002, http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature articles/steele/ (accessed February 8, 2013).

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Patricia MacCormack, Cinesexuality (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 2.

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While you were sleeping: Though Roger Vadim’s Carmilla (Annette Stroyberg) focuses her seductive powers on an aristocratic relative (Mel Ferrer), she also becomes fascinated by that man’s “normal” fiancée (Elsa Martinelli) in Blood and Roses . Courtesy of Documento Film/Paramount Pictures.

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5

Blood and Roses (1960)

Realizing the Vision of Carmilla

Lauren E. Strong

The most popularized vampire novel captured on celluloid many times was undeniably Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), but J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) was next in terms of the attention it received on the big screen.1 While depictions of male vampires have predominantly been defined in literature, female vampires in contrast have often been used to challenge patriarchal convention; their presence in literature, art, and film seems to come from shifting ideas about sexuality rather than the previously thought notion that vampirism related to society’s fear of death.2 Literary and cinematic female vampires reflect the changing ideas and concerns regarding female sexuality. This in part explains the female vampire’s popularity during the nineteenth century and her resurgence during the 1960s and 1970s. Before the late 1950s, the vampiric figure was a minor theme in cinema, but from 1957 to 1973 over two hundred vampire films were produced in over ten countries.3 An influential factor prior to the proliferation of vampiric moving pictures was the strict enforcement of the Production, or Hays, Code of 1930, which regulated what was considered morally acceptable in film and television. Consequently vampire films of the early twentieth century were versions of Dracula that focused not on the sexual aspects of the bloodsucking creature, but on its monstrous horror qualities. Relaxation of the Hays Code standards, accompanied by the adoption of the Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of America (or MPAA rating system) in 1966, allowed a wider range of films to be made, and the erotic vampire genre became highly successful. Societal changes for women during the 1950s witnessed the advent of women entering the workforce in greater numbers. Concurrently, the introduction of the 83

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birth control pill made the sexual revolution of the 1960s an undeniable and persistent influence on the largest generation in history, the baby boomers.

Together, these factors contributed to the breakdown of conservative social norms and traditional gender roles that prevailed in the lives and cinematic works of preceding generations.4

These significant changes in American culture possibly prompted the introduction of homoeroticism, namely lesbianism, into film. Whereas in other film genres graphic sexuality and violence was considered unac-ceptable, supernatural and horror films had a greater freedom due to their unrealistic quality. The vampire genre in film and literature has been one of the most common outlets for portraying sexuality and desire without explicitly stating it, and part of the appeal of the erotic vampire in film included a homoerotic aspect.5 The relationship between vampire and victim has taken on one of two dominant forms since it was first introduced to audiences. The vampire was portrayed as either a maniacal fiend killing anyone in his/her path regardless of sex, race, and class or the vampire developed an intimate connection with the victim resulting in his or her destruction or immortal condemnation by being turned into an eternal vampiric companion.6 In England and America the vampire genre was created predominantly by men and the prime examples of vampires that were discussed were male, but often female figures were incorporated into texts to portray the most subversive behaviors that were depicted.7 Vampirism became an outlet for displaying the unmen-tionable. Lesbian vampire types became so dominant during the 1970s that it is still the most common representation of the lesbian in film.8

Often used to embody death and desire as well as fulfill male fantasies about women with women, the erotic lesbian vampire functioned more as a soft-core pornographic male fantasy than a supernatural, horror film.9

The vampire genre has been one of the most popular outlets for writing about sexuality and desire without explicitly stating it, and more commonly vampirism has been used as an acceptable framework for portraying subversive themes. Two of the most prominent examples of this are found in nineteenth-century literature and twentieth-century film.

Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s groundbreaking novella Carmilla (1872) follows the story of two friends, Laura and Carmilla, and their erotic relationship of vampire and victim. French filmmaker Roger Vadim introduced the first major film adaptation of Carmilla with Et mourir de plaisir, or Blood and Roses (1960), which followed selected elements of the novella’s plot line and further explored the female vampiric type. While both novella and film were innovative for different reasons, each used vampirism and surrealism as a way to portray female homoeroticism and desire. In Carmilla, Le Fanu weaves more than a tale of a vampire and its bloodsucking adventures; he develops an emotional and physical relationship between the vampire and her victim, while also reflecting Victorian society’s unease with female sexuality by limiting the parameters of Brode_WEB.indb 84

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lesbian attraction to vampirism.10 Vadim’s cinematic version takes many liberties with Le Fanu’s original novella by adding a host of characters, changing names and plot lines, while maintaining the first-person narrative, although this time from the perspective of the vampire, Millarca, instead of the victim, Laura. Vadim took liberties with the plot, censoring the full extent of the female relationship that Le Fanu created, but to this day it remains the most accurate retelling of the novella.

Blood and Roses possibly illustrates the shift that occurred in the vampire genre from the nineteenth century, when Carmilla was created, to the twentieth century, when film forever changed the public image of the vampire.

Blood and Roses is a remarkable film, but it has been eclipsed by the surplus of erotic and sensationalized vampire films distributed during the 1970s when the vampire genre was at its height. In contrast to these later productions, Blood and Roses was first and foremost an art film, strictly adhering to art cinema conventions rather than following the traditional vampire film genre standards. By turning to art film methods and incorporating a male figure, thereby creating a love triangle, Vadim minimized much of the desire between Carmilla and Georgia that was so vital to the earlier novella.

Blood and Roses is predominantly rooted in a lesser-known film practice, European art cinema, which defines many of the nontraditional aspects of the film. Art cinema began with the European avant-garde films of the 1920s and 1930s and continued to take shape again after World War II when Hollywood film production was on the decline and alternate modes of production were encouraged.11 Rather than a cohesive movement in film, art cinema is often regarded as an individual method of film practice set within a specific historical context and guided by basic formal principles.12 The well-known French New Wave cinema and the auteur theory gained popularity in Europe, particularly in France, around the same time, and both share common features in that the individual is emphasized and a romantic notion of filmmaking is attached to the films.

Art cinema aligned itself with the premise of the auteur theory in which the director of the film was given the authorial role and was a vital if not the main component of the film, creating a work of art with an independence lacking in most Hollywood films. Art cinema is often overlooked and has received little of the criticism or analysis that the auteur theory has received over the years.13 In traditional classic cinema, narrative form guided the sequence of events and the visual representation, whereas in art cinema the visual and auditory (such as the musical score, not dialogue) aspects of filmmaking guided the narrative. Art cinema was also noted for its realism, which ranged from realistic settings to candid sexuality and nudity; often these elements were vital and permissible components of the movie due to the serious nature of its style. Plot lines revolved around psychological issues of the characters, producing a

“drifting quality” rather than a strictly defined sequence of events. The films focused on reaction rather than action, with characters repeatedly Brode_WEB.indb 85

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sharing personal stories, dreams, and fantasies to add greater psychological depth.14

Blood and Roses adds a new twist on Carmilla, as it revolves around the idea of supernatural transference in that Millarca’s two-hundred-year-old soul infinitely possess the bodies of her female victims in order to be with the man she loves.15 What is significant about this new plot line is that the film eliminates much of the relationship between the two leading female characters, which was undeniably the essence of the earlier novella. The film is modified to include a third love interest—Leopoldo von Karnstein—into the story. By creating a love triangle with the addition of a male character, Carmilla/Millarca goes from a lesbian vampire type to a female vampire who uses whatever means possible to ensure her eternal companionship with the man she loves. The second part of this chapter discusses the plot of Blood and Roses while providing a stylistic analysis of the film in order to illustrate the sublimation of lesbian desire into the areas of visual imagery, vampirism, and surrealism.

Blood and Roses opens with a plane taking off on a runway, and as it ascends into the sky a voice-over of Millarca begins to tell her story. Although the viewer is unaware of it, the opening scene is actually a flash-forward, and this same scene will conclude the film. While this technique is used frequently in contemporary film practice, during the 1960s it was less common, and is one of the first indications that Blood and Roses does not fit into the typical vampire film genre. As the plane soars through the clouds Millarca introduces herself. “My name is Millarca. I lived in the past, and I live now.” She notes that in the age of technology and industry, it is hard to believe in the spiritual realm, which belongs to the thinking of the Old World, but nevertheless, it still exists. As her dialogue ends, the clouds dissipate to reveal a large castle in Italy, part of the Karnstein estate. The camera zooms into the living room of the house where an eclectic group of people are gathered. Millarca invites the viewer to join her. “Enter with me. I will tell you the story of my most recent life.”16

Leopoldo von Karnstein, the lead male character, speaks with Chief Justice Monteverdi, his daughter and Leopoldo’s fiancée Georgia Monteverdi (equivalent to Carmilla’s Laura), and his first cousin and last descendant of the Austrian line of the family, Carmilla von Karnstein; all are discussing plans for the upcoming costume ball. Leopoldo wants something spectacular for the party, so he suggests a fireworks display at the old Karnstein cemetery. As he says this the camera turns to Carmilla, who abruptly looks at one of the servants with an expression of anger and fear. It is apparent that they know something the audience does not, but Leopoldo assures them everything will be fine as the graves have been empty for over two hundred years.

As the servants grudgingly leave to arrange the fireworks, Carmilla explains that the townspeople are afraid of the Karnstein vampires or the undead who live off human blood. Leopoldo quickly silences Carmilla, re-Brode_WEB.indb 86

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alizing the mounting fear in the room, and asserts that there have not been vampires since 1765, when the peasants broke into the cemetery and staked them all. Carmilla argues that, on the contrary, one body survived. “The lady in question,” Carmilla tells her guests, is Millarca Karnstein, who lived during the height of their family’s power (or when they were vampires).

She was passionately in love with her cousin Ludwig, but unfortunately died on the eve of her wedding in his arms, where she swore to love him forever. The reason her body was not destroyed was because Ludwig hid her grave from the peasants. Regrettably for Ludwig, a mysterious series of events left each of his later three fiancées dead right before the wedding.

As Carmilla finishes her story, Georgia points out that it was obviously Millarca who killed the fiancées. At this mention, both Carmilla and Georgia turn to a life-size portrait of Millarca hanging in the living room, where the viewer gets a glimpse of the remarkable physical similarities between Carmilla and the vampire Millarca. In the painting Millarca wears her white wedding dress and holds a withered rose. Georgia questions the rose’s faded appearance. Carmilla explains that flowers always wither when a vampire touches them. This aspect of the withered rose will be used several times later in the film to indicate a vampire’s presence.

As Carmilla finishes the story of Millarca, she falls into somewhat of a trance imagining what the vampire would be like if she were still alive.

“Look!” says Carmilla, and the characters and camera turn toward the French doors that lead outside. “She has crossed the olive grove. She has opened the door.” At these words the curtains start blowing and the sound of wind whistles through the house. “She is still wearing her white dress. She is coming in.” The camera turns to a subjective point of view shot, which creates the illusion that the camera lens has become the eyes of one of the characters. In this scene it suggests the spirit of Millarca is peering in through the window.17 The point-of-view camera pans across the room as the guests stare back into it, until it comes to rest on Leopoldo, and Carmilla says that he reminds Millarca of Ludwig, her love, and perhaps she has returned to be with him.

The next scene takes place at the elegant costume ball on the Karnstein estate, where Carmilla is nowhere to be found. As the guests gossip about Carmilla’s absence it is revealed that Carmilla is in love with Leopoldo and her lack of attendance at the party is a result of her jealousy over Leopoldo’s upcoming wedding to Georgia. As Carmilla goes to get dressed for the ball, Millarca’s voice-over beckons Carmilla to wear the white wedding dress from the portrait, which she acquiesces to. As the fireworks explode, Carmilla wanders in a beautiful Italian landscape accented by fluted columns while pining over her unrequited love for Leopoldo. Millarca’s white wedding dress billows behind Carmilla, creating a romantic gothic setting while the modern fireworks display in the background connects the old and new. A brooding Carmilla is led to the Karnstein abbey under the spell of Millarca, whose voice whispers, “Don’t you Brode_WEB.indb 87

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feel my spirit calling you? Don’t you?” At this moment something goes wrong with the fireworks, and there is an explosion in the abbey. The explosion paves the way for Carmilla to enter, and she continues to wander into the smoldering ruins to encounter Millarca’s tomb. In a trance she finds the sepulcher, and as she touches the stone the top slides away.

Carmilla whispers “Millarca,” and backs away as a shadow emerges from the grave and approaches Carmilla. The sound of a heart beating faster and faster begins as the camera zooms into the surprised yet contented face of Carmilla until the screen goes dark and a bloodcurdling scream echoes through the abbey.

Upon her return to the house, Leopoldo and Georgia begin to notice that Carmilla has acquired some strange characteristics. Later that night at dinner Carmilla experiences a newfound knowledge of eighteenth-century history, and when Georgia goes to kiss her good night she notes her hands are like ice and she is extremely pale. The next day when Georgia, Leopoldo, and Carmilla go horseback riding, they are astonished to find that the horses are so afraid of Carmilla she is unable to ride. On another day while Georgia and Carmilla are walking the grounds, Carmilla becomes exhausted after a few steps, and insists on staying under the shade of a tree away from the sun. As they sit under the tree Carmilla (possessed by Millarca) stares longingly at the resting Georgia. This scene is one of three instances in the film where Carmilla and Georgia are alone and lesbian desire is evident. Carmilla’s attraction to Georgia is intense and unexpected.

The previous moment, the women were casually walking through the estate grounds and suddenly Carmilla is overcome by a desire to kiss or bite Georgia, the viewer unsure of which. As she leans over to kiss Georgia, Leopoldo interrupts the sensual moment between the two women. There is a similar scene in the novella in which Carmilla and Laura sit under a tree holding hands and sharing secrets, but without the interruption of a male figure. Leopoldo’s presence at the moment of erotic attraction between Carmilla and Georgia confirms his role as the foil to Carmilla’s plan and lesbian desire, but unlike in the novella, Carmilla does not want to take Georgia as an eternal companion; it is only out of Carmilla’s desire to possess Georgia, in order to be with Leopoldo, that she is drawn to her.

After the horse riding incident, Carmilla returns home overcome by a strong urge for sustenance. Millarca’s voice whispers, “I need nourishment.” Carmilla spots Liza, a household servant, and later that night she follows Liza home through a tree-lined path. When Carmilla leaves to pursue her first victim the viewer primarily sees her and Liza simply walking through a vast Italian countryside, downplaying the inevitable attack. Panoramic long shots (or shots that provide a wide-angle view of an area) comprise the majority of the scene as Carmilla wanders regally through castle ruins and swaying trees.18 Vadim essentially creates a cinematic landscape painting while minimizing the impending violence. Unlike the majority of vampire films, violence is never portrayed outright in Brode_WEB.indb 88

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Blood and Roses; instead temporary looks of horror and frightened screaming informs the viewer of what has happened.19 As the women wander, then eventually run through the idyllic landscape, the moving camera and the haunting music of an Irish harp heightens the suspense as Liza runs but is confronted by Carmilla everywhere she turns. Liza backs up against a tree and begs Carmilla to leave her alone as the camera zooms in on Carmilla’s face while she approaches her victim. Once again the screen goes black and ends with Liza screaming in horror at the vampire’s unseen attack. In the novella, a large part of Carmilla’s appeal was her ability to seduce her prey and the way she developed an intimate connection with other females. This eventually led to a trusting relationship in which Carmilla began to feed off of her female victims gradually in order to maintain her strength, by which time they were so engrossed in the relationship that they were unaware of what was happening. In Blood and Roses Carmilla’s first attack is hasty and unplanned and any connection or desire between the women is sublimated into the surrounding scenery.

Carmilla returns home revived and refreshed, where Leopoldo finds her playing an old family song on the piano and the two sit together flirtatiously laughing and talking. They discuss their relationship, hinting at how they miss what they once had. Leopoldo invites Carmilla on his honeymoon with Georgia, pointing out that they are all friends so there should be nothing wrong with that. As Carmilla begins to agree she turns to look in a mirror and sees a red bloodstain begin to spread over her left breast on her white dress, but when the camera pans back to Carmilla the viewer sees that there is no stain on the dress. She runs in horror to her bedroom and rips the bloodstained gown off, and as Leopoldo comes in to comfort her, they begin to kiss, establishing a complicated and incestuous love triangle. Sexual desire is stronger between Carmilla and Leopoldo throughout the film, but due to the literary source and vampire genre status of Blood and Roses the limited instances of attraction between Carmilla and Georgia are what is predominantly focused upon in scholarship, and popularized in images of the film. Heterosexual, erotic moments such as the previous scene between Carmilla and Leopoldo are absent in film stills, while the three instances of desire between Carmilla and Georgia elicit an abundant amount of images, revealing that in many ways the film was marketed as a lesbian vampire film to appeal to contemporary audiences as a soft-core pornographic fantasy but in actuality it was not.

The next day Carmilla and Georgia are taking a walk outside when they find themselves caught in a rainstorm. After seeking shelter in a greenhouse, Georgia confronts Carmilla, telling her that she has always known she (Carmilla) is in love with Leopoldo. Carmilla is silent and as Georgia continues pressing her for a response, Carmilla finally erupts, “Carmilla is dead.” Georgia turns to pick up a rose as a peace offering to Carmilla, and as she does she pricks her lip on a thorn, drawing blood. The same haunting music used in the earlier attack scene, between Carmilla and Brode_WEB.indb 89

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Liza, quietly plays as Carmilla’s face advances toward Georgia. Carmilla gently kisses the blood from Georgia’s lip until they are interrupted by a servant and Georgia quickly departs, unsure of what has just happened.

Although it is not Leopoldo who interrupts them this time, it is one of his male servants demanding Carmilla and Georgia return home, thus once again thwarting female desire. In the greenhouse, Carmilla drops Georgia’s offered rose, where it lies withered on the ground.

While there are moments in Blood and Roses where erotic attraction between Carmilla and Georgia is undeniable, as in the greenhouse scene, there is always the underlying notion that Carmilla/Millarca is only drawn to Georgia out of her desire to possess her and eternally be with Leopoldo.

Le Fanu’s novella did not need nor try to integrate any male character into the intimate relationship between Carmilla and Laura. Vadim’s version, while innovative in its visual presentation, eradicates a large part of the lesbian desire with its incorporation of a male figure.20 Leopoldo controls Carmilla and Georgia throughout the film with his actions and words.

There are instances when Carmilla refuses to submit to male authority, as in the costume ball when she will not leave her room, though Leopoldo blames it on her frivolous and spoiled nature. Similar things happen with Georgia, for example, after the costume party; Georgia remarks about one of the partygoers’ appearance, and Leopoldo responds by calling her a bitch. Both women are vying for his affection, yet he represents the patriarchal role of trying to impose order on unruly women.21

Georgia’s demeanor becomes contemplative and quiet after the encounter in the greenhouse, and Leopoldo, thinking Carmilla is upsetting her, decides it is best to get married quickly and not at the Karnstein estate.

Carmilla/Millarca, sensing that she must act quickly, goes to Georgia’s bedroom later that night. As Carmilla leans over the sleeping Georgia, Georgia whispers “Millarca.” Carmilla’s pale fingers delicately untie Georgia’s nightgown in preparation for the vampire’s bite as the Irish harp melody plays softly in the background. The film switches to black and white as the surrealist dream sequence begins. In the dream, Georgia awakens to find Carmilla at the foot of the bed. As Georgia stares at Carmilla, slowly bright red blood begins spreading over her white dress starting at the neck until it covers her entire gown. The black-and-white photography adds to the starkness of the red blood against the white dressing gown, and as Georgia lies frightened she hears the voice of Liza, Carmilla’s first victim, calling her name. Through the French bedroom doors Liza floats by in a sea of water beckoning her to come out. Georgia opens the doors and dives into the water. The scene abruptly changes and Georgia is now walking through puddles on the estate grounds surrounded by dancing couples recalling the night of the costume ball. As she wanders between the figures they suddenly vanish, and she is standing in front of an archway with two figures approaching on horseback that then fade into a wall followed by an abrupt zoom to another scene where Georgia finds herself standing at Brode_WEB.indb 90

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the entrance to a long corridor lined with hundreds of women. Some are talking, some are quiet, but the cement hallway is filled with noise. The camera pans over the faces of the women, coming upon a mannequin in the midst of all the human females. The camera suddenly stops, and Georgia is at the opposite end of the corridor, where she is led away by two nurses. The music ceases, wind begins whistling, and the faint sound of a heartbeat begins. The nurses drag her into a room, where Georgia stares in horror at what is happening. Six robotic nurses form an assembly line, all wearing bloodred gloves and passing medical instruments to the doctor, who is preparing to operate on a woman harnessed supine and spread-eagle on a table. She is nude from the waist up and her face is covered with a bag. The doctor turns toward Georgia, and Georgia realizes with surprise that it is Carmilla. “Carmilla?” she asks. The woman responds, “I am Millarca. Carmilla is dead. I killed her the night of the ball.” She then turns and lifts the mask off the girl on the operating table, revealing a dead Carmilla. The wind begins howling violently and suddenly Carmilla (possessed by Millarca) and Georgia are spinning in a circle, holding each other. Carmilla leans in closer as the camera slowly zooms in to Georgia’s neck, where Carmilla eventually sinks her teeth. A screaming Georgia awakens in her bedroom and the film returns to color.

This surrealist-inspired dream sequence, one of the most memorable scenes in the film, plays off Carmilla’s use of the dream metaphor as a framework for the vampire’s attack. The jarring images composing the dream sequence range from a floating dead servant to water-drenched dancing couples and robotic nurses, until the final scene portraying the vampire’s attack seems the least bizarre in comparison to the barrage of images previously experienced by the viewer. In the novella, large cats and black shapes haunt Laura’s dreams, but Blood and Roses draws upon modern fears with women filling corridors leading to a sterile operating room managed by robotic women bringing death through an operation, not by supernatural means. The swirling figures of Carmilla and Georgia as Carmilla prepares to attack her prey are almost anticlimactic, a factor that forces us to conclude that visual imagery, not lesbian desire, was the thematic focus in Blood and Roses.

As Georgia continues screaming, Leopoldo and a doctor rush to her aid, and they notice the bite marks upon her neck. Little by little they begin to piece things together until they come to the conclusion that Carmilla has tried to kill Georgia out of her love for Leopoldo. Carmilla overhears the conversation and flees to Millarca’s grave. Events begin happening quickly as the music swells and Leopoldo starts running after Carmilla.

As the two run through the countryside, town officials are preparing to detonate the rest of the explosives within the Karnstein abbey. The men begin counting down. Leopoldo calls her name “Carmilla, Carmilla,”

which she will not answer to, until he finally yells, “Millarca!” She stops and turns around with tears streaming down her cheeks as she looks at Brode_WEB.indb 91

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her eternal love. At that moment the explosives ignite, sending Carmilla over a cliff and impaling her body on a branch. Back in her bedroom, Georgia clutches her chest in pain whispering, “Oh it hurt,” as the camera cuts back to a dead Carmilla, her limp body hanging over the branch.

The final scene returns to the airplane where Millarca’s voice-over picks up where it left off in the beginning. She asks the viewer, “Well what do you think? Still a modernist? The true explanation lies in the world of the spirit.” The camera turns toward Leopoldo and Georgia embracing in the plane while Georgia holds a rose in her hand. Millarca’s voice continues,

“Ah, Leopoldo, another modernist. Three months on a honeymoon and still he thinks it is Georgia he married. It is I, Millarca. I who lived in the past, I live now and Leopoldo is mine.” As the last line is uttered organ music grows louder as Georgia lowers the flower to reveal it fading in her hand.

What is remarkably different about Blood and Roses from contempora-neous vampire films, besides its art film status and well-known director, is that it uses neither violence nor nudity to enthrall the viewer and provides an alternate ending; instead of the normal destruction of the vampire, the vampire lives on in the body of the victim, the woman she decides to possess. Its congruence with the art film genre has to do with the film’s attributes that reflect the European art cinema tradition of turning to effusive and sensuous cinematography and dramatic and even narrativistic haunting music to provide much of the anticipation and action of the film. It is also these visual aspects that de-emphasize the implicit eroticism portrayed in the original novella. While Blood and Roses was innovative as an art film, it represents a shift in the twentieth-century vampire film genre to a pornographic heterosexual fantasy of homoeroticism instead of the intimate, relational components of Carmilla. The qualities that made Carmilla so inventive and fascinating during the nineteenth century were altered in twentieth-century film to attract the attention of male viewers through their often sexualized portrayals of the two leading women while relegating the female relationship to a side note. Blood and Roses possibly illustrates the shift that occurred in the vampire genre from the nineteenth century when Carmilla was created to the twentieth century when film forever changed the public image of the vampire.

NOTES

1. David Pirie, The Vampire Cinema (New York: Crescent Books, 1977), 31.

2. Carol Senf, The Vampire in 19th Century English Literature (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), 160.

3. Pirie, The Vampire Cinema, 6.

4. Stacey Abbott, Celluloid Vampires: Life after Death in the Modern World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 75–78.

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5. Darryl Jones, Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 85.

6. Anne Williams, ed., Three Vampire Tales (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), 3.

7. Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (New York: Routledge, 1994), 57–58.

8. Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 84.

9. Tim Kane, The Changing Vampire of Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Growth of a Genre (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 43.

10. Ivan Melada, Sheridan Le Fanu (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1987), 100–101.

11. David Bordwell, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,” in The European Cinema Reader, ed. Catherine Fowler, 94–102 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 94. Some early examples of art cinema were Surrealist, Dadaist, and Expressionist films, which looked to overthrow traditional film practice by creating something entirely new. The films wanted to attract the intellectual viewer rather than try to appeal to mass audiences.

12. Ibid., 96.

13. Ibid., 89.

14. Ibid., 96–97.

15. Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film (New York: Limelight Editions, 1993), 105–6.

16. Blood and Roses, screenplay and dir. Roger Vadim (USA: Paramount Pictures, 1960), videocassette. It is important to note that the original film is in color with black-and-white film used during the dream sequence.

17. Frank E. Beaver, Dictionary of Film Terms: The Aesthetic Companion to Film Analysis (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), 277.

18. Beaver, Dictionary of Film Terms, 218.

19. Weiss, Vampires & Violets, 94.

20. James Craig Holte, Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 105. This paragraph is partly in response to Holte’s assertion that Blood and Roses “downplays the patriarchal revenge of the original narrative ( Carmilla) and emphasizes the lesbian elements of Carmilla.” I find this statement to be completely false, and am trying to stress that by simply inserting a male character to create a love triangle, Blood and Roses immediately diminishes a large part of the lesbian relationship, and does not emphasize it, as Holte says.

21. Elizabeth Signorotti, “Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in Carmilla and Dracula,” Criticism 38 (Fall 1996): 607. Signorotti’s essay posits that Carmilla broke the traditional bonds of male authority by focusing solely on two females, Carmilla and Laura, and their relationship without the interference of a male figure, while Dracula needed to reassert male authority twenty-five years later by using a range of male characters to establish control over the female characters. The ultimate sign of this is through the institution of marriage. Male figures in Dracula work to prevent any homoerotic desire between women, while in Carmilla desire is given free rein. I looked to aspects of this essay in that Blood and Roses employs a similar device with the addition of Leopoldo, which sublimates the desire between Carmilla and Georgia.

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Last Year at Marienbad revisited: For Succubus with Janine Reynaud, director Jesús Franco self-consciously avoided conventions associated with the horror genre to work in a European art-house style associated with such mid-1960s directors as Alain Resnais.

Courtesy of Aquila FIlm Enterprises/Constantin Film.

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6

Soft Focus, Sharp Knives

The Projection of Vampiric

Fantasy in Jess Franco’s Succubus

Jack W. Shear

Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up in a dream. And sometimes, every once in a while, you wake up in someone else’s dream.

—Richelle Mead, Succubus Blues

As a title, Succubus: THE Sensual Experience of ’69 (1969) raises definite expectations and sets concrete assumptions about what the viewer can reasonably anticipate from the film to come. Although it was originally titled Necronomicon when it was released in the Spanish and German markets in 1968, Jesús Franco’s film promises to provide the illicit, the extravagant, and the lascivious; after all, anything that claims to be

“THE Sensual Experience” of a given year holds itself forth as an insur-mountable cinematic spectacle. Even the use of the word “succubus” to define the film’s main area of interest sets the tone of what the implied theatergoer can expect. A succubus is a demoness of legend, traceable back to the medieval folklore of the fourteenth century, who was said to drain the vitality of men through the arts of seduction and the action of sexual conquest. As such, the figure of the succubus is a clear forerunner of the constellation of gendered sexual anxieties that would later adhere to the modern conception of the vampire. Indeed, in many modern cinematic horror tales—such as Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983) and Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body (2009)—the succubus and vampire are conflated as a mythic female species that siphons off human vitality through mul-tiform erotic practices. Franco’s Succubus, then, promises not only to titillate, but also to invoke a particular form of arousing, archetypal female 95

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sexuality—the erotically threatening, yet irresistibly alluring, figure of the vampiric woman.

The succubus-as-vamp prefigures the femme fatale found in film noir; like those black-and-white cinematic sirens of the postwar age, the deadly woman postulated by the title of Franco’s film guarantees a cathartic experience of both pleasure and destruction—or so the filmic bill of fare implies. However, those viewers expecting to the see a satisfactory vampire-woman sexually cavort across the screen are doomed to be disappointed by Succubus. Though the film’s title suggests the presence of a supernatural vixen who casually mixes Eros and Thanatos, what Succubus provides instead is a dream-like meditation on the process by which a “succubus”

is brought into being by the male heterosexual imagination. (Even the film’s Spanish title, Necronomicon, hints at direct avenues of death and sex that go unexplored by Franco’s film.) The absence of a truly supernatural vampiric woman in the film is not necessarily a misapplication of the title or a classic bait-and-switch; instead the expectations raised by the seemingly misleading title are part of what Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs call Franco’s technique of “playful allusions.”1

Part of the reason for Franco’s career-long obscurity is that his films simply do not fit into easily interpreted categories, particularly where the bifurcated world of Spanish cinema is concerned. As Tatjana Pavlović explains: In Spain of the 1950s, when Jesús Franco started his career, there was, on the one hand, saturation by historical epics, musicals, and melodramas intended to inculcate traditional moral and religious values, sponsored officially by the Francoist government. On the other hand, there was the dissident cinema, grounded in the neorealist traditions, that dealt with social problems that the

“official” cinema would never acknowledge. The uniqueness of Jesús Franco is that he did not make either type of film even though his career began in those turbulent years. He was an anomaly not fitting in any of these camps.2

Under the gauzy surface of his cinematography there is a method to Franco’s madness; while often difficult to parse, his strange films “had just the right amount of gloss, abstraction and delirium to confuse the censors,”

who might otherwise have silenced the deftly inserted cultural and social commentary that so often flies under radar of critics who deconstruct his work.3 With Succubus, Franco crafted a film that was erotic enough to attract attention, yet surreal enough to deliver covert commentary that would have been ruined (or at least rendered simplistic or cloying) if it had been presented straight. Indeed, Succubus toys with the idea of conveying content; it is by turns mystifying in its use of displaced, soft-focus shots that seem more languid than meaningful and startling in its direct address to the viewer. Franco’s filmmaking is coy, and part of his sense of play operates by activating the audience’s expectations—if only to thereafter modify Brode_WEB.indb 96

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and purposefully transgress against the viewer’s preconceptions about his art. Franco’s genius is the use of an abstracting soft focus that disguises the coming of the inevitable sharp knife that snaps the viewer back to reality.

Nevertheless, the expectations aroused by the promise of a literal succubus do not go wholly deflated by Franco’s film. While Succubus is not a film about a literal vampire, it is a film about the psycho-sexual loci that construct and maintain the erotic metaphor of the vampire-woman.

Rather than giving the implied male viewer a sex romp starring a supernatural temptress who destroys the men she pleasures, it instead gives us a center seat to watch the unfolding process by which a woman is sexualized by the male heterosexual imagination and thereby transformed into a fatal woman. Certainly, Franco was not shy about approaching literal vampiresses in his films, as his Vampyros Lesbos (1971), Dracula’s Daughter (1972), and Female Vampire (1973) all attest. Succubus, however, is a film about the process of becoming, as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari use the term, because within it the process of becoming vampire “undermines” the “powers of family, career, and conjugality.”4 Through Succubus Franco suggests that the creation of the vampire-woman—or the fulfillment of the succubus role desired by the male imagination—marks a irreparable break from the aspects of life (“family, career, and conjugality”) that would otherwise grant a woman a sense of personal identity, subjectivity, and agency. In place of those actualizing elements, Franco illustrates how the male heterosexual imagination projects an irrational libidinal fantasy of the vampire-woman that possesses disastrous consequences for both the men and women involved. In Succubus, the fantasy of the femme fatale is never an alternate form of female sexual agency; it is instead a fantastical projection of a dominating male sexuality that erases female subjectivity, makes female sexuality subordinate to male desire, and ultimately unleashes a vampiric sexuality that threatens to devour the male imagination that brings it into being.

1. ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

(FOR MALE HETEROSEXUAL FANTASY):

SUCCUBUS ARISE!

Just beyond the title screen and opening credits of Succubus Jess Franco plays another “trick” on the viewer. While Succubus seems to begin in media res, the first scene of the film is a frame narrative that initiates the subtle cinematic process through which the audience’s expectations are played with and rearranged. Countess Lorna Green (Janine Reynaud) emerges from the darkness brandishing a riding crop and dressed in a black, modish, split-to-the-navel dominatrix outfit to menace a man and Brode_WEB.indb 97

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woman—each is bound to a St. Andrew’s Cross. The blond woman is the first to receive Lorna’s attentions. Lorna lets her crop trail up the woman’s body, reveling in the sexual control of a woman whose clothes and flesh have already been rent by previous abuse; the camera follows the exploratory sweep of Lorna’s riding crop, thus directing the audience’s assenting and objectifying gaze. The blonde calls Lorna a “monster” and is chastened with the crop before Lorna turns her attention to the man.5

Lorna’s actions toward the man are much more sensual than the possessive and cruel gestures to which the woman has been treated. She caresses his face and circles him while admiring his masculine beauty. The difference between the way the camera (and Lorna) assesses the woman and the man is the difference between the look of frank ownership and lusting appraisal. Lorna works her hands over his chest and bends at the knee before him in a position suggesting immanent fellatio; however, in a metaphoric shift, it is blood that Lorna sucks from his body. Instead of fearing her or rejecting the perversity of Lorna feeding from him, the man kisses Lorna’s fingers and is partly unchained from his cross. His agency restored, the man becomes complicit with Lorna’s vampiric suckling.

When the still-crucified woman offers a horrified objection to the sight of Lorna and the man enjoying their depraved embrace, Lorna sadistically tortures her by dragging a knife through an open wound on the blonde’s chest. The scene then unexpectedly cuts to a close-up shot of a second man’s face. This focal shift to Pierce (Michel Lemoine) is the viewer’s first intimation that they are not alone in watching Franco’s sadomasochistic scenario play out and that viewership is equated with a male gaze in Succubus. As the camera zooms in on his spectating eyes, we hear Pierce’s inner monologue as a voice-over that unpacks the thematic qualifiers that differentiate this scene from any number of similar SM fantasies to be found in the lurid reels of mid-century low-budget European film: “I have done well. She is perfect, a disciple who mirrors my own image—the essence of evil. A devil on earth.”6 As the perspective shifts back to Lorna’s erotic display, she begins to assert more domination over the half-bound man, but his reactions to her ministrations reveal that he is far more of a willing participant in this libidinal act of domination than the blond woman. Lorna drops to her knees, tears down his trousers, and hovers over the flaccid bulge in his un-derwear. Though he doesn’t display the tell-tale signs of arousal, he seems to be in ecstasy as her mouth proceeds up his body and laps at the cuts that adorn his torso. As Lorna disrobes herself for the man’s visual stimulation the camera cuts to two different men who are clearly also enjoying the spectacle of her sexual performance. Cutting back, we see Lorna draw a long stiletto; she plunges the dagger into the man’s side, causing him to let loose a cry that could be a death howl, a sexual climax, or an ambivalent combination of eros and the death instinct. Suddenly, houselights flare to life and an entertained audience applauds the bizarre cabaret that Lorna and her two fellow actors have just dramatized.

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Franco’s “trick” in this initiatory scene is to reveal that the action we have assumed was part of his film was instead a performance within a performance. The purpose of Franco’s cinematic ruse is to call into question the complex interrelation of spectatorship (particularly the male gaze), the projection of a male heterosexual fantasy centered on vampirism, and how these two areas direct male and female subjectivity in general. The voice-over that Pierce provides during the course of Lorna’s vampiric dominatrix routine translates the tangle of desire, voyeurism, and sexual imagination from the visual to the spoken power of Logos.

Pierce is a commanding figure, a diabolic Svengali who repeatedly bends Lorna to his will; his actions toward her are empty of physical threat or force—rather, he operates through coercive language and the directing power of his gaze. In his voice-over he positions himself as Lorna’s creator (“I have done well”) and her as his “disciple” who has properly learned and internalized what he desires. He has remade her in his own image; she is his “mirror” as an “essence of evil” and “a devil on earth.”7

Much is implied in Pierce’s brief statement of purpose. He identifies the “evil” subject position Lorna now inhabits as one that is a priori male; that is, the succubus role that Lorna acts out for the assembled crowd is not a native or essential facet of her subjectivity as a woman, but rather a “part” she has learned according to someone else’s script. The role she plays as a vampire-woman in this scene is a role born of the male erotic imagination. The devilish succubus, then, is predicated on an operational nexus of fantasy that is inherently demonic, dominating, and violent—as well as one that is already extant within the male sex drive as the collision between pre-Oedipal and anti-Oedipal intensities. Furthermore, Pierce’s narration implicates the truth that if the role of vampire-woman is not natural to the condition of female sexuality—that is, it is not dredged up from the unconscious, released from the repressed interiority of the psyche, or granted free rein from the normative strictures imposed by the larger culture—then it must be a condition that is dispensed from without by an exterior source. Since Pierce identifies himself as the point of origin for Lorna’s transformation into a succubus, the genesis of becoming vampire must be the male imagination that conjures the fantasy and projects it onto the subject of its objectifying erotic gaze.

The sadomasochistic content of the opening scene forms the outer boundary and inner substance of what the succubus fantasy demands of women like Lorna, who have been asked to fulfill it. Within Succubus, Franco—like Gilles Deleuze in his extended essay “Coldness and Cruelty” (1967) from the same era—makes a fundamental break with the pathological definitions of masochism and sadism. Rather than viewing masochism and sadism as disparate poles on the spectrum of deviant sexual behavior (with each distinct set of fetishes and predilections marking an endpoint of the ways in which one can experience sexualized submission, mastery, pleasure, and pain) the two are portrayed as being locked Brode_WEB.indb 99

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in an essentially dialectal relationship. While a fetish for pain might be the

“object of the fantasy, the fantasized object par excellence,” the bare fact of pain is not the culmination or fulfillment of the masochist’s desires.8

Not every instance of pain will be taken as pleasure by a masochist; generally, to be received as pleasurable the experience of pain must fit within the projected parameters of the masochist’s inward fantasy life.

In Succubus, the male heterosexual fantasy of the vampire-woman’s dangerous sexuality promises the curious admixture of pain and orgasmic gratification (which is given visual expression by the man who receives Lorna’s sadistic pleasures) not because the experience of torture is desired by men, but rather because it expresses the fantasy of a phallic woman who acts in accordance with male erotic expectations and allows the man to assume a wished-for position of submission. The succubus fantasy brought to life by the processes that enable Lorna’s becoming-vampire allows the male fantasist (whether Pierce, the cabaret audience, or the implied voyeur watching the film) to paradoxically maintain control—it is he who directs the scenario and sets the sexual agenda—even while giving up the veneer of dominant male heterosexuality. Note that the tools of sadomasochistic pain and pleasure that Lorna wields in this scene are supplied by men as part of the role they have cast her in; she is granted the use of phallic items such as a riding crop and a penetrating knife for their desired ends. As Laura Mulvey notes, “Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.”9 That Lorna has merely borrowed the use of these items from their rightful owners hints that they can also be taken away, leaving her reduced to what should be perceived as her usual status as a castrated other within the uncanny and phallocentric visual order enforced by the film.10

Although the appearance of male control is continually stripped away by Lorna’s vampiric sexual actions it is always reasserted by the use of the male gaze to structure the film’s instrumental and epistemological use of spectator and spectacle. The initial arrangement between viewer and viewed is maintained throughout Succubus; Lorna is caught in a series of perpetual sexual performances through which she receives recognition by men both named and unnamed. In a later scene, Lorna has let herself into William’s (Jack Taylor) apartment; Lorna desires sex, but he has arrived too drunk to perform. In order to entice him, Lorna places herself under William’s sexualizing gaze by performing an unprompted striptease for him. As she peels off her dress, she proclaims, “I am Lorna, the erotic love queen—queen of dance, and a stripper.” Her stripping routine and excla-mation are not the honest expression of liberated sexuality. Through her clichéd come-on, the learned sultriness of her gyrations, and the way she Brode_WEB.indb 100

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positions her body for maximum visual impact, Lorna attempts to appeal to William by conforming to a preexisting visual lexicon that insists that, for a woman, to display oneself in accordance with the expectations of male fantasy is to ensure arousal and reward. However, William is having none of it; he calls her performance “old-fashioned and boring,” signaling that her vamping is not nearly vampiric enough to demand his attention.11

Throughout Succubus, Lorna is put, or puts herself, into situations where she is evidently self-aware of her place as a spectacular object within the film’s psycho-sexual regime of male viewership. She unveils her body before a mirror; touches her own reflection; lays her cheek against the virtual cheek of her doubled image; trims her eyelashes, combs her hair, and puts on lipstick—all of which is shot at an angle that allows us to see both Lorna’s body as an object presented for the delecta-tion of our shared voyeuristic gaze and to observe her own cognizance of the fact that she is the subject of an unspoken optical definition. Lorna is frequently shot through objects that distort, but fail to obscure, her image: whether viewed through a swinging birdcage, the sensual motions of a fish tank, or a magnifying lens, the point of emphasis is that Lorna only attains meaning when she is looked at.

In every instance of her self-presentation as an object to be seen, Lorna functions as the receptacle of her viewer’s fantasy projections. During a swinging, acid-fueled party, Lorna is once again the object of spectacular attention. In a moment where the film slides into a performative enactment of a particularly masculine-gendered version of an orgy fantasy, she is set upon by a pack of party-goers ravenous for a taste of her flesh—a scene set to a throbbing jazz soundtrack. Yet, this scene is never about Lorna’s pleasure, but is instead about the line between the pleasure William takes in watching her in sexual situations and the jealousy his ego feels when the scenario leaps the tracks of his id’s erotic insinuations.

When the sight of Lorna engaging with others crosses the border from titillation to envy and resentment, William pulls Lorna from the party and strikes her on the staircase to remind her that she only matters when she acts as a screen for his fantasized projections. As the centerpiece of the group-sex scenario, Lorna was to be something of an erotic buffet. William, of course, demands that she perform as a succubus who feeds; when she is inert and fed from she disabuses herself of the vampire-woman persona he wishes her to assume. William effectively interrupts what would otherwise be a scene of polymorphous perversity to affirm the primacy of the male erotic imagination when Lorna appears to be enjoying herself in a way that is not staged for his enjoyment.

In fact, the slap across the face that William gives her is hardly necessary, as Lorna is a self-disciplining subject already interpolated into and attuned to the constraints involved in her ongoing becoming-vampire transformation. Existing as she does within the panoptic gaze of the film, Brode_WEB.indb 101

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Lorna is a docile body that has internalized the desire for her to perform the prescribed role of a vampiric woman or a demonic succubus.12 As feminist film critics such as Linda Williams have noted about the horror genre, “the female protagonist often fails to look, to return the gaze of the male who desires her.”13 In the filmic logic that dictates the imagery, dialogue, and plot of Succubus, Lorna is given no space to look in the first two-thirds of the film precisely because that would gesture toward an undisciplined remainder of her own agency. Lorna only looks at herself, as when she gazes at her own body in the mirror, to gauge how well or how poorly she is living up to the fantasies set out by men such as William and Pierce at the outset; her docile body, with its pliable myriad of stereotypically feminine poses, and her flat lack of affect (both of which are signatory striations of her assumption of a sexually alive but otherwise unliving vampiric persona) are the barometer by which she reads her success as an object under eroticized surveillance.

2. THE OBLIGATORY LESBIAN SCENE: VAMPIRISM

Of course, the male fantasies projected upon Lorna in Succubus are not limited to the psycho-sexual enactment of male-female pairings or bisexual explosions of free-floating eroticism. Indeed, this would be a truly remarkable Euro-horror film if it didn’t express a fascination with the idea of Sapphic pleasure. However, Succubus’s flirtation with the sexual desire of one woman for another is framed within the context of male prompting, and it is here that the function of Lorna as a surrogate for male fantasy truly comes to the fore.

Placed before the scene intended to dole out what might otherwise be considered a perfunctory display of lesbian experimentation, Lorna and William play a strange game in which William takes on the role of Mickey Spillane interrogating Lorna as a “beautiful foreigner.”14 This game echoes the earlier word-association games the Lorna plays with her psychoanalyst Ralf (Adrian Hoven) and Admiral Kapp (Howard Vernon, credited as Howard Varnon). As “Spillane” asks questions of the femme fatale, he punctuates each instance of this bizarre cross-examination by flicking the lamp on and off. Yet, this “game” is never a game at all; William’s questions quickly move from playful role-playing (“Your name, baby?” “Profession?” “Where did you stash the drugs?”) to a pointed excavation of what is left of Lorna’s identity (“Why do they call you Countess?” “Why do you speak to those people? Come!” “Who are the men who follow you and spy on you?”).15 This “terrible cross-examination”—as William himself terms it—dissolves into a soft-focus scene that is less an interrogation and more a game of free association.16 The transition between these two scenes is abrupt, despite how interconnected they are on a progressive Brode_WEB.indb 102

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thematic level. Indeed, the filmic boundary between the two is a quick cut to an image of the ocean break against the rocky cliff-side, but this too is rich with surreal symbolic meaning. Through the “Spillane game,” William has identified his own frustration at there being an authentic Lorna living beneath the surface of his projected fantasies; instead of coming to terms with that truth, William chooses to reduce her to a blank slate for his continued erotic imaginings through a process of psychological programming that renders her passive, docile, and receptive. In essence, his goal is to break her identity on the rocky shore of his masculine power.

In the scene that follows, Lorna’s psychoanalyst continues the programming process by telling her a series of non sequitur facts, only to have her to reply to each with an achingly dispassionate “I don’t care.”17

One of the only variations in Lorna’s responses comes when the doctor states, “Marilyn Monroe was murdered”—to which she flatly replies

“She’s dead.”18 This deviation from the apathetic litany of “I don’t care”

is in itself noteworthy. Lorna is roused from her repetition by the mention of Marilyn Monroe, another woman whose life was fundamentally distorted by her function as a spectacular tableau of male desire and projected fantasy. Lorna’s “She’s dead” is both a statement of fact, a moment of self-recognition, and a stoic acceptance that a life lived within the space of masculine imaginal erotics inevitably leads to a figurative, and perhaps literal, death of the authentic female self.

In a moment of bare meta-textuality, the free association between Ralf and Lorna shifts to cinematic concerns. Lorna admits to Ralf that horror movies are her “weakness,” and Ralf responds by asking her if she is afraid of a number of classic horror film baddies (such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein’s monster, and Godzilla) as the camera pans by a collection of action figures representing the familiar cast of film’s stable of supernatural villainy.19 Of course, as many feminist film critics have pointed out, the rogue’s gallery of famous, recognizable horror film monstrosities encapsulates an array of enlarged and distorted masculine threats; the use of the monstrous male who menaces the female protagonist stretches back (at least) to the gothic novels of the eighteenth century. Similarly, the abduction of Kay Lawrence by the Gill-man in Jack Arnold’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is at once a response to scientific intrusion into the Gill-man’s territory and a leveraging of the fear of sexual assault as a response to colonization.20

It is particularly revealing that the first monster Ralf asks Lorna about is Dracula, for Dracula—in his literary incarnation penned by Bram Stoker and in the many staged and cinematic iterations that followed—
is the combination of external and sexualized threats par excellence.

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by sexually transmitting the vampiric condition through his bite. As Stoker’s Dracula famously proclaims, “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine—my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I feed.”22 The final image in this scene, before we are again treated to a view of the sea crashing against the rocks, is of Pierce with his hands outstretched in the posture of a master hypnotist as a voice-over proclaims him to be the newest version of the ancient archetype of masculine evil. Franco inverts the fanged thrust of common depictions of the arch-vampire by psychologizing the masculine threat that the count usually represents; instead of an overt threat that couples an external concern to a form of sexual menace, Succubus internalizes this narrative movement by portraying Lorna as a woman who is being opened up—with all of the emotional, mental, and sexual connotations that entails—to be a receptacle for the male characters’ collective vampiric fantasy. This is, in fact, a double movement: Lorna is positioned to enact a vampiric lesbian role for male voyeuristic pleasure, yet each man in the film casts himself as the Draculoid figure that bends the vampire-woman to their shared erotic fantasy by the force of his seemingly supernatural will.

Now that William, Ralf, and Pierce have each reasserted their libidinal mastery over Lorna by occupying the narrative space of sexualizing villains of the gothic-horror mode, the scene shifts to one in which Lorna again becomes a submissive participant within the scope of masculine erotic imaginings. This time, however, instead of placing her within a heterosexual context, the men have her enact a performance of lesbian desire; while this may seem paradoxical if we connect the reality of lesbian sexuality with the exclusion of male eroticism, it is clear that this scene is staged for the titillation of male heterosexuals rather than feminine self-expression or the deployment of a genuine alternative sexuality. Clad in a white plastic trench-coat (designed by no less than Karl Lagerfeld) throughout much of this scene, Lorna is presented as a blank screen or an empty canvas that invites erotic projection from the normative male mind. Her visual presentation is a tabula rasa that already suggests the way in which it should be interpreted. She has become, to borrow a phrase from Jean-François Lyotard, a variation on “libidinal theatre”: Theatricality and representation, far from having to be taken as libidinal givens, a fortiori metaphysical, result from a certain labour on the labyrinthian and Moebian band, a labour which prints these particular folds and twists, the effect of which is a box closed upon itself, filtering impulses and allowing only those to appear on the stage that come from what will come to be known as the exterior, satisfying the conditions of interiority.23

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she might instrumentally perform within the imaginatively constructed libidinal theater. Her purpose, and moreover the presentation of her sexualized body, is to make the “interior conditions” of fantasy into the reality of its exterior performance. Her white, shiny exterior may be slick and impenetrable, yet it is also easily stripped away when the male (and the complicit viewer’s) erotic imagination demands it. Furthermore, the white, scene-defining garment seems immanently disposable; it doubles her role as a potentially temporary commodity brought into being by an especially male and heterosexual means of fantasy production.

As we return to the scene of the windswept rocks at the seaside, Lorna meets up with Bella Olga (Nathalie Nort), and they drive back to the countess’s villa for their tryst. Like Lorna, Bella is clad in a white outfit whose color suggests virginity and whose design suggests carnal possibility; though Bella’s dress is as pristine as a bridal gown, the cutouts that grace either side accentuate her hips and breasts in a way that is unmistakably meant to align the viewer’s perspective with that of an implied male gaze that evaluates the sexual promise to come in this scene. The fact that both Bella and Lorna are neatly doubled in their choice of garments that imply both chasteness and voluptuousness gestures toward the continued confusion of where to place a woman on the madonna/whore axis that intends to sort the generic category of “woman” into its proper binary position.

Costuming is the major vehicle for thematic delivery in this scene. As the women spill out of Bella’s red Mercedes and walk toward the countess’s chateau, Bella remarks, “Oh, it’s a place for fantasies.”24 In fact, this location is a place for fantasies—specifically a place for the projection of a heterosexual fantasy centered on what sexual relations between women might look like; that lesbian desire is simply a fantasied role that women can slip into and out of to suit the projected fantasies of men is underlined by a sequence in which the women take stock of the antique costumes that Lorna has collected and placed in her private gallery. Costumes such as these always already suggest a performance and a performance further suggests an audience. Indeed, the variety of costumes available in Lorna’s collection belies that women are expected to inhabit a multitude of fantasized roles in order to keep a man sexually satisfied. In this scene, Succubus recalls the tenor of the relationship between the actress Sybil Vane and the libidinal imagination of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s famous novel; in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Dorian’s appreciation of his lady love is predicated on her ability to satiate a desire for artistic presentation that conflates the aesthetic with the erotic.

For the men in Succubus and the implied viewer watching Succubus, as it was for Dorian, an “ordinary” woman simply will not suffice. To reach the maximum thrill of variety the heterosexual male imagination requires a woman who can be all things that the imagination is capable of conjuring—she must be pliable enough to become a Rosalind, an Imogen, Brode_WEB.indb 105

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a Juliet, and a Desdemona as easily as she changes costume among a pre-chosen array of roles and erotic expectations. The presence and purpose of the costumes in this scene—which both women wear prior to unveiling themselves from them—marks the line between women who are “ordinary” and women who “appeal to one’s imagination.”

Of course, that boundary line also divides women who are in control of their own personal agency and identity from those who have been asked to capitulate (as Lorna has in the previous scene) to identification with a sense of self constructed solely from the tropes and conventions of male fantasy. (Tellingly, at first Bella mistakes the room containing Lorna’s costumes for her bedroom—though it is as intimately connected with the sexual act as any boudoir could ever hope to be.) Furthermore, as a prelude to the sexual act between these two women, the donning of costumes from this gallery discloses the artificiality of this particular lesbian encounter. That is, desire for another woman is simply another garment that can be tried on—especially if it is an elaborate scenario put on for an appreciative male audience. And this scene is unarguably staged for a male audience—to don their new costumes Bella and Lorna must first disrobe each other despite being, we assume, capable of dressing and undressing themselves.

The lack of sexual agency is further emphasized in this scene in an exchange of surreal dialogue between Lorna and Bella. Bella asks if Lorna has ever loved another woman; Lorna replies, “I love everything and everyone who reflects Lorna Green. Anyone who mirrors her.”25 While this statement could be taken as a self-affirmation or a narcissistic excla-mation, the deadpan affect with which the line is delivered reveals that it is a statement that arrives without personal investment; rather, “Lorna Green” is erased as a person within that statement and replaced with a generic category of “Lorna Green”—a variable category that expresses a mythologically sexually dexterous womanhood without individual content or inner life. Franco’s choice to name his central succubus “Lorna Green” itself alludes to this, as “Lorna Green” is a categorical woman who reappears under a different guise in his Lorna, the Exorcist (1974) and as the name of an actress in Macumba sexual (1983) and La noche de los sexos abiertos (1983). The various “Lorna Greens” that the countess mentions (each assigned an exotic locale to differentiate them) exist not as singular women bound by a shared name, but as a series of erotic doppelgangers tailored to what can only be a parade of fantasied sexual scenarios attached to a projected “Lorna Green.” In fact, Franco chooses to explicitly announce this within the film by inserting a cutaway to Ralf, who interrupts the women undressing and caressing each other by directly addressing the presumably male viewer. “My dear friend,” he says mockingly, “these impulses not controlled by your unconscious show very serious modalities. I’ll explain that to you some other time. However, Brode_WEB.indb 106

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you’ve got to get over these odd fantasies; it’s quite schizophrenic.”26 Any pretense that this scene displays anything other than the “schizophrenic”

“odd fantasies” of the heterosexual male “unconscious” are obliterated by this simple interjection. More importantly, this direct address to the viewer is prescriptive; the suggestion that the viewer “must get over”

their fantasies points to a didactic reading of the film that promises to become more emphatically evident (“I’ll explain that to you some other time”) toward the film’s conclusion.

Now that both women are attired in historical costumes, Lorna begins to inhabit a sexual role that includes and assimilates the conventions of a particular formula of gothic terror—she becomes a vampiric woman who preys on other women. The vampire-woman who makes victims of her own sex has a long history in myth, literature, and film; in this new role (again one constructed purely from male fantasy) Franco combines the literary representations of lesbian vampirism found in works such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel (1797, 1800) and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), early erotic vampire cinema such as Roger Vadim’s Et mourir de plaisir (1960) and Camillo Mastrocinque’s La cripto e l’incubo (1964), and the legends surrounding Elizabeth Báthory—the supposed “Blood Countess” of Hungary.27 As the scene progresses, the desire for the former gives way to the latter; Bella languidly works her way up Lorna’s recumbent form, pausing suggestively around her waist before heading due north, only to have her romantic embraces met with Lorna bashing her head with a conveniently placed sculpture.

The lust for a woman’s touch, then, gives way to a lust for bloodshed as Lorna fulfills the role of the subservient vampire femme fatale who both seduces and kills for the pleasure of a voyeuristic man who looks on in rapt attention as the proceedings unfold according to his fantasy.

Quick cuts to the hypnotic Pierce staring straight ahead, his face an impossible-to-read mask, act as almost subliminal reminders that this is a scene that is viewed as opposed to a scene that unravels according to the agency of its players. Unfortunately for Bella, one blow to the head is not enough to appease the violence demanded by this fantasy. As she attempts to escape the castle the mannequins used to display Lorna’s costumes come to life and encircle Bella around an impassable door.

Lorna appears among the mannequins; at first glance, her appearance is easy to miss because she is strategically placed as just another animate object among those that entrap Bella. Lorna is as blank-faced and as directed by an unseen puppet master as the mannequins. In essence, this is the scene’s final reminder about Lorna’s lack of activated self-interest throughout Succubus’s lesbian interlude; she is as much a figuration of fantasized male projection as the uncanny mannequins that have no will—save the one that constructs and rationalizes their movements at this phantasmagoric moment in the film.

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Lorna emerges from the throng of mannequins; she has replaced the sculpture with which she previously attacked Bella with the horror-film phallic symbol of choice: a very long and very sharp dagger. Making sure that the phallic nature of the weapon does not go unnoticed, Bella’s cries are transformed through the use of reverberation and echo into cries of orgasmic bliss. In a reversal of the conventional “Final Girl” trope identified by Carol J. Clover, Lorna is not imbued with masculine agency to be transformed into a survivor, but instead to function as the proxy of male sexual power by being transmogrified into a penetrating killer.28 The final shift in this scene isn’t toward identification with female agency; rather, it encourages further identification with the implied male gaze. Since the scene’s titillating lesbian content has run its course, it is free to discard Bella by means of a silencing penetration. Indeed, since Bella was the willful initiator of a sexual act that did not include men (despite its paradoxical performance for male enjoyment) there is a certain fetishistic logic according to which she must be disposed of in a manner that reestablishes the primacy of male presence within the sexual act. In effect, Bella’s death comes as a punishment for an imagined transgression that was allowed and condoned within the scope of the male fantasy that desired its enactment in the first place.

As the scene closes Lorna kisses the lips of one the mannequins, completing the circle of identification between the fantasized vampiric countess and the inert representation of an ideal female form. As Lorna caresses the breasts and traces the contours of another mannequin’s hips in a dumb-show version of the earlier projected lesbian fantasy, her head is cocked at an odd angle—she is a mere turn of the head from looking at the film’s viewer, as if she is aware that she has found her rightful place within the erotic imaginings that underpin the scene. In the end, this scene is a bildungsroman writ small; though she begins this sequence of scenes possessing a modicum of individuation, what Lorna has learned is that she must subjugate her identity and agency to a set of male desires and heterosexual expectations that are already present and already informing who and what she can be—even if the benefactor of that act of subjugation remains largely unseen. Lorna emerges from this scene in the posture of a broken and lifeless mannequin. Her limbs are splayed at odd angles and she is surrounded by the half-forms of display models.

This image is powered, in a real sense, by vampiric logic: Lorna now recognizes that she must be utterly drained of personhood by a vampiric male heterosexuality even if it means becoming a vampire herself in the process. As she searches underneath one of the mannequins she finds the blood of a woman that she herself has spilled. She turns the mannequin over to discover that it has Bella’s likeness. Confronted by the end results of her capitulation to male fantasy, Lorna is horrified and runs away from the scene of the crime—and into the waiting arms of the man who Brode_WEB.indb 108

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has helped collaboratively orchestrate her transformation into a vampiric femme fatale for his own sexual benefit.

3. FAUSTINE: SUCCUBUS RAMPANT

Now that she has acted out the projected fantasy of a lesbian encounter that concludes with a reifying murder to reassert the primacy of violent penetration, Lorna’s process of becoming vampire is apparently complete—at least to the satisfaction of the men who have been altering her subjectivity throughout the film. Indeed, in the previously discussed scene, she has achieved a Báthory-esque sexuality. Her potential to be fitted to the role of a “Blood Countess” has been referenced repeatedly in Succubus by her mysterious title as Countess Lorna Green. However, most figurations of Báthory-esque vampiric sexuality attach a level of depraved agency to the fictionalized countess’s actions; the Blood Countess kills to preserve her beauty by bathing in the pure life-fluid of virgins, or simply because it brings her sexual pleasure. Despite its grotesqueness and cruelty, that degree of female agency runs contrary to what the men desire from Lorna’s performance as an idealized vampire-woman. They would prefer their succubus to be a docile body orchestrated by the heterosexual imagination and sanctioned by the male gaze, but by interpolating Lorna into an erotic-symbolic regime that imbues her with the intensity of what Freud calls “the struggle between Eros and Death, between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction” they have literally created a monster that is rampantly beyond their control.29 As much as the processes by which Lorna becomes vampire have functioned as a way to civilize the discontents of her erotic potential for a male audience, they also conversely activate a dissolution of the gendered binary of penetrated and penetrator in a way that both colludes with and magnifies the unbreak-able connection between Eros and Thanatos.

All along, Lorna’s becoming vampire has operated to make the sadistic and masochistic fantasies imbricated in the initial scene of torture more real and therefore transcendent beyond the confines of the erotic imagination. As Deleuze notes, this is the usual course of fantasies that proceed along sadomasochistic lines because they are “a powerful force of paranoid projection” that necessarily “transforms the fantasy into an instrument of a fundamental and sudden change in the objective world.”30 Indeed, the reality of Lorna’s transformation into a true succubus is tested when she is asked to repeat the performance of the film’s opening sequence—but this time with a fundamental difference intended to confirm the reality of her becoming-vampire. Clad in the same black outfit and wielding the same phallic tools she used in the film’s initial scene, Lorna duplicates the libidinal torture of the same actor and actress Brode_WEB.indb 109

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from the prior performance of the earlier Grand Guignol spectacle. Except, this time, the performance does not end in the admission of its artificial nature; instead, the vampire-woman’s caresses are not part of an act performed for an audience, but are the enactment of a double homicide that signals the completeness of Lorna’s identification with a role that has eclipsed her personal identity.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that Lorna has been subsumed in a role imposed on her by the manipulations of the male characters in Succubus, the newly minted vampire-woman cannot be allowed to exist once she has fulfilled her erotic purpose in making that fantasy into a deadly reality. Franco’s film is clear that the vampiric logic implicit in this becoming requires that Lorna be disavowed regardless of her success at meeting the sexual expectations set out for her. There are both explicit and implicit reasons for this. As explicitly stated by William, now that Lorna has fulfilled the projected fantasy of the truly fatal femme fatale, the male imagination has grown bored with that flavor of eroticism and has wandered on to fresher fantasies; “You have to change things every day,” he says, to escape becoming “outmoded.” Curiously, Franco uses the rest of this conversation to connect the idea of sexual boredom to his craft and art. “Films are outmoded, don’t you agree?” William asks before pointing out that “They’re shown three months after they’re made.” A fantasy, like a film, once “shown” loses the power of its making—its process of becoming. The moment a fantasy becomes real is like the moment a film is released; it loses its molecularity and is diminished as a known quantity.

The men in the film also lose interest in their succubus because the stereotyped male erotic imagination featured within it is intrinsically infantile. Although the nexus of fantasies attached to Lorna’s becoming-vampire pleasurably rehearse a combination of anti-Oedipal desires (the Báthory-esque Lorna is a disavowal of the nurturing mother, the helpless-ness of the restrained male actor is a rebuke of the Oedipal father, etc.) the arousal they create as they approached actuality is dispersed the moment they attain concrete reality. Lorna’s sexuality is only ever gauged as an exciting potentiality; when the vampire-woman arrives fully formed and erotically activated, she represents a threat to the Ego in what Barbara Creed refers to as an instance of panic in reaction to the possibility of a

“phallic mother.”31 While the male heterosexual imagination that calls Lorna into being as a vampire-woman is responsible for her transgressive existence, it cannot parse or accept a woman unbounded from the usual psycho-sexual semiotics of phallologocentrism, castration, and physically gendered difference. (This is, of course, the tinge of paranoia that Deleuze detects within sadomasochistic fantasies.)

As the blond cabaret performer states as part of her beatnik-gymnastic routine, “Man is just a child.”32 The infantile demands of the collective male imaginations at work in Succubus demand that Lorna be stripped of the Brode_WEB.indb 110

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dangerously masculine and penetrative agency she has acquired through the processes of becoming vampire and reinserted into an archetypal wounded female subjectivity. Lorna’s murderous cabaret performance is to be her last; William and Pierce have arranged for her to be shot after she demonstrates the totality of her vampiric sexuality. As a vampire-woman, she threatens the internalized hegemony of gender precisely because she is a phallic mother who has “mutated beyond fixed gender oppositions,”

and could represent the beginnings of “new assemblages” that combine the masculine and feminine—and are potentially better than both.33 The method of her assassination is calculated to bring her in line with psycho-sexual expectations about the female body and its subordinate role as a flawed, lacking embodiment of subjectivity. The bleeding bullet holes with which William and Pierce hope to end the reality of the vampire-woman recall the vaginally symbolic “gaping wound” that defines the loss of agency associated with castration anxieties. In effect, her proposed death would relegate Lorna to her “correct” (and abject) identity through the violent imposition of figurative genital reassignment.34

Indeed, among the multitude of appellation-metaphors attached to Lorna is the designation that she is a “Faustine.”35 Yet, she can never correspond to the male Faust of myth and literature on an exact, one-for-one basis because she is a woman. Where the male Faust conjures Me-phistopheles to do his bidding, Succubus’s Faustine is herself a demonic vampire conjured by men to do their erotic bidding. In the usual Faustian bargain, as recorded by Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the conjurer must be dragged to Hell by the consequences of his own hubris; tampering with the order of things, of summoning forth a demon to satiate fleeting desires, is a project doomed to disaster. Once brought into being by the processes of becoming vampire, our Blood Countess runs rampant.

Pierce’s attempt to kill Lorna occurs off-camera, but she escapes him and she kills him (or so we’re left to assume since we hear gunshots) with his own gun—once again appropriating a deadly phallic symbol and turning it upon a man to inflict upon his body the feminizing wounds meant to reaffirm her place as a docile subject of the male erotic imagination.

Furthermore, in a scene that doubles the early sequence in which William was unable to achieve an erection in response to Lorna’s striptease, he again discovers that she has let herself into his apartment. Dispensing with the formality of burlesque revelation, this time she awaits him in the nude. The succubus is triumphant; she makes sexual demands—her

“Come here” and “Kiss me” are imperative commands that William fears to forestall.36 Of course, her kiss is but a prelude to her sliding the phallic stiletto into his neck. Symbolically castrated through near-decapitation, William has become the feminized victim of the phallic Faustine. Lorna rolls his inert body off of hers, discarding him in an ambivalent gesture Brode_WEB.indb 111

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that answers his own plans to rid himself of the vampire-woman. By giving her a taste for the interplay between blood and eroticism, the men in Succubus have given her a taste of their own fantasizing power—a power that sends tremors of subjectivity-altering consequences into the order of the real—and it is intoxicating. Nevertheless, it is a fatal intoxication for all involved. In the film’s final sequence, Pierce, who was not killed in a firefight with Lorna, as we might have surmised, leads the countess back to her castle where she may “sleep” and be damned, for the death (over) drive which she now perilously embodies is—and must remain—the “demonic and diabolical” antidote to the male heterosexual imagination and all those who are consumed by it.37

NOTES

1. Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956–1984 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 92.

2. Tatjana Pavlović, Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies: Spanish Culture from Francisco Franco to Jesús Franco (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 108. See also Joan Hawkins, “The Anxiety of Influence: Georges Franju and the Medical Horror Shows of Jess Franco,” in Horror Film Reader, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight, (2000), 195–202.

3. Tohill and Tombs, Immoral Tales, 94.

4. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 233.

5. Succubus, DVD, directed by Jesús Franco (1968; Germany: Aquila Film Enterprises: Blue Underground, 2006).

6. Succubus.

7. Succubus.

8. Gilles Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty,” in Masochism (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 72.

9. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3

(Autumn 1975): 6–7.

10. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, trans. David McLintock (New York: Penguin, 2003), 139–41.

11. Succubus.

12. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977), 135–69.

13. Linda Williams, “When the Woman Looks,” in The Dread of Difference, ed.

Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 15. See also Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection,” in The Dread of Difference, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 35–64; Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chainaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 166–230; Raymond Lefevre, “From Brode_WEB.indb 112

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Voyeurism to Infinity,” in Horror Films Reader, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight, 2000), 87–93; Judith Halberstam, S kin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 138–60.

14. Succubus.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Creature from the Black Lagoon, DVD, directed by Jack Arnold (1954; USA: Universal, 2007).

21. Phyllis A. Roth, “Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” in Dracula, by Bram Stoker, ed. Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal (New York: Norton, 1997), 414.

22. Bram Stoker, Dracula (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 306.

23. Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London: Continuum, 2004), 3.

24. Succubus.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Interview with the Vampire (New York: Limelight, 1997), 97–102.

28. Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, 35–41.

29. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: Norton, 1989), 756.

30. Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty,” 72–73.

31. Creed, “Horror and Monstrous-Feminine, “ 59–63; see also Sigmund Freud,

“The Infantile Genital Organization (An Interpolation into the Theory of Sexuality,” in On Sexuality, trans. James Strachey (London: Penguin, 1977), 307–12 and Sigmund Freud, “Medusa’s Head,” in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 202–9.

32. Succubus.

33. Anna Powell, Deleuze and Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 79.

34. Barbara Creed, The Monstrous Feminine: Women in the Horror Film (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1993), 52–53 and Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 54–55.

35. Succubus.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

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Girls will be girls: In The Vampire Lovers , Millarca (Ingrid Pitt) seductively plays with her latest upper-class victim (Madeline Smith). Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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7

Heritage of Hammer

Carmilla Karnstein and the

Sisterhood of Satan

Douglas Brode

The great, unexpected success of Horror of Dracula (1958) led Michael Carreras and his studio to produce male-oriented vampire films, several starring Christopher Lee as the count. Nearly fifteen years later, with Dracula A.D. 1972, the public finally began to weary of the formula.

Though Brides of Dracula (1960) had proven popular, only during the 1970s did Hammer seriously shift to the succubus with an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla. As had been the case with Dracula, its popularity spawned a rash of sequels.

“THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE”:

THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) AND THE LESBIAN VAMPIRE

Considered from one perspective, The Vampire Lovers (from this point referred to as Vampire Lovers) might seem the final swingin’ sixties celebration of nudity. In light of female flesh revealed in abundance the film could easily be mistaken for a Playboy production. Simultaneously, Vampire Lovers might be thought of as ahead of its time, if from a notably patriarchal point of view. Clearly influenced by the emergence of feminism, Vampire Lovers raises issues pertaining to the women’s movement only to appear openly hostile to its ideology. Sisterhood is portrayed as dangerous and destructive to the females that it purported to speak for. While this seemingly modest work of soft-core erotica does proffer a cautionary fable against the heart, soul, and mind-set essential to emergent 1970s feminism, however unintentionally, several basic themes of the women’s movement are, ironically enough, forwarded by the text.

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A male bias exists as to the team of writer (Tudor Gates), director (Roy Ward Baker), and producer (Michael Carreras), as well as the gender of the original source’s author. Though in Carmilla Le Fanu allowed “Laura” to serve as the primary narrator, a frame exists around her recollections, as well as the other stories contained within In a Glass Darkly.1 The first and final words are reserved for a supposedly objective, obviously controlling male who places Laura’s subjectivity in “proper perspective” via Dr. Hesselius, a literary predecessor to Freud. Though not present in Vampire Lovers, an unnamed doctor (Ferdy Mayne) may be intended to represent him. The prologue focuses on Baron Joachim Von Hartog (Douglas Wilmer). Some forty years before the story proper opens, he hides in an ancient castle, planning to kill vampires. His story appears a reworking of an incident from Le Fanu’s tale in which Baron Vordenburg explains his attempt to enact just such vengeance for previous attacks on his younger sister. As Von Hartog crouches in darkness, a demon returns from attacks on villagers. This thing seeks the cover of its shroud, a variation on Dracula’s need to return to his crypt. Von Hartog and we see a shrieking being as it circles wildly. In place of the expected hideous beast, this vampire turns out to be a beautiful girl (Kristen Betts); blond, young, seemingly nonthreatening.

She offers an extreme departure from such Theda Bara-ish dark beauties as Gloria Holden ( Dracula’s Daughter) and Barbara Steele ( Black Sunday).

Her only significant precedent is Annette Stroyberg in Blood and Roses, an art-house item that the general audience attending Hammer’s genre piece in 1970 would most likely not have been exposed to.

The girl’s unexpected aura of innocence causes Von Hartog to abruptly pause. The momentary hesitation almost costs him his life; the vampire opens her mouth wide, revealing fangs. Von Hartog recovers just in time to decapitate her. Like so many movies to follow, Vampire Lovers is “about” the disarming power of female beauty, particularly of the sort that Western culture posits as innocent in appearance, causing the would-be crusader to momentarily set aside caution in adhering to the ancient code of chivalry.2 At least, that is, until she reveals her true nature. Such behavior is exposed as a dangerous anchor to an earlier age.

As modernity approaches, women can no longer be assumed to embody what they “seem.” Though safely situated in a period piece setting, the film indicates, if indirectly, an abiding male attitude contemporary with the release of Vampire Lovers: a reactionary relationship to yet-emergent feminism in the era’s art, letters, and politics.

When Jeanine Rejaunier coined the term “the beauty trap” during the 1970s, she intended that phrase as a warning to fellow females.3 Modern feminism posited beauty as a dangerous pit for women, rendering them vulnerable to the men who observed (and, in the process of gazing, disempowered) females.4 The parallel warning in Hammer’s horror films is Brode_WEB.indb 116

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to an assumed male spectator: female beauty, reaching back in Western culture to Eve in Eden and, in the unexpurgated Bible, Lilith, unfairly empowers women by allowing them an effective means of entrapping men.

As in the Genesis archetype, which reoccurs with regularity, to survive, man must be wary of beautiful women, whose charms are a masquerade under which evil may be concealed. In a bizarre irony, then, this film’s positing of beauty as disempowering both to men and those women who do not possess this quicksilver prize might be viewed as less than antithetical toward feminism.

The first act opens four decades later (1790) with a shift in style. The prologue’s color-gothic gives way to a realistic vision of a baronial estate. What With equal rights come equal responsibilities: Like Christopher Lee as Dracula before her, Millarca (Ingrid Pitt) must pay the final price of a stake through the heart, wielded once again by the indomitable Peter Cushing. Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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follows is a dramatization of the novella’s backstory. A grand affair (though not, as in the source, a costume ball) at the home of General Von Spielsderf (Peter Cushing) and his niece Laura (Pippa Steele) (Bertha in Le Fanu), is interrupted by a sudden arrival of the countess (Dawn Addams) and her daughter, Mircalla (Ingrid Pitt). One mature and dark like Lilith, the other as young and bright as Eve, they create an aura of awe for all attending men and women, spectacular beauty augmented by their aristocratic heritage.

As in the novella, the countess receives a faux message calling her away.

She accepts the general’s chivalric offer (he wears full-dress uniform, signifying allegiance to the code) to allow Mircalla to remain as companion for his lonely niece. Here the Hammer team adds an element not found in Carmilla. The bearer, a black-and-red garbed mystery man (John-Forbes Robertson), previously was seen on horseback watching over the arrival of the two women and, in retrospect, bringing the male gaze into play. While seeming to serve the women, he actually rules the roost. Only gradually do we sense that he, behind the scenes, is in charge. By consciously adding such a figure to the dramatic (and thematic) mix, Vampire Lovers implies even a sisterhood of Satan, self-sufficient in Le Fanu, will in the Hammer version ultimately be lorded over by a male patriarch.

As with other Hammer horror items, another theme has been introduced that defines their canon: the idea of class via a depiction of the reigning, if fast-fading, aristocracy as either well-meaning but hopelessly naive or wicked, parasitic, and feeding on the working people—vampires even when nonfantastical. In Hammer’s 1970s Carmilla variations, this more often than not is embodied by the female of the species, beginning with the aristocratic girl in the prologue. Before von Hartog confronts that disarming vamp, she feasted on a man who unwisely stepped out of a local inn. He meant nothing to her whatsoever, existing purely as prey: food, nourishment to allow her to continue her existence. If this held true only for male victims of female vampires, we might believe that some sexual politics were being forwarded: such succubus figures show contempt for male victims but engage in more complex relationships with female victims. Though the latter does indeed shortly occur, first with Laura and then Emma (Madeline Smith), the film’s equivalent to Laura in Le Fanu, Mircalla will be seen stalking a poor village girl. Mircalla feeds off her precisely as she did the earlier lad. This sequence, played in a dreamy, surreal manner, recalls a similar stalking sequence in Blood and Roses, suggesting that this is a common genre trope rather than a peculiarity specific to the house of Hammer.

What separates Mircalla’s victims, then, has less to do with gender considerations than social status. A tender, loving death is visited only upon women, at least in this film, though strictly to fellow women of the ruling class. In her awareness of her aristocratic status, she will treat only other elites to a slow, deadly seduction rather than a sharp rape and murder.

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contained within the normal society. In both cases depicted, the countess and Mircalla pick and choose not only upscale beauties but, more specifically, those lacking a strong mother figure to nourish them. Following the ball, Mircalla leaves the young swains and Laura as well, and proceeds into night’s shroud wearing her bright red gown, to meet the mystery man. The precise nature of this encounter will not be explained. Sexual or not (certainly the viewer imposes his or her own worst fears and darkest desires onto the unknown coupling), what they enjoy constitutes some form of evil released in nature; not William Wordsworth’s romantic cel-ebratory bouts of “Splendor in the grass” and “Glory in the flower,”5 but more on the order of what Joseph Conrad warned his readers to avoid at all costs: “The Horror! The Horror!” found in the heart of darkness.6

That beauty is a theme rather than merely a given in the context of this film-text is established immediately. At the ball Mircalla is fascinated to note that one man, and one alone, does not turn away from his own female companion to gaze upon the fascinating stranger. Well-groomed men flock about her, but not Carl Ebhardt (Jon Finch), Laura’s fiancé, which explains why, among all the others, he alone intrigues Mircalla.

How dare he not make a fool of himself? Doesn’t he likewise possess male eyes for gazing? Why then doesn’t he fall into the spider’s web of her beauty? Carl, however, will have none of it. This renders him dangerous to la belle dame sans merci. Also suggested here is support for one aspect of feminist theory: The best man is the enlightened one who rejects the supremacy of beauty as a means of assessing a woman’s worth.

The issue of class is again raised by his very character. Clearly, Carl is not born to the aristocracy. Employed by this family, albeit in a high-level capacity, Carl is upper-middle class. If the story were set a half century earlier, it’s altogether possible the general would perceive such a union as less than fitting for his privileged daughter. That was then; this, now. The main story here must be understood against its historical backdrop: a Europe in the process of immense social upheaval.7 The industrial revolution was even then readying to burst upon the scene;8 the common man, in the then-occurring French Revolution, aspired to rise up from previous ongoing poverty.9 If the aristocracy’s patriarchy previously would accept for marriage to a daughter only a blueblood, now such an upwardly mobile young man as Carl must, if reluctantly, be seriously considered for that honored position.10

What follows might best be described as full dramatization of the novella’s backstory. Mircalla befriends Laura, who soon suffers terrible dreams in which she is menaced by a huge cat. Her nocturnal fears are depicted in black and white, yet another reference to the Vadim film of a decade earlier. “I shall never leave you,” Mircalla promises Laura, even as the girl’s health fails. “My dearest love.” Importantly, Mircalla’s tone of voice rings with fascinating ambiguity. On the one hand, she is the seducer of innocent youth, saying precisely what the child-woman Brode_WEB.indb 119

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wants/needs to hear. Yet there seems some sincerity in Mircalla’s delivery. We aren’t certain whether she means what she says or is a first-rate performer. Perhaps the character herself does not fully know. Clearly, the female aristocrat Laura brings out a true tenderness in Mircalla, even though that masks the victim’s oncoming murder.

If the cachet of class cannot protect Laura, it signifies that her passing will occur only after a perverse seduction. Here, the presence of Pitt as the vampire woman must be brought into consideration. At first glance Pitt appears, no matter how beautiful, too mature for the part. The actress, at age thirty-three, was far more advanced in years than the schoolgirl of Le Fanu’s tale. However, we ought to keep in mind that Vampire Lovers, though inspired by “Carmilla,” must stand on its own as a work, with an agenda and identity. And in this radically altered variation on the source, Pitt proves to be precisely what the concept calls for. Still young enough to be alluring, she is also mature enough to suggest not only sisterhood with Laura but, beyond that, a hint of the mother as well. In the film, Mircalla is both older mentor and childlike companion to Laura, which perfectly sets up the second story involving Mircalla’s next intended victim.

In the novella, that character is called Laura; in the film, Emma. As Vampire Lovers segues into Act Two, Spielsdorf, Carl, and the well-intentioned doctor are momentarily left behind. Not, however, before they form a patriarchal triad which, through chivalric behavior, attempts to prevent Laura’s death. Carl rides like a young knight errant to bring the doctor to the manor.

In so doing, he assumes the role of traditional prince-rescuer.11 Despite such a valiant effort, they are too late to save this girl. But the men do note the bite marks, even as Mircalla mysteriously disappears. However modern the scientifically inclined doctor may be, he now knows—as do his fellow crusaders—that vampirism remains alive (if that is the correct term) in their world. The men’s failure to save Laura only convinces all that they must not allow this to occur again. If they are updated knights, then virginal aristocratic females are reimagined holy grails in an ever-more-secular society.12

The following sequence more or less mirrors the book’s primary narrative. The countess and Mircalla are involved in a coach accident outside the home where Roger Morton (George Cole) and his daughter Emma mourn for the loss of her friend. As the countess must, once again, press on quickly, Mircalla, now called Carmilla, is invited into their stately home. However handsome, it cannot compare to the splendor of the general’s estate. Nor does Morton appear in almost regal garb, associated with a more glorious past, which the general strutted about in. Morton is very much a man of the moment: upper-middle class, belonging to a relatively new social stratum. Ancient bloodlines are giving way to a new elite based on business acumen.13 Morton is accepted by the Spielsdorf family as worthy of their company in this modern paradigm. The great question is whether Mircalla/Carmilla will feel about Morton’s virgin daughter as she did for the general’s blueblood niece.

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Essentially: will Carmilla perceive Emma as worthy of a slow seduction? Or will she treat Emma as she did the commoners? The film raises, as Le Fanu’s novella did not, the issue of an altering social situation.

Immediately it becomes clear that Carmilla (always overseen by the mysterious stranger, silent and at a distance) is more than willing to adjust.

She woos Emma with the identical words and actions earlier reserved for Laura. The last of a long line has finally been used up and the vampire, if she is to survive in an evolving new world order, must now lower her once-fixed standards or go under herself.

Here, though, the filmmakers add yet another character to the ensemble: the governess, Mme. Perrodot (Kate O’Mara). She is a mature yet youngish and beautiful woman hired by Morton to care for lonely, vulnerable Emma.

In a smart casting move, the actress playing the governess bears an almost uncanny resemblance to Pitt’s Carmilla. Both are fully grown females, with a hint of something strange beneath the surface of their perfect features and placid poses. Yet we sense a key difference, too. If Pitt incarnates the aristocratic mien of casual European elegance, Mme. Perrodot is middle class, and Irish to boot. Her sophistication is clearly learned; she must always step lightly so as not to reveal her base bloodline. For her, the position of governess represents a major step up. For Carmilla, the true (if decadent) aristocrat, Mme. Perrodot is but a climber, desperate to achieve a higher form of status.

A key genre convention had been established in Blood and Roses: the vampire princess competing with a “normal” female for a conventional male.14 Here, that cliché is undermined. From the moment Carmilla arrives, a glint in Mme. Perrodot’s eyes reveals she feels threatened by this potential rival for Emma. As Carmilla’s cautious seduction of the girl begins, Mme. Perrodot initially serves as protector, playing that assigned role for her oft-absent patriarch. Carmilla knows precisely how to handle that. Her beauty, early on established as pan-sexual, now works its spell on the governess. Though Mme. Perrodot may be naive enough to believe Carmilla cares for her (as Carmilla truly did for Laura and now does for Emma), her pretentions to sophistication hardly impress Carmilla. Despite hints as to a relationship, Carmilla perceives the governess as she did the common women and men from town: temporal nourishment.

With Morton called away, and young Carl Ebhardt rejected when he arrived to try and protect Emma as he earlier hoped to save Laura, Vampire Lovers suffers from a vacuum that must at once be filled. Required by the narrative line is some patriarchal figure. Rising to the occasion, Renton (Harvey Hall), a loyal family servant, initially thwarts not only Carmilla but the governess, now under the vampire’s power. Though inferior in class even to the governess, Renton employs his traditional male sense of automatic authority, ordering servant girl Gretchin (Janet Key) to do his bidding. Renton keeps a crucifix and a garlic-like concoction of healthy plants beside the ever feebler Emma. Morton’s undoing will result from his subscribing to the way of all (male) flesh (almost all, considering Carl): a Brode_WEB.indb 121

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weakness for beautiful women. While at the village inn he, so somber at the estate, laughs vulgarly, grabbing the backside of a serving wench. Carmilla only has to pick Renton as her next victim, employing his gaze to her benefit; the gaze rendering him, not her, powerless. In their seduction scene, the film plays a Hitchcockian turnabout on its unwary audience. Renton is an unpleasant looking fellow, Carmilla beautiful as ever. Most viewers, female or male, want her to win, hope she will destroy him and achieve her ends. We too fall under the spell of Carmilla’s beauty, falsely assuming, as the poet John Keats put it:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty;

That is all ye know, and all ye
need to know.15

If Carmilla’s beauty contains a kind of truth, it is of a most terrible order, implicitly speaking to the shallowness of both women and men who refuse to reject the gaze. Another poet comes to mind, here a twentieth-century bard. William Butler Yeats articulated a contemporary world swept toward disaster:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.16

Carmilla is, if unconsciously, an anarchist, the pre-Christian cabalistic creature who, on the surface, plays the social game, doing so in hopes of destroying civilization:

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and

Everywhere the ceremony of innocence

Is drowned.17

Sadly, “The Second Coming” will not, as hoped for, be the return of gentle Jesus but something considerably older:

A shape with lion body and the head

Of man . . .18

That is, a female predator, following “twenty centuries of stony sleep”

returning to lure mankind, believing itself to be on the edge of far horizons, back into a moral bog:

And what rough beast, its hour come

Round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?19

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The answer: Carmilla Karnstein: Sphinx of Egypt, Lamia of the Greeks, Lilith of Western culture, takes full human form. Yet ever the lion, or serpent, inside. In the film, this force of female evil will be halted, if temporarily, by the company of men. Father figures and patriarchal aristocrats Spielsderf and Morton join not only with the doctor but young Carl to thwart Carmilla’s evil intent and save “the final girl.”

This can be accomplished only after realizing that the doctor’s command of science will only achieve its aims if logic is conjoined with its seeming opposite: full acceptance that old superstitions as to the supernatural have not, indeed cannot, be replaced by modernist thinking. Nietzsche’s fin de siècle insistence that the old gods are dead and that we have advanced (or retreated) to a vision beyond good and evil aside, The Beast yet remains on the prowl, most dangerous when she walks in beauty.20

For closure, Baron von Hartog (Baron Vordenburg in Carmilla) returns, elderly now, to join them by making clear the last truly aristocratic man still walking the earth is also dedicated to the righteous cause. Still, it is all but impossible to hate Carmilla. We too are seduced.

Her sense of sympathy for Laura and then Emma can touch us if only because she is so clearly touched by them and their plight: They must die for love if she is to live. A recurring motif has the bedridden Emma begging Carmilla to read Victorian-era romance novels to her. In each, a bold man rescues the princess and then carries her off to his castle where they will live fairy tale–like happily ever after. Carmilla scoffs as such silliness. “Don’t you wish some handsome man would come to you?” Emma asks. What Carmilla hopes to achieve is to replace that figure (here Carl) with her own self. Even if a receiver can find Carmilla’s desire sympathetic, the film contextualizes any alternative girl-girl relationship within its male point of view. Carl rides to the rescue at the last moment in a conventional (and uncritical, so far as the film is concerned) rendering of the rescue myth. The “silly” romantic fiction, adored by Emma if scoffed at by Carmilla, frames this reworking of Le Fanu’s tale.

By closing the piece with a traditional marital-minded couple, Hammer suggests that normalcy (i.e., patriarchal family values) has been reestablished. Yet a cross-cut does much to diminish any feelings of future stability. On the hillside, the mystery man astride his horse smiles wickedly. His already-forming plans would shortly be realized in the sequel. A male villain remains potent and ongoing in a way that the dominatrix female did not. The film’s final male gaze belongs to him: down at the complacent male company and the young female they intend to protect—and, in protecting, own. He has other plans.

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“THE CACHET OF CLASS”:

LUST FOR A VAMPIRE AND THE BISEXUAL FEMALE

Almost universally panned,21 Hammer’s second Karnstein film suffers from the hurried replacement of director Terence Fisher by Jimmy Sangster,22 a strong writer but with scant experience behind the camera. The film appears inexpensively done in comparison to its more elaborate predecessor. Worse, a pop song was added to the soundtrack that elicited giggles from the initial audience. Yet the casting of Swedish beauty Yutte Stensgaard, then twenty-four, satisfied Le Fanu purists who yearned for a childlike succubus. Returning screenwriter Tudor Gates brought a literate, even literary, sensibility to the work. To damn the piece with faint praise, in comparison to the least ambitious of sequels, which recycle elements of some previous hit, Lust for a Vampire takes the story in a disarmingly new direction, reinventing this series and the female vampire film.

Gates’s story structure rubs against the traditional grain that insists, as James B. Twitchell has noted, that “in the female version (of the vampire saga) the male victim is simply used and presumably forgotten.”23 To im-The second coming of Carmilla: Like her male counterparts in the genre, Carmilla (Yutte Stensgaard) proves vulnerable to the cross (wielded here by Ralph Bates) in Lust for a Vampire ; the difference is, as a beautiful woman, she possesses a power to combat that threat when cornered by a male adversary. Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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pose a structure on the works, Vampire Lovers can be posited as the first full-blooded lesbian-vampire film; the sequel offers a bisexual orientation.

Mircalla balances her relationships with other girls (sudden rape-murders for commoners and slow seductions for the high-status female victims) with her ongoing serious relationship with a man. Moreover, Mircalla here clearly appears incapable of developing any sentimental attachments to her lovely female victims. In this regard, the film’s original title might well be more appropriate to the piece: To Love a Vampire.24

The film opens in 1830, forty years following the previous movie, seven years before the Victorian era commenced. In an unspecified area of Europe, presumably the same geography in which Vampire Lovers occurred, a blond/buxom peasant girl (Kristen Lindholm) serves drinks at the inn to a local youth.

LOCAL BOY (passionately): Can I see you tonight?

PEASANT GIRL (coyly): Perhaps.

Clearly it is the female who calls all the shots while the larger vulnerable male is at the mercy of her whim. For him, at least, she is something of a fang-less vampire, if not interested in achieving his death then possibly la petite mort. Moments later, she steps out of the building into natural surroundings, Little Red Riding Hood–like, though her own peasant blouse is virginal white. She will not reach grandmother’s house or any safe haven. The stern gaze of the mysterious stranger (played by Mike Raven) is cast on her, the virginal (perhaps) victimizer of the village lad herself about to fall into an aristocrat’s trap. Though this recalls a similar sequence in Vampire Lovers, here familiarity does not breed contempt, owing to a variation on the theme. There, a male commoner, all but identical to the lad we see here, became the victim. By reversing genders, the filmmakers hint at this film’s altered point of view.

As in any good fairy tale, the peasant girl’s mistake is to wander off the main path. She does this the moment that she spots a handsome, expensive coach headed her way. As the driver (Christopher Lonniger) forces her out of the way while bringing the coach to a halt, she gazes in awe at the sight. Such female gazing will be as important here as the male gaze was to Vampire Lovers. Notably, it is not a beautiful person, male or female, that excites her but a status item. Any previous power present in her confrontation with someone of her own class, owing to her beauty, dissipates. As the door swings open and she is wordlessly invited in, the peasant girl giddily allows herself to become completely vulnerable. Inside sits a true aristocrat; Countess Karnstein (Barbara Jefford), her face hidden by an alluring hood.

No dialogue is necessary, as the girl’s face serves as a mirror. Her expression transforms from delight at being allowed in to a flush of thrill at an apparently imminent sexual encounter to sudden, abject horror.

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As expected, the camera’s point of view isn’t the victim’s but the victimizer’s. As in Vampire Lovers, sisterhood, in a 1970s sense—a bond between women that cuts across class and age—is by implication rendered nil. Though we have already noted a male overseer to this abduction via the Mystery Man, the immediate threat to the female victim is another woman. But the prologue is far from over. The overpowered peasant girl is carried inside Castle Karnstein, the Mystery Man now finally revealed to be Count Karnstein. This patriarch and his bride of blood perform a virgin sacrifice. As the black mass concludes, the girl’s blood drips from her sliced throat into a goblet. This bright red liquid is then applied by these decadent aristocrats to the skeleton of one of their own, soon to be revealed as the Carmilla of Vampire Lovers. Carmilla (seen from behind) rises from her crypt. Gates and Sangster effectively withhold what an audience most desires yet most fears to see. The dreaded image will be revealed in due time. What initially appears an overly exploitive sequence (extreme in its time) conveys the general theme of Hammer horror: The wicked upper class destroys the simple working class so as to continue to exist.

The First Act opens in the village, which, despite the time frame, appears absolutely medieval. Yet another pretty peasant girl, Trudi (Luan Peters), serves drinks to yet another young man. He, however, is no local. Richard La Strange (Michael Johnson), an aristocrat, is researching one of his scandalous books. Upon learning that he was born in Ireland but spent much time in London, the knowledgeable receiver grasps that he’s a stand-in for Sheridan Le Fanu.25 That however is but part of the character’s identity. When he offends villagers by daring to visit Castle Karnstein on a cursed day, Richard recalls Percy Byshe Shelley, doing much the same thing at the remains of Castle Frankenstein in 1814.26 The bawdiness of Richard’s tone, his cynical, cavalier manner of expressing

“sophistication” as to sexuality, draws on Lord Byron, George Gordon.27

Ultimately, Richard is the romantically inclined author in complete form.

If Richard’s attitude is romantic, his dramatic function tends toward the classic. Like tragic figures of the past, this film’s hero suffers from hubris.

Though he writes horror tales Richard shows no respect for ordinary people who take his work seriously. While he hopes to bed every young woman he meets, Richard is apparently incapable of a commitment to any woman. And if he appears “normal” at first sight—elegantly handsome, if in a superficial way, the nineteenth-century playboy incarnate—his very name hints at an out-of-the-ordinary identity. For Richard is, in truth,

“strange” in many regards, a kind of “other.” His flirtatious attitude toward Trudi, as well as the schoolgirls he encounters, leaves little doubt that Richard is a predator, a male vamp (in the Theda Bara sense, sans fangs) if not an outright fantastical vampire.

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As already mentioned, he is an aristocrat. In vampire lore, particularly Hammer’s, such status suggests vampirism. Still, Richard’s arrogance will give way to vulnerability as, entering the ancient castle, he finds himself surrounded by what appear to be the very beautiful but deadly virgin-vampires he earlier scoffed at. All at once he, the male sexual predator, finds himself in role reversal, fending off seeming female predators that sullenly emerge out of shadows. Until this phantasmagoria of dark sex and delightful death gives way when a patriarchal male voice exclaims: “Girls!” Now, appearance is replaced by reality. These are silly schoolgirls brought here on an educational trip by their teacher, Giles Barton (Ralph Bates) from a nearby finishing school. For the moment, tension is relaxed. Men are (seemingly) in power, women helpless, harmless creatures of beauty and light who follow older male “leaders.” Normalcy, or what passes for that in patriarchal society, is restored.

Intriguingly, then, the institution turns out to be a matriarchy. The owner, Miss Simpson (Helen Christie), will soon be introduced. First, though, we meet her assistant, Janet Playfair (Suzanna Leigh), she in the process of liberalizing the operation. While the girls still study the classics under Giles’s arch tutorial, our first image of the elegant old mansion that serves as the chief building here reveals nubile teenagers dancing under the midday sun. Janet introduces them to ancient pagan rhythms, now-forbidden movements associated with goddess cults (the “old faiths”).

She embodies the New Woman28 of the upcoming Victorian era, clearly having read the feminist pamphlets of Mary Wollstonecraft, arguing in favor of equality for women, including sexual equality.29 Again considering the period during which Lust for a Vampire was produced, she in context serves as an objective-correlative for the 1970s Women’s Movement. Indoors, the girls attempt to connect with everything Apollonian; outside, virgins celebrate the joys of Dionysian release, inspired by a young woman only a few years older than themselves.

Color symbolism reinforces this: the girls wear red or black sheaths, the colors linked to death and sexuality. Only the thirty-something teacher wears white. Her costume suggests an irony, since shortly Janet reveals herself to be experienced in a healthy sense, holding her body in reserve until certain that some fellow human being meets her standards, only then willing to share herself without reservation. As to the girls, they are trapped here between harsh conservatism from Giles and Miss Christie, and Janet’s own liberal-progressivism.

Momentarily, Janet appears something of a redo of Mme. Perrodot from Vampire Lovers, though she soon proves herself to be that character’s inverse: a believer in personal freedom, the only human who can’t be seduced by the soon-to-arrive vampire. Janet makes eye contact with Richard, though in no way does this suggest submissiveness or wantonness. She appears to Brode_WEB.indb 127

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be sizing him up as a potential lover, later deciding if he is worthy of her. It hardly speaks well of Richard, then, that he’s far more interested in Janet’s largely inexperienced students than this impressive woman. “Tell me about the girls!” he asks Giles. Upon hearing that he’s authored salacious books, Miss Simpson reacts in horror; after learning he’s the son of Lord Thurston, the status-minded dowager changes her tune. “Oh! Then you will always be welcome here.” She does add: “But not your books!” Not all her student-wards though are aristocratic. Susan Pelley (Pippa Steele) is the daughter of a wealthy American businessman, she living out the Daisy Miller dream of achieving sophistication via a European sojourn.30

Hardly a coincidence, the female vampires arrive almost simultaneous with the male vamp. Richard’s calculated plans for cold-blooded seduction end abruptly with his first sight of Mircalla. A child as well as an aristocrat, she appears younger in appearance than the other girls.

That, as well as an ancient bloodline, seemingly speak for themselves. Of course, just such an assumption, at heart false, will leave characters as diverse as Richard and Miss Simpson vulnerable. The impact Mircalla’s ethereal beauty has on Richard is worth considering. Previous cockiness and insincerity disappear. He is born again, not by lust (his feeling for every other attractive woman) but love, if of a dangerously obsessive order. Mircalla brushes by him, aware of Richard’s presence but, unlike the others, casual rather than attracted. Her lack of interest only whets his appetite, whereas Janet’s obvious enthusiasm at encountering a man she deems worthy of her diminishes Richard’s potential ardor. The male of the moment, 1970s style, appears threatened by a woman who dares to be as free and open about sexuality as himself.

For the time being, however, there remains confusion as to who the vampire may be. The seemingly “innocent” schoolgirls may live up to their earlier “act.” Conversations while readying to retire suggest something other than purity of mind or body:

STUDENT # 1: Mr. Barton is a nasty little man. Notice how he’s always watching while we dance?

STUDENT # 2: Who was that other man? He was handsome!

The possibility that one of the already-in-residence girls may be the film’s vampire is taken further still. Susan turns out to be Mircalla’s assigned roommate. No sooner are they alone than Susan offers to give the weary girl a rub-down. As Andrea Weiss has noted, lesbianism and vampirism often go hand in hand in popular culture from this period.31

Mircalla sweetly submits; Susan gradually allows her strokes to become ever more sensuous, and then leans down as if about to bite Mircalla’s neck. Janet arrives at the door, interrupting such activity, causing the girls to pull apart. Still, the look in Susan’s eyes suggests naughtiness. Later, Susan is spied, swimming alone in the pond. Is it possible that she slipped Brode_WEB.indb 128

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off to the village and drained a local girl in place of Mircalla, who joins her now for a nude moonlight swim?

Before a general audience unfamiliar with Le Fanu or even Vampire Lovers can shift its suspicions toward this latest arrival, another character is at once posited as a possible suspect: monstrous-looking Giles, skulk-ing about, observing their every action. His potential to be the villain was set up earlier when newcomer Richard visited Giles’s room, filled with ancient books, asking: “You practicing to be a vampire?” Shocked by that unexpected assertion, Giles laughed madly. The manipulated perception that Giles likely is the culprit will now be reinforced. After the sensuous swim, the camera assumes the predator’s point of view on Susan. Staring directly at the unseen figure drawing close, her face writhes in terror, even as we witnessed with each peasant girl. All seems clear enough: Susan’s body is dragged away and then dumped down the well by a character revealed, owing to his recognizable boots, as Giles.

Yet between the killing and disposal of Susan’s body, an intercut draws us back to the school. There, Richard confronts Mircalla outside of the classroom for the first time. Hubris has been replaced in his eyes, manner, and voice by a humility acquired owing to his experience of truly loving, if in the most self-destructive manner. The sickness of Richard’s obsession is equaled by sincerity. Like a swain in some romantic ballad, Richard tearfully speaks of “the pain of loving.” This is not hunger, even passion, but devotion, albeit of a blind order. During his first glimpse of Mircalla, Richard—lest we forget, a poet, if until now a decadent one—was stricken with a Gatsby-like vision of his dream girl come to life. He cannot know that, like Daisy Buchanan in the most famous American analysis of such

“romantic readiness” leading to intimate tragedy, the dream will step-by-step degenerate into a nightmare.32

Mircalla’s reaction to all of this? She appears horrified by Richard’s declaration, about to hurry by. Then, in a glorious moment, she pauses, albeit briefly, to stroke his cheek, while casting Richard an ambiguous glance. Could she also be in love? Or is she the cold, calculating vampire, playing with a male she now knows to be in her power? We will not know for certain until the finale; even then ambiguity will rule.

For the time being, Mircalla is so Disney Princess–like in appearance, Richard so perfect for the Prince Charming role, that an audience will likely watch the remainder of the film expecting a conventional fairy tale, hoping handsome Richard will undertake a Hero’s Journey, saving his lady fair.33 This convention, presented in a traditional manner at Vampire Lovers’ conclusion, will be undermined by what occurs next.

The transition between the first and second acts is facilitated by a midnight meeting Giles has arranged with Mircalla. Here we discover that Richard’s seeming opposite is actually his doppelgänger, as obsessed with Mircalla as is our hero. She, archetype of virgin beauty, floats toward Giles through the forest, across a low-traveling fog. He appears at Brode_WEB.indb 129

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first to be large, monstrous, the wicked predator who has lured a slight, sweet creature here. Giles is even garbed in black. But colors associated with the ongoing genre are deconstructed via a sudden reversal of expectations. Giles appears menacing as he closes in, cross held high, on the lovely, frightened girl-child. Then he inverts the cross to make clear he not only knows but relishes her true identity. A flashback at last reveals her to be the bloody figure that rose out of the ashes in the prologue. Act One’s dramatic approach—mystery; we encouraged to guess at the vampire’s identity—gives way to suspense. Mircalla unmasked, we can only wait for the hero to learn what the audience now knows.

How does one save a fair maid from the dragon when she turns out to be the one who breathes fire?

As Giles begs to be transformed into a vampire, his seeming strength giving way to submission, Mircalla’s expression also alters. She does indeed bite Giles, but not in the manner he’s hoping for: A slow, careful puncturing that would transform him into one of her own kind, he becoming her servant for eternity. This belle dame sans merci bites down ruth-lessly, using him all up in a feeding frenzy. As Giles expires, we realize that his previous hiding of Susan’s body had been an attempt to prove his potential value to Mircalla. Yet her look, attitude, and manner all suggest that she takes a cruel pleasure in denying him immortality. The question now: When such a confrontation comes, as it must, with Richard, will she also dispose of him, or make Giles’s foil a permanent prisoner of love?

A correlative scene occurs in Richard’s room where Janet employs Susan’s disappearance to confront him. Here her surname takes on full meaning, “Playfair” being a statement as to her values. Earlier, Janet dared risk her tony job by confronting Miss Simpson, who cares only about financial well-being and ongoing reputation. Janet is the single female in “the world” presented by this film who does truly believe in sisterhood, caring very much about those girls, on the order of an older sister. She takes on a motherly attitude (in a progressive sense of the term) that Miss Simpson ought to assume but is far too threatened to do.

Scandal be damned, so far as Janet cares. What happened to Susan? Who did this thing, and how can any further such acts be avoided? Moreover, as Richard now realizes Janet suspects Mircalla, he comes to see the good and decent woman as his enemy.

We must at least consider, then, the possibility that Richard sensed Mircalla was the vampire all along, and that rather than repel him, here is precisely what caused the obsession. Recall his look of disappointment when, in the castle, he learned that the approaching females were not of the succubus order but giddy girls. At once they became less appealing, if worthy still of his pedophile persuasion. If Richard sensed at once, then, that Mircalla is the real deal, his feelings for her (understood by Janet perhaps but certainly not by Richard himself) represent the desire for the fall, Brode_WEB.indb 130

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much as in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s less fantastically inclined thrillers.34

In such a scenario, he will, after facing proof positive of her guilt, not love her in spite of Mircalla’s obvious guilt but because of it.

“Strange love,” an ineffectual, anachronistic soft-rock ballad informs us.

The quality (or lack thereof) of the song and performance notwithstanding, here is the essence of what the movie is about, and the theme hardly seems antifeminist: the disastrousness of a “love” based purely on a male’s total commitment to a woman based primarily on physical beauty . (Janet too is beautiful, if less perfectly so, yet that is only one among many attributes, her others far more important in the long run). Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) in Hitch’s Vertigo (1956) comes to mind as Richard studies a painting of the ancient Carmilla, this work of art able to inform him, if only he would open his eyes and mind, as did that portrait of Carlotta open Scottie’s in the earlier film. Offered there too was a Janet-like character, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), as an alternative to Kim Novak’s impossibly perfect Madelaine. Richard knows, on some level, that Mircalla is the murderer.

For here is his turning point. He has to realize (even if attempting to live in denial) his beloved is a killer. Yet this only increases his desire to, Giles-like, cover up proof as to her guilt. Torn between overwhelming dictates of strange love and what little remains of his social conscience, Richard warily confronts Mircalla. “I know!” These are the precise words Giles used.

Now, the movie reinvents itself (and vampire lore with it) by allowing us to see a hint of vulnerability in Mircalla’s eyes. She may possibly respond in kind, her character here setting up the postmodern vampire woman of films yet to come. In such postfeminist works as Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987) and Innocent Blood (John Landis, 1992), the vampire woman will fear “falling in love with the food.” True, as early as Dracula’s Daughter, the female vampire regretted her tragic situation.

Yet there was no hint there that she could truly, deeply love any single person, man or woman, while yet a vampire. Here then is the film that first challenged and displaced the simplistic femme fatale vision of such a character/icon. In a dream state recalling the semi-surreal sequences set on estate gardens in Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961), the following erotic yet disturbing exchange takes place: MIRCALLA: If I were a vampire, you would die.

RICHARD: Yes . . . !

The thought only increases his ardor. Before lovemaking begins, however, a previously introduced theme is recalled. “Do you believe in your own myths?” Mircalla demands, her voice and eyes cruel. “Is Richard La Strange a peasant at heart?” Richard, like Mircalla, possesses the cachet of class. And, as she, the dominant one, makes clear, aristocrats create myths (his job) or live them out (she); base commoners shudder in fear. As the Brode_WEB.indb 131

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two kiss, we have no idea whether, like Giles, Richard will be sucked dry, or transformed into one of her kind. The third and most intriguing possibility—that she will embrace the side of her that is truly woman, rejecting vampirism owing to true and honest feelings that have evolved for this person—has no genre precedent. Yet this is precisely what happens, once again reinventing the movie and the idea of the female vampire.

On the other hand, a hoary convention is revived as angry villagers march up the hill, carrying torches to the ancient castle. Eager to live out the Prince Charming role, Richard rushes into the burning building, risk-ing his life to retrieve his inamorata as her wicked fellowship disappears into flames. The unexpected sound of his voice touches something in Mircalla, who turns to face him. Sleeping Beauty (she trance-like now, in Count Karnstein’s power) appears about to accept his offer and rush out in the nick of time. Certainly, Carmilla sounds sincere as she calls out his name. Before she can join him, however, Karnstein employs his psychic influence, another patriarch robbing this woman of her right to choose.

Resolving the issue deus ex machina style, a falling timber punctures Mircalla’s heart, stake-like. Richard wanders outside, where Janet patiently awaits.

Yet even now the film denies us a fairytale finale. The look on Richard’s face suggests he will never get over what happened and join Janet either in matrimonial bliss or the free love she would willingly offer in its place. He appears lost, bewildered, and dead to the world; separated from Mircalla forever, unable to recover from the experience of loving a vampire.

And while this may seem something of a stretch, by denying (in fact, destroying!) the fairy-tale paradigm, Lust for a Vampire might be read as a feminist film. Lest we forget, the woman standing beside him, herself beautiful if imperfectly so, offers Richard as near-perfect a future as any man has a right to even hope for; Janet, his emotional, sexual, and intellectual equal if only he could, as Saul Bellow might have phrased it, seize the day.35 Yet Richard is barely aware of her presence. If the context of Vampire Lovers rejected Carmilla’s assertion that fairy tales that end with a variation on the rescue myth are “silly stories,” Lust for a Vampire appears to embrace just such an attitude. The man who can only be satisfied by elusive and perfect physical beauty is a fool, a tragic one at that, if he has an opportunity to co-join with a truly remarkable though, owing to her humanity, imperfect woman and fails to do so. Taken as a cautionary fable to and for the era’s male spectator, Lust for a Vampire “says,” by intent or happy accident, to that target audience precisely what the feminists of the early 1970s were attempting to tell him.

Meanwhile, villagers dance with glee, though a recently arrived priest howls that fire cannot destroy the demons; their evil will return. Closure, Brode_WEB.indb 132

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in the emergent vampire film of the 1970s and beyond, will be an ever-less-valid means of ending such tales that, like Lust for a Vampire, draw to a close with a promise only of more evil.

For the first time, there isn’t even a sunrise in sight.

“AN EPITAPH FOR AN ERA”: TWINS OF EVIL AND

THE HETEROSEXUAL VAMPIRE WOMAN

Originally to have been titled Virgin Vampires, this John Hough–directed thriller has been referred to as the third installment of Hammer’s so-called Carmilla trilogy. Actually, that character, played by Katya Wyeth, puts in only a cameo performance here that could just as easily have been left out, plot-wise. Though Gates wrote the screenplay, all mention of the Karnsteins seems obligatory, while any connection to the Le Fanu novel appears negligible, more a means of selling this item than any honest desire to create an ongoing female vampire saga.

Though Peter Cushing appears as the scourge of Satan, he here is interested in ridding the world of witchcraft, not vampires.

That said, Twins of Evil is hardly devoid of interest. If the first two films offered icons of first the lesbian and then the bisexual vampire woman, here Hammer offers a novel twist for its time that hearkens back to Theda Bara: The vampire woman as entirely heterosexual. Included is a brief lesbian sequence in which a coldhearted vampire girl approaches a chained female victim, she open to the embrace until realizing that this will mean pain and death, not pleasure and liberation. The entire sequence, though, plays as forced in context. The female lead, Maria (Mary Collinson), is a Venice-born beauty just recently relocated in Eastern Europe. Bored, she slips out of her uncle’s middle-class home to frolic with a nearby aristocrat (Daniel Thomas), the cliché of an evil aristocrat whose social status renders him invulnerable to the law so essential to Hammer. Not once does she or her twin, Frida (Madeleine Collinson), ever cast so much as a passing glance at a pretty girl.

The idea of twins does strike the viewer as perfect to a genre that has doubling (Mircalla/Carmilla) at its very heart. The young actresses cast in the roles had recently been the first ever identical twin Playmate(s) of the Month for Playboy (11/70) and that status caused potential moviego-ers to assume that ample nudity would be found here. That was not the case. However sexually violent the situations become, less nudity is featured in the third film than in either of the two previous ones. This can be read, if we choose, that Hammer, like the world itself, was beginning to consider that sixties-era vision of “liberation” to be passé. Moreover, the film’s theme suggests an anti-sixties’ sexual revolution theme. The Brode_WEB.indb 133

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Lolita with fangs: Hammer’s Twins of Evil, starring the Collinson sisters, was one of the earliest mainstream movies to offer a vampire nymphette. Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

“good twin,”’ Frida, stays home, as her uncle and aunt command; she in the end does survive, whereas her playgirl sibling—“the bad twin” long before she succumbs to vampirism—heads out to engage in local period-piece “happenings,” only to be destroyed. Intriguingly, then, Hammer’s final female vampire film embraces at least some of the tenets of 1970s Brode_WEB.indb 134

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feminism that earlier entries in the series rejected. Here we encounter not yet another celebration of the bygone Swingin’ 1960s but an epitaph for that era, even a tacit rejection of its briefly chic principles, as society and cinema moved ever deeper into the very different 1970s.

NOTES

1. A package of five short stories and novellas, originally published in Dublin (1872). Each features its own unique narrative voice, these filtered through the consciousness of a “sympathetic listener,” Dr. Hesselius, a fictional pre-Freudian doctor of the mind. Le Fanu drew his title from Corinthians 13, which tells us that man, owing to his subjectivity, can never truly perceive the objective world around him, knowing it only “through a glass darkly.”

2. The concept of chivalry as a dangerously outdated concept for men living in the Victorian era, or at least the Hammer rendering of that period, is vividly described in: Gregory A. Waller, The Living and the Undead (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 113–16.

3. Jeanine Rejaunier, The Beauty Trap (New York: Pocket Books, 1970); the term was further defined in 1994 by Elaine Landau to explain “a way of thinking [that]

asserts that a woman’s true value and desirability are essentially tied to the way she looks.”

4. “The gaze” (an awareness of being watched by the one observed) was first introduced into psychoanalytic film and popular-arts criticism by Jacques Lacan.

In her influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (originally published in Screen 16, no. 3 [Autumn 1975]: 6–18), Laura Mulvey brought this theory into line with second-wave feminist ideology by arguing that women are objectified in motion pictures, at least those that are controlled by male writers and/or directors. More recently Mulvey’s writings have been called into question by film theorists who argue that in films written and directed by women, Kathryn Bigelow included, the gaze proves every bit as prominent, suggesting a pan-sexuality to the gaze as it does indeed exist in film spectatorship and reception, rather than a male gender-bias to the gaze.

5. William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1802–1804), originally published in London, Poems in Two Volumes (1807).

6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (London: Blackwood’s Magazine, 1899).

7. Peter N. Stearns and Herrick Chapman, European Society in Upheaval: Social History since 1750 (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 58–67.

8. Emma Griffin, Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 21–29.

9. William Dovie, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111–37.

10. Stephan Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 46–59.

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11. ”The Rescue Myth” and other aspects of fairytales that, from today’s perspective, are considered antifeminist in their very concept are discussed throughout: Marie-Louise von Frazz and Kendra Crossen, The Interpretation of Fairytales (Boston: Shambhala, 1996).

12. For a detailed description in short form, see: Chris Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 32–55.

13. The early stages of the European changeover in emphasis from lineage to finance are chronicled in the first four chapters of C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World: 1780–1914 (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003).

14. Victoria Amador, “The Post-Feminist Vampire: Heroine for the Twenty-First Century, The Journal for Dracula Studies 5 (2003): 4.

15. John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819); originally published in Great Odes of 1819 (London, 1820).

16. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1919); originally published in The Dial (Chicago: 1920).

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern (1886; repr. New York: Courier Dover Publications, 1916).

21. “Cynical and depressing” (Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorized History of Hammer Films (London: Titan Books, 2007), 96; “one of the worst films ever made” (costar Ralph Bates “Giles,” quoted in: Howard Maxford, Hammer, House of Horror: Beyond the Screams [Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1996], 110).

22. For the fullest and most comprehensive encyclopedia of information as to the constant “musical chairs” approach to writing and directing projects at this studio, consult: Wayne Kinsey, Hammer Films—The Unsung Heroes: The Team Behind the Legend (Sheffield, UK: Tomahawk Books, 2010).

23. James B. Twitchell, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1981), 68.

24. According to several of the volumes on Hammer’s history listed above, Gates’s script always referred to the relationship between Richard and Carmilla as “love.” The title was changed simply to make the piece more titillating by emphasizing intense sexuality of a basic instinct sort, without the deeper emotions that give this work its resonance. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, an edited version of the film played on U.S. commercial TV with the original title reinstated, perhaps because the lusty moments were mostly removed.

25. For a full perspective on Le Fanu, the following is highly recommended: Gary William Crawford, Jim Rochill, and Brian J. Showers, eds., Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2011).

26. The story is best told in the original: Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1807).

27. Among the most thorough and satisfying biographies is one of the more recent: Benita Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame (New York: Vintage, 2000).

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28. For a full diversity of interpretation and analysis, see: Angelique Richard-son, Chris Willis, eds., The New Woman in Fiction and Fact: Fin de Si è cle Feminism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

29. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (originally published: London, 1792).

30. Henry James, Daisy Miller (originally published: London: Cornhill Magazine, June–July 1878); for a full description of the character’s representation of the American nouveau-riche’s superficial attempts to gain a European-style sophistication, see: Daniel Mark Fogel, Daisy Miller: A Dark Comedy of Manners (Woodbridge, CT: Twayne, 1990).

31. Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 85.

32. A phrase employed by F. Scott Fitzgerald in various sources, including the novel The Great Gatsby, to allow readers a sense of the degree to which a certain type of male, however experienced as to dealings with other men in the harsh everyday world, can reveal an unexpected sense of absolute innocence upon confronting a truly beautiful female, then mentally endow her with positive traits that have little if anything to do with her character; in line with Keats’s equally appealing if equally absurd assertion that “Beauty is truth; truth, beauty; that is all.”

33. Once an epiphany for scholars of mythology, this assertion by Joseph Campbell has become something of a cliché; however, it exists now as part of the American undergraduate vocabulary and certainly does aid in the understanding of certain literary and cinematic tropes including those found in Lust for a Vampire.

34. The first and best analysis of this particular theme in Hitchcock’s work, as related to his Jesuit upbringing, is: Eric Rohmer, Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films (New York: Ungar, 1979).

35. Saul Bellow, Seize the Day (New York: Penguin, 1976).

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She bathed in the blood of virgins: Ingrid Pitt, as Countess Báthory in Countess Dracula , appears more a candidate for a Playboy magazine layout than a historic recreation of that actual personage. Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts.

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8

“Your Tale Merely Confirms

That Women Are

Mad and Vain”

The Uncanny Rendering of

Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s

Life as Vampire Legend

Janet S. Robinson

INTRODUCTION TO THE DOUBLE LIFE OF

ELIZABETH BÁTHORY/ERZSÉBET BÁTHORY

Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Erzsébet Báthory) was born to an illustri-ous, noble Hungarian family whose members included Zsigmond Báthory, Prince of Transylvania (1588–1599), and Stephen Báthory, King of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (1576–1586). Elizabeth’s life (b. August 7, 1560) and death (d. August 21, 1614) continue to haunt history, legend, and folklore. Elizabeth, educated and fluent in dozens of languages, was the most powerful woman in Hungary during her lifetime. Her private letters, translated from Hungarian to English, present a woman who, surrounded by the brutality of the ongoing war with the Ottoman Empire and the religious upheaval during the Protestant Reformation and ensuing Catholic Counter-Reformation, strives to claim her property, her possessions, and her public voice against all odds. The mythology that surrounds her historical story represents a transposition of the carnage carried out by men in the name of national security—including her own husband, known as the “Black Hero of Hungary”—onto Elizabeth.

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for the family’s vast holdings, including dozens of castles, manor homes, villages, thousands of acres of land, and hundreds of staff members;

“she was also responsible for arbitrating disputes for servants and locals, maintaining defenses against the Turks along the border, and even conducting sensitive matters of diplomacy.”1 After her husband’s death from a wound inflicted (strangely) by either a warring enemy or an unpaid prostitute, she alone maintained the sole management of her properties, employees, and wealth. After her death, in a windowless room in her own castle, her name was forbidden to be spoken in Hungary for over a hundred years.2

The phantasmagoric legend, in which she was a lesbian vampire who bathed in virgin blood in order to attain eternal youth and beauty, was born from the historical account of her well-documented trial. Yet, in more recent versions of her story, an attempt has been made to reha-bilitate her, not as a vampire, but as a complex and powerful woman who under intense political pressure suffered from seizures, delusions, and extreme insecurities. These contemporary versions of her story explain the young girls’ deaths as the consequence of a rapidly spreading epidemic of cholera that lethally swept through the castle. Additionally, the young girls’ deaths are perceived as a typical casualty of the time, in which servants were considered property or slaves, many of whom were commonly killed either on purpose or by accident by their owners, an act that was considered legal during the time period.

According to actual trial documents, the countess was responsible, with the help of four accomplices, for the torture and murder of more than 650 virgin servant girls. This grave accomplishment has provoked countless stories, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and films such as Countess Dracula (1971); Immoral Tales (1974); and, more recently, Bathory (2008) and The Countess (2009); she is also credited with being the muse for the gothic novella Carmilla, written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in 1872, pre-dating Bram Stoker’s seminal story by twenty-five years.3

Two hundred years after her death, Elizabeth Báthory, known as the

“Infamous Lady” for her crimes, inspired Le Fanu to appropriate her story in his vampire tale Carmilla. Although her story is only loosely based on vampire lore—she was not undead, fanged, or supernatural—
during the vampire mania that swept Europe in the 1800s Le Fanu’s story became popular, and Elizabeth became known not as the “Infamous Lady,” but instead as “Lady Vampire.” This slight shift in mythological identity sealed her fate forever, inexorably tying her to the enduring popularity of vampire lore.

Like many female historical figures, Elizabeth Báthory’s life story revolves around her home: the Castle Csejthe. Appositely, after her trial Brode_WEB.indb 140

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and indictment, she was sentenced to “lifelong imprisonment in [her]

own castle,” thereby she was literally imprisoned in her own home.4 Her home, the setting of her life, crimes, imprisonment, and death, links Elizabeth’s alleged transgressions at the Castle Csejthe to Hungary and its role in the geopolitical history of the region. This private/public mirroring offers insight into the uncanniness of her life’s similarly doubled narrative and the cinematic replications of her life story.

The quest for eternal youth and beauty is at the heart of Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s story; her wish for the impossibility of undying youth reveals the cultural legitimacy of the value placed on a woman’s beauty while paradoxically punishing the same woman, as she ages, who continues to seek this unattainable goal. Furthermore, the cinematic vision of Elizabeth’s uncanny younger-looking self represents the misogynistic perception that women are essentially duplicitous, regardless of the fact that what drives their quest for youth and beauty is created by the sexist ideology of the patriarchal structure that values young, beautiful women over female intellect, leadership, and accomplishment. Interestingly, this uncanny doubleness has a twin in contemporary culture—that is, the before and after pictures of women who have had makeovers or cosmetic surgery. The two images are the same, yet not the same; this mimetic uncanniness informs the enduring relevance of Elizabeth Báthory’s mythological narrative.

In Elizabeth’s case, her desire to retain her youth by using virgin blood as a type of cosmetic recuperation of young, white, wrinkle-free skin is evidence of both her power and her crime, for which she pays the ultimate price. Similar to the fairy tale Snow White, the aging queen asks her magic mirror, “Who is the fairest of them all?” to which the mirror replies in a deep male voice, “Snow White.” In Elizabeth’s story, the aging queen does not wish to kill her competition, the lovely, young Snow White (a name that references both virginity and youth) but rather to replace her by her own metamorphosis to her former state of youth and loveliness.

Just as the vampire mythology disavows the undead a mirror reflection, here too, history works to reveal Elizabeth’s mirrored image as an uncanny double for the articulation of an ambiguous relationship between the idea of woman as merely a symbolic mirror reflection of male desire and woman as actual flesh and blood, a subject with real, not imagined, depth and complexity.

COUNTESS DRACULA (1971) AND IMMORAL TALES (1974) Peter Sasdy’s Countess Dracula and Walerian Borwczyk’s Immoral Tales depict Elizabeth as a bloodthirsty, vampiric countess who kills virgins for Brode_WEB.indb 141

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eternal youth and bloodlust. The Hammer Production of the film Countess Dracula displaces the 1970s image of women during the women’s rights movement, who fought for power, politics, and civil rights, with a representation of Elizabeth Báthory, whose prime concern is her fading beauty.

This displacement reveals the subtextual desire of the filmmakers to use her story as push-back against the rising organization of women and their ambitions for equality protected by the United States government. While today’s media continue to emphasize the importance of male accomplishment and sacrifice in blood-splattered wars since the 1970s, including Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and Iraq, women’s stories continue to be marginalized, evidenced by the continuing lack of equity for women in the political arena, and even more so, in the everlasting failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

The film Countess Dracula opens with the reading of Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s (Ingrid Pitt) recently deceased husband’s will, where she discovers that she must split her share of the estate with her daughter, Ilona (Lesley-Anne Down).5 This unexpected news undermines Elizabeth’s position as the surviving widow and sole heir to their fortune, and initiates her fear that growing old will render her obsolete and powerless.6

In addition, the will reinforces her daughter’s youth and beauty as a real threat to her powerful position.

In the following sequence, one of Elizabeth’s young maidens cuts herself with scissors while attending to her and blood accidently splashes onto Elizabeth’s wrinkled, haggard face. Suddenly, her skin begins to magically smoothen and whiten, reversing in seconds to its once youthful appearance. Soon she realizes that the more blood she attains, the greater the transformation. She quickly goes to work to change not just her face but also her entire appearance into a younger, more beautiful, full-bodied version of herself. Looking at her newly attractive reflection in the mirror, she decides never to regress to her old, ugly self and hatches a plan to pass as her own daughter, who is expected to arrive at the castle in a few days.

Elizabeth enlists her longtime lover Captain Dobi (Nigel Green) to kidnap Ilona and keep her imprisoned in the hut of a mute, lecherous man who lives outside town. The plot thickens when a young suitor comes to town to meet the soon-to-be-arriving daughter, Ilona. Although Dobi is approximately the countess’s age, she prefers the younger Lt. Imre Toth (Sandor Elès), who arrives in town to court Ilona. Having never seen the countess or her daughter, he believes the fiction that Elizabeth is Ilona.

Unfortunately, the supernatural potion of virgin blood only retains its power for a limited and unknown amount of time. This narrative snag recalls another fairy tale: Cinderella and its contemporary incarnation: Shrek. In contrast to Cinderella’s fear of the clock tower bells ringing at Brode_WEB.indb 142

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midnight and transforming her back to her original physically and eco-nomically impoverished state, or the impending sunset that turns Fiona into an ogre, this magical blood loses its power without notice. More than a minor inconvenience, Elizabeth panics when, while embracing Toth, she glances into a mirror and sees, with horror, a wretched, old hag, warts and all, staring back. Luckily she is able to run from the room before Toth becomes wise to her true identity. Ironically, he perceives her behavior as first-time sexual jitters.

One effect of the double image reflected in the mirror is the uncanny rendering of the actress, Ingrid Pitt, who plays Elizabeth as an old hag. In a non-diegetic twist, Pitt, who at the time of production was a strikingly beautiful thirty-four-year-old woman, had to undergo hours of being made up in order to look like Elizabeth’s haggish elderly doppelganger.

This reverse doubling works to reveal an unintended meaning: Hollywood may be able to turn a woman into a monster, but the reverse is either impossible or undesired.

After Elizabeth’s first transformation into her younger lovely self, Dobi finds her in her bathroom donning long, blond locks in place of her stringy gray hair and wearing a blue sheer nightgown with a neckline to her navel, revealing cleavage and glimpses of black, not gray, pubic hair. Filmmakers imply that even the audience doesn’t wish to see an old woman modified to look young. Not surprisingly, this B-movie titty flick endorses the film’s criticism of female aging through the employ-ment of the youthful Pitt, indirectly revealing the reality of Hollywood’s resistance in casting an aging actress and cosmetically altering her to look young and sexually desirable, an artistic choice that would have more realistically mirrored Elizabeth’s identity crisis. The inference is disheartening, to say the least: not only is the character of Elizabeth Báthory inexorably trapped in her own body, but so too is Ingrid Pitt, and by extension, all women.

Alas, this thematic doubling, or mirror-image, reinscribes the male-defined womb-tomb motif. The narrative trajectory of men’s lives from womb to tomb precludes women from an active role in their own life stories. For men, the womb does not represent self-identity, but rather the site of creation. In a significant reversal, female identity, defined at least in part by her womb, is inextricably linked to the tomb because female aging marks a figurative death of her cultural viability. In this specific sense, the female body becomes its own tomb, a coffin encasing the corpse of the lost, never to be seen again, younger female self.

In addition, the self/other doubling in the film evokes a Freudian perspective that includes the idea of the uncanny doppelganger in which “a person may identify himself with another and so become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other’s self for his own.”7 Accordingly, Brode_WEB.indb 143

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the uncanny doppelganger, in the vision of the young beautiful Elizabeth/Pitt, is at first a narcissistic representation of immortality. Yet, without total mastery of the magic that retains her youth, her image turns to a harbinger of death, an object of terror belied by the cosmetically altered, more monstrous Elizabeth/Pitt. The pervasive love/hate relationship women have with their own uncanny reflection in the mirror has never been more center stage than in a sequence that begins with Elizabeth lovingly gazing at her youthful self in the mirror. When her reflection suddenly transforms her into an elderly, ugly version of herself, she violently smashes the same mirror to pieces.

As the plot develops, Elizabeth’s handmaiden, Julie (Patience Collier), who continued to serve Elizabeth faithfully through the murders and their magical results, has a change of heart when she figures out that Ilona, whom she raised since infancy, is being held captive. The mother/
daughter doubling in which Elizabeth simultaneously is and is not her own daughter comes to a screeching halt when Ilona appears at the castle.

The gorgeous twenty-year-old Lesley-Anne Down, who plays Ilona, adds another non-diegetic stake to the heart for women over thirty; at thirty-four, even the magnificent Pitt cannot compete with Down’s natural youth and beauty. Ironically, Pitt’s own image becomes the object of terror, the inevitability of growing old, the harbinger of woman’s bloodcurdling demise, is more real than imagined.8

Thus the film Countess Dracula not only serves as a morality tale for the fate that awaits the narcissistic woman, but sheds light on the paradoxical position of women who are simultaneously valued for their appearance and punished for their pursuit of beauty as they age. In the bizarre finale, Captain Dobi walks the countess down the aisle to be wed to Lt. Toth, who looks increasingly agitated about his ominous fate. The wedding scene casts Dobi and Elizabeth in an incestuously tinged relationship in which as long as she retains her youth, he takes the place of her father instead of lover. The ceremony, ironically performed by a Catholic priest in Latin (the actual Elizabeth was a Protestant), is overheard by Ilona, who walks toward the wedding crowd to see what’s going on. After the vows are exchanged, Elizabeth’s veil is lifted, but when she looks up, she has been suddenly transformed into a horrifying, aged witch, shocking the priest. Immediately, Elizabeth grabs a knife from Dobi’s uniform and screams, “Where is she?” As Elizabeth runs toward her daughter, knife in hand, Toth steps in and Elizabeth accidently kills him instead of Ilona, the intended target of her rage.

The Hungarian war with the Turks provides the political backdrop for the narrative, which slips through the story primarily in the men’s military titles, that is, Captain (Dobi) and Lieutenant (Toth). Another Brode_WEB.indb 144

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significant title is the title of the film itself: Countess Dracula. There is no character by the name Dracula in the film; the only reference is in the final sequence when the villagers call for her hanging, repeatedly chanting: “The Countess. The Devil Woman. Countess Dracula. Devil.” The film intercuts the all-female villagers chanting with an overhead shot of the haggish Elizabeth looking up at the camera through the bars of her basement jail cell. By focusing on the private, the public goings-on during the war and its results are transferred to Elizabeth’s murderous crimes, creating one more reverse reflection in the spectrum of human experience, one that concurrently celebrates men and punishes women for the act of murder. Perhaps, this narrative composition presents an alternate and undesirable representation of the real fate of women in the fairy tale’s so-called happily ever after.

In another startling cinematic reversal, polish director Walerian Borwczyk’s Immoral Tales reimagines Elizabeth’s story as a pseudo-lesbian erotic tale. The third film in a series of four shorts, titled “Erzsébet Báthory,”

depicts the Báthory legend from a pornographic perspective in which Elizabeth (Paloma Picasso) and her androgynous page Istvan (Pascale Christofe) procure virgin women from surrounding villages to their castle.9 The opening scene shows the peaceful townspeople going about their business, when suddenly, as Elizabeth and Istvan arrive on horseback to acquire the girls, the villagers run for cover. This scene visually evokes a ghostly twin to the cinematic images of the historically documented po-grom attacks by the Cossacks in the early 1900s.10 In addition, the scene has an uncanny resemblance to the historical accounts of the bands of fierce soldiers, including Elizabeth’s husband Ferenc, notoriously known as the Black Hero of Hungary, pillaging rural villages and raping young girls in the name of securing the frontier. Historical evidence shows that by August 1605, the Hungarian troops were responsible for “considerable amount of damage to the very area they were supposed to be protecting

. . . destroy[ing] property and stolen cattle, horses and money from the locals.”11 The transference of this actual, male-driven violence onto this female narrative points to a more ubiquitous crime: revering, not revil-ing, the perpetrators of such violence and destruction for their bravery and courage, garnering many men hero status and a place in the history books. In contrast, Elizabeth Báthory remains a vilified murderous vampire who kills for vanity, not country.

Instead of male brutes, Immoral Tales envisions the attackers as female, who not only abduct the young women, but first assess the women by lift-ing their clothes with a phallic riding cane in order to judge their breasts, pubic hair, and backsides, all shown in full-screen close-ups. This routine inspection not only evokes the legitimization of rape in war and the idea Brode_WEB.indb 145

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For Walerian Borowczyk’s nongeneric rendering of the Báthory legend, Paloma Picasso (daughter of Pablo) appeared in a more historically accurate depiction of the aristocratic woman and her era. Courtesy of Hammer/Seven Arts; Argos Films/New Line Cinema.

of victors legally justified in taking the “booty” of the conquered, but it also evokes images of the internationally sanctioned slave trade throughout history.

After arrival at the castle, the virgins take long showers, soaping each other up, and then crowd into a room in which they ravage Elizabeth sexually, hoping to tear off a piece of her magical dress, endowed with Brode_WEB.indb 146

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pearls that supposedly grant eternal bliss. While they rip her dress, the camera pans to other girls, who fondle each other. In one shot, an extreme close-up, a woman’s fingers place pearls inside her vagina.

These provocative images not only distort images of violence against women into images of sexual arousal for the spectator, but also evoke historical accounts by witnesses during her trial. Although all the testimony was most likely obtained either through torture or hearsay, the most gruesome details of the torture match the visual imagery of Borwczyk’s film, including the cutting and biting of the girls’ fingers, buttocks, and breasts, sticking pins all over their bodies, including their lips, tongues, fingers, hands, and faces; and demanding the girls stand naked for hours as they were beaten or subjected to freezing water thrown on them. Additionally, fifty-year-old Benedikt Deseo, recounts, under oath, that a “round fire iron was also heated until very hot and (on my honor), shoved into their vaginas.”12 The recognition of this historical distortion of vision works to expose why women in powerful positions today must still live the insidious contradiction of the female body, simultaneously revered and reviled, and forever trapped in a masculinist politics of vision that continues to project male atrocities onto the female body itself.

The film continues to represent woman as the perpetrators of bloodshed; when they have finished ripping the magical dress to shreds, the women turn their greedy aggression against each other. While they proceed to scratch, bite, and rip each other to pieces, Elizabeth slips away to bathe in a tub of the spoils of the just-witnessed bloody defloration.

Interestingly, one detail of this film that departs from the central mythology of the Báthory story is that Elizabeth appears youthful throughout the film and the act of bathing in blood does not transform her; in fact, it remains unclear what effect the blood has and why she desires to bathe in it.

The story takes a gender-bending twist when the androgynous page removes her uniform, exposing long brown hair and a slight and feminine physique and is revealed to be Elizabeth’s uncanny lover. After this literal bloodbath, Elizabeth and her lover perform a pseudo-wedding ceremony and make love in a large bed atop pristine white sheets. But, while Elizabeth sleeps, her lover retreats from the bed to the hallway outside the chamber. Suddenly, the police break in to arrest Elizabeth and the film cuts to Istvan passionately kissing the head policeman, revealing her betrayal and the spectator’s realization that she is the one responsible for the arrival of the authorities and Elizabeth’s arrest.

This narrative trajectory represents the filmmaker’s desire to recapitulate history as a male fantasy that includes girl-on-girl action. By the end of the film, the powerful countess has been removed from society, her Brode_WEB.indb 147

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lesbian lover reveals her “true” heteronomativity, and in turn, submits to a male lover who simultaneously restores the patriarchal order that places men in all positions of power. As in Countess Dracula, the film’s story takes place almost entirely in the Castle Csejte, arguably signifying the nation’s politics over the proper place for women, either figuratively imprisoned or literally imprisoned, but indeed, always sexualized.

BATHORY: COUNTESS OF BLOOD (2008) AND THE COUNTESS (2009)

More recently, in Jurab Jakubisko’s film Bathory and Julie Delpy’s The Countess, Elizabeth is recast not as a titillating figure of B-movie pleasure or pornography, but as a woman who suffers a crisis of identity and ensuing incarnations of mental illness. In Bathory, Elizabeth experiences seizures, delusions, and migraine headaches, while in Delpy’s The Countess, she goes mad following the perceived unrequited love of a younger man. In both films, she is represented as a woman with enormous amount of power and the victim of an extensive conspiracy, led by the historical figures of Palatine Gyorgy Thurzó and King Matthais II of Hungary, linking her inexorably to the nation/state of Hungary, with her castle representing the center of power and wealth during the time period.13 With her immense fortune, she not only owned more land than the king, but years earlier he had borrowed money from her husband, which at the time of Ferenc’s death, the king did not have the assets to pay her back, and thus she became the victim of a great conspiracy, led by the Palatine Gyorgy Thurzó and the King of Hungary himself.

Jakubisko’s Bathory stands as the most visually complicated and sophisticated of the four films. Its scope, length (141 min.), aesthetic beauty, and enormous budget mark it as unusual, specifically because a large portion of the events depicted do not appear in any of the legend or folklore about her.14 The film opens with an aerial shot of the actual ruins of Castle Csejte with voice-over narration introducing her story. Through computer-generated effects, somewhat similar to the re-creation of the Titanic from its watery grave in the eponymous film, the castle walls begin to rebuild themselves and, simultaneously, the surrounding landscape comes back to life, restoring the image to its heyday in the late 1500s. At first this vampiric cinematic effect appears to be creating a visual analogy to the film’s purpose—that is, to resuscitate Elizabeth Báthory’s story in order to recast her as “a modern Renaissance woman who ultimately fell victim to men’s aspirations for power and wealth,”15 instead of a sadistic, murderous monster. At the same time, the special effect illustrates a meta-Brode_WEB.indb 148

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phorical imagining of my argument. The remains of the motherland, long buried by the geopolitical cost of multiple wars, political impotency, and economic failure, resembles the revamping of the dilapidated building from the grave through technology as beautiful artifice. Elizabeth’s body is symbolically displaced by the cinematic rebirth of the Castle Csejte, as the old crumbling building is resurrected from the ravages of time to the magnificent, architecturally sound castle representing the halcyon days of a Hungary, once again, forever new and immortal.

In the attempt to vindicate Elizabeth from the folklore that ceaselessly casts her as a monstrous murderess, the film explains the frequent deaths of young girls as either a consequence of a rapidly spreading epidemic of cholera lethally sweeping the Castle Csejthe or as female servants killed accidently, which at the time was considered legal, once again evoking the worldwide trauma of slavery.16 The film accounts for the circumstances of her arrest, including dead girls on the floor and torture cages, and the three hundred witnesses who testify against her, as part of a conspiracy between Thurzó and King Matthias to remove her from power and gain access to her vast wealth and property.

Bathory’s revisionist narrative, cut into three distinct parts, titled

“Ferenc,” “Davulia,” and “Thurzó,” depicts Elizabeth as a strong-willed countess loyal to her warrior husband. Jakubisko’s cinematic interpretation attempts to fracture the Countess Báthory mythology.

Yet, there are some problematic elements to the film that undermine the director’s desire to recuperate Elizabeth as a hero instead of a villain.

Specifically, in the first section of the film, Ferenc returns to the castle from war to a pregnant Elizabeth. Drunk and euphoric from a victory on the battlefield, his homecoming quickly turns from a touching moment between husband and wife, to a violent struggle resulting in rape. Ferenc dominates Elizabeth sexually and she wakes up in a pool of blood, causing the stillborn birth of her son. Devastated, Elizabeth mourns the loss of her baby and her relationship with Ferenc suffers its initial disharmony.

Later in the film, Elizabeth takes on a lover in her husband’s absence caused by his continuous participation in the war against the Turks.

One evening while on leave, Ferenc shows his rage and jealousy toward Elizabeth’s lover, the renowned painter, Caravaggio. The conclusion to this mini-narrative within the larger context of the film is not only bizarre, but supports a narrative analysis that lends itself to the theoretical construct of the uncanny. In the middle of the night, Elizabeth brings Caravaggio to the Castle’s subterranean Gynaecuem.17 Out of a wooden cupboard, she brings out her stillborn infant, lying prone on red silk, encased in a block of ice, and assigns Caravaggio the task of Brode_WEB.indb 149

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creating a painting of the dead infant so that she may keep his memory alive. The stillborn in ice evokes the vampire mythology of bringing the dead back to life, casting Elizabeth as a vampiric and mentally unstable woman who has a desire to re-create an uncanny doubled image of her dead baby through the creation of art. A long take pans the infant in close-up so that the spectator experiences the tiny frozen features of the abject corpse.

According to Raymond T. McNally in his book Dracula Was a Woman,

“The vampire rests in his coffin like an unborn baby in the damp darkness of his mother’s womb. . . . He is still attached by an umbilical cord, to the ‘womb-tomb’ to which he must return or perish.”18 The theoretical construct of the womb-tomb is doubly signified here; the infant is forever encased in the castle’s Gynaeceum, the figurative womb of the castle, the overdetermined signifier of Elizabeth’s doubled uncanny female body in which the unheimlich takes on a sickening meaning.

The historical account of Elizabeth’s crimes place many of the murders in the Gynaeceum, a place in which only women were allowed, giving her the ultimate freedom to pursue her torturous acts on the bodies of the young virgins, out of sight of powerful male figures. In a visual twist, the Gynaeceum reflects a type of the reverse, uncanny, double image of dead bodies on the battlefield, an exterior landscape that excludes women.

Ultimately, this scene works to undermine any attempt to represent Elizabeth as a feminist hero whose fall from power can be entirely explained as a male conspiracy against her. The frozen baby becomes a signifier for Elizabeth’s progressing insanity and inability to distinguish reality from hallucination. The film, thus, works not to reinvent her as a strong female character, but instead as a hysterical witchy woman whose later dabbling with the black magic of her historically accurate cohort and presumed lover, Davulia, offers lengthy cinematic excursions into the hallucinatory world of Elizabeth’s psyche. Her uncanny hallucinations are produced with the use of double exposure, super-imposition dissolves, and blurred distortions of the goings-on of the castle. She floats through a myriad of both real and imagined events—
including raucous parties, dances, and feasts—swirling around her as she exists as a type of ghost watching her own life unfold, yet absent her fleshy presence.

One hallucinatory scene has specific relevance to my argument here.

The phantasmagoric scene begins with Elizabeth waking to take a sip of a red and green potion in a goblet at her bedside. The colored liquid bubbles and swirls and dissolves into the pulling of a heavy red curtain aside, revealing Caravaggio’s actual painting Judith Beheading Holofernes Brode_WEB.indb 150

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coming to life. This reenactment conflates the vampiric return from the dead with the immortality of art itself. In addition, the curtain represents both the theatricality of the moment and the meta-cinematic commentary of art imitating life and the reverse. The use of double exposure and cinematic manipulation of shutter speed continue the mind-bending excursions into unreality in which Elizabeth, in a white translucent sleeping gown, holding a candle, walks down a hallway into another room where a naked Caravaggio awaits her arrival. The mise-en-scéne mirrors the baroque style of his painting, with other people inhabiting the room, including a lute player, a couple making love, servants, and a body covered by a white sheet on the table where Caravaggio sits. Elizabeth’s whispering voice-over can barely be heard against the sound of the lute and other ancient instruments playing. The use of excessive swish pans, double-exposure, and red and green filters produce a ghostlike specter of artistic sophistication while offering the spectator the voyeuristic pleasure of watching a pseudo-orgy. Both Elizabeth and Caravaggio are portrayed at their most attractive, beautiful and un-aged. The ensuing sex scene includes male and female nudity and desire. Lying on her back, Elizabeth turns her head to the moving white sheet next to her; to her horror, an older version of herself with red hair lies beside her. She attempts to identify the woman as Annika, a long dead close relative who Elizabeth identifies with because of their twin heart-shaped moles. But the woman speaks back: “I’m Erzsébet.” The uncanny doubling recalls Ingrid Pitt as Elizabeth when she, too, comes face-to-face with her older self. In contrast to Pitt’s response of disgust toward her own image, this version of Erzsébet expresses her fear of death, “I don’t want to die in flames like you.”

Her older image responds, “If you die now you remain young forever.”

The scene ends, without sexual consummation, but with a cut to an exterior shot, perhaps a harbinger of her fate, of Thurzó’s coach riding up to the castle.

Though the dialogue points to reading the scene as a commentary on the connection between art and immortality, Erzsébet’s fear of death over her fear of aging construct an alternate reading that relies on some background on Caravaggio as a real person in history and not just an actor in Erzsébet’s story. He lived approximately during the same time period as Erzsébet, from 1571 to 1610. He, too, resisted the authoritative powers, in his case, the Italian government and the Catholic Church.

There was a warrant for his arrest at the time of his death, which also occurred under mysterious circumstances of which the truth will never be known. Yet there is a significant distinction between the two: over the centuries Caravaggio’s notoriety transformed into a celebration of his work and his identity as an influential painter and artist, whereas, Erz-Brode_WEB.indb 151

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sébet gets no such ameliorated metamorphosis. Instead, she continues to breed incantations of the misogynistic powers that successfully defeated her in 1610; her death did offer her an artistic immortality, but did not keep her young forever. Unlike Caravaggio, her story forces a never-ending confrontation with the monstrous nature of herself, her body, and her place in history as the “most prolific female mass-murderer” of all time.19 This ever-repeating gendering of history may say more about the time in which we live now than previously considered. The uncanny retelling of the past cannot change until the present allows history to be seen through a different lens.

Another aspect that problematizes Báthory as a Renaissance woman of her time is her sexual relationship with Caravaggio. Left alone for the almost thirty years of her marriage to Ferenc, Elizabeth had been rumored to take on lovers. In the three other films I cite here, her sexual appetites are central to the narrative and also work to link her to threatening aberrant female sexuality. Yet, in the film Bathory, Caravaggio’s homosexuality is not subtext, but context. He tells Elizabeth of his first love, a man whose body he describes as “physical perfection.” For the sexualized countess, the fact that the only lover she takes in the film is homosexual complicates the perceived threat of her sexuality because it reinforces the idea that her sexuality is born out of loneliness, not raw sexual desire, as it cannot be reciprocated. In this instance, her character is not ahead of her time, but fits squarely within the stereotypes of women whose only access to power relies on an absent or feminized man.

The finale of the film’s epic narrative follows Elizabeth as she begins to dress like a man and train to kill Thurzó, her enemy. Interestingly, historical documents of her private letters do not stray far from this cinematic portrayal. Her response to those who attempted to appropriate her property without permission was: “Do not think that we will leave you to enjoy them [her possessions] in peace. You will find in me a man.”20 In the end, of the film at least, she does out-fight and outwit Thurzó, but her demise is as history recounts, alone in her walled-in bedroom by suicide. However, her power seems to transcend her death in the scene, as her prayers psychically ignite the candles in her room, causing a spectacular scene of supernatural self-immolation. Her final words before death in the film reflect the director’s vision: “I was born at a time that was not right for me. Remember me when I’m gone.” This epic costume drama offers an alternate narrative trajectory, but one that in the end does not serve to retrieve Elizabeth Báthory as a transcendent hero of her time because her life remains tied to murderous mythology rather than her actual life. Although the film disrupts the most horrifying imaginings of the countess, her position merely shifts from villain Brode_WEB.indb 152

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to victim; the vampiric rendering of her story will always fall short of depicting her as a historical hero.

Thus Jakubisko’s reiteration does not fracture the past successfully, but perpetuates it; his rendering becomes the story of woman usurped by a male artist, in this case, not Caravaggio or even Le Fanu or Stoker, Jakubisko himself. Given the extravagance of the production, Jakubisko is guilty of appropriating Elizabeth’s story in order to make his own artistic mark on cinematic history. This historical representation reveals Jakubisko’s inadvertent failure to eradicate, or even transcend, the biographical connection between Countess Elizabeth Báthory and the uncanny vampire mythology that has long defined her.

Delpy’s The Countess stands as the most ambiguous of the Elizabeth Báthory stories. On the surface, Count Thurzó (William Hurt) deceives Elizabeth into believing that her younger male lover, the historical figure of Thurzó’s invented son, Istvan (Daniel Brun) rejects her because she’s aging.21 For that reason, Elizabeth (Julie Delpy), in a vampiric attempt to resuscitate her own sexual viability back to life, procures young virgin girls, tortures them, and uses their virgin blood to extend her own youth and narcissistic image of ideal beauty.

Told from various points of view, the film is primarily narrated by Istvan after Elizabeth’s death. At the same time, most of the action of the film takes place during private moments within her castle bedroom in which Elizabeth is often the only character on-screen. Therefore, the notion that Istvan’s perspective is a rendering of the truth is called into question. In Istvan’s voice-over narration, he confesses that, “most of what he knows about her has been told to him,” which opens a space for a negotiated reading of the entire film. In one instance, Elizabeth, alone and agonizing over her lost lover, cuts a slit above her heart and stitches a piece of Istvan’s hair into her body. Both unnerving and so physically perilous as to threaten her life, this action remains a secret from Istvan throughout the narrative. It is thus unclear who is controlling the narration of the story.

After her arrest, Elizabeth begins a monologue that serves to contradict and undermine the authenticity of the Istvan’s storytelling. The use of the male narrator implies the usurpation of Elizabeth’s own voice through a male perspective; in this case, the oppositional reading offers insight to the actual meaning of the film—that is, men, not women, have always told women’s stories. This twist complicates Elizabeth Báthory’s transhistorical cinematic narrative, specifically because it is the only film that was written and directed by a woman: Julie Delpy. By writing the story in a male voice, she subtextually makes the claim that stories about women written by men should never be believed. Delpy’s assertion has critical Brode_WEB.indb 153

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implications to all historical accounts, because history is exactly that: his-
story, not her-story.

In the final scene of the film, sentenced to life imprisonment in a walled-in room in her castle by the villain of the story, Count Thurzó (William Hurt), Elizabeth responds:

Your tale merely confirms that women are mad and vain and should not be given the right to rule. Your fable will keep the populace occupied for a very long time. They will be terrified by the bloodthirsty myth you have made of me and forget about evils that are indeed very real.

The very “real” evils, justified by historical account, point to the bloody period of wars between the Wallachians (today’s Bulgarians) and the Ottoman Empire’s forces in which hundreds of thousand soldiers perished in the name of country and church. One hero from an earlier period, 1448–1476, Vlad the Impaler, is considered to be the original inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Vlad has a fondness for impaling the defeated enemy soldiers (Turks, primarily) thousands at time, sometimes leaving whole hillsides of dead bodies in his wake. Vlad’s claim for the responsibility for over eighty thousand murders recoups a comparison to Elizabeth’s conviction and imprisonment for six hundred fifty murders. Vlad’s well-documented gruesome phallic torture serves as the inspiration for Stoker’s novel and also his inscription into the historical accounts of the time period. However, this historical displacement of actual bloodshed and its transference to the mythology of Elizabeth’s life story recapitulates my initial claim of the grave effect of the gender divide of male narratives of men regaled as heroes for their courage on the battlefield in contrast to the private murders attributed to Elizabeth for her sin of vanity. To be sure, the male ambition to mark their names in history by carrying out the institutionally sanctioned killing of the enemy in the name of war fills the pages of all written political histories, and indeed, in contrast to Elizabeth’s fate, the acts of the male warrior are not perceived as crimes or even narcissism, but heroic selfless martyrdom worthy of national celebration.

Interestingly, the subsequent scenes give Elizabeth her own voice-over.

As she sits waiting for death in the windowless room, she contemplates her fate:

God, you have abandoned me. In war hundreds are killed and tortured and they are left there to rot and feed the vultures, and yet, we glorify our warriors. We give them laurel wreaths and honors. But all I get is torment. I cannot be humiliated this way. Give me an illness that will kill me fast. I cannot do it myself. I must go to heaven. Amen.

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The voice-over coincides with the diegetic image of Elizabeth, leaning against an interior castle wall, her face pressed up next to a small hole, exterior light shining though. This moment of self-reflexively evokes the cinematic apparatus; the light of the outside world slipping through the hole like the light of a projector as if on a movie screen, illuminating her face against the darkness of the stone wall. She stands silent as the projection of male desire longs to transform her. At that moment, she bites her own wrists, chewing skin and flesh to put an end to her torment. The film cuts to an overhead shot of Elizabeth bathed in light, by which the meta-cinematic material apparatus of the projected light, the male gaze, disappears. The aging, monstrous woman transforms into her uncanny double self: she is young and beautiful once again. After she is thrown into an unmarked grave, the young lover resumes his voice-over as he condemns this bloody tale: “History is sealed behind a brick wall. Time will soon bury us all.” Ironically, it is the male telling and retelling of her story that figuratively keeps her immortal.

CONCLUSION

Either truth or fiction, the harsh criticism of Elizabeth Báthory’s desire to retain her youth is as relevant today as it was four hundred years ago. According to Huffington Post Business online magazine: “The market research firm Global Industry Analysts projects that a boomer-fueled consumer base, ‘seeking to keep the dreaded signs of aging at bay,’ will push the U.S. market for anti-aging products from about $80
billion now to more than $114 billion by 2015.”22 The multibillion-dollar industry, not endorsed by the FDA, points to the problematic ways women continue to be valued for their youth and beauty while being criticized and devalued as they age. Perhaps, if the $80 billion was spent on women’s education, relief from poverty, and access to safe and affordable child care, and toward the budgets of films directed by women about women, Elizabeth’s story would not cast her as a devil woman whose most notable accomplishment is being the most prolific female mass murderer. Statistics today show that men direct 96 percent of all feature films, and even more disturbing, when people are asked to name their favorite female director, the answer is silence.23 The dis-articulation of women, therefore, is not historical but an undying work in progress.

Ultimately, the documented story of Elizabeth Báthory is of a countess, who in the early 1600s, owned more land and assets than the king of Hungary. In the absence of her husband, she ran most of the country, Brode_WEB.indb 155

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including countless castles, hundreds of employees, and thousands of acres of land by herself. Perhaps, then, there is no possible successful treatment of her compelling life story, one that inscribes her true tale not as the uncanny projection of male desire and repression that metamorphoses her body and the place she lived into terrifying strangeness, but as the story of an actual woman who lived and died, like so many women, at home.

NOTES

1. Kimberly L. Craft, Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory.

(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011), 44

2. According to Dennis Báthory-Kitz who is a living descendent of Elizabeth Báthory’s ancestral line.

3. Elizabeth Miller states that there is no proven association between Bram Stoker’s Dracula, La Fanu’s Carmilla, and Elizabeth Báthory’s actual life, in her book Dracula: Sense and Nonsense (UK: Desert Island eBooks, 2012). She primarily blames Raymond T. McNally for perpetuating this misleading association in his book Dracula Was a Woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983).

4. Craft, Infamous Lady, 171

5. Interestingly enough, her husband, Ferenc Nádasdy, took her last name because her lineage was linked to higher nobility than his.

6. In the actual story, she does receive sole ownership of her estate after Ferenc’s death, but according to historical account, most of their money and property belonged to her before marriage.

7. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (Penguin Classics, 2003), 142.

8. Pitt and Down teamed up again in a BBC production titled Unity, in which Down plays the historical figure Unity Valkyrie Mitford, a woman known to be in Hitler’s inner circle. Pitt, who was Jewish in real life and survived a concentration camp during the war, plays Fraulein Baum, whom Unity gives up to the Nazis in the narrative. The symbolism here is doubly significant: Down once again symbolizes Pitt’s demise, and Unity’s real middle name is Valkyrie, referring to the female gods in Norse mythology that choose who will live and who will die on the battlefield. Operation Valkyrie was also the code name for a planned, but unsuccessful, coup d’état against Hitler in 1944.

9. This is the only film that Paloma Picasso, Pablo Picasso’s daughter, ever made.

10. The film Fiddler on the Roof has one such scene in which the Cossacks arrive at a Jewish wedding wreaking havoc and destruction, ultimately torching the nuptial scene, sending the guests running for their lives.

11. Craft, Infamous Lady, 62.

12. Ibid., 286.

13. Ibid.

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14. The budget of 10 million euros (around $15 million) makes it the most expensive Slovak and Czech movie ever made. Its $6 million at box office points to the film’s financial loss, primarily caused by a limited foreign release in 2008.

15. IMDB, Bathory: Countess of Blood, film summary, www.imdb.com/title/
tt0469640/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2.

16. Servants were considered the same as property, and it was legal to dispose of them according to the owner’s wishes.

17. Gynaecuem is related to all those words you want to connect it with. Gyne simply means “woman” and the “gyn-” prefix indicates some relation to women.

Gynaikeia is an adjective that means “related to woman” and can also be used as a noun meaning “the woman’s things” or “things belonging to woman.” So this same word is used to refer to things as different as the woman’s part of a house (perhaps a sewing room, or bedroom, or in a wealthy home a separate apartment) and the woman’s time of the month (menstruation), etc.

18. McNally, Dracula Was a Woman, 96.

19. Elizabeth Báthory is cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most prolific mass murderer.

20. Kimberly L. Craft, The Private Letters of Countess Erzsébet Báthory (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011), 71–72

21. Interestingly, Elizabeth’s gender-bending lover in Immoral Tales shares this character’s name: Istvan.

22. “Boomers Will Be Pumping Billions into Anti-Aging Industry.” Huff Post Business., April 10, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/20/boomers-antiaging-industry_n_932109.html.

23. Miss Representation. Directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Los Angeles: Girls’ Club Entertainment. 2011.

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Deadly innocence: Kirsten Dunst, as child-vampire Claudia in the film version of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire , wraps her sweet but dangerous arms around Louis (Brad Pitt). Courtesy of Geffen Pictures, Warner Bros.

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9

The Dangers of Innocence

An Analysis of Film Representations
of Female Vampire Children

Alexis Finnerty

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it.

—Graham Greene

This quotation by Graham Greene would make an apt tag line for a child vampire movie.1 More than anything else, these movies are about the dangers lurking in innocence. In the tradition of adult vampire movies, these films often espouse classicist ideology, which scorns romance and nature and views children as little monsters who have yet to be civilized. Yet child vampires do not pose the same threat as adult vampires. Adult vampires are immoral; they’re aware of and delight in their own cruelty. Child vampires are amoral; their unintentional cruelty results from moral ignorance, rather than malicious intent.

Innocence receives its connotation of moral ignorance from the Bible.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve are described as ignorant and childlike. They obey God, their symbolic father, and they are unashamed of their nakedness because they do not know any better. God created a paradise for them called the Garden of Eden, and gave them permission to eat from any of the trees that grew in the garden except the Tree of Knowledge.

One day, the snake tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge by telling her, “when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). After Adam and Eve eat from the tree, they gain the painful knowledge of their nakedness and God casts them out of the Garden of Eden. This parable can be read as a metaphor for growing up; the Garden of Eden represents childhood, the 159

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Tree of Knowledge represents the experience of coming of age, and the world outside the garden represents the mysterious world of adulthood.

As with Eve in Genesis, the young female vampire’s innocence endangers herself and others. Her budding sexuality makes her doubly threatening. She can use both her innocence and her sexuality to entice and entrap her prey without much thought and without knowledge of the moral implications of her actions. Perhaps because of this, vampire movies tend to treat their girl-vampire heroines with understanding and compassion.

An early example is Lust for a Vampire’s Carmilla (Yutte Stensgaard).

She is not portrayed as a malevolent force, but as an impressionable young woman dominated by an evil male authority figure. Whenever Carmilla kills, there is a cutaway to Count Karnstein, as if she kills at his direction.

The Carmilla in Lust for a Vampire is young and pliable, in keeping with the trend of depicting a female vampire as a young woman in literature and the cinema. Yet, recently, female vampires in the movies have become younger and younger. Eli from Let the Right One In and Abby from Let Me In are stated to be twelve in human years, and Claudia from Interview with the Vampire and Renesmee from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 appear still younger. The rise in female child vampire films is likely another aspect of the cultural trend toward sexualizing very young girls, which is prevalent in music videos and live performances as well as television shows like TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras.

Of all the prepubescent vampires, Claudia looks the youngest and acts the most childlike. Although actress Kirsten Dunst was ten years old when she played Claudia, her character has all the naiveté of a child half her age. We first see Claudia as a human girl trapped in the plague quarter of Louisiana, whimpering and caressing her dead mother’s hand. She is so helpless and desperate for comfort that she impulsively hugs Louis and begs him to “please wake mama.” Louis bites her and Lestat gives her his blood, thus beginning her new life as a vampire.2

Claudia’s childlike belief that her dead mother was asleep demonstrates that when she was turned, she was not old enough to understand the finality of death or the value of human life. Her brain isn’t developed enough to share Louis’s sympathy for humans, so she is able to kill without guilt. The only behavioral guideline she has to follow is that of the psychopathic Lestat: kill carefully and don’t get caught. Since she learns morals from an immoral person, it’s not surprising that she develops into an unrepentant killer. Louis confirms this by remarking in voice-over, “To Lestat [Claudia was] a pupil. An infant prodigy with a lust for killing that matched his own.”3 His words are accompanied by an image of Claudia and Lestat with a smiling family and then a cutaway to a procession of coffins, the victims of Claudia and Lestat’s “lust for killing.”

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As time passes, Claudia becomes more and more discontent with her vampiric existence. She is tormented by the knowledge that her mind may mature, but her body will always remain the same. She becomes furious with Louis and Lestat for turning her into a vampire and obsessed with finding out how it happened. After Louis tells her Lestat’s role in making her a vampire, she decides to leave Lestat. She pretends to make peace with Lestat, tricks him into drinking from a boy who is already dead (which weakens him), and then slits his throat. As he reaches for her, she steps away and says spitefully, “One lesson you taught me.

Never drink from the dead.”4 Claudia’s use of Lestat’s own advice to betray him can be interpreted as a warning to the parents in the audience: Be careful what you teach your children, for they will become what you have taught them to be.

Claudia shows no more remorse for slitting Lestat’s throat than for killing any of the humans she fed on alongside Lestat. Claudia looks out impassively as Louis dumps Lestat’s body in the swamp and says coldly,

“He belongs with those reptiles, Louis. He deserved to die.”5 However, her warm relationship with Louis shows she is capable of feeling affection, loyalty, and perhaps even love toward those who treat her well.

From Claudia’s perspective, Louis seems to care much more for her than Lestat; Lestat is impatient with Claudia and believes that she should be grateful to him for giving her immortal life, while Louis is sympathetic toward her and expresses guilt for taking away her mortal life. Thus, even after Claudia discovers Louis’s role in making her a vampire, she confesses that she can’t hate him. She wraps her arms around him and says softly, “Louis, my love, I was mortal until you gave me your immortal kiss. You became my mother and my father, and so I’m yours forever.”6

Claudia can’t bear to be separated from Louis, so much so that she climbs into his coffin at night even after he buys her a coffin of her own.

When the French vampire Armand expresses an interest in Louis (but not Claudia), Claudia is furious and sad and fearful of the prospect of separating from Louis. She tells Louis that Armand’s soul has told her to let Louis go. Melancholy, bittersweet music plays as she asks him, “Is that what I should do, Louis? Let you go? My father, my Louis, who made me.”7 In addition to Claudia’s inability to develop physically, this scene suggests that Claudia has a lingering childish attachment to her parental figure. Armand’s advice to Claudia to let Louis go suggests society’s pressure on a young woman to grow out of this parental attachment and become mature enough to strike out on her own.

However, the film suggests that Claudia may never be able to grow out of her dependence on adult vampires. As Armand says in a voice-over,

“It’s forbidden to make one so young, so helpless. It cannot survive on its own,” while the visuals show Claudia meeting a woman in a doll shop.8

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It soon becomes clear that Claudia was choosing a surrogate parent, since, in the next scene, Claudia asks Louis to turn the woman from the doll shop (Madeleine) into a vampire so she can have a mother. Claudia realizes that separating from Louis is inevitable, but, rather than attempting to live on her own, she merely substitutes another parental figure for Louis. Claudia explains that she cannot turn Madeleine into a vampire by herself, saying to Louis, “I haven’t the strength. You saw to that when you made me.”9 Her inability to turn Madeleine into a vampire without Louis’s help symbolizes her inability to survive without an adult vampire to take care of her.

Louis is reluctant to make Madeleine a vampire because he has come to see his vampirism as a curse, and he doesn’t want to condemn another to an existence of darkness, violence, and moral uncertainty. Despite his reservations, Louis eventually gives in to Claudia’s demand rather than push her toward adulthood. Afterward, he tells Claudia, “Bear me no ill will, my love. We are now even.” In his mind, Louis makes up for condemning Claudia to eternal childhood by giving her a mother figure at the cost of the last vestiges of his human soul. When he explains this to Claudia, she agrees that justice has been done and forgives Louis by saying, “Yes, Father. At last we are even.”10

Overall, Interview with the Vampire presents a complex portrayal of Claudia as both a killer and a victim. Like all murdered children, Claudia had the opportunity to grow up stolen from her, and this is the tragedy of her character. She is understandably obsessed with the mature female body and with finding a mother to replace the one she lost. The film alludes to these desires by depicting Claudia sketching mature female nudes, keeping a dead woman’s body in her room, and seeking out Madeleine to be her “mother.” Claudia asserts power over her human victims by charming and killing them, but she is ultimately a victim, burned alive for attempting to kill Lestat.

Female vampire movies often present their heroines as victims of their own vampirism, especially when the vampire is a child. For Eli, the child vampire from Let the Right One In, vampirism is a curse that condemns her to face either an eternity of loneliness or risk hurting those she cares about. In the beginning of the film, Eli relocates to the village of Blacke-berg, where she meets Oskar, a twelve-year-old human boy who is bullied at school. Eli tries to stay away from Oskar to protect him, telling him right off that she can’t be his friend. When he asks why that is, she replies,

“Does there have to be a reason? That’s just the way it is.”11 Eli’s response indicates that she’s aware of the emotional gulf between humans and herself, and accepts it as a permanent downside to her existence.

However, Oskar and Eli’s shared loneliness inevitably compels them to seek each other’s companionship. The next time Oskar goes outside at Brode_WEB.indb 162

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night, Eli sits next to him and watches him try to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

Both Oskar and Eli feign disinterest by asking the other to leave, but they both betray their true feelings by staying and engaging in conversation.12

Oskar lends Eli the Rubik’s Cube when she expresses an interest in it. She solves the puzzle and leaves it outside for Oskar to find the next morning, paving the way for future interactions. Oskar and Eli meet several more times at the jungle gym outside their apartment complex. In each successive meeting, the camera gets closer to Oskar and Eli, as if to visually convey the increasing intimacy between them.13

Oskar and Eli’s relationship eventually evolves from a friendship into a blossoming romance. Oskar hugs Eli and tells her he likes her outside the candy store, and Eli climbs into bed with Oskar in the middle of the night after the death of her guardian. Oskar asks Eli to be his girlfriend, reassuring her that they don’t have to do anything different when she is reluctant to agree. Eli responds, “Then we’ll go steady. It’ll be you and me,” and she takes Oskar’s hand on top of the covers.14

The risk comes when Oskar unexpectedly decides to mix his blood with Eli’s as proof of their bond. He takes her to a deserted room in the basement of their apartment complex and cuts the palm of his hand with a knife. He holds his bleeding hand out to Eli, and she backs away warily.

The audience can hear Eli’s stomach growling. Oskar misinterprets Eli’s hesitation as fear of blood or pain and tells her, “It doesn’t hurt. All you need to do is poke your finger.”15 Oskar’s blood drips to the floor and there is a long moment of silence before Eli dashes forward and licks Oskar’s blood off the floor. Eli looks up at Oskar with a fierce, hungry expression on her face and yells, “Go! Go away!”16 Oskar doesn’t move, so Eli runs away instead. It’s clear from the tense, suspenseful music that plays during the scene and from the hungry look on Eli’s face that she came uncomfortably close to biting Oskar.

Eli’s vampirism not only makes it difficult for her to get close to humans, it also causes her physical pain. Let the Right One In distances vampirism from connotations of death and corpses (Eli sleeps in a bathtub, not a coffin; Eli tells Oskar she’s not dead) and, instead, portrays vampirism as an unusual illness. In the film, the symptoms include: a nutritional need for human blood, an inability to digest human food, an unpleasant body odor, and a fatal reaction to sunlight. The decision to show Eli suffering through these symptoms and, therefore, to suggest that she is a sick girl rather than a dead girl, is another clever way the film manages to create sympathy for its heroine.

If Eli’s need for blood isn’t met, she smells unpleasant and she suffers stomach cramps and hunger pains. The film establishes that Eli needs blood by showing her guardian killing a man and draining his blood for her, but forgetting the blood in his haste to escape the scene of the crime.

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The next night, Eli meets Oskar at the jungle gym outside the apartment and he tells her, “You smell funny.”17 After Oskar leaves, Eli clenches her stomach and grimaces in pain. There’s also a stomach gurgling sound effect, implying that she is suffering hunger pains.

Eli’s inability to digest human food is dramatized when Oskar takes her to the candy store. Oskar offers her a bag of candy and Eli initially declines, but relents when she sees the disappointed look on Oskar’s face, saying, “I can try one.”18 She takes a candy wafer from the bag and looks at it skeptically, takes a deep breath as if to steel herself for an ordeal, then puts the candy in her mouth and chews it slowly. The film then cuts to Eli bracing herself against the wall of the building and vomiting, the sequence of shots implying that the candy made her sick.

Eli’s weakness to sunlight is hinted at when her caretaker covers up the windows of her apartment and by the way she only comes out at night.

Later on, a vampire woman named Virginia burns to death in direct sunlight, proving that sunlight is indeed fatal to vampires in the film, as in so many others.19 However, the vampires in Let the Right One In are not shown to be vulnerable to crosses or holy water, implying that they are not inherently demonic, unholy, or undead. The film also downplays Eli’s culpability for creating new vampires and strengthens the disease metaphor by showing that vampirism can be transmitted easily and unintentionally, like many other diseases. The film implies that all that is necessary to create a vampire is to bite a victim and leave him or her alive. Eli’s first two victims do not turn into vampires because she breaks their necks before she leaves them; however, Eli’s third victim (Virginia) does become a vampire because Eli is interrupted before she can kill her.20

Eli never intentionally creates a vampire in the film; possibly because she believes that killing her victims is more merciful than condemning them to a life like hers. The film also strongly implies that Eli dislikes the act of killing. When Eli attacks her first victim, the actual assault is photographed as a long shot and void of personal detail; Eli and her victim appear as shadows under the bridge. The film cuts away to the horrified face of a man who witnessed the crime, then cuts back to a close, tightly framed shot of Eli as she leans over the body, puts her head in her hands, and sobs quietly, her shoulders shaking.21 The focus is not on Eli’s brutal act but on her remorse, again allowing the audience to identify with her.

Eli kills not out of cruelty or indifference toward humans, but out of necessity; as she says to Oskar later in the film, “I do it because I have to.”22

The tragedy of Eli’s character is not that she can’t grow up, but that she must kill to survive yet hates taking life.

Although I am treating her as a female child vampire, there is a possibility that Eli might have once been male. Over the course of the film, Eli tells Oskar several times that she is not a girl.23 We assume that she Brode_WEB.indb 164

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is referring to her vampirism, but, later, the film suggests that Eli might also have meant that she is not biologically female. When Eli changes clothes at Oskar’s house, there is a brief shot from Oskar’s point of view of a long, ragged scar along Eli’s genitals, as if something was removed.24

However, Oskar does not discuss what he saw with Eli, nor does the film elaborate on this revelation in any other way. In addition, Eli displays her femininity throughout the film through her fondness for wearing dresses and fuzzy pink sweaters and her tenderness toward Oskar.25 For these reasons, Eli fits the prototype of a female child vampire.

The shot of Eli’s scar and the questions it raises are not present in the American remake of Let the Right One In, perhaps because Americans are less comfortable with gender and sexual ambiguity than Europeans.

However, Let Me In is otherwise quite similar to the Swedish original.

Most of the changes (such as moving the setting from Sweden to New Mexico, changing the main characters’ names to Abby and Owen, and changing the bullies’ taunts from “little piggy” to “little girl”) were obviously made to Americanize the film and don’t impact the portrayal of the girl vampire character.

However, some of the vampire attacks in Let Me In are shot in a way that’s slightly more sympathetic to the victim than the corresponding attacks in Let the Right One In, making Abby a bit more horrifying than Eli. As stated earlier, Let the Right One In depicts Eli’s first attack from an impersonal long shot, cutting to a closer shot after the attack, when she cries over the body. This sequence of shots tends to make the audience sympathize with the vampire rather than the victim. In Let Me In, the camera is under the bridge with the two characters and the assault is filmed in a tightly framed medium shot, with the bodies of the characters taking up most of the frame. After the victim is dead, the film cuts to a close-up of the vampire as in Let the Right One In; however, Abby does not cry over the body as Eli did. Instead, she slowly raises her silver eyes and glares into the camera with a feral rage, making her seem more an object of horror than an object of sympathy.

The depiction of Abby’s second-to-last attack is also a bit different from the same attack in the original film, again in a way that encourages the audience to empathize with the victim. In Let the Right One In, the attack occurs when a hostile man enters Eli’s apartment during the daytime, seeking revenge for the death of his friend and girlfriend. When the man begins to peel up the tape covering the window in order to let in the sunlight, Oskar yells, “No!” His shout distracts the man and wakes Eli, allowing her to pounce on him from behind while Oskar slowly backs out of the room and shuts the door. The camera follows Oskar and does not show the attack, though Oskar (and the audience) can hear the struggle and the wet sucking sounds of Eli feeding. In Let Me In, the intruder Brode_WEB.indb 165

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Abby attacks is not a hostile man looking for revenge, but a policeman looking for his suspect. Unlike the man in Let the Right One In, he lowers his weapon when he sees Abby asleep, indicating that he doesn’t want to hurt her. Like Oskar, Owen comes into the room and yells to stop the policeman from uncovering the window, but, unlike Oskar, Owen and the camera linger in the doorway as the assault occurs. The camera initially focuses on Owen’s face, but then cuts to a shot of the dying man from Owen’s point of view, allowing the audience to see his pleading eyes and his bloody hand outstretched toward Owen in supplication. Owen tentatively reaches out toward the man, then changes his mind and runs from the room.

Owen’s reaction to the attack is much like the audience’s reaction to the film; he sympathizes with the victim, but he sympathizes with the vampire more, although he doesn’t want to think about how she survives.

Although Abby is a bit harder to relate to than Eli, she is still a sympathetic character. Abby’s relationship with Owen has all the tenderness and sexual innocence of Eli’s relationship with Oskar, and both Abby and Eli also show affection toward their surrogate fathers. Both Abby and Eli refuse to drink Oskar/Owen’s blood after he cuts himself, and both are reluctant to kill their father figure even when he’s badly injured and asks for death. Abby and Eli may be killers, but they ultimately use their superhuman powers for good when they save Oskar/Owen from drowning at the hands of unusually vicious school bullies. The morally ambiguous portrayal of the vampire in these two films (especially the original Let The Right One In) thus represents a transition between the female child vampires from previous films who think nothing of killing most humans and the morally upright female child vampire from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn who would never kill a human.

Renesmee Cullen is an extremely unusual character in the Twilight universe because she is half human and half vampire, conceived from the sexual union of human Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen. She is perhaps even more unusual metatextually, as she represents a romantic depiction of a vampire child in a genre that is dominated by classicist representations of vampires. In classicist vampire tales, nature is a malevolent force, romantic love leads to sin and evil, and vampires embody transgressive sexuality. Female child vampires are generally portrayed as dangerous, uncivilized little monsters that attack and/or seduce humans without knowing any better or because they can’t help doing so. Renesmee, on the other hand, is shown to be a wise young girl who is pure of heart, does not attack humans, and is not sexually precocious—the embodiment of the ideal romantic child.

Ironically, Renesmee is mistaken for a classicist vampire child within the Twilight narrative. These vampire children are called Immortal Chil-Brode_WEB.indb 166

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dren and are made by transforming a human child into a vampire. According to Carlisle Cullen, Edward’s knowledgeable father figure, “The Immortal Children were very beautiful. So enchanting. To be near them was to love them. But their development was frozen at the age they were turned. They couldn’t be taught, or restrained.”26 Carlisle’s description of the Immortal Children as monstrous, seductive, and tragically ignorant mirrors the description of the classicist vampire child so closely, it’s likely that Twilight author Stephenie Meyer based her Immortal Children on traditional depictions of young vampires in movies.

Much of the film is spent showing different vampires that Renesmee is unlike the Immortal Children in almost every possible way, while subtly speculating as to why that might be. The film suggests that Renesmee is not a classicist vampire child because she was born of love rather than violence, she has a loving and supportive family, and, of course, she is half human. Traditionally, humans are reborn as vampires after a vampire bites them or after they drink a vampire’s blood. The vampire metaphorically represents sexual temptation and the blood exchange between the human and the vampire represents a transgressive sexual act; the vampire’s bite is a metaphor for penetration and drinking blood is a metaphor for ingesting sexual fluids. In most vampire films, including Interview with the Vampire, Let The Right One In, and Let Me In, the transition from human to vampire happens after a violent assault. As a result, the change is traumatic for the new vampire, who either didn’t consent to giving up his or her human life or didn’t consider the consequences of doing so. Renesmee is also born from sexual intercourse, but the sex is literal rather than symbolic, and it is non-transgressive because it occurs between a consenting husband and wife. Renesmee’s birth is not traumatic, since it happens as a result of a loving, consensual act and Renesmee did not have a prior life as a human to lose. Thus, it’s not surprising that Renesmee is more well adjusted than Claudia, Louis, Eli’s victims, and even Eli herself.

Like human children, vampire children seem prone to emulate the behavior of the adults closest to them. Claudia watches Lestat kill and feed on humans without compunctions, and thus develops into an unprincipled killer. On the other hand, Renesmee learns morals from the Cullens, who drink animal blood and don’t harm humans. Renesmee’s gentle upbringing and her ability to survive on animal blood and human food goes a long way to explain why she is the only female child vampire analyzed here who does not kill humans. In addition, the entire Cullen family loves and cares for Renesmee, creating an emotionally supportive environment that allows her to develop affection for them in return. The film shows most of the Cullens holding Renesmee in their arms when she is a baby, Carlisle, Alice, and Jasper Cullen marking off Renesmee’s height with a Brode_WEB.indb 167

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worried frown because she is aging so quickly, Edward playing the piano with Renesmee, and Renesmee opening presents with the entire family on Christmas, among other signs of affection.27 Renesmee seems to have a special bond with her mother, Bella, who loves her unconditionally. On the eve of the Cullens’ big battle with their vampiric antagonists, Bella holds Renesmee close and gives her a locket with the inscription “Plus que ma propre vie,” telling her, “This means more than my own life, and that’s how much I love you.”28

Having essentially nonviolent role models partially explains why Renesmee does not feed on humans, but it’s also likely that Renesmee’s human side allows her to sympathize with humans more than most child vampires can. The combination of Renesmee’s human and vampire halves makes her seem alternately childlike and wise beyond her years.

Renesmee has the ability to psychically transmit her memories and emotions to other vampires (and probably humans too, although she only uses it on vampires) by looking her recipient in the eye and touching his or her cheek.29 Renesmee prefers to communicate by using her ability rather than by talking, and the combination of her silence and her advanced method of communication gives her an air of infinite wisdom she has yet to share with the world. Yet, Renesmee also has moments of childlike vulnerability. Just before Edward and Bella introduce Renesmee to the Denali vampires to prove that she’s not an Immortal Child, Renesmee looks at Bella nervously and blurts out, “What if they don’t like me?”30 In addition, she exhibits a childish naiveté when she asks Bella why “Aunt Alice” and “Uncle Jasper” left, and when she snuggles up to Bella on the night before the final battle with eyes that are rimmed with red from crying.31

Although she may be childlike, Renesmee can also be quite brave. This is most evident when she walks up to Aro, leader of the evil Volturi, looks him straight in the eye, and touches his face in order to use her ability. After experiencing the memories, Aro looks at Renesmee in amazement and whispers, “Magnifico” in an awed voice; as if he has never met anyone like her in the hundreds of years he has been a vampire.32 Aro’s expression is the same expression all the other vampires wore upon first meeting Renesmee: astounded, but not afraid. Most female child vampires are objects of equal fascination and horror, but Renesmee is solely an object of wonder, made even more fascinating by her unusual lack of horrifying features.

It’s fortunate for the humans that many of the vampires in Twilight do not drink human blood, since Twilight’s vampires are unusually powerful for cinematic vampires. They’re inhumanly fast and strong, they don’t need to sleep, they’re invulnerable to crosses and sunlight, and some of them also have super powers, such as mindreading and seeing the Brode_WEB.indb 168

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future. Vampires in Twilight can only die by being decapitated and then burned, a feat that can be accomplished solely by shape-shifters or other vampires. The vampires in Interview with the Vampire, Let the Right One In, and Let Me In are quite weak in comparison; although they have superhuman strength, they are weak without human blood (or, in Interview, after drinking a dead person’s blood), they must sleep during the day, and they quickly burn to death when exposed to sunlight.

The vampire sisters from Two Orphan Vampires, Henriette and Louise, have even fewer powers. Henriette and Louise can venture out into the sunlight without burning, but they are blind during the day and, although they can see at nighttime, they still lack the superhuman strength and speed of vampires in other films. They usually pick out lone female victims and attack together to maximize their chances of being able to feed without injury, and they avoid men who they think might be able to overpower them. After the eye doctor who adopts them injures Louise, Henriette and Louise sit at the kitchen table and discuss the easiest way to kill him, as they are not strong enough to attack him directly. They run from him even after Henriette stabs him, thinking he might be able to hurt them before he dies.33

Henriette’s and Louise’s lack of physical strength and partial blindness make them unusually vulnerable to human vampire hunters, and they exist in constant fear of humans discovering their vampirism and killing them for it. At the start of the film, the audience learns that Henriette and Louise have already suffered many deaths at human hands, but after each death, they are reborn. Having experienced multiple violent deaths, they are understandably fearful of humans and worried about their next death, as shown in the first cemetery scene. Henriette and Louise are sitting on a stone in the cemetery next to their orphanage, when Louise starts to sob. Henriette asks Louise why she is crying, and the camera moves to a close-up of Louise crying on Henriette’s shoulder while Henriette gently strokes her hair. Louise confesses her fears to Henriette: LOUISE: I’m afraid that we’re going to be killed again.

HENRIETTE: So, we will return again.

LOUISE: But what if we didn’t come back? What if one day things went wrong and we stayed dead forever?34

This exchange reveals Louise’s fear of human bigotry and violence, but also her human-like fear of the unknown state that follows permanent death. Henriette’s practical response indicates that she may be more confident and less of a worrier than Louise, but it’s also possible that she shares Louise’s fears and only pretends to be strong in order to comfort her sister.

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Along with their blindness and other physical weaknesses, the sisters’ obvious affection for each other helps to make them sympathetic and relatable to audiences. However, the film also strongly implies that Henriette and Louise love each other in a more than platonic way. Illicit sexuality in Two Orphan Vampires is much more obvious than in the other four films, probably because the vampires are older (fifteen to sixteen as opposed to ten to twelve years old). Henriette and Louise are shown kissing each other on the lips, undressing each other, embracing in the nude, and drinking blood from each other’s necks. There’s also a scene in which an injured Louise drinks blood from Henriette’s breast to regain her strength, then passionately proclaims her love for her sister.35 As discussed earlier, acts of vampirism are often used to represent sexual acts, especially nonnormative or proscribed sexual practices. Thus, Henriette’s and Louise’s vampirism is likely a metaphorical representation of their incestuous love. As is usually the case in lesbian vampire movies, all the vampire hunters in Two Orphan Vampires are men; thus, the human male violence against the vampire sisters represents patriarchal society’s punishment for incest and homosexuality.

The female vampire is one of the most morally complex character types in cinema. Audiences may recoil from her violent and voracious sexuality, but they embrace her for her passion, her rebelliousness, her vulnerability, and her beauty. Female vampire children are even harder to hate due to their tragic ignorance and charming naiveté. They are all victims of their vampirism, albeit in different ways: Claudia because it halts her physical and mental development, Eli (and Abby, to a lesser extent) because it forces her to kill to survive, the vampire twins because it makes them a target for human vampire hunters, and Renesmee because it makes her a target for other vampires. Thus, it tends to be easier for audiences to relate to female vampires than to zombies, werewolves, or even male vampires, who are often portrayed as greedy, diabolical, and selfish seducers. In the end, perhaps we empathize with the quasi-monstrous child because many of her qualities, such as her ignorance, affection, and dependence on others, can be found within ourselves.

NOTES

1. Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955; repr. New York: Random House, 1992).

2. Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, DVD, directed by Neil Jordan (1994; (USA: Geffen Pictures, 2000).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

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5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Let the Right One In, DVD, directed by Tomas Alfredson (2008; Sweden: Sandrew Metronome, 2009).

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2, DVD, directed by Bill Condon (2012; USA: Summit Entertainment, 2013).

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Two Orphan Vampires, DVD, directed by Jean Rollin, (1997; France: Les Films ABC/Avia Films, 2002).

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

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In the early screen incarnations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula , the women (here, Helen Chandler as Mina) are posited as victims to the predatory male (Bela Lugosi). Courtesy of Universal.

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10

The Women of Dracula Films

Brides, Daughters, and

Fierce Opponents

Carol A. Senf

When I first started thinking and writing about Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the early 1970s, I was among the first to examine the women characters in the novel, and I’d like to think that I helped to initiate a scholarly/critical conversation about Mina, Lucy, and Dracula’s Transylvanian brides. I can take no credit for the presence of interesting women characters in various film interpretations, however, for the exploration of different types of women characters is present in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which Jeffrey Weinstock describes in The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema as

“the vampire Ur-text . . . around which all vampire texts—literary, cinematic and otherwise—necessarily orbit.”1 Weinstock goes on to explain that Stoker established “the vampire norm . . . to which all other vampire representations inevitably are compared”:

Stoker’s vampire has so seeped into the collective unconscious that even those who have never read the novel or seen a vampire film can still list the vampire’s primary defining characteristics: subsists on blood, sleeps in a coffin, warded off by crosses and garlic, lacks a reflections, can transform into a bat, killed by staking.2

Weinstock’s characterization here unfortunately focuses too much on the surface of the literary vampire, ignoring its social and historical significance. More important for the purpose of this chapter, it ignores the fact that Stoker’s Dracula and most film adaptations of his novel include multiple vampires. Even more important to this chapter, which examines the women characters in Dracula films, is the fact that most of these vampires are women.

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BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

In Stoker’s novel, Dracula himself appears in Jonathan Harker’s diary as a warlord who describes his nation’s heroic past, and, despite the reader’s learning more about him, that characterization remains until the final confrontation at Dracula’s castle. Increasingly unsettled by the fact that he is a prisoner and repulsed by Dracula’s overtly bestial characteristics (which include bad breath, hairy hands, and sharp fingernails), Harker nonetheless continues to see him as a noble adversary: In his speaking of things and people, and especially of battles, he spoke as if he had been present at them all. This he afterwards explained by saying that to a boyar the pride of his house and name is his own pride, that their glory is his glory, that their fate is his fate.3

Assembling the humans together to battle him, Doctor Van Helsing reinforces Dracula’s heroic past:

He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land. If it be so, then was he no common man; for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the “land beyond the forest.”4

At the same time, Van Helsing also identifies Dracula as a source of evil, whose touch produces both literal and spiritual death: But to fail here, is not mere life or death. It is that we become as him; that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him—without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. To us forever are the gates of heaven shut; for who shall open them to us again?

We go on for all time abhorred by all; a blot on the face of God’s sunshine; an arrow in the side of Him who died for man.5

Van Helsing’s language here reinforces the spiritual conflict between humans and vampires and also explains the reason that crosses/crucifixes have become so much a part of the vampire film’s mise-en-scène. It doesn’t quite undermine the fact that Dracula’s human enemies continue to treat him as a noble adversary with a loyal following, whom they approach at the end of the novel. That nobility is even reinforced by Mina’s observation at the conclusion:

It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.

I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.6

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While many—perhaps most—readers see this conclusion as the victory of humans over the vampire, others see it as sufficiently ambiguous to wonder whether Dracula survives. Quincy Morris and Jonathan Harker do not use the weapons usually recommended for dispatching a vampire, and either Stoker or an editor eliminated a paragraph in which Dracula’s castle also crumbles into dust. Certainly various film versions have raised the possibility that Dracula can be resurrected again and again and again.

As will be evident in discussions of individual films, these adaptations have also chosen to focus on some or all aspects of Stoker’s character.

Whereas Dracula, the single male vampire in Stoker’s novel, is presented as monstrous, unholy, bestial, and heroic, there are five women characters in the novel, of which four come entirely under his spell, becoming vampires themselves. A fifth woman, Mina Harker, fights to retain control over her life and, as such, comes to represent an entirely different kind of woman character, a difference that is central to both Stoker’s novel and to most films based on it.

The first vampire women to appear in the novel are the three women Harker encounters when, ignoring Dracula’s express warning not to explore the castle, he finds himself in the women’s section of the castle and imagines one of its former inhabitants, a “fair lady” sitting there writing “with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love letter.”7

Falling asleep, he awakes to be approached by “three young women, ladies by their dress and manner.” Two of them resemble Dracula, being “dark” with “high aquiline noses.”8 The third, however, is fair, and Harker believes that he recognizes her. Because Stoker never identifies her, some readers have speculated that an earlier reference to her had been expunged while others attempt to link her to the woman vampire in

“Dracula’s Guest.”

What is unambiguous is their sexuality. In fact, Stoker reinforces that sexuality by repeating the word “voluptuous” and by emphasizing Harker’s ambivalent response to them:

All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth.9

Rescued from this attack by Dracula, who brings with him a bag containing a child whose blood seems to appease their thirst, Harker continues to see the three vampire women as a greater threat than Dracula. Indeed, thinking about them motivates Harker’s escape: “I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit!”10

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Returning to the castle at the conclusion, Van Helsing reinforces their evil and their voluptuousness before he finally destroys them: She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in the old time . . . many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at the last his heart fail him; and he remain on and on, till sunset come. . . . Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss—and man is weak.11

Using the ritual that he had previously used on Lucy, Van Helsing destroys Dracula’s sisters/brides. Appearing in fewer than a dozen pages in the novel, these vampires are depicted (both in Stoker’s novel and the film adaptations that include them at all) almost entirely in terms of their sexuality and ravenous appetite.

More interesting are the two English women who ultimately succumb to Dracula’s caresses, Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray Harker. Their distinctly different characters stem, I believe, from Stoker’s response to the changing role of women at the turn of the century, especially the more professionally oriented and sexually aware New Women referenced at several points by Mina. While the two young women had been friends since childhood, Stoker introduces them in the letters they write to one another.

Mina’s first letter emphasizes her hard work and also suggests that, while loyal to her fiancé (and later husband), she has a mind of her own:

I have been working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies, and I have been practicing shorthand very assiduously. When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am practicing very hard.12

While the reader learns later that Mina is a poor orphan and that she has worked as a teacher, we see her here surrounded by the instruments and practices that identify the new communication technology, a level of comfort that signals her as forward looking and progressive.

Lucy, on the other hand, presents herself as a rather silly little flirt, interested in “walks and rides in the park” and in the attentions of three suitors. One might think of her as only giddy, but the following comment hints at a level of latent sexuality that will become manifest after her encounter with Dracula: “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it.”13 Her sexuality is reinforced by the fact that she encounters Dracula while she is sleepwalking through Whitby and, later, before her first death, when she attempts to seduce her fiancé: Brode_WEB.indb 176

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In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips:—

“Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!”14

In a scene that mimics Dracula’s rescue of Jonathan from the three women, Van Helsing protects Arthur from the kiss of an aggressive female vampire.

In addition to the occasional sexuality that she exhibits before her first death, Lucy later resembles the three vampire brides in her predatory behavior toward children. In fact, her treatment of children is what convinces Dr. Seward and the other young men that she must be killed:

“With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone.”15 Joining Van Helsing, the young men meet in her crypt and use the entire arsenal of vampire prophylaxis (including the wooden stake and decapitation) to remove her as a threat.

Lucy’s friend Mina Harker reveals almost none of this sexuality or animalistic behavior. Indeed, the only time she comes close to admitting even a slight attraction to Dracula comes when she recounts his visit to her bedroom: “I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his victim. And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat!”16 Elsewhere she does whatever she can to work against Dracula, assembling the letters, diaries, and newspaper clippings that may reveal something about Dracula as an adversary. In making her a writer and detective, Stoker emphasizes her intellectual skills, thus distinguishing her from the voluptuous women vampires, including her friend Lucy. While Mina is openly skeptical of the New Woman, she is frankly more like them than she recognizes in both her desire for equality and in her degree of comfort with modern technology. What keeps her traditional is her maternal behavior, first demonstrated in her profession as a teacher in a school for girls and later when she comforts the grieving Arthur. At the conclusion, seven years after the destruction of Dracula, she returns with Dracula’s other opponents along with the Harkers’ young son, Quincey.

Having clearly established two different kinds of women characters in Dracula, Bram Stoker lays the groundwork for many film adaptations, some of which will be explored in the remainder of this chapter. It should not be surprising to note that many of these film adaptations continue to mull over women’s changing roles in society just as Stoker did in Dracula.

FILM ADAPTATIONS OF DRACULA

Table 10.1 provides a very brief overview of the women characters in six select film adaptations of Stoker’s novel. Not only does it suggest Brode_WEB.indb 177

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Table 10.1. Women Characters in Six Film Adaptations of Dracula Victimized

Date of

Vampire

Assertive

Traditional

Title

Release

Director

Brides

New Women

Woman

Nosferatu

1922

F. W. Murnau

Ellen Hutter/

Lucy

Nina

Westenra

Dracula

1931

Tod Browning

Three

Mina

Lucy

Horror of

1958

Terence Fisher

One

Mina

Lucy

Dracula

Holmwood

Holmwood

Bram Stoker’s 1974

Dan Curtis

Three

Mina

Lucy

Dracula

Dracula

1979

John Badham

None

Lucy Seward

Mina Van

Helsing

Dracula

1992

Francis Ford

Three

Mina Murray/

Lucy

Coppola

Elisabeta

Westenra
that Dracula has been more interesting to adaptors at certain historical periods, but it also highlights the fact that writers and/or directors have sometimes changed the names of the characters. While Murnau originally changed the names of his characters out of the desire—ultimately unsuccessful—to avoid a dispute with the Stoker estate, we can only speculate on the reasons that Badham reversed the names of his two central women characters.

Given the twentieth century’s greater comfort with sexuality and the relaxation of certain film codes regarding sexuality, it isn’t surprising that cinematic vampires, especially after 1968 when major studies abandoned the Motion Picture Production Code (popularly known as the Hays Code because Hollywood’s chief censor for a period was Will H.

Hays), express their sexuality more openly than Stoker did. Weinstock, in fact, argues that “vampires are indelibly marked in the contemporary imagination as the sexiest of monsters” and that “when we think celluloid vampires, we think sex,” adding that “it seems impossible to think about the cinematic vampire today without on some level also considering sexual mores and taboos.”17 Indeed, both Weinstock and Silver and Ursini observe that cinematic vampires allow their creators to wrestle with important social issues, Weinstock opening his very smart short study with the observation that they are “inevitably products of their historical moment, and . . . the expression of underlying fears and desires concerning sex and race and the human relationship with technology is always local—culturally specific and time-bound.”18

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Silver and Ursini also explore the way in which various directors have adapted their interpretation of vampiric characters: Beyond the character archetype . . . elements of the narrative and the mise-en-scène—from the locales, costumes, and make-up to the lighting and sound effects—have also been conventionalized to varying degrees.

To begin with, the vampire films are set, almost without exception, over the last one hundred and fifty years . . . either sometime during the Nineteenth century or contemporary to the date of production—the former usually being the case with European and Mexican productions . . . and the latter with American films). The implications of the period setting . . . are manifold in terms of specific imagery: Victorian cities with gas-lit, cobblestoned avenues and alleyways alternate with country manors and mountainous castles.19

While agreeing with much of what is said by Weinstock as well as by Silver and Ursini regarding historical treatments of sexuality, the following discussion of six Dracula adaptations will explore other aspects of the treatment of women. Sexuality is definitely important, as is evident in Stoker’s urtext. However, to reduce the women characters, in either the novel or its film adaptations, is to lose sight of something broader and more interesting. Bram Stoker was definitely thinking of new possibilities for women, as his characterization of Mina Harker shows, and many screenwriters and/or directors have followed in his footsteps.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) F. W. Murnau’s silent-film adaptation of Stoker’s novel, which was adapted to the screen by writer Henrik Galeen, changed the names of the central characters, hoping (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to avoid having to pay royalties to Stoker’s estate.20 As a result, many of the characters have different names, depending on what print of the film one sees: Nosferatu/

Count Orlok; Jonathan Hutter/Harker or Thomas Hutter; Ellen Hutter or Nina Hutter/Harker. Lucy Westenra and her husband remain as Harker’s friends, her role reduced to supporting the Mina character in her grief at her husband’s absence and finally to succumbing to the plague the vampire brings to Bremen. Indeed Nosferatu provides a backstory for the film in the diary of Johann Cavallius, historian of Bremen, who traces the plague that impacted his community in 1838 to the young Harker family and their encounter with the vampire. Like Stoker, he begins by indicating that Nosferatu is a creature from the past, having been born in 1443.

In Nosferatu, also, Jonathan is presented as a rather smug resident of the present, happy with the promise of earning both money and prestige by completing a real estate transaction in a distant land. There are subtle differences, however. While both Stoker’s Dracula and Nosferatu open with Brode_WEB.indb 179

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a loving couple, Jonathan and Mina in Murnau’s adaptation are already married, and Mina seems apprehensive upon learning where Jonathan is going.21 Gregory Waller notes in his book The Living and the Undead the contrast between the contented opening scene and almost everything that is to follow. He also makes note of certain religious allusions that will appear throughout the film. In fact, Waller describes the opening domestic scene as “a modern Garden of Eden, in which the man goes and does, while the woman entertains herself with idle childish diversions or passes the time with needlepoint before her husband reappears from his sojourn in the public world of commerce.”22 Such an observation is unfair to Mina, however, for her ultimate sacrifice is what saves Bremen from the plague.

On the other hand, he is correct to point to the complacency that occurs throughout the film, the result of the modern characters having faith in science and commerce rather than in religion. In fact, he points out that Jonathan laughs when Mina attempts to warn him of danger and at the peasants who caution him of the dangers he will encounter at the castle.

Jonathan’s encounter with Nosferatu reveals both to him and to the viewer that the simple peasants and his sweet wife know something he does not.

While Jonathan eventually returns to the sunlight, he never entirely escapes from the darkness and constriction associated with both Bremen and Castle Dracula, and Murnau consistently surrounds Mina with an entirely different mise-en-scène that demonstrates her difference from other characters. The opening scene in which she appears in the garden of her home playing with a kitten seems to suggest her innocence. However, Murnau rapidly moves on to reveal something more substantial.

Her husband away on a business trip, Mina moves in with the Westenra family. While her sleepwalking episodes might initially suggest a connection with Stoker’s Lucy, Murnau’s treatment of her reveals a more substantial kind of character.23 Indeed, Gregory Waller focuses on the openness that surrounds Mina as she sits on a bench at the shore awaiting Jonathan’s return:

Sky, sand, and sea all extend beyond the frame, and the waves and wind bring motion into the tableau. But Nina remains still, surrounded by crosses (presumably grave markers) that protrude at odd angles from the sand, like driftwood that has been arranged to resemble a cluster of dead trees. The crosses “associate” Nina “with Christian redemption and death,” as Wood concludes; they also contrast with the crosses that Jonathan sees on his journey, which signify the vital faith of the peasants and the nun. Up to this point in the film, that is, before the vampire’s arrival, Bremen contains no crosses, no religion to accompany its commerce, science, and medicine. This secular world would seem to have no need for the cross. This seaside cemetery has become a sort of picturesque ruin, deserted except for Nina, who. . . has dis-sociated herself from Bremen.24

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Jonathan and Nosferatu return to Bremen at roughly the same time, Nosferatu bringing with him rats and plague. Before their arrival, however, the sleepwalking Mina says to the Westenras, “He’s coming. I must go to meet him.”25 While it is unclear whether Mina is referring to Jonathan or Nosferatu, her subsequent actions reveal her decision to stand up to Nosferatu. Reading in The Book of the Vampires, which Jonathan found in the inn and brought home with him, Mina discovers what can destroy a vampire: “Only a woman can break his frightful spell—a woman pure in heart—who will offer her blood freely to Nosferatu and will keep the vampire by her side until after the cock has crowed.”26 Thus Murnau makes manifest the feminine strength that Stoker had presented in Mina’s character. The viewer sees her friend Lucy succumb to the plague and observes Mina looking out her window at the long line of coffins moving through Bremen.

Having made up her mind to follow the mandate laid out in The Book of Vampires, Mina saves Jonathan by asking him to “call the professor” while she prepares to lure Nosferatu to his ultimate destruction. Her decision, as Waller demonstrates, is both personal and civic: Later at night, she opens the bedroom window, beckoning the vampire to enter her bedroom, in order to stop the weary procession of coffins. Her sacrifice is at once a personal and a civic action; no other solution will suffice, for the ritual must be followed to the letter, even though Nina has no guarantee it will be successful.27

The final scene, in which Nosferatu disintegrates as the sunlight strikes him, reinforces the diary with which the film had begun. Bremen is saved, though the viewer has no way of knowing whether the destruction of the vampire has also eliminated the crass commercialism that had produced Renfield and the ineffective science and medicine that characterizes the modern world. It does suggest a certain kind of female strength in the heroic Mina, who must sacrifice herself to save her city.

Dracula (1931)

While Tod Browning’s Dracula, the earliest adaptation to feature sound, is not entirely faithful to Stoker’s novel, it does include all the women characters from Stoker’s novel. The three ghostly women emerge from coffins in the cobweb-strewn crypt with Dracula, and these same ghostly women come to Renfield until Dracula warns them away. Browning, however, does little more with them than use them to provide ghostly atmosphere.

Furthermore, while he does feature two apparently different types of women, he fails to distinguish them sufficiently. As a result, neither has Brode_WEB.indb 181

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the strength of character that Stoker or Murnau give Mina. Dracula and the viewer meet the two young women at the theater. Mina (in this adaptation identified as the daughter of Dr. Seward and the fiancée of Jonathan Harker), Lucy Westenra, Jonathan, and Dr. Seward are seated together in a box when Dracula comes in.28 Browning presents Lucy as a romantic young woman who recites part of a poem about death upon meeting Dracula. In fact, Waller describes Lucy as “easy prey for the vampire” because of her romantic tendencies but also “because she is to some degree independent, with no father or lover to protect her.”29 On the other hand, Browning doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with Lucy. Since Browning’s film is based on Balderson and Deane’s theatrical adaptation, it’s difficult to know whether Browning was familiar with the novel or with the sexually aggressive woman that Lucy becomes. While it’s certainly true that Lucy returns as “The Woman in White” after her death and is described as being “like a hungry animal,”30 I tend to agree with David Skal who observes dryly:

“The whole subplot involving the discovery and destruction of Lucy as a vampire is simply dropped in midfilm and never resolved.”31

Mina is only slightly more interesting, though Browning may have been influenced by an earlier role associated with Helen Chandler, the actress who plays her in the film. In fact, Skal reveals a bit of the backstory, explaining that Chandler was known for her role in Outward Bound (a 1930 film about people on a mysterious ghost ship in which Chandler plays a young woman who has made a suicide pact with her husband): It certainly served to link Chandler in the public mind with themes of the supernatural. The actress had a fragile, wistful quality that perfectly suited the role of Mina as it was now written—gone completely was any hint of the “New Woman” of the novel; the character was now a complete milksop.

“In Dracula, I played one of those bewildered little girls who go around pale, hollow-eyed and anguished, wondering about things,” she told an interviewer in 1932.32

Browning tends to emphasize the sexual attraction that women feel in Dracula’s presence. Lucy, the female nurse, and Mina all appear to be hypnotized by Dracula. In fact, Mina describes herself after her meeting with Dracula: “I feel wonderful. I’ve never felt better in my life. . . . I love the night.”33 On the other hand, there is the occasional hint at the greater power with which both Stoker and Murnau invest Mina. She appears somewhat aware of the threat that Dracula represents, though in her sleep she tries to remove the wreath of wolfsbane and open the windows that Van Helsing has closed to protect her. After that point, she is completely passive in the hands of various male characters. Dracula takes her back to the abbey and is followed by Renfield, whom he kills. Van Helsing kills Dracula and Lucy while Mina is saved. Waller comments succinctly on Browning’s treatment of his heroines: “Lucy is . . . an expendable victim . . . while Mina—who Brode_WEB.indb 182

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lacks the intelligence, faith, and the all-important spiritual significance of Stoker’s heroine—must be saved if the world is to be returned to normal.”34

One wonders whether this film, which was released at the beginning of the Great Depression, spoke to American desires to return to some semblance of normalcy or to the threat of a foreign force on the horizon. Whatever the appeal, it doesn’t provide much commentary on the role of women.

Horror of Dracula (1958)

The first film from Hammer Studios to feature Dracula, Horror of Dracula (the American title) was directed by Terence Fisher, written by Jimmy Sangster, and starred Christopher Lee as Dracula. It makes several substantial alterations in the basic plot: the three vampire brides become one bride; Harker and Van Helsing are vampire hunters; Mina and Arthur Holmwood are married, and Lucy is Arthur’s sister and Harker’s fiancée.

The changes Sangster makes in the basic plot are worthy of comment.

Arriving at Dracula’s castle to destroy him, Harker is much more knowledgeable regarding the supernatural than Stoker’s character. He is not so knowledgeable that he avoids the threat of a mysterious woman who appears soundlessly to him and tells him she is a prisoner.35After Harker offers to help, she starts to sink her teeth into his neck, but Dracula pushes her away and carries her off.36 Probably infected by the unnamed vampire woman, Harker later finds her and Dracula in the crypt and manages to drive a stake through her heart, which turns her into an old, wrinkled woman and then quickly reduces her to dust though not until after her screams awaken Dracula.37

The scene then shifts from Dracula’s castle, which is located in a forested region, to the home of the thoroughly respectable Holmwoods.

Despite changing the names, Sangster nonetheless maintains some of the contrast in the two women characters: Mina is more mature and more businesslike, while Lucy seems almost childlike, an ideal victim.

Fisher has the nightgown-clad Lucy open the window and wait eagerly for Dracula. Silver and Ursini comment on the erotic undertones of this scene, observing, “The Lucy of the Hammer Dracula awaits her deadly gentleman in bed, breathless and eager.”38 The predictable result of their encounter is that Lucy, already something of an invalid, becomes even more ill, an occasion for bringing Van Helsing to their home. Speaking into the phonograph, he compares being vamped to drug addiction, and the very next scene reveals Lucy’s addiction.39 In fact, she asks Gerda, the Holmwoods’ housekeeper, to remove the garlic flowers Van Helsing has placed around her and to open the windows.40 After being visited by Dracula on numerous occasions, Lucy finally succumbs.

Fisher echoes the spiritual resonance of Stoker’s novel and Murnau’s film by having Van Helsing brand Lucy’s forehead with a crucifix and Brode_WEB.indb 183

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by having Dracula himself awed by this symbol of the Christian faith. He also has Lucy prey on children, though this time it is Tania, the daughter of the Holmwood housekeeper. Shortly thereafter, when Van Helsing drives the stake into her heart, the camera focuses on her face, which has returned to its peaceful and human look.41 Silver and Ursini comment on this scene though they focus on Fisher’s use of special effects rather than on the Christian symbolism.

The film’s Van Helsing drives her back into her crypt by branding her forehead with a cross and stakes her after sunrise. [Both staking scenes] . . . are similarly direct in their use of special effects not to mention stage blood to underscore the grisly reality of piercing an undead—which screams out its hatred at the vampire-killer.42

Whatever the emphasis, however, it appears that Lucy doesn’t have the strength of character to fight for her own salvation. Thus, she must rely on the stronger males around her. In fact, there is almost the suggestion that the women in this film are interchangeable. Van Helsing and Arthur agree that Lucy replaces the woman in Klausenberg that Harker had destroyed, and Dracula quickly moves from Lucy to Mina.

While Mina herself is only slightly more interesting than Lucy, the circumstances surrounding her relationship to Dracula are more important.

Indeed Fisher emphasizes her greater resolve by showing that Dracula must trick her into meeting him by pretending to be Arthur. As a result of this treachery, Dracula manages to install his coffin in the Holmwoods’ basement, from which he can come and go at will to visit the unsuspecting Mina.

Arthur and Van Helsing are also unaware of Dracula’s repeated visits to Mina, but the audience knows what has happened when the cross that Arthur gives her for protection burns her hand. In fact, the remainder of the film, like Browning’s Dracula, focuses on the conflict between Dracula and Van Helsing. Carried to Dracula’s castle, the comatose Mina is dumped into a grave,43 from which her husband subsequently rescues her. Inside the castle, Fischer concentrates on the heroic battle between Dracula and Van Helsing, who uses the cross to force Dracula into the sunlight. Focusing on the concluding scene, Waller comments on its symbolism, which suggests a return to normality:

All that is left of the vampire is a large gold ring, and the camera holds on a close-up of this single token of Dracula’s aristocratic legacy as the final credits roll. Only the Count’s ring remains, lying empty on the floor, while outside with her husband, Mina still wears her gold wedding band.44

Certainly the return to a legally sanctioned marital relationship is a dramatic contrast to what had preceded. Commenting that the creators at Hammer Studios may have been influenced by Ernest Jones’s Freud-Brode_WEB.indb 184

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ian analysis of the vampire phenomenon, Silver and Ursini describe the female vampires in Dracula as “voluptuous and voracious succubi,”45 a remark that links the first Hammer film to the latent sexuality in Stoker’s novel as well.

Just as Stoker’s Dracula had lashed out at his human opponents, saying

“Your girls that you all love are mine already,”46 Fisher’s Dracula turns ordinary women into monsters who then attack others who love them.

Only heroic masculinity can restore normality.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1974)

Directed by Dan Curtis and written by Richard Matheson (whose I Am Legend is a vastly different depiction of the vampire), the made-for-TV

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which now is titled Dan Curtis’ Dracula on the DVD
version, distinguishing it from the later Coppola film) stars Jack Palance as Dracula and presents a more sympathetic interpretation of the monster.47

Like Frances Ford Coppola’s film adaptation, it emphasizes the medieval heroism of the Dracula character and attempts to present something of his thought process. For example, the viewer sees his memory of the human relationship with the woman who had been his great love and his memory of her death at the hands of his adversaries as well as his response to the staking of Lucy Westenra, who is clearly presented as the incarnation of Dracula’s lost love. In fact, a tapestry depicting Dracula, which includes an image of Lucy, figures significantly within this adaptation. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which Silver and Ursini describe as “in many ways the most faithful and at the same time the most innovative film treatment of Stoker’s novel,”48 also includes three ravenous vampire brides who live with Dracula and Lucy’s friend Mina in Dracula’s castle. The biggest changes are the following: the three women turn Jonathan Harker into a vampire; Curtis and Matheson eliminate Renfield, Quincey, and Seward from the plot; and Mrs. Westenra is a stronger figure than she is in any other version. The result is a film version that prioritizes the women characters while allowing Dracula, Van Helsing, and Arthur to remain appropriately masculine.

While Dracula’s sister-brides are present in this version, they do little more than reveal the aggressive and erotic aspects of the vampire embrace when they attack Jonathan Harker.49 Indeed Curtis consciously emphasizes the eroticism of the vampire, referring to Dracula in an interview on the DVD as “Very erotic, our Dracula.”50

Silver and Ursini explore the way Curtis uses the camera to feature the romantic/erotic aspects of the vampire relationship: Dracula’s “tryst” with Lucy on the lawn of her home in England combines the dynamic of cross-tracking (intercutting between a receding camera travelling back from her as she walks and a forward track from her viewpoint in towards Brode_WEB.indb 185

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him), which suggests in a direct visual way something of the magnetism of his being, the sexuality of their embraces, and her clearly orgasmic reaction to his bite with the sentimental associations of the music-box theme on the soundtrack, a melody [that is] first heard over his flashbacks and represents his former love. Consequently, his seduction and murder of Lucy is as much an attempt to recapture this lost love as it is to fulfill the needs of his “disease.”51

Bram Stoker’s Dracula also attempts to differentiate responses to Dracula. Mina, Lucy Westenra’s dearest friend, is more conscious and aware than Lucy who, like Stoker’s character, seems to operate largely in a trance. Drawn to Dracula during one of her sleepwalking episodes, Lucy removes the garlic from around her throat and surrenders entirely to Dracula.

Mina, on the other hand begs Van Helsing to tell her what’s going on, and he admits, “You should know.”52 As in Stoker’s novel, Mina is capable of analyzing the situation. She figures out that the earth boxes belonged to Dracula, the individual that Jonathan had gone to visit. Later, after being forced to drink from Dracula’s breast, she reveals a degree of self-awareness unseen in any of the other vampires.53 Hypnotized by Van Helsing, she reveals that she is not entirely under Dracula’s spell though she confesses to Van Helsing, “I want you to deal with me as you did Lucy. . . . I’m losing myself bit by bit.”54

Despite her greater strength, however, the remainder of the film focuses on the conflict between men who battle in Dracula’s castle. Even though Van Helsing and Arthur successfully defeat Jonathan Harker, Dracula’s vampire brides, and ultimately Dracula himself, the film concludes with the dual image of Dracula, impaled by a medieval lance, with the tapestry in the background. Faintly in the background the viewer hears the sound of battle and the shouts of “Dracula.”55 Despite the greater number of women in this version, Dracula remains very much at the center.

Dracula (1979)

A few short years later, however, a film adaptation puts one of its women characters very much at the center. Directed by John Badham, Dracula is based on the Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston play, though W.

D. Richter’s screenplay puts one of its women characters—here named Lucy Seward—very much at the center of the action.56 Indeed, Lucy who appears here as Dr. Seward’s daughter is presented as both brave and independent. The film introduces her helping her father in the ward during a chaotic outbreak of the inmates in his insane asylum and also suggests that she is more forward thinking than most of the other characters.57

Even Dracula, who says of her admiringly, “She is stronger than most women,”58 falls under her spell.

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The role of women in Dracula adaptations grew ever more “liberated” as, in John Badham’s 1979 version, Lucy (Kate Nelligan) freely chooses to take Dracula (Frank Langella) as her lover, causing Dr. Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) to appear less the heroic savior than an unwanted intruder. Courtesy of Universal.

Her friend Mina Van Helsing, who succumbs easily to Dracula’s hypnotic powers, goes out to see the ship that had beached on the shore and encounters Dracula in the form of a wolf. After that she falls completely under his spell, passively opening her nightdress to bare her neck for subsequent visits. In death, however, she appears more zombie-like than Brode_WEB.indb 187

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seductive, becoming easy prey for the stake wielded by her father. In death as in life she remains almost entirely passive.

Waller, one of the few critics to evaluate this film, comments on the difference in the two young women:

Badham, like Browning, emphasizes the distinction between the two young women. Mina . . . is fair, frail, and dependent, a Victorian child-woman. . . . While recuperating from a long illness, Mina is drawn from the apparent security of the Seward household . . . into the stormy night to a cave on the shore and the arms of Dracula. She offers no resistance and no challenge to the vampire. . . . Reborn as a vampire, Mina does not become a voluptuous siren, but rather a half-decomposed, chalky white, walking corpse, who feeds off of infants, lives in the dank, deserted mines, and finally reaches out to give her Papa one final, deadly embrace. This gesture is her undoing, and it suggests how much Mina remains dependent until the end.59

Lucy, on the other hand, is revealed as both modern and fiercely independent. While there is no indication that she aspires to a profession, she assists her psychiatrist father in the asylum and meets her fiancé as an equal. Capable of making up her own mind, she is presented as sexually active though not especially aggressive. For example, she leaves her bedroom to meet her fiancé; she offers to teach Dracula to dance; and she expressly ignores the warnings of her father and Jonathan when she decides to visit Dracula’s home at Carfax Abbey.60 Waller astutely observes what happens when Lucy makes this decision:

What Lucy receives is grand romance . . . and sexual ecstasy that is visualized in exploding colors, far brighter than the natural world, colors that dissolve into one another with the two lovers silhouetted in black, completely united in flesh and blood.61

Unfortunately, because Badham’s Dracula is set at the turn of the century, her decision meets the resistance of fiancé, father, and Van Helsing. At least temporarily she is incarcerated in a cell in her father’s insane asylum.62 Eventually, however, she and Dracula attempt to escape England entirely, though Jonathan and Van Helsing follow them to the ship that will carry them away. The conclusion is sufficiently ambiguous to permit viewers to have multiple interpretations. Van Helsing is killed, and Dracula is exposed to the burning sun, which seems to dry him up as had happened in Horror of Dracula. The final images are of Dracula’s cape fluttering in the sky (or is it a bat flying off to freedom?) and of Lucy’s enig-matic smile.63 Does she recognize that Dracula is safe somewhere that she can ultimately join him? Or has her relationship with the vampire simply freed her to make her own way in the world away from the conventions Brode_WEB.indb 188

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so admired by men like her father and Van Helsing? Here again, Waller provides a thoughtful reading of this final scene: Her final smile suggests satisfaction, pleasure and awareness. It matters little if Lucy is actually witnessing the escape of her paramour or . . . remembering the vampire’s caress. In either case, Lucy is cut off or has escaped from the world she once inhabited, as if she, like us, can hear the howling of the wolf, the music of the night, which is, in fact, not only the last sound heard in the film but also the first sound, before any credits, any images at all appear on the screen.64

For the first time since Nosferatu, when empowerment unfortunately resulted in the death of the assertive woman, a film adaptation of Dracula features a female character that has the strength and independence of Stoker’s Mina. Of course, by 1979 audiences lived in a world in which real women were experiencing greater freedom and autonomy, a time in which it was no longer unusual for women to make their own decisions.

Dracula (1992)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola with a screenplay by James V. Hart, Dracula (sometimes known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula)65 may well stem from a woman’s decision, according to David Skal, who explains that Winona Ryder (who plays the double role of Mina Murray and the historical Dracula’s wife Elisabeta) had brought an “unproduced television script by James V. Hart” (who ultimately wrote the screenplay) to Coppola’s attention.66 One wonders whether Ryder saw the possibilities in the multiple roles or the strong character of Mina.

As in Stoker’s novel, the Mina character in this adaptation is especially interesting because of the contrast to the other women in the film, including her predecessor in 1462, whose death, according to the voice-over at the beginning, signifies the beginning of Dracula’s story when, outraged by the callous response of the priest to his young wife’s suicide, he strikes the cross and ends his relationship with Christianity for all time.67

Silver and Ursini suggest that parts of Hart’s script are inspired by Matheson’s script for the 1974 film:

While the narrative of Bram Stoker’s Dracula does attempt to be . . . faithful to the plot line of the novel, two key elements seem to come from Richard Matheson’s script for Dan Curtis’ 1974 version: that Dracula is Prince Vlad Tepes and . . . the identification through flashbacks of Lucy [in Coppola’s version, Mina] as the reincarnation of the love of his (human) life.68

Certainly correct regarding the heroic figure of Dracula, Silver and Ursini fail to comment on the fact that Mina’s character is much more complex than in earlier adaptations. Indeed, even though this version continues to Brode_WEB.indb 189

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demonstrate that vampirism brings out latent sexuality (a sexuality made evident by the extreme behavior of the three vampire women in Dracula’s castle as well as by Lucy’s response to Dracula), it nonetheless also follows Stoker’s lead by making Mina more conscious and aware, both in her response to Dracula and in her relationships to the human characters.69

Coppola establishes the mise-en-scène to focus on the difference in his two young women characters. Not only do their costumes and hair serve to distinguish them (Mina is shown with a severe hair style and high collars while Lucy wears her hair loose and generally displays décolletage), but Dracula’s response to them reveals that he sees them as completely different. Treating Mina with tenderness and rarely showing her his animal side, he comes to Lucy as a wild beast.70 In addition, Lucy remembers little of her sexual encounter in the garden with the wolf-like Dracula, observing only, “I’m changing.” Mina, on the other hand, openly resists the attention of Prince Vlad on the London street and refers to “Madame Cu-rie” as a woman she admires when Prince Vlad takes her to the cinema.71

Only later does she remark, “I know you.” Worrying that her feelings for Prince Vlad are wrong, she observes to herself, “Perhaps I am a bad, in-constant woman.” Nonetheless, it is clear that she has strong feelings for the figure that she refers to as her prince, telling him “I want to be with you always” and a little later, “Take me away from all this death.” Despite her feelings for her prince, when Jonathan writes to her from the convent where he is recovering, she joins him, and the two marry in a chaste scene that is clearly designed as a stark contrast to Lucy’s marriage in blood.

Having made her choice, Mina nonetheless continues to have strong feelings for her prince. She accompanies Jonathan, Van Helsing, Seward, and Quincey to Transylvania, and in the scene in which Jonathan and Quincey battle Dracula, kneels over him, and observes, “How my love could release us from the powers of darkness.” Saying, “Our love is stronger than death,” she kisses the still bestial face. At that moment, Dracula becomes the noble warrior he had been so many centuries ago.72 The suggestion at the end is that Dracula is released from his pain.

While it is certainly true that Coppola’s Dracula reveals the sexuality inherent in vampirism (Van Helsing is telling his students about vene-real disease while the three vampire women suck Jonathan’s blood, and he later describes Lucy as a “willing concubine”),73 Silver and Ursini are wrong to focus entirely on the sexuality:

Bringing the sexual tensions of Stoker’s novel forcefully to the surface, as when Lucy and Mina giggle over a pornographically illustrated volume of Arabian Nights, creates a literalism that is at odds with the figurative elements. By the time Dracula and Mina drink absinthe and an extreme close shot through a glass isolates the “SIN” from the label, the film has moved well beyond Stoker’s fiction.74

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Like Stoker’s New Woman character, Coppola’s Mina consistently appears as a different kind of woman, her sexuality balanced with other elements, including her familiarity with technology, her professional experience, and ultimately her ability to separate love from its sexual expression. This greater complexity is initially revealed in the dramatic contrast with her friend Lucy at the film’s opening but is later reinforced by the repugnance she shows when the three sisters at Dracula’s castle ask her to join them.75 Protected by the magic circle that keeps them out, she reveals that she is turning and attempts to attack Van Helsing. Hart and Coppola thus suggest her love for both Jonathan and Prince Vlad. In the case of Prince Vlad, though, she must make the difficult decision to drive a stake through his heart and cut off his head. Like Stoker’s Mina and Badham’s Lucy Seward, she reveals herself as someone capable of making choices—even difficult choices—that are right for her.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

When I initially began this project, I hoped to be able to demonstrate that more modern adaptations would reveal stronger and more interesting New Woman characters, characters whose behavior revealed the greater freedom and autonomy available to real women. Certainly, one might argue that Mina in Coppola’s Dracula and Lucy Seward in Badham’s Dracula do reveal interesting dimensions. Instead of being the passive victims of early gothic literature, they are heroines in their own right, often more interesting than the males who work to rescue them. On the other hand, even films that feature strong and independent heroines continue to feature women as victim (Badham’s Mina) or the entirely sexualized vampirized characters in Coppola’s Dracula. Sad to say, Stoker’s Mina is still more interesting than most of her celluloid offspring.

NOTES

1. Jeffrey Weinstock, The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema (New York: Wildflower Press, 2012), 17.

2. Ibid., 126

3. Clive Leatherdale, ed. Bram Stoker’s Dracula Unearthed (Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, UK: Desert Island Books, 1998), 66.

4. Ibid., 337.

5. Ibid., 333

6. Ibid. 510

7. Ibid., 77.

8. Ibid., 79.

9. Ibid., 80.

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10. Ibid., 102.

11. Ibid. 499–500.

12. Ibid., 103.

13. Ibid., 110.

14. Ibid., 244.

15. Ibid., 304.

16. Ibid., 96.

17. Weinstock, The Vampire Film, 57.

18. Ibid., 3.

19. Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Interview with the Vampire, 3rd ed. (New York: Limelight, 1997), 55–56.

20. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, DVD, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, written by Henrik Galeen (1922; USA: Alpha Video, 2002).

21. Ibid., chapter 1

22. Gregory Waller, The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 179.

23. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, chapter 3.

24. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 185, citing Robin Wood, “The Dark Mirror: Murnau’s Nosferatu,” Film Comment 7 (Summer 1971): 23–27.

25. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, chapter 3.

26. Ibid., chapter 5.

27. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 191

28. Dracula, DVD, directed by Tod Browning, written by Garrett Fort (1931; USA: Universal, 1999), chapter 7, “The Visitor.”

29. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 88.

30. Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, chapter 14.

31. David J. Skal, Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of “Dracula” from Novel to Stage to Screen (New York: Faber and Faber, 2004), 189–90.

32. Ibid., 179.

33. Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, chapter 16.

34. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 89.

35. Horror of Dracula, DVD, directed by Terence Fisher, written by Jimmy Sangster (1958; USA: Warner Home Video, 1995), chapter 3, “Mysterious Lady.”

36. Ibid., chapter 5, “Library Bloodlust.”

37. Ibid., chapter 7, “The Crypt.”

38. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 124.

39. Horror of Dracula, chapter 11, “State of the Undead.”

40. Ibid., chapter 13, “Instructions Disobeyed.”

41. Ibid., chapter 16, “Through the Heart.”

42. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 82.

43. Horror of Dracula, chapter 23 “Race to the Castle.”

44. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 122–23

45. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 124.

46. Leatherdale, Dracula Unearthed, 421.

47. Dan Curtis’ Dracula, DVD, directed by Dan Curtis, written by Richard Matheson (1974; USA: MPI Home Video, 2002).

48. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 86.

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49. Dan Curtis’ Dracula, chapter 4, “Harker’s Discovery.”

50. “Dan Curtis Interview,” special feature on Dan Curtis’ Dracula.

51. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 88–89.

52. Dan Curtis’ Dracula, chapter 18, “Warning Mina.”

53. Ibid., chapter 22, “Stalking Mina.”

54. Ibid., chapter 24, “Hypnotising Mina.”

55. Ibid., chapter 29, “The Final Battle.”

56. Dracula, DVD, directed by John Badham, written by W. D. Richter (1979; USA: Universal, 2004).

57. Ibid., directed by John Badham, chapter 2, “Lone Survivor.”

58. Ibid., directed by John Badham, chapter 7, “Business at the Castle.”

59. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 97.

60. Dracula, directed by John Badham, chapter 11, “United for Eternity.”

61. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 98–99.

62. Dracula, directed by John Badham, chapter 16, “Healing Lucy.”

63. Ibid., chapter 18, “Last Voyage.”

64. Waller, The Living and the Undead, 105.

65. Dracula, DVD, directed by Frances Ford Coppola, written by James V. Hart (1992; USA: Columbia, 2010).

66. Skal, Hollywood Gothic, 277.

67. Dracula, directed by Frances Ford Coppola, “Prologue.”

68. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 155.

69. Dracula, directed by Frances Ford Coppola, chapter 6.

70. Ibid., chapter 10.

71. Ibid., chapter 13

72. Ibid., chapter 29.

73. Ibid., chapter 14.

74. Silver and Ursini, The Vampire Film, 158.

75. Dracula, directed by Frances Ford Coppola, chapter 27.

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Black is beautiful! The image of the succubus as an ancient pagan beauty who seduces men through her dancing is brought up to date with the vampire-as-stripper: Grace Jones as Queen Katrina in Vamp and Aaliyah as Queen Akasha in Queen of the Damned.

Courtesy of Balcor Film Investors/Planet Productions; Warner Bros./Village Roadshow.

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11

Narratives of

Race and Gender

Black Vampires in U.S. Film

Giselle Liza Anatol

In my current book project, The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the African Diaspora, I explore a variety of narratives, from folklore to calypso to speculative fiction novels to contemporary poetry, that take up the figure of the soucouyant—a skin-shedding, bloodsucking demon-woman found in narratives from the Caribbean, the U.S.

South, and parts of Africa. While U.S. films with black vampires have yet to feature a soucouyant, they reinforce the conventional gender roles that accompany the traditional folk stories. In this chapter I examine Blacula (1972), Ganja and Hess (1973), Vamp (1986), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Blade (1998), and The Queen of the Damned (2002) in order to demonstrate the ways that these visual texts deliver powerful social attacks about racial prejudice but often end up replicating normative gender standards for the African diasporic women characters featured in their storylines.

These vampire movies of the “post”–Civil Rights era continue in the trajectory of 1960s and 1970s blaxploitation motion pictures: “while appearing to critique white racism in America, most of these films were unable to withstand the genre’s more regular demonization of gender and sexuality, which are arguably more deeply embedded as monstrous within both the horror film and the culture at large.”1 The problem does not get resolved in the 1970s; rather, it extends well into the 2000s.

Film scholar Robin Wood proposes that movies are simultaneously “the personal dreams of their makers and the collective dreams of their audiences—the fusion made possible by the shared structures of a common ideology.”2 He stresses how the state of dreaming is evoked in the very process of watching movies in cinemas since one sits in darkness, relaxes 195

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the conscious mind, and engages in a fantasy-experience in which “full awareness stops at the level of plot, action, and character”; in this way, “the most dangerous and subversive implications can disguise themselves and escape detection.”3 He argues that visual horror narratives are therefore constantly engaged in a superficial and psychological struggle with the repressed, where the “Normal” is constantly threatened by the “Monster.”

For the films analyzed in this chapter, the “monster” is not just the racialized Other, but the uncontained/uncontainable female person of color.

Although reflections of ethnic communities, racial groups, women, and historical time periods can be influential, one must also be aware of the fluid nature of spectatorship, a process grounded in the viewer’s experiences—both individual and communal. Neither audiences nor, by extension, films themselves are uniform, passive, or static; differences of race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, and age, to name a few—even changes in the mood of particular viewer—can greatly alter the interpretation of the text. African American filmmakers, critics, and audiences operate in awareness of Hollywood’s traditional use of racial stereotypes, and so often see film not as a reflection of an objective, factual history, but rather as a dynamic, politicized representation of an alternative history. In other words, horror movies do not simply generate fear. As Benshoff argues,

“identifying with monsters out to topple dominant social institutions (that oppress both movie monsters and real-life minorities) can be a pleasurable and a potentially empowering act for many filmgoers” (emphasis added).4

THE VAMPIRE WITH “FANGADELIC SOUL”: BLACULA

Using this formulation, I turn first to Blacula (1972), directed by William Crain and starring William Marshall as Blacula and Thalmus Rasulala as Dr. Gordon Thomas.5 The Academy of Horror Films and Science Fiction Films named it the Best Horror Film for 1972; reviewers for the Chicago Defender and Variety magazine also praised it.6 The Committee Against Blaxploitation, however—a media watchdog organization—condemned it.7 Other African American reviewers noted the political commentary embedded in the narrative: “I have . . . chosen to look upon the entire film as an effort by those responsible to show satirically the black man’s plight as a victim of white vampirism. . . . Those who enjoy seeing the establishment take a whipping will be interested in the number of L.A. Police done in by this midnite creeper.”8

The opening scene’s setting is the Castle Dracula in Transylvania, in the year 1780; Marshall initially plays Mamuwalde, an African prince from the Eboney tribe.9 Mamuwalde and his companion Luva have just been entertained by Count Dracula at a lavish party. Their host states that he Brode_WEB.indb 196

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has never before had the opportunity to entertain guests from “the Dark Continent,” making his appreciation of them purely as exotic artifacts evident. When the prince states that his people are “eager to bring our ancient culture into the community of nations,” the count is dismissive.

Mamuwalde’s response—that the time would be better spent than in “an exchange of banalities with pseudo-intellectuals and dilettantes”—allows viewers to witness his elevated vocabulary and sharp tongue: he is more than an intellectual match for the European Dracula, defying stereotypes of African inferiority. He continues on to urge dignitaries to use the

“weight of their stature” to aid the larger purpose in his visit: demanding a total cease in the slave trade. When Dracula insists that the trade has merits, staring lasciviously at Luva and stating that he would “willingly pay for so beautiful an addition to my household as your delicious wife,”

the audience observes a reversal of the trope of the African cannibal; it is the European aristocrat, and not the African prince, who is represented as bloodthirsty and predatory. Mamuwalde’s outrage grows; he categorizes Dracula’s behavior as “like some animal,” further inverting stereotypes of the bestial African savage and cultured European nobleman. Even though Dracula retorts, “Let us not forget, Sir; it is you who comes from the jungle,” his words ring hollow.

Eventually, Dracula and his minions knock the prince unconscious and imprison the couple; the count sucks Mamuwalde’s blood and condemns his victim: “a wild, gnawing, animal hunger will grow in you. . . . I curse you with my name—you shall be Blacula! Vampire, like myself.” Later in the film, each time the blood-craving Blacula attacks his victims, we see this bestial element manifest itself on his face: his eyebrows thicken; he grows bushy, lamb-chop sideburns; the hair on his head becomes wild and unkempt. This increased shagginess makes him appear “almost lupine.”10 However, whereas Benshoff reads this effect as part of “[t]he lingering racist discourse of Negro bestiality,” I would argue that the makeup choice further heightens the filmmakers’ condemnation of slavery: it is European bestiality that has been passed on to the African, and enslavement—in this case, to bloodlust—animalizes the prince. This reading is accentuated by the fact that when the transformation occurs, Blacula’s skin appears to pale; it is as if he is literally becoming more white.

The entire opening sequence thus encourages viewers to make connections to the indignities of slavery: the slave trade is referenced explicitly in the opening dialogue; Mamuwalde and Luva are taken captive against their will; they are moved from the count’s luxurious quarters to a tomb-like room; Dracula renames the prince, stripping him of his royal title as well as the culture and history associated with his African name. Significantly, the prince never accepts the name and assumes it himself; when he reawakens in late twentieth-century Los Angeles, he always calls himself Mamuwalde, Brode_WEB.indb 197

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refusing, in a sense, to assimilate.11 In the 1970s, the fact that his image cannot be captured on photographic film seems to speak to the metaphoric invisibility of people of African descent in U.S. society. And although the prince and his wife are imprisoned together in Castle Dracula, Luva is not made into a bloodsucking creature. She is fated to die in the room while Mamuwalde is sealed in the coffin, suggesting the emotionally painful separation of families.12 Finally, the transportation of Blacula’s body to Los Angeles in a coffin can be read as a literal representation of the Middle Passage.

“HOLD ME; JUST HOLD ME”: WOMEN’S ROLES IN BLACULA

In his analysis of the problems of pre-1980s black cinema, Gladstone Yearwood assesses a body of work that consistently replicates normative values when depicting women of the African diaspora: he notes the repeated portrayal of black female characters in “passive sexual terms”—typically homemakers and others constantly ready “to provide pleasure for the hero.”13 In Blacula, Michelle, Gordon Thomas’s fiancée, would seem to challenge conventions. She is a working woman. She accompanies Thomas on a dangerous mission to the graveyard as well as to the underground chemical plant in the final scene. However, in the first mission, she merely sits, watching Thomas perform all of the physical labor of dig-ging up the coffin; her most active deed is screaming while the disinterred vampire attacks. In the final mission, when Thomas locates Mamuwalde’s coffin, Michelle is not allowed to approach; her fiancé hands her over to the care of a nearby police officer. Thus, while her character is not portrayed in sexual terms, her agency is, for the most part, minimal.

Tina/Luva, the central female figure of the film, is even more “decorative rather than powerful,” as Jewelle Gomez asserts is the case for the women of Blacula and the later film A Vampire in Brooklyn.14 In the opening scene in Castle Dracula, when Dracula and his servants prevent Mamuwalde and Luva from leaving, the prince fights valiantly while Luva stands by, simply shrieking. Dracula does not convert her into a vampire: when she is left to die in the chamber with Mamuwalde locked in a coffin, it is almost as if the count considers her unworthy and inconsequential. This dismissal is not based solely on race and nation of origin—after all, Mamuwalde has been transformed. Whether Dracula’s choice signifies a world of men fighting for power and dominance, or an attempt to degrade his opponent according to a patriarchal model that associates being penetrated with weakness, or veiled homoerotic desire, the African woman is left out of the equation.

Luva’s timidity is emphasized throughout the film. In their 1970s re-encounter, Mamuwalde tells Tina that she must come to him freely, with love: “I will not take you by force. [. . .] [I]t will not be unpleasant or painful.” Although she believes that she is indeed the spirit of Luva, she Brode_WEB.indb 198

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is still represented as frightened and unsure. She has sex with the mysterious stranger but is afraid to proceed to the next step. In some ways, this failure to “commit” resounds with popular pre-twentieth-century stereotypes of the African-diasporic woman as lascivious jezebel; eager to fulfill her sexual needs but apathetic toward family and stable relationships. The character’s tentativeness surfaces again when Gordon and Michelle try to convince her to stay with them for her own safety. She initially agrees, but when Blacula communicates with her telepathically, she goes to him in a trancelike state: she seems to have no independent power of her own. Near the conclusion of the film, she finally agrees to devote herself to him forever, but because she gets shot by a police officer, Blacula still has to “take” her without her verbalized consent. Finally, the fact that Tina/Luva is staked by the white officer, and not the black one, is suggestive. Considering the sexual metaphor of the staking, it might be that Thomas cannot be allowed to kill his sister-in-law and still remain a (monogamous) hero in the eyes of the viewer. Just as Mamuwalde is loyal to Luva, Thomas must remain faithful to Michelle—he cannot penetrate her sister. The larger implication, however, is that miscegenation only remains taboo in film when black men and white women are involved.

Sexual relations between white men and black women are symbolically consummated in Blacula. One might interpret the violent conclusion of Tina’s/Luva’s life as commentary on the legacies of African-diasporic women’s rape at the hands of white slaveholders, but the narrative does not succeed in developing this metaphor.

Harry Benshoff observed that the media interpreted Blacula’s “appetites”

as “noble, even tragic,” whereas the female central character of the horror movie Abby was figured as possessing appetites that were “grotesque and in need of eradication.”15 Correspondingly, several reviewers read Blacula’s Michelle and Tina as positive representations of black womanhood: in a New York Times editorial, for example, Arthur Johnson praised Denise Nicholas and Vonetta McGee for portraying “sensitive human beings and not sex objects.”16 While this may have been true in comparison to the hypersexualization of African American women in much blaxploitation fare, one should not ignore the fact that neither of these sensitive women is given a last name, a marker of a full-fledged identity. By the end of the film, each is completely contained within patriarchal parameters.

THEMES OF RACIAL RESISTANCE IN GANJA AND HESS

Although French critics and Cannes Film Festival audiences extolled Bill Gunn’s 1973 project Ganja and Hess, it was a failure in the United States.

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Entertain You), Black Vampire (Impulse Productions), and Black Out: The Moment of Terror (Fantasy Video), it fell into near oblivion. Gunn, who wrote, directed, and acted in the original, but removed his name from the redistributed copy, had attempted to create a work that transgressed the constrictive bounds of the formulaic Hollywood horror movie, and the blaxploitation motion picture as well. Similar to Blacula, Ganja and Hess blurs the line between “normal” and monstrous. However, as a much more thematically daring and stylistically innovative piece than Blacula, it not only challenges mainstream conceptions of what black cinema is and can do, but also ideas about the cultural and religious salvation offered by European civilization.

Dr. Hess Green, holder of doctorates in anthropology and geology and premier scholar of the ancient African civilization of Myrthia, is stabbed three times by his new assistant, George Meda (played by Bill Gunn), with a “diseased” Myrthian dagger. The opening frames of the film provide a textual summary of the plot, and link Meda’s murderous act and its effects on Hess to Christianity and drug dependence. Each gouge is symbolic—“one for God the Father / one for the Son . . . and one for the Holy Ghost”—and each makes the protagonist both “addicted” to consuming blood and immortal. Hess’s new state of being is therefore instigated by a violent physical attack, suggesting that religious conversion, while not typically physically oppressive, can be psychologically brutal, destroying a long-standing way of life.

On the first night that Hess Green and George Meda spend together, after sharing a lavish meal at the Green mansion and retiring for the night, the former lies in bed, fingering the Myrthian dagger he has retrieved from the museum where he and Meda met. He experiences a vision of the ancient Myrthian queen, wearing an elaborate feather headdress and furs, stalking through a field; this is followed by a surrealistic sequence in which the museum director, in a Western suit, tie, and silver eye mask, holds out his hand for an introduction. The scene then quickly jumps back to the queen, beckoning Hess from her field.

The wardrobes of the Myrthian queen and the museum curator stand in stark contrast, as do their complexions, the time periods they occupy, and their facial expressions. The scene reads as a battle between (1) the Western study, acquisition, and implied objectification of ancient cultures and (2) the lived experience of and emotional connection to those cultures. Tim Lucas and David Walker suggest that the film is a sensual experience to be engaged on a physical level: trying to connect to it solely on an intellectual plane will lead to frustration. Thus the film’s form echoes its content: Hess symbolically stands between the two worlds, African and European, past and present, sensual and intellectual, and is pulled in two directions.

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FEMALE AGENCY IN GANJA AND HESS

Whereas Hess accepts the cross and the death of his corporeal body near the end of the narrative, his lover, Ganja, refuses to do so. It is ambiguous whether her refusal is to be read as an act of female independence and agency, or an act of betrayal of her life companion—another example of the untrustworthy black woman.

Film scholars Manthia Diawara and Phyllis Klotman interpret Ganja as Gunn’s depiction of a “contemporary” woman of African descent: one who, “tired of being subservient to the church and to black men,” chooses to embrace wealth, immortality, and earthly pleasures because they are

“immediate and real.”17 At the conclusion of the film, after calling an am-bulance and witnessing Hess’s corpse being taken away, Ganja stares out of an upper window of the mansion, apparently in shock at the loss of her lover. She sees a nude man emerge from the swimming pool and run toward the house. Right before the camera cuts back to Ganja’s face, viewers observe the man leaping over the bloodied form of Archie, Hess’s butler; Ganja’s expression then shifts from that of sorrow to a mysterious smile.

It is no coincidence that the naked man is Ganja’s first victim—the director of a recreation center whom Hess had invited to dinner on the night that his wife’s vampiric transformation (although this term is never used in the film) took full effect. The sex scene between this nameless man and Ganja is notably longer and more explicit than the earlier scene between her and Hess, although it is unclear what is “real” and what may be imagined by Ganja as she drinks the blood of her victim. Once again, the piercing of the victim’s body and the transfer of fluids is clearly linked to desire and sexual intercourse. One might argue that Ganja is in full control here: although legally married to Hess, she is able to engage in this act with another man and satisfy her needs—whether these are blatantly sexual or to acquire the blood necessary for her survival. At one point, she licks three deep scratches that she has apparently raked into the man’s back. These parallel score lines closely resemble a brand; it seems that Ganja has marked her victim as her property, inverting patriarchal notions of female ownership.

However, the scene shifts abruptly to show Ganja screaming over the blood-soaked body. She mouths to Hess, who is now visible onscreen,

“Help me. Help me, please,” and then runs off. The sequence suggests a queered relationship in which Hess is an active participant: he stages the encounter and also acts as a voyeur. Ganja’s cries for help—significantly without sound—her act of rushing from the scene and her need to psychologically distance herself from the actual act of bloodsucking indicate less agency than one might assume at first glance. She is voiceless, and out of control—much as she was when Hess decided to transform her from a mortal woman into a vampire.

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When the rec-center director surfaces from the pool at the conclusion of the film, transformed by Ganja’s bite, the film seems more concerned with the racial ideology proposed through the rest of the narrative than with conveying a message of female empowerment. The man’s hair, full and natural, and his lack of clothing would seem to imply that he is in his

“original” state, pre-European contact. In running across the lawn, he resembles the Myrthian queen stalking across the field. As he leaps over Archie, the insinuation is made even more evident—Archie is fully clothed, in his white butler’s jacket and black slacks. Previously in the film, Ganja’s rudeness to the butler may have been condemned: at the breakfast table, she calls him “darky” and haughtily orders him to get her grape jelly and hominy grits. The demand is equivocal, though—does she force him to prepare and bring the items as a stab at what she sees as his cultural inauthenticity? Or does she truly desire these things for herself, with Archie’s hesitation revealing his—and Hess’s—distance from African American cultural markers? Significantly, the nameless man represents close contact with the members of an urban community through his work at the recreation center, whereas Hess embodies alienation and anomie in his isolated mansion out in the countryside. Ganja’s delight over the approaching man, coupled with her refusal to join Hess in his embrace of European Christianity and his ensuing death, posits that she chooses to reunite with a culturally connected past. Significantly, though, this must be achieved through the man with whom she has had sexual contact.

Jewelle Gomez asserts that both Blacula and Ganja and Hess “try to reinterpret the vampire myth for black culture, but they still adhere to the formulaic design: (black) woman as handmaiden or (black) woman as temptress/bait.”18 Benshoff supports this allegation, commenting on the recut versions of Ganja and Hess, which attempted to “market it as a blaxploitation possession film about a sexually monstrous woman.” He cites the advertising blurbs meant to capture potential audience members:

“The Devil wanted their souls—she wanted their bodies . . . and more!”19

The fetishizing of Ganja—and most of the women in the film—appears clear from the start; however, the writer/director does attempt to insert some social commentary into his representations. Ganja is George Meda’s wife, and initially calls the Green mansion in search of her missing husband. Although dressed in the clothing of the upper class, her language and tone are far from sophisticated. She demands that Hess provide her accommodation; when she arrives in the limousine he has sent and Hess comes out to greet her, she sneers, “Tell your boss I’m here,” obviously assuming that the “master” of the house must be white. Her attitude changes radically when she discovers that the African American man is the owner of the estate, and she begins her seduction. Her sexuality is tied to a desire for material things; rather than depicting her as superficial and Brode_WEB.indb 202

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selfishly grasping, however, the film suggests that sex and the body may be poor women’s only means of survival.

Another of Hess’s victims is a white woman with an infant who also apparently solicits money for sex: Hess approaches her on a front stoop in a busy urban area after leaving Ganja in his country manor. The sexual encounter occurs off-screen, but when we next see Hess, he is getting dressed and the woman’s bloody body lies on the bed. The camera angle skews one way and then the other, rocking like a boat, as the baby cries in the background. Gunn creates the sensation of seasickness and things off-kilter to convey the horror of the acts Hess must commit to satisfy his addiction. Whereas audiences embracing the masculinist Black Power ideology of the 1960s and 1970s might identify the condemnable act as an interracial affair, or paying for sex, the distressing wails of the abandoned child—the secondary victim of Hess’s act—point to the extremely limited options of single women of the time. While these interpretations render the women characters as somewhat more complicated than many reviewers gave the film credit for, their potential power is clearly muted, and they stand largely as victims reacting to circumstances rather than initiating a new and positive way of interacting with the world.

TWO DECADES LATER— VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN

Much like Blacula and Ganja and Hess, Vampire in Brooklyn, starring Eddie Murphy and Angela Bassett, attempts to make a strong critique of U.S. racism, but often ends up replicating normative values, especially in terms of gender ideology. The female characters in the Murphy film are superficially much more central to the plot, but they still remain marginal in terms of their actual agency. Vampire in Brooklyn’s glancing appropriation of black female bodies is highly significant of the ways that gender norms have not changed as much as might be expected.

In a story written by Eddie Murphy, his stepfather, Vernon Lynch, and his brother, Charles Murphy, Eddie Murphy plays Maximilian, a vampire entering the United States through New York City from an unspecified location in the Caribbean. As the last of “his people,” he seeks a female vampire with whom to mate and propagate their race. Angela Bassett plays Rita Veder, a half-vampire, half-human police detective, unaware of her “mixed” heritage. She is successfully wooed by the debonair Max but discovers his (and her) true identity and eventually rejects him.

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century, U.S. immigration policy became progressively more exclusionary.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) enabled a sharp rise in the funding set aside for the “control” of national borders (especially the Mexico-U.S. border). Interestingly, the opening scene where Max slays the entire crew of the ship that crashes into Brooklyn Port echoes strongly with Dracula’s destruction of the crew transporting him to England in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. Recent scholarship debates whether Stoker’s malevolent force corresponds to anxieties over Eastern European migration/
invasion or the English aristocracy symbolically sucking Ireland dry. The narrative of the Murphy film does not appear quite so ambiguous.

The film does, however, carry distinct political and social implications as “an African-American appropriation of a traditionally white genre.”20

The opening voice-over describes a “race of vampires”—not a “coven”

or a “group”—which provides an overt reference to the racial allegory at play. The voice-over relates how these vampires were driven from Egypt, with the majority fleeing to the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. The writers thus locate Africa, and not Europe, as the site of origins for vampires, displacing Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu, and other Eurocentric mainstream images with an Afrocentric myth. In doing so, they essentially remove the stigma of mimicry and derivativeness from their twentieth-century project.

The voice of the opening narration goes on to claim that those “of better taste” traveled through Africa, and then over the Atlantic to an island in the Bermuda Triangle, where they feasted on the blood of “unwary travelers” until the “tribe” was wiped out by hunters. The description of a mass migration to the Caribbean resonates with an oblique reference to the Middle Passage and the forced migration of Africans to the Americas.

Interestingly, the specific island is never mentioned, perpetuating U.S.

society’s troubling failure to distinguish between the islands and cultures of the Caribbean—the same move that occurs when Rita informs Detective Justice that her father was murdered “down in the islands” before she was born.21 However, while reductive, this namelessness allows connections to be drawn between various Antillean and Latin American communities that have inherited the legacy of slavery.

Max eventually informs Rita that her father was murdered by humans, a race prone to “fear what they don’t understand and [. . .] hate what they fear.” Max claims that Rita’s father sacrificed himself so her mother could survive, and this is what drove her to mental instability. The story runs counter to the version of history first posed by Dr. Zeko, another islander in Brooklyn and an expert in the supernatural. According to this Van Helsing-esque character, Rita’s mother “succumb[ed] to the powers of the Dark One” and Rita was the result. Viewers are never given a scene of the past, and this striking absence prohibits a singular version of Truth or Brode_WEB.indb 204

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objective historical fact from emerging. The phrase the “Dark One” thus comes to function not exclusively as a metonym for evil, but alternatively, as a simple racial designation. At the end of the film, after Max is staked, a white bird soars out of the exploding apartment building; it then transforms into a star, which shoots off into the sky. This positive imagery, suggestive of peace, hope, freedom, and rebirth, counters traditional notions of vampiric evil, and leaves the viewer with a complex rendition of Murphy’s character—a distinctly racialized one.

RITA VEDER—THE “HALF-BLOOD” FEMALE VAMPIRE

In her role as a mixed-blood vampire, Rita makes it easy to interpret the film as a narrative that tracks cultural anxieties over miscegenation.

The narrative posits that she must choose between the human Detective Justice, her partner on the police force, and the vampire Maximilian. The former represents mainstream, normative ideals and values; the latter stands as a figure of alienation, social contempt, and a connection to her visually masked heritage—not only vampiric, but also Caribbean. In the final showdown, Max argues with his rival: “I could give her everything, Justice! Tell me why you deny her that!” to which the officer replies: “She doesn’t belong in your world!” Max asserts the power of biology when he contends, “It’s in her blood!” Unlike recent scholars who assert identity as a fluid, performative, and self-chosen category, Max claims an innate difference in Rita—an identity that is fixed and inescapable.

The parallel between Max (and other vampires) and people of African descent seems obvious. Max’s argument that Rita’s vampire blood trumps her human blood—despite the fact that she is fully half human—evokes the one-drop rule: an ideology asserting that no matter how white a person’s skin might be, and how far back the black ancestor lies, the person in question is always “black” by default (and possibly deserving condemnation for attempting to transgress the boundaries of that identity). Julie Cary Nerad attributes the continued tenacity of this belief within the African American population to convictions about the “debt of responsibility” to one’s community of origin;22 within the white community, to a desire to maintain “the fal-lacious hierarchy of innate difference that has been used historically to justify systemic inequity and violence.”23 For Vampire in Brooklyn, the issues that arise are whether the film makes inroads toward recognizing the constructed nature of identity and the false “white vs. black”

binary of racial identity, and how—if at all—it reconfigures notions of Otherness and redefines blackness as more than just a corrupting (i.e., vampiric) agent to a white (human) standard.

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Critic Leslie Tannenbaum notes that scholars in African American, postcolonial, gender, and queer studies have challenged the notion of a physical body’s “self-evident readability.” He argues that, whether intentional or not, Vampire in Brooklyn subverts ideas of “a unified and stable black identity”24—one that is easily readable, and thus easily containable.

Although compelling on several fronts, Tannenbaum’s argument fails in several ways—particularly when it comes to the representations of African diasporic women. The critic maintains that not only does the character of Max destabilize black identity by shape-shifting into the forms of dense white fogs and huge black wolves (much like Stoker’s Dracula), and also into characters of multiple races once he has consumed them, but actor Eddie Murphy slips in and out of the comic role that viewers insist he play for his movies to be considered “good.” However, while it is true that the blend of horror and comedy strikes at the foundations of conventional boundaries and thus has the potential to create anxiety, I would argue that the comic emphasis of the plot often defuses its threat.

Tannenbaum claims that Max focuses on Rita as his primary sexual object(ive) “because her body is quite literally marked by vampirism.”25

In other words, Max’s male body is unreadable and his vampiric identity undetectable, but Rita’s female body is presented as supremely recognizable and legible. When Rita and Max first meet in Zeko’s establishment, Rita hesitantly says that she feels like she has seen Murphy’s character before. This does not come across as conscious recognition of his vampiric identity, however; Bassett’s character is distinguished throughout the film as one who relies on gut emotions and intuits the future—not someone who recalls figures and events from the past. In contrast, Max confidently says to her: “I recognize you.” Where the black male bodies in the movie can be interpreted as unstable and destabilizing, the black female bodies appear established in the discursive sphere. Additionally, as is evident when Rita stakes Max at the story’s conclusion, black female bodies serve as a rectifying force for the status quo. Rita’s act and subsequent turning to Justice posit that the mixed-blood character must assimilate; there are no possibilities for both/and biracial identity. Rita much choose one part of her identity over the other, and she eventually sides with the majority population and those in power.

The readability and “containability” of Rita’s body seem crucially tied to women’s sexuality and reproductive potential: Rita is necessary to Max as a mate and the carrier of his offspring. She becomes the contested sexual object, vied over by Max and Justice, in much the same way that her mother was the objectified object of dispute between Rita’s father and Dr. Zeko. In Rita’s repeated visions/nightmares, she keeps seeing herself in Max’s coffin, not her own. Significantly, this symbolic “marriage bed” belongs to him, and not to the two of them. Strongly reminiscent of Brode_WEB.indb 206

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Blacula, where Luva/Tina’s primary purpose appears to be to establish Mamuwalde’s virility and loyalty through the ages, Rita’s role also seems to be helpmate, not equal.

In many ways, the film posits women as the site of contamination and of social and national vulnerability. Max’s search for a mate and entry into the United States, Rita’s sexual attraction to Max and the awakening of her previously dormant vampiric urges, Rita’s human mother’s union with her vampiric father and the ensuing mental breakdown—all cause black women’s sexuality to hover on the edge of deviance. This reading is emphasized by two minor characters in the film: Rita’s roommate, Nikki, who functions in accordance to the jezebel stereotype, and Julius’s girlfriend, Eva, who serves as an aggressive, symbolically castrating Sapphire figure. Nikki flirts heavily with Justice even though she senses Rita’s interest in him; when he rejects her, she responds immediately to Max, whom she invites up to the apartment for loud and raucous sex. Eva’s initial fury with Julius is also tied to sex: with rolling of the eyes, she accuses him of snoring during intercourse. The couple becomes a laughingstock within the visual frame as men on the street hoot at Julius’s predicament, but it is solely Eva who serves as the object of ridicule for the viewing audience. Furthermore, although Eva is antagonistic toward the police, symbols of patriarchal authority and, as suggested above, oppressive Eurocentric power, when she finds out that the investigating officer has questions about Julius and he might get into trouble, her anger turns to glee and she readily betrays him.

Thus, Vampire in Brooklyn, while attempting to condemn racial discrimination in the United States like many of its blaxploitation antecedents of the 1970s, in the end reinforces conventional notions of women’s monstrosity.

Like Blacula and Hess, Max might rally African diasporic audiences and encourage viewers to align themselves with the “monsters” who challenge hegemonies, but the film reinscribes more ideologies than it subverts.

GRACE JONES VS. RICHARD WENK:

CONFLICTING ARTISTIC VISIONS IN VAMP

In an interview given around the release date for Vamp (1986), a film written and directed by Richard Wenk, Grace Jones described her drive to make Katrina, the central vampire of the film, a unique presence in the world of vampire fiction. She pulled art from her personal collection to decorate the character’s dressing room in the film, provided her own elaborate jewelry, and sought to incorporate “Oriental,” Egyptian, and other exotic visual aids in her attempt to create a distinctive persona: “I figure I might as well have a vampire that doesn’t look like any other vampire.

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She’s constantly changing every five minutes: different hair, different eye colors . . . [She’s] having fun because she really is a narcissist.”

Unlike Luva, Ganja, and Rita, Katrina expresses no ambivalence about her bloodsucking needs; she radiates power in a variety of ways. Not only does she stun her audiences by the audacity of her striptease performances, but she seems able to mesmerize them. The club’s bouncer, Vlad, pines for her, but she only uses him for “a quick fix” of blood when she cannot find a fresh victim. His sexuality is in her control, not the other way around. His name suggests a linkage to the historical Vlad Tepes (1431–1476); the bloodthirsty prince of Wallachia who left his slain enemies impaled on stakes and is commonly thought to be an inspiration for Stoker’s Count Dracula. If so, Katrina dominates the vampire believed by many to be the “master” and mold for subsequent European and U.S. vampires, and thus doubly inverts the narrative of white male master and black slave.

Besides sexual allure, Katrina appears to possess economic power. She owns the After Dark Club—she does not merely dance there. Vic, the club’s manager and the MC of the strip show, quavers under her stare and hastens to offer explanations for tasks gone wrong. Interestingly, viewers learn that he once owned the club; the social and financial power of this white man has somehow been appropriated by the black woman.

And while many other vampires are dispatched by being stabbed in traditional fashion, Katrina manages to extract an arrow from her throat and a length of metal pipe from her stomach and continues stalking her prey for several minutes near the film’s conclusion. Naive college student Keith, played by Chris Makepeace, eventually does destroy her by exposing her to sunlight, but not before her skeletal remains can give him the finger. This humorous touch leaves a compelling image of resistance in the viewer’s mind despite the antagonist’s defeat. In the interview, Jones laughed, “I think women now are [powerful], you know. . . . We always have been and just a lot of them haven’t realized it: that they are powerful, that they are smarter than men, and they are the stronger sex!”

Despite Jones’s attempts to imbue her character with power, “memories and feelings,” a history and a background, the film itself leaves the viewer with a radically different impression of black women’s potential for authority and influence. By making Katrina the most enthralling stripper at the nightclub, Vamp perpetuates images of African women’s hypersexuality. The movie trailer from June 1986 focuses on the character’s seductiveness, not her ability to run a business: “She’s sensuous. Alluring.

Insatiable.” During the first scene in which she appears, Katrina’s entire dance is shown, whereas the other strippers are only shown in short clips; furthermore, the camera does not pan away from her body to the strip club’s audience, or cut to shots of the protagonists: all attention is focused on Katrina’s performance. While this might, on one hand, imply agency, in that performance is “an act meant to do particular kinds of work or Brode_WEB.indb 208

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make particular kinds of statements,”26 or might even emphasize to film audiences the importance of the black woman to the plot and in a larger U.S. sociocultural discourse, it also relegates Katrina (and Jones) to the passive position as the object of the (predominantly white) male gaze. As in many conventional vampire films, where a key motif is “looking”—
being able to look at the sun without being incinerated, the vampire’s mesmerizing stare, and being able to look away from it—the gaze holds great significance. Grace Jones has often toyed with notions of voyeurism during her career, but in this case, she is all bizarre spectacle, both for the characters in the on-screen audience and the viewers of the film. Her eyes never make direct contact with the camera, which would give the illusion of her instigating interactions or even directly confronting the strip club’s audience and the moviegoing audience in their attempt to visually consume her. Her off-screen celebrity only adds to the effect of the spectacle, heightening her aura as fetish rather than as willful exhibitionist, far less as an authority figure. As bell hooks details in Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), African Americans have long been the objects of scrutiny in U.S. culture. She describes the “spaces of agency” where black subjects

“can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back . . . naming what we see,”27 but this is not an option for Katrina in Vamp—she never speaks a word during the entire course of the film.

The initial striptease performance is clearly a complex act; Jones is known for her mockery of certain tropes, such as conventional notions of femininity. Katrina’s costuming and makeup in Vamp, as well as the dance itself, reveal elements of subversion. She wears a Kool-Aid-red bobbed wig, white matte concealer over her dark skin, bright red lipstick, and blue contact lenses, commenting, perhaps, on common Western associations between white skin, beauty, and sexual allure. The ankle-length, long-sleeved red dress and black gloves with which she starts the performance ensure that she is completely covered, resisting the penetrating gaze of her voyeuristic viewers. At the same time, however, primal drumbeats function as background music, and when Katrina removes her clothing, her entire body is painted with what look like tribal patterns—
heightening the viewers’ perception of her as the stereotypical African savage. For the final part of the dance, Katrina straddles a chair that resembles a human body and thrusts her pelvis against it; she then bur-ies her head in the “lap” of the chair, as if performing fellatio. For white women performers the act could be seen as transgressive and politically empowering in its “vulgarity.” But as Caribbean scholar Carolyn Cooper argues, for Jamaican women, the dancehall scene, given the plethora of images of sexualized African diasporic women in U.S. culture and the surrounding plot of the film, that strategy ultimately fails.

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the sexual interlude as she pushes AJ down on a couch, disrobes, and pins his hands up beside his head so that he cannot stroke her. She physically dominates his body and the sexual interaction and her aggressive nature are accentuated when she penetrates his flesh with a vampiric bite. This scene is by no means a positive depiction of black women’s sexual power, however; instead, this agency is pathologized. Katrina’s face changes into a monstrously hideous form—a source of terror to AJ, whose blood and human identity get corrupted. And, by the end of the film, Katrina is punished by death—a death that requires numerous “proper” penetrations—
not only by beams of sunlight, but also by a wooden arrow and a metal pipe. As Lola Young notes in her exploration of British film, a mainstream fear of the “dark” is inherent to certain colonial tropes, and these tropes get replayed again and again in contemporary narratives. She describes the fear of being re-absorbed in to the dark, articulated as a fear of the dark or being swallowed, or ingested by the Other. In order to exercise “mastery”

over that “darkness,” to pre-empt the retaliation that they guiltily fear will be enacted against them, acts of violation are perpetrated.28

The repeated penetrations needed to kill Katrina provide strong evidence for the continued social anxiety around sexualized black female bodies; it seems no accident that instead of being permitted to ingest the blood of the predominantly white characters in the film, she is forced to “swallow”

a strikingly phallic arrow, shot by a young, middle-class, heterosexual white male.

Interestingly, though, this gruesome fate—and the gruesome face associated with Katrina’s consummation of the sexual act with AJ—are so over the top that they are likely to induce laughter from the viewing audience instead of fear. Here, as in Vampire in Brooklyn, we find that while the blend of humor and horror has the potential to unsettle conventional boundaries and generate anxiety, the comedy tends to defuse the threat.

Katrina appears more like an absurd and strange animal than a human being with her pawing motions at AJ’s body, inches-long toenail “claws,”

and her wordless growls and screeches. The film’s primary lesson focuses attention on young white men, using the black female body as a fetishized prop: Beware of the exotic, seductive black woman.

The scene appears to be a comic inversion of the traditional horror scene where a young white woman is killed in a moment of burgeoning sexuality—a warning against promiscuity. In Vamp, AJ loses his mortal life after being penetrated by Katrina’s phallic fangs. The lesson is emphasized earlier in the film when Keith flirts with an attractive African American woman in a diner even though AJ, the more sophisticated character, urges him to stop.

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manner with a large knife, suggesting sexual potency, but only after alert-ing Snow, the white male gang leader, which diminishes any sense of her independence. The consequence for Keith’s toying with the idea of an erotic interaction with this black woman is his being chased all over the city by the gang (when, of course, he is not being chased by the vampires).

Keith is rewarded in the film with his life and humanity intact, and a cutesy, chatty, blond love interest by his side—a striking contrast to Jones’s character. Alison, stage name Amaretto, is a stripper and cocktail waitress at the After Dark. Given that her stage name is used only once during the course of the film, however, plus the fact that her boyish form cannot fill out the costume (the strap keeps falling off her shoulder), she is cast as inept in the role of seductress. She is the ultimate Girl Next Door: neither sexually exotic nor unique, she is ultimately forgettable—Keith struggles to remember how he knows her for the entire narrative. Interestingly, Keith is never quite sure if Alison is truly human, but he does not seem to care that much. This accentuates the notion that Katrina’s monstrosity is due more to her racial and sexual identity than her vampiric character.

FROM COMIC BOOKS TO SILVER SCREEN: BLADE

In the Blade trilogy, the narrative attempts to represent a disenfranchised

“street” hero, but ends up solidly in service of mainstream, middle-class values. The first film of the sequence is easily recognizable as racial allegory, but the categories slip and associations slide, making a simple correlation between vampires and Europeans or vampires and people of African descent difficult to pin down. When Deacon Frost states, “These people [humans] are our food,” it is unclear whether we are meant to identify vampires as the evil European oppressor, exploiting and dehuman-izing the African subject, even though the vampires tattoo their human

“familiars” with “glyphs”—comparable to brands that mark ownership and prevent other vampires from feeding on this human property. Vampires might also represent people of color, in that both groups have been discriminated against for centuries in mainstream society. But as Karen Ross claims about mainstream film, “If cinema is about escape, spectacle and pleasure and the majority audience is white, it is hard to imagine any producer wanting to make films which place culpability for five hundred years of race discrimination squarely in the lap of white society.”29

Scriptwriter David Goyer states:

The race question is definitely under the surface in both the Blade films. In the first film Deacon Frost even calls Blade an Uncle Tom, which I thought was hysterical. It’s something that we talk about, that we’re conscious of. Blade is a half-breed and Blade has been an object of racism, and has become a racist himself [blindly hating vampires for what they are].30

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The racism of which Goyer speaks is the blind human fear and loathing of vampires; his statement firmly identifies the vampires as a potentially misunderstood underclass. While Blade seems to move toward the protagonist’s self-acceptance in that he rejects the “cure” that hematologist Karen Jensen has developed for him, the ending reveals that he does not reject it because he accepts himself as half-vampire, but rather because

“there’s still a war,” and the killing must continue until all the vampires are exterminated. The film thus justifies his attacks on vampires, and the narrative fails to encourage audiences to sympathize with vampires other than the self-hating Blade.

Like Rita Veder from Vampire in Brooklyn, Blade exists as a type of biracial subject. His pregnant human mother was bitten by a vampire, and rushed to the hospital to deliver the fetus. Physiologically different from other vampires, Blade can withstand the sun, garlic, and silver, but he still craves blood. He injects a serum to temporarily suppress this thirst. As per U.S.

racial ideology, as a half-human, half-vampire subject, Blade is often identified as “either/or,” not “both/and.” Frost taunts Blade that it’s his human side that made him weak. When he continues, “You should have listened to your blood,” the language of Eddie Murphy’s Max resonates. Frost refuses to acknowledge the human blood coursing through Blade’s veins and sees the only blood, the “true” blood, as vampire blood. The statement echoes with nineteenth-century popular beliefs about the Tragic Mulatta: her white blood allegedly provided intelligence and beauty, making her crafty and alluring, while her black blood made her hypersexual and dangerous.

FEMALE VAMPIRES IN BLADE

The film opens with a pregnant African American woman being wheeled into an emergency room in the year 1967. Throughout the scene, her pregnant belly remains an object of visual focus—even more so than the bloody wound on her neck, which marks her as the victim of a vampire attack. Her blouse is bursting open at the stomach, leaving her naked belly exposed.

When doctors attempt to determine her identity, her wallet falls to the floor, and her name is obscured from the audience as well as the physicians, rendering her a nameless subject. We then see her reaching toward the new-born as it is carried away. With these details, the film centers attention on her identity as a maternal body. The anxiety generated comes from concern about the well-being of the child when its mother is endangered, not from a concern over the woman’s pain and physical victimization.

Interestingly, then, the film opens with the birth of two vampires: the literal birth of Blade, who is removed from his mother’s uterus by Cesar-ean section, and, although unknown to viewers at the time, the symbolic vampiric rebirth of the mother. She does not die, but returns as Deacon Brode_WEB.indb 212

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Frost’s sexual partner and vampiric companion at the end of the narrative. When Frost and his men use Tasers to shock Blade into submission near the film’s climax, his mother merely looks on, undistressed, and Frost preens: “She belongs to me, buddy.” She has chosen lover over son, vampire present over human past, and in doing so, fulfills expectations of a coldhearted nonhuman creature. At the same time, she fulfills slavery-era stereotypes of the apathetic black mother—one who, as a purely physical, almost animalistic being, lived more to satiate lustful desires than to make emotional connections with her children.

When Blade finds his mother in Frost’s bed near the end of the story, she calls him by his human name, Eric, seemingly evoking the traditional mother-son bond; however, her callous observation of Frost’s treatment of him reveals that the name choice might be more closely associated with denying his identity as sword-wielding vampire killer—an identity which could mean her own destruction. This reading is reinforced right before Blade stabs her, “releasing” her from her tortured existence. She attacks him, with teeth exposed and claw-like fingernails bared. When he pins her to the wall, she softly says, “You wouldn’t hurt your mother, would you?”

It is a false appeal to filial love; in its apparent attempt at sexual seduction, it also casts the character as incestuous and therefore perverse. Earlier, when she has sliced off Blade’s shirt to prepare him for the La Magra ritual, her act reads as similarly sexual. She whispers her lines very close to his face, almost nuzzling him, and sexual energy rises to the surface.

Karen Jensen stands in apparent contrast to the hypersexualized black woman. She rejects Curtis, her white ex-lover, an arrogant doctor in the hospital morgue, not once, but twice—first verbally, early in the film when her character is introduced, and then physically, when she clubs his vampire-transformed form with a bone. She is revealed to be physically strong as well as intellectually powerful—she is an accomplished scientist and discovers a cure for herself when she gets bitten, as well as the anticoagu-lant concoction that destroys the blood god La Magra, incarnated in Frost.

In addition, she appears to be a completely active agent. She kills the blond vampire Mercury with silver nitrate and garlic “mace,” and when she finds the stone case in which Blade has been trapped by his mother and Frost, she releases him, becoming rescuer to the male hero. However, the power dynamic quickly changes at this moment. Blade’s wrists have been pierced to prepare for the sacrifice, and Karen offers her neck for him to drink her blood and gain strength. In a strikingly maternal move, she cradles him on her lap, and he begins to suckle. The scene shifts from one of maternal sacrifice to a thinly veiled sex scene, however, as he sucks and sucks, and their bodies writhe and spasm. She whispers for him to stop, but he does not—or cannot—he is overcome by this sexualized bloodsucking, the first in which he has partaken since puberty. The film does not condemn Blade for rape, however; rather, it praises Karen for surrendering herself to the Brode_WEB.indb 213

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protagonist. The narrative reinforces the idea that the only options for women in power are the roles of mother and sex partner.

The film concludes with Blade continuing on his hunt for vampires.

He informs Karen that if she wants to help, she needs to make him a better serum. The African American woman is released from the domestic space to work in the previously white-male-dominated field of the science laboratory; however, she is still in a contained “safe” space while her male counterpart fights crime out in the public sphere, engaged in physical battle.

A BROWN-SKINNED EGYPTIAN QUEEN:

THE FILM VERSION OF QUEEN OF THE DAMNED

In the video commentary accompanying the 2002 Warner Brothers DVD
release of Queen of the Damned, film director Michael Rymer, producer Jorge Saralegui, and score composer Richard Gibbs describe their desire to rectify the absence of black women on the silver screen by choosing a brown-skinned actor for the role of Akasha, the Egyptian queen of the movie’s title. Although Anne Rice originally depicted her Queen Akasha as very pale in the novel, R&B singer Aaliyah (1979–2001) was selected to play the title role in the cinematic production: the filmmakers believed this to be an important historical reflection of the realities of the African continent. The choice has very distinct implications, however: many of the movie’s scenes end up replicating the disturbing images of hypersexualized women of African descent.

Describing Queen Akasha to the newly created vampire Lestat as “the mother of all vampires,” the vampire Maurius identifies her as possessor of the “purest blood.” The language echoes with ideas of Africa as the cradle of life. Interestingly, however, this black woman’s blood, some of which flows in the veins of every vampire in the contemporary setting of the film, ends up being a corrupting force, and the seed of death: Akasha has—and freely uses—the power to incinerate every vampire in her proximity because of this shared blood. And as Marius warns: “She has no respect for anything except for the taste of blood—human and immortal alike.” She is a threat to all, regardless of race.

Although the filmmakers anticipated creating a character for whom viewers could feel sympathy, the racialized narrative is hard to dismiss.

In the contemporary time of the narrative, Akasha uses her highly sexualized brown body—replete with minimal clothing, a hip-swaying, stalking stride, and serpentine dance moves—to lure a blond male vampire toward her in the coven/nightclub. She then rips his heart out and bites into it. Subsequently, when Akasha sinks her teeth into Lestat’s chest—a clear image of female penetration—and then kisses him on the mouth Brode_WEB.indb 214

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with bloody lips, the scene lies in stark contrast to those between Lestat and Jesse, his young white love interest. In the first instance, Jesse offers herself to Lestat by scratching her breast. Not only is the nipple unexposed, but the meager scratch barely pierces the skin, bringing minimal blood to the surface. She is a “cleaner,” purer candidate for his affections.

Near the film’s climax, Akasha orders Lestat to kill Jesse. He bites her in a moment of subterfuge, but, after Akasha’s destruction, when Jesse must drink Lestat’s blood to make her an immortal, the consumption takes place off-screen, and no blood is shown on Jesse’s mouth. The imagery of white woman as wholesome contrasts with that of black woman as sexually perverse.

Additionally, Akasha is rendered as a black woman who is destructive to conventional notions of family, while Maharet, her white counterpart, comes to represent family values, maternal sacrifice, and an accentuated whiteness. During the scene of Akasha’s destruction, her skin literally darkens to black. She changes into a metallic black-colored statue, which disintegrates into swirling ash and sand. In another striking contrast, Maharet, who sacrifices herself by drinking the last drop of Akasha’s blood, also turns into a statue, but one that is made of a white-colored stone.

CONCLUSION

James A. Snead makes an astute point about the effects of economics and politics on film production:

Film making, both capital- and labour-intensive, is the most dependent art form. . . . The questions remain, then: what kinds of statements and images will a society tolerate, where will it tolerate them, and with what frequency?31

It would seem that U.S. society has been able to tolerate—and continues to be able to tolerate—depictions of sexualized black women who are not whole, but dangerous. Each of the black female vampires examined here, depicted in motion pictures by both white and black filmmakers, for a wide range of audiences, across several decades, comes across as a distinct source of social anxieties, and a threat that must typically be exterminated.

NOTES

1. Harry M. Benshoff, “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or Reinscription?” Cinema Journal 39, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 31.

2. Robin Wood, “Return of the Repressed,” Film Comment (July–August 1978): 26.

3. Ibid., 26.

4. Benshoff, “Blaxploitation,” 32.

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5. Crain is an African American director, known principally for directing episodes of TV’s Mod Squad (1968–1973). The screenplay was written by Joan Torres and Raymond Koenig. The “Fangadelic Soul” tag in the heading comes from promotional text on the 2004 MGM Home Entertainment DVD release.

6. See “‘ Blacula’ Stars William Marshall,” Chicago Defender, July 22, 1972, 21; and “Blacula,” Variety, August 2, 1972, 18.

7. As Jim Pines noted in Blacks in Films: A Survey of Racial Themes and Images in the American Film (London: Studio Vista, 1975), protest groups accused blaxploitation movies of “corrupting . . . black values and especially young black minds.”

These groups focused on “the way the black hero-figure is dominantly portrayed as a super-stud, an uncompromising sexual image, and the woman depicted largely on her back” (127).

8. Quoted in Benshoff, “Blaxploitation,” 34–35.

9. Dialogue identifies this nation as from northeast of the Niger delta. To date, I have not been able to pinpoint the reference; it seems likely that the screenwriters were playing with the word “ebony” and attempting to invoke pan-Africanist unity.

10. Benshoff, “Blaxploitation,” 42.

11. William Marshall is credited with altering the initial screenplay to change his character’s name and identity; he disapproved of the original choice—

“Andrew Brown,” which was Andy’s full name in the blackface Amos ’n’ Andy series—and strove to ensure that Blacula possessed a certain measure of dignity.

I am indebted to Novotny Lawrence for this information.

12. If bloodsucking, with its penetration of the victim’s body and exchange of fluids, is read as a metaphor for (forced) sexual intercourse, the count’s choice of a male “partner” rather than a female one is striking. Rather than provide audiences with an expansive look at homosexual desire, however, Blacula demonizes it. The already-evil count is rendered more perverse by sucking the African prince’s blood—an event so taboo, it seems, that it cannot be filmed: we never actually see Dracula penetrate Mamuwalde’s neck. See Benshoff’s “Blaxploitation,” 38.

13. Gladstone L. Yearwood, Black Film as a Signifying Practice: Cinema, Narration and the African American Aesthetic Tradition (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000), 48.

14. Jewelle Gomez, “Recasting the Mythology: Writing Vampire Fiction,” in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, ed. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 89.

15. Leerom Medovoi is a case in point: for him, Blacula is “an embodiment of male charisma” and “imagined African virility.” “Theorizing Historicity, or the Many Meanings of Blacula,” Screen 39, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 12. Movie trailers identified the character as an “avenger.”

16. Quoted in Benshoff, “Blaxploitation,” 48.

17. Manthia Diawara and Phyllis Klotman, “Ganja and Hess: Vampires, Sex, and Addictions,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 35 (April 1990): 15, www

.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC35folder/ganja-Hess.html (7 March 2011).

18. Gomez, “Recasting,” 89.

19. Benshoff, “Blaxploitation,” 44.

20. Leslie Tannenbaum, “Policing Eddie Murphy: The Unstable Black Body in Vampire in Brooklyn, ” in The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night, Brode_WEB.indb 216

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Selected Essays from the Eighteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, ed. James Craig Holte (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 74.

21. Cultural reductiveness on a larger scale is evident in the casting choice of Zakes Mokae for Dr. Zeko, the wise elder in the film. Mokae is South African, chosen to play the part of an islander. The premise is pan-African unity; with brown-skinned peoples working together to defeat a common enemy, but the ethnic miscasting suggests that any brown face and foreign accent will do.

22. Julie Cary Nerad, “Slippery Language and False Dilemmas: The Passing Novels of Child, Howells, and Harper,” American Literature 75, no. 4 (December 2003): 814.

23. Ibid., 813.

24. Tannenbaum, “Policing Eddie Murphy,” 75.

25. Ibid., 70.

26. Belinda Edmondson, “Public Spectacles: Caribbean Women and the Politics of Public Performance,” Small Axe 13, vol. 7, no. 1 (March 2003): 2.

27. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 116.

28. Lola Young, Fear of the Dark: “Race,” Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1996), 82.

29. Karen Ross, Black and White Media: Black Images in Popular Film and Television (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 32.

30. Goyer quoted in Dan Shewman, “Staking Out New Territory,” Creative Screenwriting 9 no. 2 (March–April 2002): 44.

31. James A. Snead, White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (New York: Routledge, 1994), 48–49.

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The female sex vampire according to Susan Sontag: Delphine Seyrig creates the first self-consciously camp creature of the night as she seduces John Karlen in Harry Kumel’s Daughters of Darkness . Courtesy of Gemini Releasing Corp./Maron Films Ltd.

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12

Daughters of Darkness

Vampire Aesthetics and Gothic Beauty

Brigid Cherry

There is a scene in Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kumel, Belgium, 1971) in which the two women Elizabeth and Valerie talk intimately as they walk along the Venetian Gallery in Ostend. They enter a building housing the drinking fountain of a mineral spring, the pillars and black-and-white floor of the portico giving way to the warm brass and porcelain of the fountain looked over by aristocratic Georgian women taking the waters. Both pale blond, both dressed in white, looking cool and beautiful, Elizabeth coaxes Valerie to speak of love and fear and pain. The subject of their conversation is the sadistic male sexuality of Valerie’s new husband, Stefan, but it is also a seduction by Elizabeth (the vampire) of Valerie (her victim). Elizabeth is configured as the predatory vamp—older, polished, self-assured—her scarlet femme fatale lips and nails contrasting with Valerie’s soft, glossy makeup, her hair sharply styled in opposition to Valerie’s natural style which is left loose and long. Elizabeth’s finger traces the love line on Valerie’s palm, and she kisses it, leaving an imprint of her red lips. This is a pivotal moment in the film, marking the turning point that eventually leads Valerie to rejecting her place in the social order as obedient wife and embracing the Other in the form of the nomadic vampire. Throughout this sequence costume, makeup, and setting are emphasized (as they are throughout the film); these aesthetic elements contributing to, enhancing and underlining the shifting relationships that form the heart of the film. This chapter explores these aesthetics, approaching them as 219

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effective moments in a film that negotiates the boundaries between art cinema and the horror genre.

VAMPIRE AESTHETICS

Daughters of Darkness takes as its starting point accounts of the Hungarian “Blood Countess” Erzsébet Báthory. Though history records Báthory as “only” torturing and killing several hundred young women, the demonizing myth depicts her as bathing in the blood of virgins in order to maintain her youth. Popular culture has thus re-created her as a female equivalent to Count Dracula, equating her with the vampire. The film is a contemplation of what might have become of her had she lived to the present day. The result is less a horror film (although there are moments of violence and sadism, there is very little in the way of blood, gore, or scary moments) than a portrait of psychic vampirism with a disturbing subtext and unsettling imagery.

The plot is an exercise in horror minimalism, serving to emphasize the interplay between characters and their shifting emotional attachments.

When newlyweds Stefan and Valerie miss the ferry back to England and are forced to stay in Ostend, they find themselves alone (it is the off-season) in a grand hotel with the Countess Elizabeth Báthory and her companion, Ilona. When Ilona dies by Stefan’s hand, Valerie joins with the countess and together they kill and feed on Stefan. Fleeing Ostend and the encroaching daylight, Báthory is impaled on a tree branch; Valerie, already seeming mesmerized and possessed by the countess, assumes Báthory’s role and voice. The final moments of the film suggest the cycle of the undying vampire with an elliptical twist showing Valerie befriend-ing another couple in another hotel.

With its erotic and lesbian themes, the film fits neatly into the female vampire cycle of the 1970s (others being Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy, Jean Rollin’s vampire films, Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, Stephanie Roth-man’s The Velvet Vampire, and Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos). Daughters of Darkness, though, is less exploitative than other examples of the cycle and if not quite a feminist text, certainly explores relevant themes of domestic violence, female solidarity, and revenge against the oppressive male.

Moreover, with its opulent mise-en-scène—particularly the hotel setting and the color-coded red, black, and white costumes; the deep-focus cinematography; the use of arc lighting (one of the last films to do so), which lends an incandescent glow to the images; and the moody exterior scenes shot only at dusk and dawn—the film is an aesthetic exercise that pushes Brode_WEB.indb 220

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at the conventions of the genre. It conveys an atmosphere of otherworldli-ness rather than exploitation.

When discussing the relationship between high and low art in the production of Daughters of Darkness, Ernest Mathijs refers to the combination of aesthetic film practices with those of exploitation cinema.1 His use of the term aesthetic here is used in its meaning as “good taste,” and this is positioned in opposition to trash aesthetics of exploitation and horror films.

The aesthetics of Daughters of Darkness encompass the auteurist and culturally relevant elements modeled on nouvelle vague and modernist European films that he refers to as “frameworks of appreciation.”2

In this context, it is the film’s adherence to art aesthetics rather than the conventions of the vampire, horror, or exploitation genres that might be significant in understanding the stylistics and affects of the film. Trash elements can of course form their own aesthetic of bad taste in opposition to art and good taste. The aesthetic attributes of Daughters of Darkness warrant further discussion because they seamlessly combine horror aesthetics—the red-on-black titles typical of the horror genre, the fades to blood red that punctuate the film, the bloody death scenes, and impaling—with art, including the ornate rooms of the grand hotel and the architecture of Ostend and Bruges, the moody lighting and bleakness of the sea, and the rich details of costume and décor.

The most striking links to art in the film are through the use of tableaux shots in which characters are placed in arrangements that resemble the works of Flemish and Renaissance artists (including Mantegna’s portrait of the dead Christ), the casts of bodies from the pumice of Pompeii, and homages to the films of Carl Dryer, Josef Sternberg, and Ingmar Bergman, while Delphine Seyrig’s casting cannot help but bring to mind her performance in Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad. Kumel’s Formalist style and the cinematography also mark out the art aesthetics of the film.

The emptiness of the settings—Ostend in the off-season, the empty hotel—and the distanciation that arises from the preponderance of overhead and long shots, shots through glass, and extreme close-ups lend the entire film a dream-like quality. Daughters of Darkness is always something more than just another vampire shocker.

So, despite the nods to the conventions of the vampire genre—the lack of reflection, sunlight and running water as a means to destroy them, only being active at night, not eating and drinking human food, Elizabeth stating that the light hurts her eyes and Ilona dimming the light by placing her scarf over the lamp, at which point the screen fades to blood red—the art aesthetics mean that Elizabeth is not a typical Brode_WEB.indb 221

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vampire. She is never established as undead in the vampiric sense, but as the Countess Báthory she is an immortal creature who has partaken of the elixir of youth, eliding the gory and gruesome attributes of the classic blood-drinking vampire. The signifiers of these characters being undead are only present in uncanny moments such as when the concierge recognizes Elizabeth as being unchanged from when as a young bellboy, he had seen her forty years before. Her conversation with Stefan over cocktails in the hotel establishes that she is a creature who has discovered a means to remain ageless. “Popes and Holy Kings of France drank blood to stay young and healthy,” she says. “Blood is the elixir of youth.” Stefan knows the story and the details of her tortures, the bleeding of hundreds of virgins—he and Báthory both are turned on by it.

Throughout the film, such scenes serve to emphasize blood as symbolic of youth and gothic beauty. Elizabeth puts her appearance down to strict diet and lots of sleep. The diet of course is blood, and the sleep that which the vampire is forced to take during the hours of daylight.

The generic conventions of the horror film may be elided in Daughters of Darkness by the art aesthetics, but the themes are nevertheless present, most notably that the vampire is a beautiful creature. This only serves to emphasize the fact that vampirism is also equated with the cosmetics and cosmetic surgery industries, more specifically in the emphasis on youth in the beauty industry being linked by Naomi Wolf to the fact that “the vampire never ages.”3 In discussing this focus on antiaging in the cosmetics industry, Wolf equates the use of mammal fetal cells, including those from human tissue, in skin creams with Countess Báthory’s purported bathing in the blood of virgins to remain youthful.

Indeed, “Every woman would sell her soul to stay young,” as Elizabeth tells Stefan. If blood is the elixir of youth, it is significant therefore that when Elizabeth seduces Valerie it is beside a mineral spa water fountain. Tellingly this scene is intercut with Ilona’s death. Water forms an oppositional function, on the one hand as deadly to vampires, who can be destroyed by flowing water—Ilona resists Stefan’s attempts to drag her into the shower and falls on a razor—and on the other as a fountain of youth and as seductive: the tinkling sound of running water forms the backdrop to Elizabeth’s conversation about Stefan’s cruelty.

The sound of water is also present in the waves as Ilona is buried on the beach. Thus, the sounds of water link and unite these three scenes, which together form a sequence that removes Ilona from the scene and positions Valerie as Báthory’s new companion.

The loosening of the generic links of the vampire to blood drinking root Elizabeth in myth rather than the gothic novel. The figure of the vampire Brode_WEB.indb 222

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in myth and folklore has taken on many forms, and is not necessarily an undead monster in the form of an animated corpse. The key female vampiric creatures of myth are the Lamia of Greek myth and Lilith of Sumerian origin, both of whom were living, yet vengeful, women who killed and consumed the blood of their victims. The historical record establishes Countess Báthory as having tortured and killed many young women; it is only popular culture that has turned her into a vampiric creature bathing in the blood of her victims and linked her to the fictional vampire genre via her origin in Eastern Europe and the label Countess Dracula.

Elizabeth seems more like Anthony Masters’s description of the Lamia, who would “feed upon young and beautiful bodies, because their blood is pure and strong.”4 In myth (and in John Keats’s poem) the Lamia is both a serpent and a beautiful woman. In her costumes—the red pleated gown, the form-fitting sequin dress, even the silky white Cossack tunic and black trousers—Elizabeth seems at times almost serpentine in form.

The silhouette of these garments and the way they make her seem to glide—or slither—emphasizes the serpentine qualities of cut and fabric.

Similarly, Sumerian myth associates Lilith with night creatures and owls, and carvings depict her with wings; Siegmund Hurwitz suggests this connotes Lilith as a she-demon of the night.5 Elizabeth’s red pleated gown, her purple ostrich-feathered robe with feathers billowing at her neck and wrists, and more tellingly her black cape, give her the suggestion of wings. In the case of the cape, although this also connects her directly with the figure of Dracula from many Universal or Hammer versions of the film, it also aligns her—and genders her—alongside the female vampiric form of Lilith.

COSTUMING SEXUALITY AND DESIRE

According to Jane M. Gaines, spectator, body, and costume are all interconnected through the analogy of film, the seeing body and the visible body are intertwined, in particular through profilmic tactilities.6 Costume is already a significant convention of the vampire genre. Referring to Dracula in the Universal adaptation, Nina Auerbach argues that the aesthetics of the vampire costume construct a “willed difference of accent, costume and rhythm.”7 Although vampires might usually dress in the contemporary styles of those they live among, in other examples of the genre, aspects of costume that signify their status as vampire remain. Costume can, as Stacey Abbott points out with respect to George Romero’s Martin, be appropriated to mark out the wearer as a vampire.8 In such cases the use of iconic imagery in costume and makeup from films such Brode_WEB.indb 223

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as Universal’s Dracula “reveals the constructedness of the traditional vampire image.”9 As ironically configured in films like Martin, it is just a costume. However, the costume remains part of a ritualized presentation of character and persona, as does all fashion.

As Mary Ann Caws argues, there is a vampire “look”—costumes that are styled for the formal ritual of the blood rite: “the ritual of blood calls for the heavy accent on dress and dressing up.”10 The act of vampirism is an act that both vampire and victim are “always specially dressed up for”;11 in this way fashion and the body are intimately linked. And since the vampire is the most desirable of monstrous and supernatural creatures in the horror genre, costume here is tied to desire. To borrow a term from Stella Bruzzi, “the language of desire has been the language of clothes.”12 Here too, it is the language of vampirism. The spectacularity of the vampire costume is most overt in the vampire cloak, a garment that

“wraps up even as it reveals the character underneath.”13 The cloak has been used in various films to signify the association of the vampire with the bat (especially in the absence of the bat-like pointed ears and talons of Nosferatu), as in Baron Meinster spreading his cloak before transforming in Hammer’s The Brides of Dracula, for example. Elizabeth’s cape on the beach is used to similar effect, and she spreads it wide not to signify her literal vampiric transformation but to welcome Valerie into her embrace.

Stefan is burying Ilona, Elizabeth’s recent companion, and she, Báthory, is taking Valerie as her replacement. This signals Valerie’s transformation into a vampire rather than Báthory’s transformation into a bat. It also prefigures Valerie’s transformation into Báthory. As Caws points out,

“Costuming . . . emphasizes that vampirism as a style is contagious.”14 At the end of the film, Valerie has become (or been possessed by) Elizabeth and is tellingly wearing her cape.

Furthermore, in terms of the ritualistic vampire costume and its spectacularity, the costumes in Daughters of Darkness are marked by striking and significant color contrasts. The palette of the costumes worn by the vampires (Elizabeth and Ilona) and their victims (Valerie and Stefan) is dominated by black, white, and red. These colors are a recognizable convention of the horror genre, as well as being a traditional vampiric color scheme, the black of Dracula’s cloak, the white of his victim’s clothing, and the red of the blood that is shed and consumed. In this way, the costumes shift from “fashion”—clothing that is detachable from social identity—to “habit”—clothing that marks identity, ritual and social memory.15 The use of color in the costumes of the four main characters in Daughters of Darkness is thus both read and responded to as a construction of vampiric and victim identity and at the same time works to construct characters in opposition and—sometimes at the same time—to twin them.

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When Valerie and Stefan arrive at the hotel, Valerie is pale and cool with her blond hair, rosebud pink lips and all-white outfit—gloves, boots, bag, and shiny maxi coat, with white bridal bouquet. This scene is mirrored later on Elizabeth’s and Ilona’s arrival. Elizabeth is twinned with Valerie in her white blond hair and pale skin, but is Valerie’s negative image in shiny black leather coat with oversize fur collar, black raven feather fascinator and black veil, and patent leather boots. And as noted above, her lips are a vamp’s red against Valerie’s natural pink and her hair is in sculpted Marcel waves in contrast to Valerie’s loose, flowing, and natural. They are both twinned in looks, and opposites in costume.

Such examples of mirroring are significant in terms of the way the look is constructed in the film. Gaines notes the significance of mirroring in terms of the “coiling of the body that sees itself, touches itself seeing.”16 In fashioning the vampire body, however, the mirror is absent or at least ir-relevant—the vampire cannot see her reflection. Indeed, Elizabeth has no reflection when she goes through the motion of checking her makeup in her compact. Valerie, twinned and mirrored through her costume, stands in as Elizabeth’s reflection.

The next day, when the two couples meet for drinks in the hotel lounge, the relationships between the characters begin to change and the narrative construction of these changes is primarily achieved through costume. Valerie and Stefan have visited Bruges and fallen out over Stefan’s excitement at seeing the bloodless corpse. Their costumes have reversed in color. Where Valerie was in white accompanied by Stefan in a black jacket when they arrived at the hotel, now Valerie is wearing a black trouser suit and Stefan a white jumper and slacks.

Here though, Valerie is not matched with Elizabeth, who is now wearing the red pleated dress that marks out her difference from the couple she is seducing. Rather, Valerie is twinned with Ilona, who is wearing black in this scene. It is also worth noting that Ilona’s costume, with its plain black dress and prim white collar resembling a working uniform a serving maid might wear, hints at her subservient position to Elizabeth. Their relationship is defined as aristocrat and lady’s maid or companion, as much as vampire sire and progeny. As Ilona’s reflection in this scene, Valerie is prefigured as her replacement, even though it is Stefan that Elizabeth makes advances to. Stefan wearing the color that has previously been linked with Valerie stands in for her in Elizabeth’s seduction scenario. It is Valerie whom Elizabeth wishes to seduce and this is confirmed when she hands Stefan off to Ilona.

The signifying processes of these costumes thus become increasingly effective. Elizabeth and Stefan are a striking conjunction of red and white, like the trail of blood on white flesh that normally signifies the Brode_WEB.indb 225

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vampire’s bloodlust—in fact, Stefan has previously cut his neck shaving just as Harker does in Dracula. As Elizabeth leans over him discussing the tortures of the Hungarian Blood Countess, Stefan’s excitement clearly builds, the aurally affecting music heightening the erotic danger of the vampire as vamp (in the sense of femme fatale). This scene provides a link between Stefan’s appearance in Bruges and in the hotel room with Valerie. In Bruges, the murder scenes create splashes of red against the palette of white, gray, brown and dark green. Stefan’s ox-blood jacket becomes part of this red contrast and links him to the murder (and thus vampirism). Valerie recognizes the pleasure Stefan takes in seeing the young girl’s dead body, and her advances toward him on the bus back to Ostend are rejected. It appears she is no longer enough for him, and his growing excitement and arousal toward Elizabeth are extended when he has changed into a red jumper to match Báthory’s gown and beats Valerie with a belt during a thunderstorm—emulating the scarlet countess’s tortures that turned him on. Stefan, in any case, has been matched with Elizabeth already via his bright red bathrobe.

When Valerie slips out of the hotel in her white coat in the early morning, intent on leaving Stefan after the beating, Báthory is also wearing a white Cossack-style tunic, which now pairs her with Valerie. Identities, like costumes, become more and more conflated. The vampire here, to borrow from Erik Butler’s discussion of villains in German Expressionist cinema, “splits up and bleeds over into other characters.”17 In fact, after Ilona’s death, Valerie stands in exactly the place Ilona stood earlier, in the exact same pose in the inner doorway, as Báthory enters her room.

Even more effective in the film is the use of the strong, opposite color contrast of red and blue-green. This is a striking contrast, and notably one that has been employed effectively before in Hammer’s Dracula with several scenes offering various recombinations of this contrast in costume and décor. In Daughters of Darkness, this color contrast jumps off the screen alarmingly as a clash of Elizabeth’s red dress with her opaque mint-green cocktail; the sequence opens with Elizabeth pick-ing up the glass and holding it against the red of her dress and lips to emphasize the contrast. Patrizia Calefato argues that fashion works as a form of synaesthesia, being a “sense-producing art” that gives rise to

“a network of correlations between different levels of signifying reality, each having their own sense qualities.”18 This color contrast contains both the tactile sensations of the surgical knife (the cocktail suggests the color of surgical scrubs, a color chosen to prevent afterimages imped-ing vision for the surgeon looking at an expanse of blood and internal organs) and the taste and smell of absinthe, crème de menthe, or other Brode_WEB.indb 226

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strongly flavored green liqueur (absinthe in particular being associated with the vampire via fin de siècle decadence). The clothed body here

“emphasizes . . . the relations between signs and the senses.”19 Visually, the scene is as “revolting but interesting” as Elizabeth says is the history of her family. Erzsébet Báthory, the Scarlet Countess, is manifest in Elizabeth’s costume (she is, of course, dressed in scarlet as she talks about her supposed ancestor). This “transformation along a given line of thought” confirms, if confirmation were needed, that Elizabeth is indeed the Scarlet Countess. Her red dress gives her special status.

She is the instigator of change, enflaming Stefan’s passions into acts of male violence against women—domestic abuse against Valerie and the symbolic rape and murder of Ilona. The lesbian vampire is positioned as avenging angel (the angelic silhouette of her red dress again), she is outside the social order, and above it.

THE NOMADIC VAMPIRE

The roots and history of vampire fiction also cast the gothic vampire in the hierarchy of the social order, notably as a decadent aristocrat, Countess Báthory being the female counterpart to Count Dracula (both vampire narratives drawing on bloodthirsty historical rulers from Eastern Europe). Elizabeth’s costumes in Daughters of Darkness directly connect her with moneyed and leisured aristocracy. In her position as a titled woman of leisure drifting around Europe, Elizabeth is akin to Byron’s Augustus Darvell and Polidori’s Lord Ruthven—“vampire dandies created by nineteenth century bohemians” as Milly Williamson describes them.20 In a direct connection to Byron and Polidori and their fictional vampires, Elizabeth seems to be on one long “grand tour.” She marks herself out as belonging to the category of bohemian decadents by remarking that “nothing in life is ever that serious.” Accordingly, her clothing is expensive and impractical. In scene after scene she is depicted lounging around in the palatial hotel in velvet robe, gowns, and evening dresses. All her costumes are elaborate and contain excessive embellishments, purple ostrich feathers billow around her face, the candle light flares dramatically off neck-to-toe sequins, pleated folds of fabric fall from neck and wrist. Even her “day wear” marks her class.

Her Cossack-style outfit (anchoring her in her own Eastern European past) when she follows Valerie is fine, white silk, immaculate and pristine, with highly polished boots. It is not a working uniform, but a dilettante’s high-fashion version of it. This may explain too the scene of her knitting in the lobby of the hotel, an otherwise perplexing hobby for a Brode_WEB.indb 227

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vampire. It links to the various kinds of needlework that young women of the wealthy classes would have traditionally practiced.

This configures and contextualizes Elizabeth’s superior aristocratic attitudes toward others. She is controlling, as when Ilona tries to leave her and Valerie tries to reject her advances. Her demand that “You must be nice to me; soon you’ll love me as I love you now” after kissing Valerie’s palm and leaving the imprint of her red lips can be read as of the dominant aristocratic demands on inferiors, staff and servants, and even lovers. Even though Valerie says she despises her (as serfs might despise their master), Elizabeth will not let her go—she claims ownership of Valerie. Valerie’s (and Stefan’s) relationship with Elizabeth is already configured as troubling from the moment they arrive at the hotel. Valerie and Stefan are given the royal suite, “the hotel’s very best,” but this is Elizabeth’s regular choice (albeit quite some time ago, as the concierge remembers). Valerie and Stefan have already usurped Elizabeth’s position as royalty, and in their mirror-image costumes, Valerie is already configured as Elizabeth’s future companion and possession—the end of the film literally depicting Valerie possessed by the spirit of the Scarlet Countess and wearing her clothing. Class is thus clearly inherent in the costuming, but it also indicates the nature of the vampire as a figure out of time and place.

The concierge, of course, remembers Elizabeth from forty years before, one of the first signifiers of her vampire status in the film. Moreover, she and Ilona seem displaced in time, transported directly from the 1930s (the last time she was in the hotel) to the 1970s. Her costumes—the Fortuny-style pleats of her red dress, her feathered boudoir gown, and the black sequins of the outfit she is wearing when she is sitting in the foyer knitting—could be the same ones she wore last time she stayed. Moreover, Elizabeth’s appearance is based on Marlene Dietrich in von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (and other roles) and Ilona’s on Louise Brooks as Lulu in Pabst’s Pandora’s Box. This intertextuality is emphasized by the mannered performances and exaggerated gestures of the actors, but also by the décor of the hotel and the props. The Tiffany lamps, the red velvet up-holstered chaise lounge, Elizabeth’s red and black art deco compact, the wide staircase down to the hotel foyer all suggest a more glamorous era in contrast to the bleak gray seas, sky, and concrete of Ostend. Elizabeth is thus anchored in her own past.

It is therefore significant that she calls the hotel sinister and deserted.

She refers to it as a caravansary and this itself has connections back to the notion of the aristocratic vampire on his Grand Tour. A caravansery, though, is a wayside inn along the Silk Road, a stopover for traders en route to a distant land. For Valerie and Stefan this is indeed a stopover Brode_WEB.indb 228

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on the way to England, but it suggests that Elizabeth is a perpetual traveler, moving from one place to another and never settling. She has been traveling around Europe for at least forty years (when she was last at that hotel), she describes herself as “just an outmoded character . . . the beautiful stranger, slightly sad, slightly mysterious, that haunts one place after another—Nice, Monte Carlo, Bruges.”

She is a sophisticated, but jaded aristocrat in a stylish and elegant setting (the hotel) but under this surface her use of the term caravansary (although these are palatial buildings) suggests a worn and weary traveler on a length journey, and might suggest that in her travels (probably since leaving Hungary three hundred years before) she has journeyed across Asia too. Aristocracy—and vampirism—is linked via this endless journey to ennui and inner despair. Indeed, they share a connection in this to Romantic vampires: as Williamson points out, nineteenth-century literature exhibits the traits of interior conflict and cross-impulses that can be identified in recent domesticated vampires like Louis in Interview with the Vampire.21 “I’ve seen many a night fall away into an ever more endless night,” Elizabeth says, “After a while it’ll only be the remembrance of a bad dream and then the remains of a remembrance.” In her passivity toward Stefan, Valerie already possesses the same ennui that characterizes Elizabeth. Although it is already winter, the weather dull and overcast, when they arrive at the hotel, Valerie wears sunglasses, rendering her emotionless as he carries her over the threshold (and again prefiguring vampirism in an aversion to the light). This ennui is a significant marker of vampirism in the film, standing in for fangs and bat-like characteristics. When Ilona says she wishes she could die, it is a conceptual wish—I wish I could die—not a literal one, a desire for death at that moment; Ilona wants to leave, but never can: “Call this a life?”

she asks rhetorically. In Valerie, this is amplified into the hypnotized look she takes on after being bitten, and significantly she is dressed in bridal white again to signify her now being “wedded” to Elizabeth.

This new coupling, of the lesbian vampire, is not, however, passive. It immediately precedes the moment of revenge when they kill Stefan and leave Ostend together.

ELIDING HETERONORMATIVITY

Stefan, furthermore, is problematically associated with aristocracy, and in this he represents the patriarchal line that must be obliterated before the feminine can regain ascendancy. In the beginning, he resists telling his mother, Lady Chiltern, about Valerie (putting off their return Brode_WEB.indb 229

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to England and passing a note to the concierge upon arrival at the hotel asking him to lie about getting no reply) and Valerie—and the viewer—is led to assume that this is because Stefan is marrying beneath him. Through his mother, Stefan’s aristocracy places him in a class with Elizabeth, but ultimately the problem is revealed as one entirely unrelated to class and snobbery. Rather it is one of sexuality. Marriage, and the heteronormative couple, is already undermined in the opening moments of the film. It is already winter, a barren season as suggested by shots of bare tree branches against a darkened sky, and though it is night, ostensibly a time for lovers—and a wedding night to be more precise—close-up shots of flowers and champagne lying on a table seem less a prelude to romance than a rejection of it. Though Stefan and Valerie whisper their names huskily to one another as they make love, afterward they talk of love in terms of not loving each other. It is this lack of love that unites them and marks them out as being made for each other. Love is signaled as cold from the very beginning and this is underlined strongly by the establishing shots of Ostend, bleak and washed out with a gray sky over pale sand, gray high-rise buildings and the pale stonework of the hotel at which they will stay. The ferry they have missed is already leaving, white and gray on the gray sea, but in a scene of stark color contrasts (another example of the stylistic signature of the film) it is juxtaposed ominously with a cut to the fiery sunset (a pan up so that the sun looks as if it is literally falling from the sky) as Valerie and Stefan take dinner.

The reason for “not love” being the basis of their relationship is only revealed when he finally speaks to his mother by phone. The establishing shots reveal Chiltern Manor to be a Jacobean manor house staffed by a butler who carries an old-fashioned candlestick phone on a silver tray, tying Stefan to an aristocratic past, but also—in the revelation of

“Mother” as a camp homosexual in silk dressing gown surrounded by orchids in the conservatory—to queer sexuality. As Moya Luckett points out, the dressing gown in this context is a liminal garment (an idea proposed by Stella Bruzzi that applies better perhaps to Stefan’s red bathrobe as “the uniform of a loser”22) suggesting failed masculinity and androgeneity.23 Mother reclines in a hammock constructed from white lace and vintage red and blue flower print fabric, with pink silk pillows of the same shade as the color of the orchid on his occasional table. He is dressed in a silk dressing gown of blue-green chintz patterns with dark red trim—reflecting and reversing the contrasting color palette of Elizabeth’s red pleated gown and blue-green cocktail. He wears a chiffon scarf (again with red flowers) at his throat and with the powdered skin, dark shadow around his eyes and red tint on his lips; Brode_WEB.indb 230

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he is a parody of the vampire’s ageless beauty. With the addition of black dyed hair—the very opposite of Elizabeth’s cool blonde—he also recalls Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in the Universal film. Again, aristocracy (he could perhaps be referred to as a queen in the sense of flamboyant homosexuality) and vampirism are linked, both to each other and to queer sexuality. Both aristocratic figures in the film, Elizabeth and mother, are vampiric and homosexual, but it is Stefan that is associated with perversity, turned on by torture, a sadist and domestic abuser, and acting out a false heteronormative role of “son” and “husband” but sexually duplicitous given his sexual relationship with Mother. More important, from the perspective of a feminist lesbian vampire narrative, it is Stefan alone who is subject to patriarchal agency, even if ironically from a male character referred to as Mother.

CONCLUSION: VAMPIRE AGENCY

In discussing the lesbian gothic, Paulina Palmer argues that the ways in which “gothic imagery and motifs furnish writers with a vehicle for representing lesbian sexuality and experience” are now commonplace.24

It has long been recognized that lesbian vampires in Daughters of Darkness and other films such as Blood and Roses and The Hunger invite identification from their lesbian audience and evoke sexual desire,25 but as Williamson points out there is no reason why female viewers more generally might not have sympathy and desire for the female vampire.26 Bonnie Zimmerman argues that the film presents an antimale narrative, and in terms of the power relations in respect of traditional marriage as well as the class system presented in the film, Daughters of Darkness certainly provides an effective anti-heteronormative theme.27 However, the film’s aesthetic qualities also work to addresses issues related to femininity in a much wider sense. The effective moments in the film work toward creating horror and desire in the figure of Elizabeth. They also construct Elizabeth as a woman deserving of admiration in terms of her beauty and style. Her costumes in particular mark her as a person of glamour and style, but also place her as outside time, history, and normal social mores. It is this in particular that suggests Elizabeth possesses vampire agency—unlike many female vampires who are created by male vampires and subject to their patriarchal rule, Dracula’s brides for example.

She creates herself through her own myth and attains autonomy through it. As Abbott argues in reference to The Addiction and Nadja, or like Selene in Underworld Evolution as discussed by Simon Bacon,28 her vampirism enables the female vampire to find a place for herself and allows her to Brode_WEB.indb 231

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face dangers and confrontations.29 Although Elizabeth is not subject to the inherent dangers of the urban environment, like Nadja and The Addiction’s Kathy, Elizabeth is empowered by her vampirism. It is important to note that the film’s only Van Helsing character—the retired detective—is a minor irritant that she treats with disdain, shrugging off his questions and finally running him down with her car. Elizabeth, unlike the urban female vampire, is timeless and aloof; she may be alone, but she never had to free herself from the patriarchal figure and expresses this through her appearance and mannerisms.

NOTES

1. Ernest Mathijs, The Cinema of the Low Countries (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 97.

2. Ibid., 100.

3. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (London: Random House, 1991), 120.

4. Anthony Masters, The Natural History of the Vampire (New York: Putnam, 1972), 168.

5. Siegmund Hurwitz, Lilith—the First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine, trans. Gela Jacobson (Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Ver-lag, 1999), 15.

6. Jane M. Gaines, “On Wearing the Film: Madam Satan (1930),” in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, ed. Stella Brizzi and Pamela Church Gibson (London: Routledge, 2006), 161–68.

7. Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 69.

8. Stacey Abbott, Celluloid Vampires: Life After Death in the Modern World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 92.

9. Ibid, 119.

10. Mary Ann Caws, “What to Wear in a Vampire Film,” in Fashion in Film, ed.

Adrienne Munich (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 46.

11. Ibid, 97–98.

12. Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (London: Routledge, 1997), 48.

13. Caws, “What to Wear,” 41.

14. Ibid., 46.

15. Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 5–16.

16. Gaines, “On Wearing the Film,” 170.

17. Erik Butler, Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film: Cultural Transformations in Europe, 1732–1933 (Woodbridge, UK: Camden House, 2010), 154.

18. Patrizia Calefato, The Clothed Body (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 97.

19. Ibid., 97.

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20. Milly Williamson, “Vampire Transformations: From Gothic Demon to Domestication?” in Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, ed. Carla T.

Kungl (Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2003), 102.

21. Ibid., 101.

22. Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema, 86.

23. Moya Luckett, “Performing Maculinities: Dandyism and Male Fashion in 1960s–70s British Cinema,” in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, ed. Stella Brizzi and Pamela Church Gibson (London: Routledge, 2006), 326.

24. Paulina Palmer, Lesbian Gothic: Transgressive Fictions (London: Cassell, 1999), 13.

25. Sue Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991), 1–19.

26. Milly Williamson, The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (London: Wallflower, 2005), 191.

27. Bonnie Zimmerman, “Daughters of Darkness: The Lesbian Vampire on Film,”

in ed. Barry Keith Grant, Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film (London: Scarecrow Press, 1984), 158.

28. Simon Bacon, “The Breast Bites Back: How the Projected ‘Bad’ Object of the Female Vampire Achieves Autonomy in L. Wiseman’s Underworld Evolution,” in Illuminating the Dark Side: Evil, Women and the Feminine, ed. Andrea Ruthven and Gabriea Madlo (Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2010), 99.

29. Abbott, Celluloid Vampires, 150.

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The pornography of horror/the horror of porn: Marilyn Chambers, one of the most popular X-rated stars of the 1970s, played a modern girl who becomes a vampire through scientific rather than supernatural means in David Cronenberg’s Rabid . Courtesy of New World Pictures.

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13

The Sick Rose

Rabid and the Female Science Vampire

Aalya Ahmad and Murray Leeder

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy

—William Blake ( Songs of Experience, 1794) Alongside the reanimated corpses lurking in ancient crypts and castles, an equally strong countertradition locates vampires in spaceships and laboratories. The vampire’s strange habits and drives need not only derive from the supernatural and the demonic, but may also be explained by weird modern science. This essay explores the “science vampire” through David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977). Often discussed as a companion piece to (or lesser copy of) Cronenberg’s first feature, Shivers (1975), it tells the story of Rose (Marilyn Chambers), a young Montreal woman who is wounded in a motorcycling accident while riding with her boyfriend Hart (Frank Moore). At the nearby Keloid Clinic, plastic surgeon Dr. Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) saves her using an experimental treatment that leaves her able to subsist only on blood, which she consumes through a needle-like or phallic extrusion that grows in her left armpit. Her victims become 235

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blood-starved monsters themselves and soon martial law is declared in Montreal to combat what the officials believe is a new strain of rabies.

Rabid, we argue, not only fits within the scientification of the vampire, but also troubles and complicates the authority of science itself, giving us a female vampire created by modern medicine through whom a critique of masculine medical-scientific authority and its relentless need to “know”

women is staged. As a subject of this authority by virtue of her atavism, by her status as the “superspreader” of the mysterious “rabies,” and as a sick woman, Rose both embodies and defies the discourses by which she is constituted as an abject and ultimately destroyed.

THE SCIENCE VAMPIRE

On the DVD commentary track on Rabid, Cronenberg remarks that he enjoyed such traditional vampire films as those made by Hammer Film Productions, but that they never appealed to him as films he would want to make himself, stressing that “I preferred the science-based, contemporary storytelling.”1 Cronenberg describes Rabid as being “about a woman who is a strange kind of modern-day vampire, a biologically correct vampire—that’s to say, nothing to do with the supernatural.”2 The phrase “biologically correct” is an amusing one, since Rose appears so “incorrect” a biological specimen, blurring the lines between male and female, human and animal, and human and machine. We prefer to use the term “science vampire” over the more generically bound “science fiction vampire,”

although Rose fits with both of Margaret L. Carter’s categories of science fiction vampire: “(1) vampirism as disease; (2) vampires as members of a separate species.”3 If science vampires originate in the nineteenth century, they appear to peak in popularity in the period of Rabid, the 1960s–1980s, when various films and novels either stripped away the supernatural elements of the vampire story or contextualized vampirism within a modern regime of supernaturalized science: “There’s nothing supernatural about us,” declares the vampire cult of Thirst (1979), and the eponymous main character of Martin (1978) states, “Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There’s no real magic ever.” The science vampire does not need to be located within a generic context of “science fiction,” although it does appear in such fictions; rather, the narrative of the science vampire derives its explanations for the vampire’s existence through claims to scientific, medical, or technological origins, however loosely conceptual-ized. Thematically, the science vampire plays on cultural anxieties about science, medicine, and technology.

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We should not conceive the “science vampire” as existing in absolute opposition to the supernatural vampire; the two traditions frequently complement each other. The lines between the scientific and supernatural have never been wholly clear and were certainly not rigidly delineated in the Victorian era, in which the modern vampire mythology took shape. In the Victorian gothic, we frequently find that “science is Gothicized, and gothicity is rendered scientifically plausible.”4 Bram Stoker’s canonical vampire novel Dracula (1897) constructs the count as simultaneously a supernatural monster and one subject to the new technologies and methods so abundant in Stoker’s text, from blood transfusions to Winchester repeating rifles to phonograph records. Dracula also references numerous scientists, including physiologist John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, neurologists David Ferrier and Jean-Martin Charcot, as well as criminologist Cesare Lombroso, to whom we will return. Importantly, the authority of a male expert, Dr. Van Helsing, is invoked to justify the slippage between science and the occult; he states that science “wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain,” but that the “new beliefs” of science are in fact “but the old, which pretend to be none.”5 Nina Auerbach notes that Stoker’s Dracula is “the first vampire” adhering “to experts’ definitions,” “a consummate creation of the late 1890s, dutifully transmitting its legacy to our own expert-hounded century.”6 This expert male figure, invested with the cultural authority of the scientist, would become a mainstay of such narratives; Rabid, we shall show, decisively undermines his authority.

Pre-dating Dracula’s merger of science and superstition are such scientific vampire tales as Guy de Maupassant’s “Le Horla” (1887) and H. G.

Wells’s “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” (1895). Science vampire fictions become increasingly common in the twentieth century, with important literary examples, including Gustave le Rouge’s La guerre des vampires (1912), J.-H. Rosny Aîné’s La Jeune Vampire (1920), Sewell Wright’s

“Vampires of Space” (1932), C. L. Moore’s “Shambleau” (1933), A. E.

van Vogt’s “Asylum” (1942), Richard F. Watson’s “Vampires from Outer Space” (1959), Colin Wilson’s The Space Vampires (1976), and of course Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954). The oft-adapted and influential latter reconceives the folkloric association of vampirism with plagues and epidemics through modern medical-scientific horror, offering scientific explanations for the conventionalized vampiric aversion to sunlight, garlic, mirrors, crosses, and so on. Alongside more obvious science fiction narratives, the alliance of vampires and science—especially biology—shows itself in orthodox vampire tales. For example, one immediately thinks of the sequence in Nosferatu (1922) where Professor Bulwer’s (John Gottowt) Brode_WEB.indb 237

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lectures on the Venus flytrap and the predatory polyp present a scientific counterpoint to the vampire’s deadly habits. Jean Painléve used footage from Nosferatu in the short subject Le Vampire (1945), which allegorizes fascism through the habits of the vampire bat; rabies is even mentioned as a disease that the bat spreads. The same year, House of Dracula (1945) revealed that the count (John Carradine) suffers from parasitic blood disease. An uneasy consolidation of Universal’s Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolf Man series, House of Dracula has the well-intentioned but misguided Dr. Edelmann (Onslow Stevens) attempting to cure the monsters but becoming monstrous himself when his blood transfusion with the count literally goes the wrong way. Here, Edelmann anticipates the narrative trajectory of Dr. Keloid in Rabid, fatally infected through his own scientific practice.

As horror and science fiction increasingly converged in the 1950s, vampire imagery often marks their juncture, as with the bloodthirsty villains of The Thing from Another World (1951) (yet another deadly plant), First Man into Space (1959), and Not of This Earth (1957). Plan 9
from Outer Space (1959) legendarily blends UFOs and aliens with graveyards and vampire-coded Bela Lugosi and Vampira. Another odd mixture of science and the supernatural appears in Blood of Dracula (1957), where the vampire is created by the science teacher/mad scientist Miss Branding (Louise Lewis) with both chemistry and a hypnotic amulet from the Carpathian Mountains. In such films as Blood of the Vampire (1958) and Seddok, l’erede di Satana (1963), as well as Richard Matheson’s short story “No Such Thing as a Vampire” (1959), the actions of desperate scientists are mistaken for those of vampires. In Seddok, the doctor extracts glands from his victims’ necks, leaving vampire-like holes, reminding us that many science vampires feed in nonstandard ways, with the syringes of this film and those used by the titular character in Martin paralleling Rose’s phallic armpit. Seddok’s American title, Atom Age Vampire, suggests that science will continue to spawn such modern monsters for which terms like “vampire” will have to suffice.7 Another register of the scientification or medicalization of the vampire in recent decades is the attempt to associate diseases, including porphyria, syphilis, pellagra, and schizophrenia, with historical vampire lore. In 1998, neurologist Juan Gómez-Alonso argued that historical vampires were humans afflicted by rabies.8 In Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy argue that, while Gómez-Alonso’s ideas may fall short on a literal level, they

[tap] into a deeper metaphorical truth. So many of our most enduring horrors, the vampire and the werewolf included, have common narrative ele-Brode_WEB.indb 238

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ments that derive naturally . . . from rabies. . . . [V]illains pouncing from the darkness, biting, lunging, tearing with claws. . . . [C]ontagion: a malevolence that creeps from victim to victim, spreading through bites, kisses, licks. [A]

familiar creature—a trusted soul, often residing within one’s own inner circle or even one’s home—that becomes surprisingly and unaccountably affected by a savage animal evil.9

Though Cronenberg’s film is not mentioned in this book, such comments point to the appropriateness of Rabid’s title. In the film, Rose’s infected victims are initially thought to have a new strain of rabies, but it soon becomes clear that the disease is something different, against which rabies vaccines have no effect. And yet, for all of the reasons outlined above, the sign of rabies still provides Cronenberg with a rich metaphor plus the association of rabies with frenzy and lack of restraint.

ATAVISM AND THE FEMALE VAMPIRE

In the commentary feature for the Rabid DVD release, Cronenberg offers a scientific explanation for Rose’s condition that does not get clearly articulated in the film: with her intestines destroyed in the crash, Rose’s body has adapted, thanks to Keloid’s surgery, and has developed, similarly to the anatomy of a vampire bat, “a very short intestinal tract that therefore cannot break down complex foods, and therefore the food of the bat and the food of Rose has to be some very basic protein, which is blood.”10 Cronenberg goes on to characterize her condition as a “kind of instant evolution among one person rather than in a species,” updating the slow evolutionary subtext of the Victorian vampire for an age in which atomic mutations and genetic engineering seem able to swiftly create new and terrifying fast-evolutionary creatures that test the line between human and inhuman. If, as we shall explore later, Rose is a Typhoid Mary figure, she is also an Eve for a new type of human being.11 Of course, this kind of evolutionary advance is simultaneously a giant step backward, to the base habits of abject creatures like vampire bats, leeches, and mosquitoes. Indeed, Cronenberg originally titled the project Mosquito. Rose’s penile stinger, her insectile monstrosity, similar to The Fly (1986) and Naked Lunch (1991), reminds us of the contrast between nature and culture-technology—“women as natural, men as cultural” that Ludmilla Jordanova finds so tellingly gendered. Jordanova sees this dichotomy as having been particularly “canvassed” in the field of medicine.12 Mary B. Campbell writes that, “Cronenberg’s doctors are in the grip of a technological enthusiasm stronger than human will Brode_WEB.indb 239

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or discretion, and their zealous tinkering with Nature reaps from her calamitous revenge.”13 Cronenberg’s construction of gender and science corresponds to that identified by Jordanova, but instead of passive women who are objects of “unveiling” for active masculine medical science, it presents us with powerful figures of female monstrosity whose secrets elude the probing eyes of medicine. Rose’s mosquito stinger—
fleshy and genital—forms a startling contrast to the white walls and sterile settings of the ultra-technological Keloid clinic.14 To underscore Rose’s affinity with Nature, her name recalls the strong cultural association we noted above between vampires, particularly female vampires, and plants, particularly dangerous and toxic plants—from Hawthorne’s poisonous Beatrice in Rappaccini’s Daughter to Nosferatu’s Venus flytrap, foreshadowing the human trap Ellen sets for the vampire, luring him to drink her blood until sunrise. Blood and Roses ( Et mourir de plaisir, 1961) also comes to mind with its “floral conceit” that is repeated in Rose’s name.15 At the same time, the sense of atavism is indicated by the fur coat she wears when she goes on the prowl, a coat that is notably absent from her earlier scenes in the clinic, although she enters the clinic wearing her motorcycle leathers. When she phones Hart for the final terrible conversation during which she is attacked and killed by her victim, the coat is draped over her body.

If Rabid dramatizes a rapid evolutionary conflict, in which the declaration of martial law implicitly serves not only the public health but also the continued survival of the species, it literalizes the much more muted war in Dracula, where the count’s invasion of England can be read as an attempt by the forces of atavism to drag civilization back into barba-rism.16 The ability of vampirism to corrupt and pollute women is a part of this process; Dracula even boasts that “Your girls that you love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine—my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed.”17

Dracula’s female vampires are a vicious lot, wantonly sexual and prone to preying on children. Unlike the count, however, they are depicted as attractive—Lucy’s vampire form is dubbed the “Bloofer Lady” or

“beautiful lady” by the children of Hampstead Heath—which reflects Lombroso’s later observations that a female criminal retains her beauty, where her male counterpart is hideous, “because beauty, being for her a supreme necessity, her grace of form resists even the assaults of degen-eracy.”18 The destruction of Lucy Westenra fascinatingly combines the themes of feminine degeneration with the medicalized “unveiling” and eroticized vivisection described by Jordanova. Her former suitor, Dr.

Seward, narrating this chapter, describes Lucy in radical opposition to how she appeared in life:

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The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness. . . . When Lucy—I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape—saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then those eyes ranged over us.

Lucy’s eyes in form and colour; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight.19

Thus, the female vampire has the function of absolving sexualized male violence, making it proper, godly, and even medically “correct,”

being presided over or supervised by two doctors. This sexualized, animalized, atavistic beast of a woman who must be cornered, violently penetrated and killed, we are repeatedly told, is not Lucy; Van Helsing even says, “It is her body, and yet not it.”20 This is echoed in Rabid as Hart declares “You’re not Rose!” upon learning that his girlfriend is the source of the infection. Only via her violent death does Lucy appear to have her lost purity restored: “there in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing . . . but Lucy as we had seen her in her life, with her face of unequaled sweetness and purity.”21 As Bram Dijkstra writes, “Lucy, the polyandrous virago, has been transformed into the ideal creature of feminine virtue of the mid-nineteenth century: the dead woman.

Civilization and evolution have, in the nick of time, triumphed over the vampire of degeneration.”22

Following Lucy’s example, female science vampires are often decep-tive and seductive figures with femme fatale and atavistic elements.

C. L. Moore’s aforementioned “Shambleau” takes place on Mars, where Earthman adventurer/explorer Northwest Smith saves a woman from a bloodthirsty mob. They identify her as a “Shambleau”—“we never let those things live,” says the head of the mob, but Smith, smitten by her vulnerability, decides to protect her. The Shambleau’s attractive, semi-human appearance conceals a monster that drains human energy in asexual ecstasy.

Continuing the female science vampire’s affinity with the natural, her hair is a Medusa-like “nest of blind, restless worms . . . it was like naked entrails endowed with an unnatural aliveness, terrible beyond words.” And yet Smith still finds “something soul-shakingly desirable about her.”23 Saved by his Venusian friend, who summarily destroys the monster, Smith agrees that the proper procedure should be to destroy a Shambleau on sight, but knows that he will be tempted by such an ecstatic fate again. In I Am Legend, the most prominent vampire is Ruth, who can experience daylight and pass for human, and who represents a new phase in the rapid evolution of the vampire race. Like Rose, she is an infected, atavistic specimen who is dangerous precisely because she appears outwardly normal.

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The 1960s saw a number of prominent female science vampires, in comic books ( Vampirella), in films ( Planet of the Vampires [1965], Queen of Blood [1966]), and in the first-season Star Trek episode, “The Man Trap” (1966). In the latter, the shape-shifting “salt vampire,” possibly influenced by “Shambleau,” poses as Nancy Crater (Jeanne Bal), having killed the original, but is sheltered by Crater’s husband, a scientist who is unwilling to kill the last of its species (the tantalizing question of whether or not he is sleeping with his faux-wife goes unaddressed).

Many of these characters, following Lucy, oscillate not only between poles of activity and passivity (luring victims by appearing harmless and vulnerable), but also between poles of purity and pollution. The same is true of Rose in Rabid, perhaps an inevitable consequence of the casting of Marilyn Chambers.24 As a model, Chambers first became known as the “Ivory Snow 99 44/100% pure” girl, holding a cherubic baby on her shoulder. Her blond all-American appearance would be shockingly reconfigured in Behind the Green Door (1972) and The Resurrection of Eve (1973), among the most celebrated pieces of porno chic. In both, Chambers characters are internally defined by antinomies of purity and pollution, as well as transformation: in The Resurrection of Eve, a film with striking parallels to Rabid, the titular character (initially played by Nancy Welch) is disfigured in a car crash and plastic surgery transformed her from a mousy brunette into a ravishing blonde. As Rose, Chambers retains the wholesome, healthy, open-faced yet carnal look that served her so well in pornography, as a character that alternates between predator and victim. It is appropriate that Rose should also be associated with a historical woman associated with illness, victimhood, and villainy: Mary Mallon, or Typhoid Mary.

THE FEMALE SCIENCE VAMPIRE AS SUPERSPREADER

Located, like Lombroso’s female offenders,25 at the juncture of discourses of criminality and medicine, Mary Mallon, an early twentieth-century Irish immigrant, was a carrier of typhoid fever who herself remained healthy but who worked as a cook for elite families, infecting twenty-two people—three fatally—with the typhoid fever that was regarded as a disease of the slums. As an interesting coincidence, the spots that appear on typhoid victims’ chests are known as “Rose spots.”

As Typhoid Mary, Mallon was hounded by public health officials—first arrested and imprisoned on a quarantine island for two years; then freed with a promise to refrain from cooking for others; and finally, when discovered cooking again, rearrested and quarantined for the rest Brode_WEB.indb 242

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of her life. Mallon was loudly denounced by health authorities as well as the popular press of the day, such as in an illustration that appeared in 1909 in the New York American, which depicted her as a cook, crack-ing skulls into a skillet. Nurturance and infection intertwined, reminding us of Kelly Hurley’s observation that food forms another register in addition to sexuality upon which Rose’s monstrosity can be read.26

To the end, Mallon stubbornly maintained she was free of disease, but stool and urine samples forcibly taken from her by the public health authorities revealed typhoid bacilli. Recently, more sympathy has awakened for Mallon in her identity as an immigrant Irish member of the servant class who fiercely resisted being labeled as Typhoid Mary, a moniker synonymous with “a polluted woman, someone who carries and gives disease to others.”27

Mallon’s struggle with the public health authorities, and in particular the “sanitation engineer” George Soper who doggedly tracked her down, reminiscent of the white-suited sanitation squads that roam and cleanse the Montreal streets in Rabid, has been the subject of several interesting accounts of the cultural construction of contagion. For example, Priscilla Wald examines Mallon’s story as an “outbreak narrative” that resembles a detective story in its “formulaic plot” of emergence and the “epidemio-logical work that ends with its containment.”28 We can easily discern this narrative at work in Rabid’s chain of victims as the plot leaps from the originally infected patient, Lloyd, and Dr. Keloid to others being bitten, turning rabid, and attacking more people in their turn. The outbreak narrative, Wald explains, involves a particular kind of “metamorphosis,” that of “infected people into superspreaders” who “bring the virus itself to life.”29 In the outbreak narrative, these superspreaders must be contained or somehow assimilated, brought back into the community through ritualistic acts of self-sacrifice: “typhoid carriers who, unlike Mallon, agreed to refrain from occupations that involved handling food or submitted to the removal of their gall bladders, a common treatment of the carrier state with insignificant success rates, were offered as socially responsible citi-zens.”30 Thus, the “transformation of Mary Mallon into ‘Typhoid Mary’

was a public-health story that fashioned a vocabulary of social responsibility from the lessons of bacteriology.”31 Rabid, as female science vampire narrative, simultaneously invokes and defies the outbreak narrative of the contaminated and scapegoated superspreader through its exposure of the process of abjectification of Rose’s body.

Rose has been thoroughly discussed as an abject figure in the Kriste-van sense of a ritualistic Othering process of defining and expelling that which “disturbs identity, system, order”32 by William Beard, Ernest Mathijs, and other critics, who have noted her monstrous blurring of the Brode_WEB.indb 243

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boundaries, for example, between genders, reminiscent of Foucault’s criminal hermaphrodite—Kelly Hurley calls her an “armpit hermaphrodite.”33 Mathijs describes abjection as the tool to regulate access to human bodies:

a fine line between the interior of the body (its private aspect which no one should be able to penetrate, and which no one should control except the owner of the body), and its exterior appearance (which is subject to social functions), and establish a sense of uncleanliness and disgust, of abjection, around whatever traverses the inner and the outer of the human body.34

Rabid as a study of abjection has thus been situated within the category of “body horror”: “The narrative told by body horror again and again is of a human subject dismantled and demolished; a human body whose integrity is violated, a human identity whose boundaries are breached from all sides.”35 Rose, all body, all the time, is Othered as female science vampire by the breach of her physical boundaries, associated not only with nature, but also with the machine, which bookends the film, from motorcycle to garbage truck; when the motorcycle flips on her, pins her, and burns her, she literally fuses with it. Following her accident and recovery, there is a machine-like coldness to her that is emphasized from the moment she wakes up. In this sense, Rose is also “posthuman”—as Hurley points out regarding the Alien, she “exceeds the logic of a human (sexual) identity predicated on genital difference.”36

For Beard, Rose is not only abject but also something like Carol Clover’s Final Girl in the slasher horror film,37 an “ego-stand-in” for the male viewer even as she both gratifies and punishes his scopophilia, revealing that he is “just as much a vampire” feeding on the “spectacle of female sexuality and violence.”38 Unlike the artful concealment of the Final Girl as an androgynous character, however, Rabid very deliberately calls the viewer’s attention to its play with scopophilia and identification in a number of ways—through the long shot that encircles Rose’s body, fixing her as Hart’s and the audience’s object of desire at the opening of the film, to the “character contagion” of Marilyn Chambers as porn star to the scene where Rose enters a pornographic movie theater and lures its viewer-voyeurs to her. As the narrative unfolds, therefore, Rose is not only abject but abjectified in the sense that the very process by which she is rendered abject, fixing her as an object (abject) of “sexuality and violence”—is foregrounded as an essential element of her story and the implied mode of perception/reception that is created for her, a process that seems to suit the female vampire in particular as a creature constructed as both desirable and shockingly repellent, “unclean and full of hell-fire,” as Brode_WEB.indb 244

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we saw above with Stoker’s character Lucy, who is transformed from the object of desire to the abject of loathing and finally “cured” in her death to embody a curious form of purity.

In this oscillation between fascination and nausea, Rose is both sick and sick-making, playing up her vulnerability to prey on both women and men. We might see Rose as a new version of the nineteenth-century cult of the sick and dying woman. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have linked the romantic cult of the female invalid, the sick woman

“who lives at the edge of death” to the “paternalistic necrophilia” of

“the logic that insists that femininity is reverse masculinity.”39 As a female science vampire, Rose embodies the contradictions of both sickness and reproductivity, “the twin pillars of nineteenth-century femininity.”40 The “offspring” she infects, in contrast to Rose’s own lassitude and invalidism—vomiting when she eats a sandwich and writhing partially nude on the floor in withdrawal—are filled with foaming vitality, lunging and snapping at their victims in contrast to Rose’s passivity and immunity. Like Romero’s zombies, Rose’s victims quickly spiral out of control, raving, spitting, snarling, and biting, becoming ever more abject and disgusting, dribbling greenish-yellow pus and foaming, while Rose herself mostly remains a calm, collected, and beautiful “bloofer lady”

both concealing and displaying her invalidism and reproductive vitality. As a superspreader of disease, she must live at the edge of death, being pushed closer and closer to that brink in the process of her eventual expulsion from society.

THE INVISIBLE WORM OF MALE SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE

Mathijs observes that Rose, in addition to or as a consequence of being abject, acts as a scapegoat figure, both through the violence she inspires around her and her ability to “unite” society in opposition to this violence—although Rabid warrants our scepticism that society has in fact been united and our concern around just how it may have been united, as the piles of garbage, stray dogs, paramilitary squads, and gunshots heard in the background at the film’s conclusion seem to indicate the ongoing disintegration of the social order and its possible reconstitu-tion along authoritarian fascistic lines.41 Toward the end of Rabid, a film punctuated by newscasts and interviews, two unidentified male authority figures speak from the television set of Mindy Kent (Susan Roman), Rose’s friend and soon-to-be victim, who has taken Rose in and nursed her, unaware of her deadly mutation. Auerbach describes Brode_WEB.indb 245

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the “woozy television and radio chatterers” in George Romero’s I Am Legend–influenced zombie films, which she sees as “utterly American vampires.”42 These chatterers are ultimately as ineffectual in halting Rose’s spreading of infection as Romero’s talking heads are powerless to stop the influx of zombies, but they do invoke the sense of medical and scientific expertise that, as we have seen, adheres to the figure of the nineteenth-century vampire. Rabid’s beleaguered health department officer Claude LaPointe43 (Victor Désy) furnishes an example of a similar Van Helsing–like expert attempting to protect the public from the outbreak. LaPointe is mediated by the television until the sequence where we see him in a car only narrowly escaping the rabid himself; unlike Van Helsing or the anonymous chatterers, he is an artfully undermined expert, one who does not have all the answers and whose only advice is

“Don’t let them bite you.”

During the newscast, one of the voices indicates that the spread of the disease has been narrowed down to a circle around the Keloid Clinic and posits that “a special factor” must therefore be “at work in the spread of the disease.” “You mean, a carrier,” interjects the other voice. “Well, at the risk of setting off a futile witch-hunt, yes,” the British voice answers.

“Somebody like the infamous Typhoid Mary, who incubates the disease and transmits it but is herself immune to it.” This background dialogue occurs as we see Rose—the Typhoid Mary in question—getting out of her demurely pink gingham-sheeted bed and furtively tiptoeing to the closet to get dressed in preparation for the night’s hunt, while Mindy bustles in the kitchen, cooking like Mary Mallon, stirring bubbling pots in preparation for a more conventional sort of dinner. Both women are therefore coded as targets of the witch hunt while the authorities struggle impotently to find them. While Rose roams first the countryside, then the city of Montreal, following her flight from the Keloid Clinic, a parallel narrative follows Hart, who seeks her as well as health officials such as LaPointe who are attempting to trace the disease. William Beard comments on the recurring “passivity, ineffectiveness, weakness”

of Cronenberg’s early male protagonists such as Hart;44 his increasing powerlessness as the film’s narrative unfolds—tinkering aimlessly in his garage while the phone rings unheard, staring in mute horror as blood from a shot rabid victim is hosed from his windshield by the “sanitation engineers” who are out in full force in a transformed Montreal—contrasts with the increasing power and purposefulness of Rose as she moves from the clinic to hitchhiking to Montreal. Hart becomes the first character to diegetically know the truth and live when he comes across Rose crouch-ing over Mindy’s body, feeding from her arm. At that point, Rose is

“unveiled” and her mystique exposed—from being the serenely smiling, ultra-desirable model woman of the lengthy encircling pan at the film’s Brode_WEB.indb 246

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opening, she becomes the hysterical, frenzied, and sick woman, shrieking and pushing Hart down the stairs. Reverting to her serene self, Rose then calmly proceeds to conduct her own experiment—witnessed by Hart via telephone, who frantically begs her to stop—performing her own epide-miological detective work and sacrificing herself by infecting a victim and waiting for the victim to turn rabid.

As with Lucy (“She is God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”),45
purity is restored to Rose in death. Such a claim at first seems counterin-tuitive, as her corpse is discovered being gnawed by a dog by the para-militarized sanitation squads clad in white that are combing the streets for infected bodies, not unlike the White Wing sanitation squads that cleaned the streets in Typhoid Mary’s day. The “sick rose” is picked up and unceremoniously tossed into the garbage compacter. The implication is, however, that Rose as a scapegoat has escaped “hell-fire” by her act of self-sacrifice like the good typhoid carriers, and thus, unlike Mary Mallon, has repented of her criminality and found redemption, in spite of or perhaps because of her abjectification. The serenity of her dead body, eyes closed as if sleeping, underscores this—although the dog has been tugging and worrying at it and presumably Rose died horribly at the hands of a rabid man, there is no wound or sign of violence on her pale, smooth skin. Thus, Beard situates Rose in the same group as “all the beautiful dead (or dying, or crippled, or blind) females throughout Romantic tradition; and it would be idle to deny that this strain of elegiac purity is the direct result of evacuating the character of the living, organic sexuality that threatens the male sensibility”;46 Rose’s beautification in death is the mark of the redeemed female vampire, returning to the state she was prior to her infection. At the same time, the ambivalence of Rose’s fate recalls the epistemological challenge to the male scientific establishment that she has posed from the outset—contained and yet not contained, in the sense that her destroyed body will never be recovered, dissected, and exhibited as a “Patient Zero” or as the Typhoid Mary–like source of the infection. She therefore resists the “unveiling” or dissection that, as Jordanova points out, defined the “privileged epistemological position”

of science and medicine, “understood through sexual metaphors, for example by designating nature as a woman to be unveiled, unclothed and penetrated by masculine science.”47

CONCLUSION

Whether or not Cronenberg had Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose” in mind when he wrote Rabid, the film resonates with the poem’s vampiric imagery. Like Blake’s rose, female vampires must, almost without exception, Brode_WEB.indb 247

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always be penetrated—exposed and unveiled, showing their fangs, their age, or other monstrous features—and then must be finally disposed of, once converted to “God’s True Dead.” For example, the witch Geraldine in another Romantic vampiric poem, Coleridge’s “Christabel,” has, it is implied, a horror concealed in her “bosom,” which is simultaneously exposed and yet concealed as “A sight to dream of, not to tell.”48 Similarly, Rose as a female science vampire, despite the tantalizing glimpses of her stinger that we see, remains unexposed, unveiled, unknowable, and defiant. Her body, resisting the terminal propensity to unveil that is the result of male scientific scopophilia, disappears in slow motion at the end of Rabid into a pile of garbage. Nobody penetrates Rose in any way, with a stake or any other appendage—the only dissection or penetration of her body that we ever witness is the surgical removal of a neat red rectangle of skin—although Dr. Keloid probes her mutation with surgical fingers before she kills him. Thus, Rose is constituted as irrevocably impenetrable and unknowable, which, contra the traditional narrative of the female vampire as abject, draws attention to the process of abjectification itself.

By penetrating her victims, including the scientist who “created” her, but remaining herself impenetrable, Rose assumes a powerful place in the ranks of female vampires.

NOTES

1. “Commentary,” Rabid, DVD, directed by David Cronenberg (1977; Canada: CFDC, 2000). The relationship between science fiction and horror is too complex to cover in much depth here; consult Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Ungar, 1987), esp. 26–42.

2. David Cronenberg. Cronenberg on Cronenberg, Chris Rodley, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 53.

3. Margaret L. Carter, The Vampire in Literature: A Critical Biography (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989), 39. See also Veronica Hollinger, “The Vampire and the Alien: Variations on the Outsider,” Science Fiction Studies 16, no. 2 (July 1989): 145–60.

4. Kelly Hurley, The Gothic Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 20.

5. Bram Stoker, Dracula, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula Omnibus (Toronto, ON: Smith-books, 1992), 152.

6. Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995), 83. “First” may be slightly overstating the case: consider Baron Vorenburg in J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872).

7. A broadly similar example is the British film Blood of the Vampire (1958), in which an eighteenth-century Transylvanian scientist is wrongfully staked as a vampire and saved with a heart transplant but left anemic and dying. He steals Brode_WEB.indb 248

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blood, not to consume it, but for his self-serving experiments. Like Atom Age Vampire, it evokes traditional vampire imagery within a scientific setting.

8. Juan Gómez-Alonso, “Rabies: A Possible Explanation for the Vampire Legend,” Neurology 51 (September 1998).

9. Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus (New York: Viking, 2012), 67.

10. Some of this explanation appears in an unfilmed portion of the script. See David Cronenberg, Collected Screenplays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), 126.

11. Compare Dracula’s Genesis reference as he declares that the vampirized Mina will be “flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be later on my companion and helper” (Stoker, Dracula, 235). Of course, Rose is an Eve without an Adam (or both at once). The porno theater Rose visits bears an “Eve” logo prominently, and of course Chambers starred in The Resurrection of Eve.

12. Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 19–20.

13. Mary B. Campbell, “Biological Alchemy and the Films of David Cronenberg,” Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Christopher Sharrett (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 335.

14. The stinger itself has been exhaustively discussed: Auerbach points out that Hammer’s vampires were defined by their fangs, a convention that quickly staled: “It was fun at first to see those penile eruptions popping out of the mouths of women as well as men, but as the series ground on, the makeup lost its sting”

(Auerbach, Our Vampires, 129); Rose’s penile stinger lends novelty to the idea of the vampire, while its location in her armpit suggests further queering of the body’s erogenous zones beyond the mouth.

15. Justin D. Edwards connects Rose’s name to the Rose brothers—Paul and Jacques—of the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec) in “Canada, Quebec and David Cronenberg’s Terrorist-Vampires,” in Transnational and Postcolonial Vampires: Dark Blood (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2012), 77.

16. For more on Dracula as an invader, see R. J. Dingley, “Count Dracula and the Martians,” in The Victorian Fantasists, ed. Kath Filmer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 13–24; and Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), esp. 86–106. The criticism on Dracula and (evolutionary or other) science is surveyed in more detail in Murray Leeder, “‘A Species of One’: The Atavistic Vampire from Dracula to The Wisdom of Crocodiles,” in The Universal Vampire, Volume 2: The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire, ed. Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, forthcoming).

17. Stoker, Dracula, 250.

18. Cesare Lombroso and William Ferraro, The Female Offender (London: Peter Owen, 1959), 112.

19. Ibid., 172.

20. Ibid., 174.

21. Ibid., 176.

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22. Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 346.

23. C. L. Moore, “Shambleau,” in Weird Vampire Tales, ed. Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg (New York: Gramercy Books, 1992), 149, 159–60.

24. Chambers’s star presence in Rabid is discussed in greater depth in Sean Mo-reland, “Contagious Characters: Cronenberg’s Rabid, Demarbre’s Smash Cut and the Reframing of Porn-Fame,” in Terror of the Soul: Essays on the Canadian Horror Film, ed. Gina Freitag and Andre Loiselle (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). See also Linda Williams’s section “Marilyn Chambers and the Utopian Energy of Sex” in Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 156–60.

25. Lombroso’s notorious work is painfully tedious in its often leering and voyeuristic mapping of women’s facial characteristics, bone structures, brain weights, body weights and so forth. Lombroso concludes that the female criminal is doubly

“a monster” because she overcomes all of the natural and social pressures on women to not be criminals (152). Interestingly for our discussion of Rabid, Lombroso equates “nymphomania” with rabies, commenting that the nymphomaniac has “a tendency to bite everyone she meets, as if affected with hydrophobia”

(Lombroso and Ferraro, The Female Offender, 296).

26. Kelly Hurley, “Reading Like an Alien: Posthuman Identity in Ridley Scott’s Alien and David Cronenberg’s Rabid,” in Posthuman Bodies, ed. Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 214.

27. Judith Walzer Leavitt, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). A sympathetic account of Mallon’s story has just appeared in the form of a novel by Mary Beth Keane, Fever (New York: Scribner, 2013). See also the 2004 Nova documentary for PBS, “The Most Dangerous Woman in America”

(www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/typhoid/) based on Leavitt’s book.

28. Priscilla Wald, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers and the Outbreak Narrative (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 2.

29. Ibid., 4.

30. Ibid., 57.

31. Ibid., 26.

32. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 4.

33. Hurley, “Reading Like an Alien,” 214.

34. Ernest Mathijs, The Cinema of David Cronenberg: From Baron of Blood to Cultural Hero (New York: Wallflower Press, 2008), 31. Mathijs contrasts the sterile and sanitized settings with the “messy and dirty” ones where the scenes of rage unfold: “Whenever a more controlled, cleaner environment presents itself—the jail or the shopping mall—it is ruptured by excessive violence” (40).

35. Hurley, “Reading Like an Alien,” 205.

36. Ibid., 210. Hurly finds that Rabid “works to overload and exhaust formations of sexual difference and identity, to represent an economy of desire and consummation that utilizes, but confounds, the usual constructions of human sexuality” (211).

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37. Carol J. Clover, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” Representations 20 (Autumn 1987): 187–228.

38. William Beard, The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 61.

39. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), 120.

40. Ibid., 148.

41. Mathijs, The Cinema of David Cronenberg, 30–41.

42. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, 161.

43. For an insightful discussion of the implications of Lapointe’s name, invoking the murder of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte by the FLQ during the October Crisis, see Edwards, “Canada, Quebec and David Cronenberg’s Terrorist-Vampires.”

44. Beard, The Artist as Monster, 65.

45. Stoker, Dracula, 177.

46. Beard, The Artist as Monster, 64.

47. Jordanova, Sexual Visions, 24. Examining wax anatomical models and representations of dissection in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jordanova finds that the “representation of a woman’s body in the process of being dissected

. . . bears directly on the idea of unveiling, which has, at any one time, both a mythical dimension and a rooted socio-cultural one.” (98).

48. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, 51.

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Gallic actress/beauty Catherine Deneuve was perhaps the only star of her era who could bring an aura of Hollywood’s greatest vamps—Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr—to the role of a contemporary succubus in The Hunger . Courtesy of MGM/UA.

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14

“You Said Forever”

Postmodern Temporality in

Tony Scott’s The Hunger

Kendall R. Phillips

Even before his untimely death in 2012, a reevaluation of the films of director Tony Scott had begun. In spite of his numerous successful and visually distinct films, as Christoph Huber and Mark Peranson note, for much of his career Scott has been, “regularly dismissed by critics as an ADD action hack director.”1 The past several years have seen a new interest in Scott such that, for example, Lorrie Palmer situates Scott alongside contemporaries like Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer as inaugurating a “postclassical cinema” with a new hyper-stylized, hyper-mediated and hyper-masculinized take on the action film.2 David Bordwell identifies Scott as an auteur whose films like Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), and The Last Boy Scout (1991) display a tendency toward “eye-catching special effects” and “fusillades of glossy graphics and hammering soundtracks.”3 Indeed, even a cursory viewing of Scott’s body of work suggests unique aspects of his filmic vision with its tendency toward rapid editing, asynchronous sound, and disjunctive musical montages.

In addition to his unique sense of visuals and pacing, Scott is also notable in terms of the various genres within which he has chosen to work, including war films ( Top Gun, Crimson Tide [1995]), comedy ( Beverly Hills Cop II), crime thriller ( Revenge [1990], True Romance [1993]), and sports films ( Days of Thunder [1990]). Across his career Scott can be seen as revisiting various film genres with an eye toward, as Knapp puts it, recasting “genre filmmaking as sound-and-light sensorium.” For Scott, this recasting involves taking up well-established genres and remaking them within his own evolving postclassical and postmodern aesthetic, which can be seen to “embolden the visuals and sound and intensify 253

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the paradigm at play.”4 Knapp’s observations provide an important clue for thinking about Scott’s work in that he is not so much reinventing the genre or reformulating its elements as he is accentuating aspects of the genre through his style.

While there are numerous stylistic dimensions to Scott’s filmmaking, one way of thinking about these dimensions is the way they shift the temporality of his films. Several of his stylistic elements—like the music montage, rapid editing, or the flattening of images through telephoto lenses—are used by Scott to provide a unique rhythm to his films. Knapp argues that in his later films, Scott achieves an “inexorable level of authorial expressivity,” but, in this essay, I want to suggest that Scott’s interest in temporality and especially a kind of postmodern temporality is evident even in his earliest and least considered feature film, The Hunger (1983).

In The Hunger, I argue Scott recasts a sense of gothic temporality within a postmodern framework and in so doing lays the groundwork for reestablishing gothic horror within the context of the late twentieth century.

THE HUNGER AND THE GOTHIC

Scott’s The Hunger is a fairly straightforward, albeit glossy, retelling of the vampire mythology. The plot is relatively simple: Miriam (played by Catherine Deneuve) is a vampire who has lived for several thousand years. She and her centuries-old lover, John (played by David Bowie), live an affluent lifestyle in a luxurious New York brownstone, where they teach private music lessons by day and track down young victims in hip nightclubs by night. Urgency is added to the storyline when John begins to age rapidly. In seeking a solution to his sudden deterioration, John visits a doctor specializing in aging—Dr. Sarah Roberts. Soon we learn that John’s deterioration has happened to all of Miriam’s lovers, and he eventually becomes a barely animated living corpse whom Miriam stores in the attic with coffins of her other decaying though still living exes. Miriam’s attention turns to Sarah, and after an afternoon seduction the ancient vampire infects the scientist with her blood. Soon Sarah is exhibiting symptoms of vampirism and her research colleagues detect a new nonhuman strain of blood fighting for dominance in her veins. When Sarah confronts Miriam, she learns that she has become something nonhuman and that she will live “forever and ever.” Rather than succumb to this new state, Sarah commits suicide—cutting her own throat with the ankh-shaped knife Miriam and John used on their victims. In the film’s penultimate moments, Miriam goes to place Sarah’s corpse with her other lovers who—evidently due to Sarah’s suicide attempt—reanimate and terrorize Miriam until she falls down a long stairwell to her apparent death. While the film seems to end as a detective comes to the house investigating one of the film’s few subplots—the search for a young music student whom John killed in a last attempt to stave off Brode_WEB.indb 254

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his aging—an epilogue follows this conclusion in which, without much explanation, we see a revived Sarah in a luxurious apartment overlooking London and quick cuts to a coffin that, evidently, houses the now decayed but living corpse of Miriam.

Perhaps because of the relatively vague though uncomplicated plot, The Hunger was a commercial and critical failure. While Vincent Canby admired the film for not pretending “to be anything except an extremely classy-looking vampire film,” he ultimately dismissed it as “cinema chic.”5

Rick Lyman lamented that “It’s too bad Scott’s crippling obsession with the movie’s atmosphere gets in the way of any narrative drive,” contending that the film “just wallows resignedly, immortally, in a hip state of pretentious uneasiness.”6 Gary Arnold, writing in the Washington Post, blasted the film: “I’m not sure when audiences will begin giggling at ‘The Hunger,’

but they will.”7 Audiences seemed generally to agree with Arnold’s assess-ment, and the film disappointed at the box office, although it would become a minor cult classic due in large part to the casting of rock star David Bowie and the inclusion of music from the pioneering goth band Bauhaus.

While The Hunger’s initial impact seems minor and disappointing, it is worth noting that the film did provide the avenue through which Tony Scott moved from successful advertising director to major motion picture director. Scott’s film represents an important reformulation of the genre that helped set the stage for his later, more successful films.

Exploring the history of vampire films broadly, Ken Gelder has argued that “later vampire films may need to assert their difference form earlier ones; nevertheless, they are often highly conscious of their predecessors, drawing on or modifying (or, as in The Hunger, aggressively rejecting) aspects of them, parodying them, ‘recreating’ them, and so on.”8 While agreeing with Gelder’s broader point, I want to suggest that Scott’s The Hunger does not so much “aggressively reject” the tropes of the vampire genre as reformulate them within a general postmodern aesthetic and, more specifically, a postmodern temporality.

Gothic narratives, of course, have long had a peculiar relationship to temporality. As Samuel Baker notes, gothic narratives typically blur together the ancient and the modern and unhinge our sense of the distinction between past, present, and future. As Baker puts it, “some Gothic works bypass the normative modern dynamic of progression and retrogression to reflect on the disjunctive temporality that underlies that dynamic.”9 Gothic tales are replete with ghosts, curses from the past, or ancient gods, all of which disrupt our temporal sense that what was is no longer. This has certainly been true in relation to the classical presentation of gothic tales in American film. The films that laid the foundation for the horror genre—

Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931)—were not only refashionings of earlier narratives but were directly concerned with the struggle between contemporary progressive worldviews (especially science) and older superstitions that would not be easily dismissed.10 More than merely a trick Brode_WEB.indb 255

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of narrative temporality, critics have long observed the ways that gothic temporality serves as a kind of critical intervention into contemporary culture. Tony Scott’s The Hunger provides such a challenge to temporality.

The film not only seeks to recast earlier versions of the vampire genre and thus constitute itself as a radical break from this generic temporality but also recasts our experience of temporality through narrative ruptures that serve to unhinge the viewer’s experience of the narrative and in so doing provide specific rhetorical challenges to the dominant temporal narratives of the present. This, I will suggest, is not only a way of recasting the gothic but also, more specifically, a way of framing the gothic within the parameters of the postmodern moment of the early 1980s.

“BELA LUGOSI’S DEAD”

Perhaps the most satisfying moment in The Hunger is its dynamic and disconcerting opening. While generally dismissing the film, Gary Arnold notes in his review that the “stylishly suicidal update on the vampire genre . . . opens with a virtuoso demonstration of pictorial skill.”11 The visually stunning opening resembles the later films of Tony Scott more closely than the rest of The Hunger and in interesting ways; the way that the film opens dynamically before settling into an almost turgid pace parallels the filmic rhythm of the 1931 Dracula. As critics have noted, the first act of Tod Browning’s film—with its journey to Dracula’s castle, fast-paced carriage ride and spooky set pieces—is followed by a dramatically slower-paced second and third act, both of which take place largely within the confines of the sanitarium and remain relatively stagnant with most of the action described rather than shown.

Whether or not this parallel between Browning’s earlier vampire film and Scott’s take on the genre is intentional, it is clear that Scott seeks in the dramatic opening to signal a specific relationship to the roots of the genre. The opening sequence begins much like a music video with singer Peter Murphy of the post-punk goth band Bauhaus performing behind a wire cage. Eventually it will seem as if Murphy is performing at a nightclub where parts of the opening sequence take place and where John and Miriam will claim two victims from among the revelers on the dance floor. The band is performing a song entitled “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” with lyrics specifically evoking the earlier Browning film: Bela Lugosi’s dead,

The bats have left the bell tower,

The victims have been bled,

Red velvet lines the black box.

This kind of explicitly self-referential opening move, however, can be read as more than just a nod to the earlier version of the genre. Read explicitly, Brode_WEB.indb 256

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the choice of a song referencing the “death” of Bela Lugosi signals Scott’s intention to redirect the vampire mythology and certainly the remarkably stylish John and Miriam bear little resemblance to the overly dramatic and clearly “Other” vision of the vampire portrayed in Browning’s film.

If the opening sequence is designed to create a disjuncture between The Hunger and its generic antecedents, it does so in a notably self-referential way. Self-referentiality, of course, is a hallmark of postmodernism and in her definition of gothic postmodernism, Maria Beville suggests there is often a “blurring of the borders that exist between the real and the fictional, which results in narrative self-consciousness and an interplay between the supernatural and the metafictional.”12 Beyond the obviously self-referential nature of the opening song, however, I want to suggest that a complex move is being made in the film’s opening that suggests a deeper and more profound rupture with the vampire genre through a complex postmodern aesthetic.

The first six minutes of the film juxtapose two different storylines as well as continually return to the figure of the nightclub singer, Peter Murphy. The sequence begins with longer shots of Murphy as he performs, then, as the credits intercut into this performance, we begin to see flashes of other activity—a close-up shot of someone in sunglasses, a quick glimpse of people dancing in the club. These rapid edits create a slightly disjointed framing of the opening, but instead of allowing these quick cuts to settle into a clear scene within the nightclub, after John signals a young couple on the dance floor the film moves into an even more disjointed and increasingly rapid set of cuts. As Murphy continues performing, at times directly into the camera, we see long shots of a car driving across a bridge, and with these visual cuts the song is also displaced with more ambient, foreboding electronic sounds. Even as we settle into a narrative progression where we find John and Miriam accompanying the young couple to what we presume is the younger couple’s apartment and their seduction by the vampires, we continue to cut back to Murphy, often not singing but glaring into the camera or into the distance through the wire cage.

Particularly telling is the sequence of approximately one minute that begins about five-minutes into the film. During this minute there are approximately forty-nine cuts that become increasingly rapid and disorient-ing. One of the scenes interspliced into this minute is John and Miriam’s seduction—John seducing the female in the kitchen while Miriam seduces the male in the living room. Cut into the traditional vampire seduction and blood-letting, are scenes of a monkey in a cage that becomes increasingly agitated and violent until, near the end of this sequence, we see the monkey aggressively biting another monkey and graphically ripping its flesh before a concerned researcher comes in to try to stop the attack. Ultimately the scenes of the monkey will be explained as connected to Sarah’s research into sleep and aging, but in the opening six minutes of the film there is no clear explanation for these scenes of animal aggression and gore.

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The postmodern aesthetic of the sequence is clear, as the cuts are rapid—sometimes lasting only a fraction of a second—and the relationship between the two scenes remains undetermined. Indeed, the rapid and disconcerting nature of this sequence seems more reminiscent of Tony Scott’s later films like Domino and Man on Fire. It is interesting that Scott’s fascination with quick shots and hyperkinetic editing are evident in the opening of The Hunger and it suggests ways in which he was already at work reconfiguring traditional genres within a postmodern, or postclassical, aesthetic. It is also interesting that Scott chose to begin this particular filmic experiment by reconfiguring the genre of gothic horror.

Alan Lloyd Smith contends that postmodernism and gothic share an interest in indeterminacy. As Smith notes, “In the Gothic, indeterminism is a narrative necessity, providing the essential possibilities of mystery and suspense” where for the postmodern indeterminacy “is surely the very raison d’être.”13 Scott’s tendency to use editing, rhythm, and camera angles to keep viewers off balance suggests his interest in crafting indeterminacy remained with him throughout his career.

The recurring shots of Peter Murphy interspliced throughout this sequence add further complexity to both the film’s indeterminate and mysterious opening and its self-referentiality. The crucial element to this rupture is the presence of Murphy throughout the film’s opening six-minute sequence.

Six times during this sequence, Murphy is shown, although he seems to be not so much performing as glaring out from within the caged stage and his rapid appearances on-screen are no longer accompanied by a shift in the soundtrack. The last several shots of Murphy are quick close-ups of him with a pained expression of either aggression or disgust. The figure of Murphy does not reappear anywhere else in the film and so it is left for us to ponder what he represents in this opening sequence. Perhaps Murphy stands as another level of the disruptive self-referentiality in which the musician serves as a kind of metafictional observer. Indeed, it seems from his expressions that Murphy is reacting in some way to the scenes of violence in both the Miriam/John storyline and the aggressive monkey storyline, and so in this way Murphy stands in for the audience and is a way of Scott further displacing our traditional location within the gothic narrative.

“FOREVER AND EVER”

If the figure of Peter Murphy serves as a means of displacing the audience from direct involvement in the narrative, the remainder of the film reinforces this distance. The opening intensity and pace dramatically slow—the discordant mechanical soundtrack shifts into melodic classical piano and the shots take on a softer and more ethereal quality.14 As the film settles into the next two acts—John’s deterioration and Sarah’s Brode_WEB.indb 258

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seduction—there are relatively few locations (with Miriam’s luxurious townhouse serving as the focal point for most of the film) and little action until the film’s denouement with the apparent death of Miriam. The slow pace of the film’s second and third act reinforce the general critical impression that Scott’s interests were primarily in atmospheric visuals and there is abundant evidence to suggest the framing of shots at times overwhelms their narrative functions. Barbara Creed observes, “the mise-en-scène for each shot appears to have been meticulously arranged. Interior scenes are bathed in soft shadows, creating a sense of timelessness.”15 It is notable, for instance, that almost every shot within Miriam’s townhouse is framed by billowing curtains that seem perpetually troubled by a constant breeze.

The undulating muslin often covers characters who spend a fair amount of time gazing in deep reflection and smoking.

It would be easy to use these overly stylized visuals to dismiss the film as an extended music video or failed example of the MTV aesthetic in its early phase; and, indeed, many critics of The Hunger did so. Another way of understanding Scott’s interest in visual framing is his shift away from the narrative dimensions of the gothic and toward its surface. Tony Fonseca argues that “vampire films prior to Tony Scott’s The Hunger tended to be more linear and plot-driven than stylized and image-driven” and that Scott’s film represents a shift toward the “more metageneric and esoteric.”16 Part of this aesthetic shift was a focus less on the narrative dynamic or on the interiority of particular characters and more on the aesthetics of the surface. This attention to surface is particularly evident in the way the film treats Miriam and John. We learn little about their background or motivations or even about their feelings about being vampires but instead the two figures are displayed for us. The choice of two attractive and deeply stylish figures—Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie—in these parts adds to a sense that they are elements in an atmospheric display and objects to be viewed.

The flattening of the cinematic space into a visual arrangement of stylistic surfaces also alters our sense of temporality. Two examples can provide some insight into this flattening effect. Shortly after the film begins its first major act—and immediately after the more dynamic opening sequence—
we see John and Miriam showering together and then in bed. While in the shower, John says almost pleadingly to Miriam, “Forever and ever?”

She gives no response but after lingering over their naked bodies under the cascading water, the scene shifts to their bedroom, where John seems unable to sleep. Shifting onto his side, John closes his eyes and the scene shifts. We see what appear to be two individuals in eighteenth-century dress. A male who is not quite identifiable plays a cello while a female accompanies on piano. The scene shifts back once more to John in bed and then back to a closer view of the two musicians although it is not quite apparent as it will be in a later flashback that the cellist is John before his Brode_WEB.indb 259

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transformation into a vampire and the female is Miriam before claiming John as her own. Immediately following these two unexplained memory fragments, we see John in silhouette lighting a cigarette and standing in front of billowing muslin. The camera lingers on this cool and detached image before the film shifts abruptly to Sarah’s story as she watches a video of the violent monkey attack from the film’s opening.

Later, in another flashback, John’s memory fragment will be explained as the time of John and Miriam’s meeting, but it is interesting that in both this and the later flashback, the memory is both highly stylized and remarkably superficial. There is no dialogue or backstory developed but the memory emerges as a carefully framed image that is less an explanation of the present than an intrusion into the past. Further, when considered in relation to the earlier—and in a way first clear moment of dialogue—John’s plea of

“Forever and ever?” there is a suggestion that past, present, and future are compressed within the highly stylized and superficial image.

A similar and more visually striking flashback occurs for Miriam near the climax of the film’s second act. As Sarah takes her first victim—her husband, who has come to Miriam’s house looking for Sarah only to find her already succumbing to the vampire’s blood—Miriam waits one floor below. Hearing the struggle and seeing the chandeliers shaking, the scene cuts back and forth from Miriam standing among billowing curtains in the present to another scene of billowing curtains in what appears to be an ancient temple.

As the camera tilts down to Miriam from the moving chandeliers the scene cuts back and forth to a pan across the temple until we see Miriam drinking the blood of a young woman on what seems to be an altar. What is striking about Miriam’s flashback is the artificiality of the ancient scene. Rather than seeking a more realistic mise en scène of ancient Egypt, Scott chooses to use neon pink backlighting and an obviously artificial backdrop. The highly stylized visuals of the flashback further suggest the superficiality of the past and, as in John’s initial flashback, the scene ends with Miriam smoking a cigarette while billowing muslin curtains blow around her.

The muslin curtains here seem to operate in ways similar to the way Michael Anderson reads the reflective surfaces in Scott’s later film Déjà Vu.

In Déjà Vu, an investigator uses new technology to have a perfect view of the events leading up to a recent terrorist bombing but through the course of the film is able to manipulate events from the past and, thereby, effect a kind of time travel. Anderson notes Scott’s use of reflections in this film and suggests “as Déjà Vu makes explicit, we invariably see into the past via reflection, whether it is light bouncing off a mirror or the reflection of a distant star.”17 A similar conceit seems evident in The Hunger. The billowing curtains suggest the screen-like nature of memory, the ways it both obscures and reveals the past and its relation to the present.

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her and explains her new condition. Sarah will, she is told, “be young forever,” even though we know this is not true, and she is now forever connected to Miriam. Tellingly, Miriam explains, “After a little while, you will forget what you were and you will begin to love me as I love you.” This fading away of memories, their slipping away, is perhaps one explanation for why Miriam’s memory was so brief and artificial. She too is forgetting what she was and abandoning her past to the promise of a future that lasts

“forever and ever.” A promise we have already learned to doubt.

“YOU LET ME DOWN”

Thus far, I have interrogated two dimensions of temporality within The Hunger: the self-reflexive rupture, with its generic temporality in relation to earlier iterations of the vampire myth, and its flattening of the relation between past, present, and future in relation to the appearance of superficial memories. In this last section, I want to situate Scott’s film in relation to its own historical moment and suggest ways in which the film seems to address the contours of the early 1980s. In particular, I want to suggest that the film embodies the broader notion of the postmodern era as a time of incredulity toward the grand narratives of progress and liberation.

Clearly, linking Jean-François Lyotard’s definition of the postmodern in his 1979 book The Postmodern Condition seems a bit grandiose. Lyotard contends that the postmodern entails “incredulity towards metanarratives. . . .

The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal.”18 But even a surface consideration of the principal characters suggests their at least tangential relation to the decline of broader cultural narratives of liberation and progress.

While we learn relatively little about John’s earlier life or even his transition from human to vampire, we do know that his principal desire is for a youth that will stretch forever and ever. This is clear not only from his persistent insistence on Miriam’s promise of eternal youth but also in his careful styling as a young man. In his reading of the film, Robert Latham notes, “the animating focus of the desire is youth, conceived at once as a consuming subject and a consumable object.”19 John casts himself as youthful in his dress, and as his decay accelerates it is notable that he targets young people.

In one failed attempt, he attacks a young skater and in another successful attempt he kills the young girl whom he and Miriam had been teaching to play the violin. John’s affection for the young girl seems obvious, as does hers for John—although in his decayed state she confuses John for his own father. Yet, in his all-consuming desire to be liberated from the movement of time, he consumes the girl’s youth in a failed attempt to save his own. In the end, this desire consumes him, and the promise Miriam made turns out to not be a forever filled with youth, but a forever of decay.

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Failed by Miriam’s supernatural power, John turns to the natural alternative, and thus he seeks out Sarah as a medical researcher specializing in aging. Sarah, of course, sees John—an apparently elderly man who confronts her with the claim that he is only in his thirties—as insane. After leaving John waiting for hours, Sarah learns the truth of his rapid aging when she sees him—now decades older—leaving the hospital. John confronts her incredulity toward his condition: “You let me down. . . . You didn’t believe me. You left me sitting there for over two hours. . . . You just thought I was some ridiculous old crank.” Sarah’s disbelief ultimately leads her to visit Miriam and be seduced and transformed by the elder vampire, but it is interesting as well to note that science, like youth, fails in its promise. Indeed, one of the film’s brief and undeveloped subplots involves Sarah’s fellow researchers trying to understand her condition after she has exchanged blood with Miriam. Sarah’s husband confronts one of the other scientists, “You are telling us that Sarah has some weird blood fouling up her veins . . . some inhuman blood.” While Sarah’s colleagues are able to identify and even see the struggle between her human blood and the invading vampire blood, there is no solution for her. The promise of scientific progress also proves unreliable.

Sarah’s scientific curiosity and medical ethics lead her to visit Miriam Blaylock, but her transformation into a vampire comes not from scientific curiosity but from sexual liberation. In an extended and arguably gratuitous sex scene between Sarah and Miriam, their blood is exchanged and Sarah’s transformation begins. While it might be tempting to pursue a queer reading of this relationship, the film does not develop the relationship between the two women and, at least in Robert Latham’s reading of the pairing, the connection is not only sexual but also economic. Latham notes Sarah’s reaction to Miriam’s luxurious house and things and argues,

“Miriam’s sexual courtship of Sarah is a class seduction, a conflation of libidinal and political economies.”20

Both the desire—or hunger—for youth and for knowledge are conflated with a broader desire for things, and in this way the other grand cultural narrative engaged by Scott’s film is the desire for economic growth and conspicuous consumption. The center of this hunger for objects is Miriam. Nina Auerbach notes that Miriam “epitomizes the glamour of the 1980s, subordinating history to seductive objects: jewelry, furniture, lavish houses in glamorous cities, leather clothes. Responding to the success stories of her consuming decade, Miriam lives through her things.”21 The cold and elegantly beautiful Miriam stands as the central desire for consumption, and as a vampire it is her curse to continue to consume even those she loves, only to abandon them for another. Reading in a psychoanalytic frame, Barbara Creed likens Miriam to a maternal figure who both gives life but also consumes it. She is, according to Creed,

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then keeps them in a state of living death. She represents the suffocating mother—the mother who refuses to let go.”22

In the end, Miriam’s belief in her own unending consumption—a consumption that encompasses youth, possessions, knowledge and sex—also fails. Sarah’s refusal of this all-consuming desire through her suicide seemingly undoes the spell that holds Miriam’s past lovers. As Miriam brings Sarah to the attic tomb, the rotting corpses reanimate, and in her terror at their reanimated desire to consume her, Miriam falls backward to her death. In the end, Miriam and her lovers decay and rot. The promises of consumption also lead to decay and ashes. The connection between her conspicuous wealth and these ashes is made explicit when the detective arrives on the scene immediately after Miriam’s apparent death. He is greeted by an estate agent who is selling the now empty and dusty house. “It all happened very suddenly,” the detective is told. Surveying the foyer, the detective finds a photograph of Miriam in a pile of refuse on the recently swept floor. The photograph is covered in ash.

And then . . . the film’s epilogue, evidently tacked on by a studio hoping for a franchise, sees Sarah alive again.23 Living in a luxurious high-rise apartment overlooking London, Sarah is seen with what appear to be two lovers—one male and one female. While the additional sequence may be another example of studio meddling, there are elements that are consonant with the reading suggested here. Miriam, the epitome of consuming desire, is now in her own casket as one of the consumed. And Sarah’s refusal of the world she was given leads to the reemergence of that world; thus even the promise of an ending (another temporal promise) is unfulfilled.24

CONCLUSION

The promise of a sequel was more or less also unfulfilled. The film would, as noted, become a cult classic, and this popularity would open the door for continued interest in the storyline. There was, for instance, a cable television series, The Hunger (1997–2000), an anthology series loosely connected to the film’s mythology and with some involvement from Tony Scott as executive producer and from David Bowie, who hosted the show in its later years. But, overall, the film was not immediately successful or apparently influential.

One might also argue that Scott’s film represented an important shift for the horror genre as a whole. The period of the 1970s—roughly from 1968 until 1982—represented what I have called elsewhere a “second golden age” of American horror.25 This period saw many of the more creative but also more nihilistic, savage, and unsettling horror films emerge, including films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), Last House on the Left (1972), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). After 1982, however, the Brode_WEB.indb 263

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country’s interest in savagery and gore seemed to decline. By the early 1980s, horror became dominated by slick, almost cartoonish figures like Jason and Freddy and the subversive politics of the films of the second golden age lost favor. Scott’s film emerged within this transition period and can be seen as encompassing the strange politics that arose when old American narratives failed and the new American narratives—driven largely by the Reagan revolution—began to emerge.

In a way, much of Scott’s more mature and successful films can be seen as remaking American mythology in the Reagan and post-Reagan era.

Films like Top Gun, Days of Thunder (1990), and Crimson Tide (1995), helped to reframe various cinematic genres within a new emerging style that has become an integral part of American filmmaking. While Scott’s first film may seem a long way from the more dynamic films of his later career, I hope to have suggested that The Hunger contains the seeds for the directions his later career would take. As with many of his later films, Scott sifted through the remnants of a largely defunct genre and found within its ashes the means to refashion it for a new generation of American filmgoers.

NOTES

1. Christoph Huber and Mark Peranson, “World Out of Order: Tony Scott’s Vertigo,” Cinema Scope Online, http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-online/
world-out-of-order-tony-scotts-vertigo.

2. Lorrie Palmer, “Cranked Masculinity: Hypermediation in Digital Action Cinema,” Cinema Journal 51 (2012): 3.

3. David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 112.

4. Lawrence F. Knapp, “Tony Scott and Domino—Say Hello (and Goodbye) to the Postclassical,” Jump Cut 50 (2008), 3.

5. Vincent Canby, “Cinema Chic Catches the Eye but Misses the Mind,” New York Times, May 1, 1983, H17.

6. Rick Lyman, “Atmosphere Is the Show in This Vampire Film,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 29, 1983, E20.

7. Gary Arnold, “‘ Hunger’: A Film with Tired Blood,” Washington Post, May 2, 1983, B1.

8. Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (London: Routledge, 1994), 86.

9. Samuel Baker, “The Transmission of Gothic: Feeling, Philosophy and the Media of Udolpho,” in Political Emotions: New Agendas in Communication, ed. J.

Staiger, A. Cvetkovich, and A. Reynolds (New York: Routledge, 2010), 90.

10. For a more thorough discussion of my understanding of the place of Dracula in relation to American horror, see my Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005).

11. Arnold, “‘ Hunger’: A Film with Tired Blood,” B1.

12. Maria Beville, Gothic-Postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity (New York: Rodopi, 2009), 15.

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13. Allan Lloyd Smith, “Postmodernism/Gothicism,” in Modern Gothic: A Reader, ed. V. Safe and A. L. Smith (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996), 7.

14. In another note to self-referentiality, the transition between the rapid and bloody opening and the slower more atmospheric remainder of the film is a scene in which John washes his bloody hands in a sink. The shot is framed so that our focus is on the bloody water draining down the sinkhole and seems an explicit gesture to the conclusion of the shower sequence in Hitchcock’s iconic Psycho (1960).

15. Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1993), 68.

16. Tony Fonseca, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead, but Vampire Music Stalks the Air-waves,” in The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night, ed. J. C. Holte (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 65.

17. Michael J. Anderson, “Resurrecting the Rube: Diegesis Formation and Contemporary Trauma in Tony Scott’s Déjà Vu.” Film Criticism 33, no. 2 (2008): 2–22.

18. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1989), xxiv.

19. Robert Latham, Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs and the Culture of Youth Consumption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2002), 111.

20. Latham, Consuming Youth, 116.

21. Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1995), 57.

22. Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 68.

23. Audio Commentary, The Hunger, DVD, directed by Tony Scott (1983; USA: Turner Entertainment Company, 2004).

24. One can imagine a relationship to the Nietzschean idea of “eternal recurrence” and it is worth noting the way film scholars have taken up this notion, largely through the works of Gilles Deleuze. See for instance, D. N. Rodowick, ed., Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

25. Kendall R. Phillips, Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter and the Modern Horror Film (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012).

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Beyond gothic: With Near Dark , starring Adrian Pasdar and Jenny Wright, Kathryn Bigelow reinvented the genre by eliminating all formal conventions, playing her piece more as a combination of contemporary Western and youth-on-the-road-movie. Courtesy of F/M Film, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group.

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15

Liberating the Vampire,
but Not the Woman

Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987) Cynthia J. Miller

In the evolution of every cinematic monster type there are critical moments: when zombies shifted from shambling menaces to swift predators; when aliens became endearing childhood playmates; and when werewolves were moved to kill for love, rather than bloodlust. For vampires, one of these pivotal moments is represented by the transition from melodramatic caricature to the realistic subtlety found in Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987). Bigelow’s film is often cited as a watershed for contemporary vampire films, and, in particular, for the female vampire.

Gone are the fangs, wild eyes, and voluptuous figures clad in seductive costumes popularized in the mid-twentieth century; here, they are replaced by understated androgyny with a rough, rural edge.1

Largely overlooked at the time of its release, Near Dark has since received significant attention from scholars, critics, and cult fans alike for its understated construction of distinctly American vampires—working-class drifters who roam the impoverished Southwest in a battered mobile home—who seek victims, companions, and thrills amid a harsh landscape interrupted only by run-down motels, roadside bars, and isolated ranches. They represent a disdainful underclass, whose power derives as much from their embrace of anarchy and unpredictability as it does from their physical strength. One part counterculture, two parts nuclear family, Bigelow’s vampires mock the weakness and conformity of their human counterparts, while at the same time, replicating one of the most basic elements of traditional human society. The vampires of Near Dark, unlike their cinematic predecessors, are not relegated to the shadows of society, but rather, move through its midst with a fluidity and violent grace, more 267

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closely resembling intense, unfettered images of ourselves, rather than any archetypes of the supernatural. The narrative flexibility offered by these characterizations would play a role in reconfiguring the portrayals of vampiric predators across genres in the decades that followed, from the televised series Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the Twilight franchise.

However, while playing a key role in the transformation of vampires as a monster type—freeing them from the constraints of traditional melodramatic portrayals—the film provides no such “liberation” for its female characters, reinforcing traditional gender roles, and constrain-ing possibilities for its female vampires as women, even as it infuses their monster type with new potential. This chapter, then, will explore the ways in which Near Dark, while helping to craft a new range of identities for cinematic vampires, conforms to traditional, patriarchal views of women, thus denying its female vampires the full force of their “bite.”

“CAN I’VE A BITE?”

Playing a role in the inauguration of what may be viewed as a new “cycle” of contemporary vampire films—released amid a cluster of supernatural films that included The Hunger (1983), Fright Night (1985), Vamp (1985), Once Bitten (1985), The Lost Boys (1987), and Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)— Near Dark appropriates and adapts the traditional vampire tale, replacing its gothic European settings with those of rural Americana, and its diseased aristocracy with malignant white trash. Bigelow’s film is not the first to transport these “creatures of the night” to a distinctly American landscape—vampires have plagued the cinematic Western frontier since Edward Dein’s Curse of Undead (1959) and William Beaudine’s Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966), reinforcing the mythology and iconography of the Wild West—but Bigelow’s vampires are new monsters for a new era.2 Stripped of their predecessors’ noble bearing, the vampires of Near Dark often revel in their lack of restraint, bullying and taunting their victims, indulging their passions, and flaunting their carnal nature.

In spite of this, the narrative begins innocently enough: Young vampire Mae (Jenny Wright) catches the eye of bored, disaffected young Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar), as she licks an ice cream cone beneath the pale, Southwestern moon. Lithe, soft-spoken, and boyish in appearance, her fragile beauty is compelling. The pair meet, and ride off together in Caleb’s pickup truck to perform an understated rendition of small-town adolescent courtship. An early exchange of call-and-response dialogue subtlety forecasts the path that the plot is about to take: Brode_WEB.indb 268

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CALEB: Can I’ve a bite?

MAE: Bite?

CALEB: I’m just dyin’ for a cone.

MAE: Dyin’?

Mae suggests that she needs a ride home, but on the way, shyly resists Caleb’s advances. He persists, and like any “proper” young woman, she insists that he take her home. When he refuses, she panics. Knowing viewers understand that she is anticipating the coming sunrise—needing to seek shelter from its destructive power—but Caleb presses on, interpreting her reluctance as coyness, and refuses to comply without a kiss.

This collision of attraction, bargaining, urgency, and bloodlust proves too much for Mae’s resolve to avoid the temptation presented by intimate contact. She responds with a gentle kiss to his neck—soft, sensual, and almost thoughtful—but one that ultimately draws blood. Then, as she runs off down the dusty road, the narrative course is set.

The newly infected Caleb struggles to return home, suffering from both his feverish blood and the effects of the sun’s scorching rays on his transforming skin. Before he can make his way across the barren landscape to the farm where he lives with his veterinarian father, Loy (Tim Thomer-son), and younger sister, Sarah (Marcie Leeds), however, before his father can reach him, he is intercepted by Mae’s “family” and carried off in their battered Winnebago. Heading this group of predatory but communal vampires is Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen), a charismatic, authoritarian older male, and Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), his longtime mate.

Mae’s “siblings,” the vicious and unsettling Severen (Bill Paxton) and the child vampire Homer (Joshua John Miller), beat and bully the newcomer, readying him for the kill, until Mae reveals that she has turned him: “Well then, you might as well just kill me too. . . . ’Cause he’s been bit, but he ain’t been bled. He’s turned by now.” He is hers now—a bizarre admixture of boyfriend, child, and pet. She defends Caleb from the family, placing herself between him and certain death, promising to teach him to hunt and kill, to shed his human weakness and carry his own weight.

“Look, I’ll take care of it.” Homer argues: “You can’t, Mae. I turned you; I taught you,” and she counters, “Well, I turned him and I’ll teach him!”

They reluctantly agree to give him a week to prove himself. As the family’s road trip continues, however, it is Caleb who now resists physicality.

Repulsed by the prospect of killing and draining the blood from his victims—the acts that will maintain his life, both physically and socially—he fails in his new role as a hunter (and supernatural male), relying, instead, on Mae for his survival and nourishment. The family quickly tires of his inability to assimilate and prepares to rid themselves of him, only suspending Brode_WEB.indb 269

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their judgment after Caleb proves his vampiric “masculinity” by endanger-ing himself to save the group during a daylight raid on their motel room.

The Coltons’ search for Caleb finally leads to a dramatic confrontation of families. The two patriarchs collide amid Homer’s attempt to kidnap Sarah and turn her into an eternally childlike companion. As the horrors of the vampires are revealed in the skirmish, the humans escape. Mae, however, remains with her own kind, despite Caleb’s urgings for her to come away with him. The badly burned Caleb begs his father to transfuse his blood, in order to help him regain his humanity. The process works, and the boundary between vampire and human families is restored.

In the film’s final scenes, the vampires’ influence, both ideological and supernatural, is overcome by the strength of normative humanity. Having tracked the Coltons back to their farm, Mae uses Caleb’s lingering attachment to her as a distraction while the others again kidnap Sarah. Assuming the role of classic Western hero, Caleb gives chase on horseback, and with the help of Mae, who risks her own life to save Sarah’s, destroys the vampiric clan. As the film closes, Mae awakens in the Coltons’ barn to find her burns healed and her humanity restored, thanks to another successful transfusion. “Caleb, what’s happening?” Mae exclaims as she checks and rechecks her skin in the sunlight. “I brought you home,” he replies. Mae clings to him in the light as, in good Western fashion, order is restored and the credits roll.

TO BE A VAMPIRE—AND A WOMAN

The literary and cinematic vampires of earlier eras were cast largely as chilling apparitions-come-to-life that imbued narratives with fear and romance, and challenged understandings of both body and soul—diseased aristocracy, menacing foreigners, or hypersexual women—conveying moral messages about the laws of God and nature. Female vampires, in particular, have been subject to sweeping, two-dimensional characterizations in cinematic narratives, either as interchangeable faces among the scores of women turned by a classic, central, charismatic figure (as in Jesús Franco’s Count Dracula [1970] and Jean Rollin’s Requiem for a Vampire

[1971]), or as embodiments of sexualized, often lesbian, evil. As Ellis Hanson observes, “The vampire lesbian . . . abounds explicitly” in films such as these: “A decadent species, slinky doyennes of haute couture, with an inexhaustible appetite for the polymorphously perverse.”3

While vampirism, as a state, has displayed a flexibility that has supported its use in a wide range of cautionary tales about contagion, rape, homosexuality, national identity, the circulation of capital, moral decline, and the distantiation between God and culture.4 But as Hallab observes, Brode_WEB.indb 270

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the modern-day vampire has become more human, while still retaining its iconic significance: “We moderns need supernatural beings we can identify with, not vague images of vast incomprehensible abstractions.”5

Bigelow’s updated vampire tale adapts and recontextualizes these traditional supernatural figures in order to link them to not only the geography and working-class socioeconomics of the contemporary American West, but also youth culture concerns of the late twentieth century. With its “indie” film aesthetics and complex characterizations, the film is often credited with playing a key role in crafting a contemporary horror landscape that is robust, diverse, and highly relevant.6 Far from “anachronistic holdovers,” the vampires of Near Dark are “satisfying constructs in their own right.”7

Satisfying, yet at the same time, deeply disturbing. In one of the film’s most often-cited scenes, the nomadic family terrorizes the patrons of an isolated roadhouse, their brutality inflected with a black humor that only amplifies the scene’s horror. Severen surveys the room and declares

“Well, I’ll be goddamned! Shit-kicker heaven!” before the slaughter begins. He prances around the barroom, taunting and bullying his prey, as one by one, the cowboys fall, their bravado draining from their faces as the blood leaves their bodies. “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved,” he laments, before sinking his teeth into a kill. As the rest of the clan settles into a nearby booth, Jesse terrifies a waitress with his smoldering predation as Homer sprawls across the table, looking on in voyeuristic delight.

While the male characters, each in their own way, provide the majority of the film’s most visceral ties to the horror genre, it is the women—

Dracula’s daughters—that supply the complexity. Unlike female vampires featured in earlier films, typically featured as dark, predatory, and hypersexual, and endowed with a compelling glamour, Bigelow’s she-creatures are muted, understated characters that operate within a broad, yet careful, emotional range. Although they seldom participate directly in the film’s violence and bloodlust, there is a steady intensity that emanates from both Diamondback and Mae. The former, an “older” being, exudes a kind of lusty confidence developed over decades of immortality (“Fun times,” she murmurs, as she and Jesse erupt into flames behind the wheel of their station wagon in the final scenes). She at once recalls the rebellion and earthiness of the counterculture of the 1960s, and the rugged aesthetic of the invisible underclass. Robynn Stilwell cites Diamondback’s comparatively imposing persona as a product of Bigelow’s trademark play with gender expectations.8 However, the character also evidences a subtext of tenderness in her relationship with Jesse, which, even as it deepens and complicates her role in the narrative, draws her back into a more conventional gender role performance as his mate, despite her dominant demeanor.

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The waifish Mae, on the other hand, echoes the archetype of the classic teen movie ingénue. Alternately flirtatious and shy, she appears hesitant, distracted, and vulnerable, despite her power and immortality. Mae’s soft-spoken, understated demeanor allows her to move gracefully across the border between femininity and androgyny, never seeming fully at home in either.9 Although clearly written following a heterosexual model, Mae’s actual performance of her sexuality is careful—subtle and limited—and her sexual status indeterminate (viewers never see her have sex, so it is unclear if she and Caleb attain that level of intimacy while they are both vampires), not representing sex, but merely the promise of sex, and thus creating an atmosphere, that is, as Nelson suggests, “pervasively erotic.”10 Such an atmosphere may, alternatively, be read as less potent, as well. Auerbach suggests that Mae’s character displays more affinity for those vampires embraced by Queer theorists, whose desire, as Ellis notes

“often functions as a destabilizing, even derailing force” in the supernatural narrative.11 However, in this case, no such destabilization takes place.

Or more accurately, no destabilization in traditional heteronormative gender role performance takes place. In different, but overlapping, ways, however, the characterizations of both Diamondback and Mae do serve to destabilize classic portrayals of the gothic vampire. Along with their male counterparts, the pair shifts this traditional monster type away from its old goth roots, trading gothic motifs for those of Western Americana and replacing the genre’s “medievalism” with contemporary narrative form.

The result is a hybrid tale that releases its gothic markers as they come into contact with Western tropes, while at the same time, retaining those elements and themes that are shared by both: Romanticism, supernatural-ism, and moralism.

HYBRIDITY AND THE WESTERN

Although Near Dark has received significant scholarly consideration as a vampire film, its status as a gothic Western is frequently treated as un-problematic. That it contains tropes and conventions of both the horror and Western genres is self-evident, but the ways in which it engages with them, and to what end, bears examination: Not all gothic Westerns are created equal.

With the introduction of the supernatural, a staple of the horror genre, into the midst of conventional Western tropes and characters, however, the two very distinct sets of generic conventions have been, as Adam Knee notes, “pulled together and forced into a showdown.”12 Knee has described this interplay as constructing a “compound genre,” suggesting that gothic Westerns “concurrently engage multiple distinct and Brode_WEB.indb 272

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relatively autonomous horizons of generic expectations.”13 And indeed, the majority of hybrid Westerns map supernatural elements onto familiar Western storylines and settings, or clothe supernatural tales in Stetson hats and spurs. Thus, in considerations of many of these projects, the notion of the compound genre proves useful, since it implies that these generic elements coexist unchanged—in tension, perhaps, but nonetheless, intact. In Bigelow’s film, elements of both genres are clearly visible: The centrality of blood—in both the taking and giving of life—the vampires’

nocturnal existence, along with the recurring themes of immortality and inhuman predation, situate the narrative in the horror genre, while visuals of the rural heartland, from dusty vistas and farmland to roadhouses and pickup trucks, position the characters firmly in the Western tradition.

Near Dark, however, while easily “readable” as either contemporary Western or horror, is, in fact, something different—a true hybrid, with genre elements that do not merely coexist, but intertwine with and inform each other. While the narrative follows traditional genre templates, this collision of characters is far from ordinary, as elements of both horror and the Western are adapted for the encounter. The film’s use of both Western and gothic tropes is more subtle than that of its Western horror predecessors: this is not the Wild West, but a stagnating contemporary southwestern locale; its heroes and villains are understated, rather than flamboyant; the boundaries of morality and gender are blurred; and death becomes conflated with life. While the vampire clan is outfitted with odds and ends of cowboy iconography—a greatcoat here, boots and spurs there—rather than cloaks and fangs, they are clearly frontier predators, with a deadly supernatural twist. The hybridity of Near Dark highlights the tension inherent in these contrasts and illustrates the impossibility of even temporary genre fixity until they are resolved in the narrative’s conclusion.

Hybridity has been described as a state of being that opens up a space of cultural uncertainty and instability, disrupting identity and creating an in-betweenness where cultural creativity can occur.14 Bigelow creates that space in Near Dark and uses it to shift the nature of the vampire from its gothic roots to an American present. As Nixon observes, the film

“retool[s] the vampire tale so as to occlude any . . . recognizable contextual and metaphorical connections” to the monster type’s history.15 The natural world of the American West—so often used to locate heartland values and morals, as well as to symbolize freedom, prosperity, and health—is inverted into something uncanny and threatening under the influence of the vampire clan, creating an unsettling gothic image of a West in decline. The vampire clan members, themselves, stand as hybrid figures as well, appearing far more human than supernatural.

Their image is one of a marginalized underclass class—“white trash,”

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if you will—juxtaposed against the disciplined, hardworking family farmers represented by Caleb’s family. The class constructs here are not to be overlooked, as they cast the vampires as not only supernatural predators, whose presence signals the physical and spiritual destruction of humanity, but as social predators, whose presence also signals the socioeconomic disintegration of humanity as well—a tangible affront to the working class. Like modern-day outlaws, Jesse and his clan help themselves to whatever they desire, creating mayhem and leaving devastation in their wake.

As Bigelow’s film collapses and merges the Western and horror genres, it creates a context of ambiguity for both Mae and Caleb, a backdrop against which they are able to work out their individual and interwoven transformations of identity—his from powerless, frustrated, adolescent to impotent supernatural being to powerful, aggressive adult male; hers from powerful supernatural being to powerless, subordinate adolescent.

Both traverse the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, victim and aggressor, and human and Other, as a direct result of involuntary changes in their “essences.” At the same time, the narrative of their romance crosses genres: What begins as a Western tale of bored-teenage-boy-meets-girl in a small rural town transforms into an emasculating gothic romance as her vampiric powers are revealed and he is “infected.”

As Caleb escapes and is reclaimed by his genre-of-origin he also claims his adult manhood, conquers the wildness of the supernatural, and draws Mae and their romance back into the Western genre—their differences in

“essence” resolved.

GENRE AND THE MORAL ORDER

Within the confines of either the gothic or Western genres, such radical character shifts would not be possible without disrupting the prescribed narrative trajectory. In the Western genre, transgression of the moral order is not permitted, and is typically answered by ostracism or death. As John Cawelti and others have observed, Westerns provide “archetypal stories that embody the organizing principles of the society we live in.”16 Existing in dynamic tension with the prevailing social order, Western narratives are vehicles for tales of danger and adventure on the frontier—a land beyond law, beyond experience—where the moral order is continually renegotiated. This tension is explicitly illustrated by the screen-crawl preface to King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946), which instructs audiences, that the film is a saga of Texas in the 1880s when primitive passions rode the raw frontier of an expanding nation. Here the forces of evil were in constant conflict with Brode_WEB.indb 274

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the deeper morality of the hardy pioneers. Here, as in the story we tell, a gray fate lay waiting for the transgressor upon the laws of God and man.17

Mae and her “family” stand as icons of “wildness” in the West—violent, dangerous, untamed—a part of the old frontier that persists in the face of civilization. Their eradication is key to the “taming” of the New West and the reinforcement of the genre’s male-centered narrative tradition. Mae, in particular serves as a complex rendition of the danger of the frontier—
a contemporary, supernatural descendant of traditional racialized “bad girl” characters—the “wild women” of the West. As Marubbio argues, the “inherently bad” qualities exhibited by these women are attributed to their racial and ethnic heritage—“bad blood”—making them inherently immoral and irredeemable.18 Mae’s blood—like that of Linda Darnell’s Chihuahua in My Darling Clementine (1948), Paulette Goddard’s Louvette in North West Mounted Police (1940), and Carol Forman’s Juanita in Under the Tonto Rim (1948)—is an essential threat to civilization.

In Mae’s case, however, “bad blood” is not a result of heritage, but of her pre-narrative supernatural victimization (her “turning” by Homer), thus, its danger may be neutralized, through a makeshift transfusion of “good” blood. While the “gendered wildness” that both she and Diamondback represent in the film’s cinematic present aligns them with traditional racialized “bad girl” archetypes, Mae, in fact, shares thematic heritage with another iconic Western female: the captive. Captivity narratives are burdened, not only with social anxieties about the act of miscegenation, but also about the longer-term effects—the cultural and psychological assimilation of captives—resulting in the blurring of racial and cultural boundaries.

The most familiar of these is, perhaps, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), a tale of abduction, miscegenation, and return. The captivity of Debbie (Natalie Wood), and her relationship with the Comanche warrior Scar (Henry Brandon) are the pivotal plot points from which the majority of the film’s action, tension, and violence arise. Fully acculturated into Scar’s tribe, Debbie resists rescue, and is nearly killed by her uncle Ethan (John Wayne) for the transgressions she now represents.19 At the film’s end, however, Debbie is returned to civilization against her will, with the implication that she will “relearn” how to be “human.”

The implications for Near Dark’s Mae are similar. An innocent, captured (or in this case, transformed) by Homer, her identity shifts to align with her captors. Mae’s essential self—her fundamental moral allegiance with civilization—however, never truly changes. In the narrative’s climactic “showdown” between the forces of good and evil, Mae’s essential humanity surfaces. In heroic Western fashion, Caleb (a former captive, himself) rides on horseback into the fray, rescues both captive females—one “tainted,” one Brode_WEB.indb 275

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pure—and returns them to home and community. In this way, Bigelow’s film plays with the moral mandates of Western narratives, violating those that come into direct contact with the supernatural, but ultimately fulfilling the genre’s insistence on restoration of the normative moral order.

Nearly all vampire films owe a debt to the treatment of evil as a psychological problem that was established in the gothic novels of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, which combined, as E. J. Clery notes, “the unnatural occurrences associated with romance and the naturalistic characterization and dialogue of the novel.”20 In this, Near Dark is no exception. While avoiding sentimental trappings, Bigelow’s film utilizes an atmosphere of foreboding and images of contemporary decay—cheap motels and seedy roadhouses, deserted streets, age-worn vehicles scattered across empty parking lots to effectively arouse audiences’

“imaginative sympathies”21 in ways that even the evocative desolation of revisionist Western imagery is unable to match.

Gothic horror also frequently displays a somewhat greater degree of moral flexibility in its heroes and villains, and the blurring of borders is more commonplace than in the Western genre. The conventions of horror

“assume that there is a moral order to be violated, resulting in corruption

. . . psychological dislocation . . . unholy hybrids, and general disorder.”22

Tensions between illusion and reality, inner and outer worlds, masculinity and femininity are often prominent. Ultimately, though, the genre also resists the unanswered crossing of boundaries between moral categories.

The fate of becoming the Other—crossing from the human realm to that of the supernatural—is the foundation for countless gothic tales of terror and horror, following Bram Stoker’s seminal Dracula (1897), in which the vampire robs Lucy Westenra of her autonomy. At the vampire’s hand, she is made Other, as he controls her from a distance and forces her to act against her noble nature.

Those crossings, however, are critical for the resolution of Bigelow’s storyline, as the Western genre complicates gothic conventions. The contemporary Americanization of the gothic makes restoration and redemption not only possible, but also necessary. Much like the Western, gothic fiction, as Jerrold E. Hogle has observed, “helps us address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural.”23 Or, as Steven Bruhm offers, the genre serves as “a barometer of the anxieties plaguing a certain culture at a particular moment in history.”24 Thus, Bigelow’s vampires, and the narratives that surround them, function as part of the larger gothic literary tradition, even as they represent innovation and change that tradition. The vampires of Near Dark participate in a conversation on youth culture, patriarchy, the family, and social class that is iconic of late twentieth-century America.

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JUST ANOTHER TEEN ROMANCE MOVIE

At the same time, the “coming-of-age” interplay of adolescent characters in Near Dark often suggests still another genre association, and begs the question: Is this just another teen romance movie? In many ways, Bigelow’s film subscribes to the same narrative conventions, focused on the certainties and challenges of adolescence, which characterize the teen movie canon, and create a recognizable sensibility associated with the genre. Near Dark follows and extends several of the templates established by earlier “teen” films, with their emphasis on the experience of adolescence—the contact point between maturity and immaturity—rather than on those typically found in either the gothic or Western genres. As Catherine Driscoll offers, teen films, or more appropriately, “adolescent”

or “youth” films, may be defined by
the youthfulness of central characters; content usually centered on young heterosexuality, frequently with a romance plot; intense age-based peer relationships and conflict either within those relationships or with an older generation; the institutional management of adolescence by families, schools, and other institutions; and coming-of-age plots focused on motifs like virginity, graduation, and the makeover.25

Near Dark encompasses many of these genre markers, and in fact, it can be argued that excising the supernatural from the narrative would have little effect on the film’s character development or the trajectory of its relationships. Bored and dissatisfied as the story opens, Caleb chafes against the limits of his small town. Bantering with a friend in the opening scenes, he barely contains his frustration. His friend (Leo Geter) withdraws from the sparring, demanding that Caleb account for his foul mood: FRIEND: What the hell’s eatin’ you?

CALEB: Your mama.

FRIEND: You wish!

CALEB: Wish I may; wish I might. Wish I was a thousand miles from here tonight.

The wish of every small-town teenager . . . that is, until Mae catches his eye.

She is a drifter—an unknown figure in a small rural community—made exotic by her difference, yet as Auerbach observes, “no buxom temptress like the Hammer women, thrusting out her cleavage and popping her fangs; she is a boyish teenager licking a Dairy Queen.”26 She appears both captivated and amused by his advances, in the way of a small-town girl unused to attention. And so, the film begins as a classic tale of boy-meets-girl.

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Mae struggles to gain him acceptance with her family, carefully cast as white trash in juxtaposition to Caleb’s own hardworking middle-class upbringing. Her “brothers” beat and threaten him, clearly resentful of his involvement with their “sister”; her “mother” is at once both more sexual and tougher than any “nice” small-town matron; and her father, a man of few words with the experiences of several lifetimes etched on his face, rules the clan with an iron hand. She is clearly a girl from the “wrong side of the tracks,” and their budding romance promises to end badly.

The troubled young pair struggles under the pressure exerted by Mae’s family. Caleb attempts to leave, but each time, is drawn back by his own weakness. Unable to return to his family, he needs Mae, and she clings to him, desperate for his companionship. When at last he makes his way home, she finds him. The pain and sense of belonging between them is palpable. She fights back tears as she asks: “Why did you leave?” He backs away, hesitates, and then gathers her in a passionate embrace. “I belong here, Mae. This is my family. . . . I miss you.” She presses him:

“What’s it gonna be?” and he looks away, unable to meet her gaze. Realizing she’s lost him, she backs away, devastated.

Ultimately, though, it is Mae who abandons her family for Caleb and his. She betrays her clan by rescuing Caleb’s sister from the clutches of her “little brother”—her ties to them, both figuratively and literally,

“burned.” Caleb carries her home, and completes her rite of passage and his own: his transition into adult manhood and her transformation into his ideal romantic companion.

In this, Bigelow’s film displays clear ties to its teen film predecessors, as well as its advancement of the teen film model through its Western/
horror hybridity. Mae’s “makeover” plot is centered on falling in love and shifting emotional, social, and existential alliances from her vampiric family (designed to replicate a family-of-origin) to her human mate. Her future with Caleb is never fully articulated—a hallmark, as Driscoll notes, of more contemporary teen fare—making the distinction between teen and adult romance clear:

For centuries across different media, plots where girls played central roles have closed with a romantic couple, but the teen film belongs to the extension of adolescent development and thus delay of the full social maturity with which marriage is associated.27

Near Dark’s hybridity, of course, complicates the trajectory of teen romance in the film. Mae and Caleb’s burgeoning relationship is intensified by gothic overtones—the “attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels”28—as darkness, suspense, foreboding, mystery, and dangerous passion all present challenges to the portrayal of adolescent Brode_WEB.indb 278

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innocence. Mae and her vampire clan offer Caleb his wish: an escape from the confines of a small life in a small town; an eternal existence brimming over with unbridled power, unlimited knowledge, and unrestrained lust.

He, however, and Mae along with him, chooses innocence.

In this, we may observe the ways in which the careful understatement of the teen movie genre, supported by the equally innocent romantic conventions of the Western, reins in the impact of the supernatural influences on the adolescent narrative, and inflects the gothic with heartland morality, even as the former appears to dominate the tone of the film. In the final scenes, the gothic is finally purged from the narrative, leaving only two romantic adolescents, performing the gender roles prescribed for them by the genre influences that remain.

PREDATOR, NURTURER, AND VICTIM

Shot through with heteronormativity and support of patriarchal structures, Near Dark advances a particular construction of “the feminine”

that both idealizes and limits the enactment of the film’s feminine roles.

Here, as Gelder notes of the film’s characters, “all women, even vampire women, are potential mothers.”29 All, in fact, are defined primarily by their relationship to key male figures. Thus, while Bigelow’s film plays a significant role in creating more sophisticated, complex portrayals of contemporary vampires, it offers no such foothold for its female characters—whether human (Caleb’s sister Sarah) or supernatural (Diamondback and Mae).

As a secondary character, Diamondback’s primary function in the narrative is as the unconventional-but-firm matriarch. As Jesse’s understated, freewheeling mate, her character is defined in relation to him, as well as to the “younger” vampires in the clan—for whom she serves as “mother” and peacekeeper—rather than as an individual entity. She serves, in many ways, as a “silenced female body,”30 present in the visual narrative, but nearly absent in the dialogue. Despite her more aggressive and predatory stance, she is seldom shown making a kill, and when she does, the act is clean and quick, unlike Severen, who toys with his prey and revels in the carnage of a kill.

A similar, but more complex disempowerment is particularly evident as we consider Mae, who carries a more robust role and serves as the film’s central female character. While Mae is, as Auerbach suggests,

“adept at undeath,”31 she is not adept at the exercise of power and will.

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enacts during the course of the film can be seen as restorative, rather than destructive, as she kills to preserve Caleb’s life. Even in the now-classic roadhouse scene, defined by its darkly comic celebration of carnage, her role is different. When she sets her sights on a young cowboy and asks, shyly, “Won’t you dance with me? It’s all right. Come on.” seductively readying him for the kill as they sway across the dance floor, it is not for herself, but for Caleb: “He’s for you,” she offers, facilitating his rite of passage as well as his redemption in the eyes of her clan.

Mae stands as a teenaged daughter to Jesse, subordinate and alternately arguing and pleading for his indulgence of her wishes, rather than challenging his right to authority, in her defense of her new “charge.”

She craves intimacy and insists on nurturing Caleb, even to the point of compromising her own well-being and that of her clan, and risks her own life and status in the group to protect the child, Sarah. Mae’s strongest and most assertive moments in the film, in fact, are those in which she is shielding other characters in their weaker moments, causing harm to herself in the process. And in those moments, she serves as an archetype of traditional femininity; reminding audiences that female strength and assertiveness is only truly valued when it is exercised in the defense of loved ones.

Breaking with the “in the moment” orientation of her vampiric family, Mae dreams of the future—a small town girl’s dreams writ large, infinitely large. She imagines her own immortality with a blend of matter-of-factness and anticipation: “I’ll still be here when the light from that star gets down here to Earth in a billion years.” This is the future of which Caleb robs her in the film’s resolution. Following the destruction of Jesse and the others, she awakens in the Coltons’ barn, instantly panicked at the daylight that fills the space. She gasps, disoriented, as memories and long-conditioned responses to the danger of the sun collide with her new reality. Caleb looks on with a proud smile, but offers no explanation. Mae is unaware that her blood has been transfused, that her dreams of immortality have been taken, without her consent.

MAE: I’m afraid . . .

CALEB: Don’t be. It’s just the sun.

In a narrative context where blood is explicitly “life-giving,” Caleb has drained Mae of her own unique life force and infused her with his own, transforming her, in the process, from supernatural to “ordinary,” so that she may be fully incorporated into his way of life. Earlier in the film, she begs him to come away with her and her family. He refuses, affirming, “I belong here.” With the life-giving transfusion of his blood, he denies her the opportunity to make that same choice. Mae is thus duly victimized Brode_WEB.indb 280

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through blood: first, when she is bitten and turned by Homer, and robbed of her humanity, and second, when she is “turned” by Caleb, and robbed of her immortality. Each has “remade” her in his own image, through invasive acts to which she did not consent. As the film closes, Mae does not turn boldly into the sun, celebrating her liberation in its warmth on her face; rather, she clings to Caleb in a dependent, childlike posture, never looking up. She displays fear, not merely of the destructive power of the sun’s rays on her skin, but of the loss of identity that she has once again suffered.

CONCLUSION

Thus we see that Near Dark was part of a significant change in portrayals of cinematic vampires in the 1980s. It, along with films like The Lost Boys and The Hunger, ushered in the era of the “human” vampire—vulnerable, flawed, and empathetic—the “creature of the night” to which diverse cinematic audiences could relate. A precursor to the “new wave” of vampire films in the twenty-first century, such as the film adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels, and popular televised programming such as the True Blood series, Near Dark thus plays a significant role in the evolution of the vampire as a “monster type.”

As a result, Near Dark serves primarily as a youthful, coming-of-age tale—a search for self and a place in the world—clothed in the dark terror of the gothic: A new hybrid cinematic vision with a conservative, traditional moral and social message. Throughout the course of the film, both Caleb and Mae engage in an extended process of negotiating identity, traversing the boundaries between subject and object, predator and victim, constraint and freedom, situatedness and wandering, morality and amorality, humanity and the supernatural, mortality and immortality, youth and adulthood. Their adolescence—already a status of “betweenness”—is fertile ground for their struggles, as they come to terms with the hybridity of their characters.

In its untraditional vampire figures, Bigelow’s film participates in the humanizing project of 1980s supernatural films, ushering the vampire, as monster type, into an era where many of the differences between living and undead dissolve. Not so, however, for the differences between the sexes. With its rescue narrative restoring the moral order in the new American West, Near Dark effectively resolves to drain Dracula’s daughters of their power—“saving” those, like Mae, young enough to be “turned” from the power, agency, and immortality of their former vampiric natures, and eradicating those who, like Diamondback, have experienced too much darkness to be redeemed.

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NOTES

1. Consider, for example, the vampires popularized by “Hammer Horror,”

from the 1950s through the 1970s.

2. For extensive discussions of the workings of these vampire types in the cinematic West, see Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, eds., Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2012).

3. Ellis Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” in Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, ed. Ellis Hanson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 184.

4. See Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (London: Routledge, 1994); Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Mary Hallab, Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead in Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009).

5. Hallab, Vampire God, 132–33.

6. See Hallab, Vampire God; Gordon and Hollinger, Blood Read.

7. Hallab, Vampire God, 69.

8. Robynn Stilwell, “Breaking Sound Barriers: Bigelow’s Soundscapes, from The Loveless to Blue Steel,” in The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor, ed. Deborah Jermyn and Sean Redmond (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 45.

9. Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” 184.

10. Victoria Nelson, Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 124.

11. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, 181–86; Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” 184.

12. Adam Knee, “The Compound Genre: Billy the Kid Versus Dracula meets The Harvey Girls,” in Intertextuality in Literature and Film: Selected Papers from the Thir-teenth Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film, ed. Elaine D.

Cancalon and Antonie Spacagna (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 141.

13. Ibid., 143.

14. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

15. Nicola Nixon, “When Hollywood Sucks, or, Hungry Girls, Lost Boys, and Vampirism in the Age of Reagan,” in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, ed. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 127.

16. See Gregory Stephens, “Romancing the Racial Frontier: Mediating Symbols in Cinematic Interracial Relationships,” Spectator 16, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 1995): 61.

17. Mary Beltran and Camilla Fojas, Mixed Race Hollywood (New York: New York University Press. 2008), 49.

18. M. Elise Marubbio, Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 8.

19. For more on this, see Arlene Hui, “La Frontera Racial en The Searchers de John Ford,” Revista Complutense de Historia de America, 30 (2004): 187–207.

20. E. J. Clery, “Genesis of Gothic Fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24

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21. Robert D. Hume, “Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel,” PMLA 84, no. 2 (March 1969), 283.

22. “The Horror Novel,” in Encyclopedia of the Novel. Cited on www.faculty

.virginia.edu/eng-archive/handouts/domesticity,_gothic,_and_horror.htm 23. Jerrold E. Hogle, “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4.

24. Stephen Bruhm, “The Contemporary Gothic: Why We Need It,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 260.

25. Catherine Driscoll, Teen Film: A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Berg, 2011), 2.

26. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, 188

27. Driscoll, Teen Film, 24

28. Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance (1921; repr.

Aukland, New Zealand: The Floating Press, 2012), 2.

29. Gelder, Reading the Vampire, 104.

30. Catherine Callagher and Thomas Laqueur, The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

31. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, 190.

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Numerous film historians have noted the “doubling” element present in lesbian vampire films: director Jesús Franco employs actresses Soledad Miranda (kneeling) and Ewa Stromberg (standing) to visualize that concept. Courtesy of CCC Telecine/

Image Entertainment.

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16

Dracula’s Postfeminist

Daughters in the

Twenty-First Century

Victoria Amador

The twentieth and now the twenty-first century have been interpreted, among other things, as the centuries of women. It follows, then, that a significant portion of those centuries would involve women constructing new, appropriate myths for themselves and that from these myths, the vampire would emerge as a totemic, rebellious figure of Other/ness and redefinition. There has been, thankfully, a great shift since the chastened New Women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula; as Phyllis A. Roth has noted, “For both the Victorians and twentieth century readers, much of the novel’s great appeal comes from its hostility toward female sexuality.”1 That hostility has been a source for female transformation, particularly in the feminist and now postfeminist eras from the 1960s to the present. The search for powerful icons led women through a variety of personal, creative, and artistic pursuits to the vampire myth, which seemed particularly attractive and malleable. In other words, women claimed their equal rights to the manipulation of the vampire, as writers and, mirroring the evolution of art in the twentieth century, as actresses and filmmakers.

There are many examples in the film and literature of the last century and in the new millennium that offer a reinterpretation of the vampire by women. This essay examines illustrations in both genres that are most relevant and ideologically important in terms of feminist/postfeminist images of women, of women producing those images, and of the LGBT

(lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) community actively participating in the creation and celebration of those images.

First, however, consider a few significant examples of works that demonstrate how the female vampire developed in the twentieth century in 285

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obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Two short stories written by women in the early 1900s demonstrated women’s ways of recognizing power in other women via the vampire myth, and also forwarded the evolution of the myth by implying that there were many kinds of vampires. The revenant that drinks blood is not the only dangerous life-taker; there are other kinds of dark desires brewing within women as well.

In her story “Luella Miller,” New England regional writer Mary Wilkins Freeman relates the tale of a helpless, gorgeous little thing that, if she “got her pretty claw on you,” sucked the life out of everyone who came near her.2 She is the archetypal helpless little girl with fangs of steel. British author Mary Elizabeth Braddon offers an updating of both Hawthorne’s

“Rapaccini’s Daughter” and the Elisabeth Báthory legend in “Good Lady Ducayne,” a tale of a “Superior Person” who uses a “practice so nefarious, so murderous” that she drains the blood of a number of young female companions in order to imbibe their youth and extend her own.3

Films in the first decades of the century also depicted the disturbingly powerful potential of women through the vampire metaphor. Theda Bara was “The Vamp” in a number of silent films, portrayed xenophobically as an Eastern European femme fatale around whom no man or marriage was safe. German chanteuse Ute Lemper sings a song on her Berlin Cabaret Songs CD entitled “Ich bin ein Vamp!” which declares, “I wear the stockings of Dubarry / bathe in coffins for a lark / I am a vamp, I am a vamp / half-woman, half beast / I bite my men and suck them dry / and then I bake them in a pie.”4

Even T.S. Eliot expressed his fear of this kind of woman in The Waste Land when he described a terrifying female vampire: A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.5

This is the woman who evolved into the heartless flapper of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories, manipulating men with the toss of her bobbed hair.

Fitzgerald saw Joan Crawford in such films as Dance Fools Dance as the ultimate flapper, the devil-may-care wild girl who would carouse and sing and jump into fountains all night until dawn. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, did such things and also, in the minds of many historians and critics, drew out his life’s blood and creativity. As for Joan Crawford, she herself bared her fangs at MGM and Warner Brothers to carve out a career that lasted fifty years, and as her alter ego Faye Dunaway declared in the biopic Brode_WEB.indb 286

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Mommie Dearest, “Don’t fuck with me, fellas. This ain’t my first time at the rodeo.” Indeed, who would?6

This vampiric figure shape-shifted in Hollywood cinema through the decades, her mixture of intrepidness and sexuality both endearing and dangerous. The hippie chick ingénue of the 1960s and 1970s extolled free love “as many women across the United States and in Europe demanded sexual pleasure and sexual equality with their husbands and boyfriends, and many more left these men and proclaimed their lesbianism.”7 The 1980s yuppie superwoman conquered Wall Street without laddering her stockings or mussing her lipstick. In the 1990s, Generation X-ers explored gothic subculture with a hitherto unknown freedom and increasing mainstream acceptance, their tastes influencing contemporary fashion. As 2000
dawned, an increase of women in production and direction, as well as actresses (some even over the age of forty), continued to progress (albeit slowly) for parity off- and on-screen. In other words, the vamp evolved within the parameters of cinema to become a feminist femme fatale.

As we can see, however, much of this vampiric action in film was metaphoric for women. The introduction of Bela Lugosi’s count to movie audiences in 1931 appropriated the vamp’s power as vampiric for men directly until the advent of the Hammer Films’ horror seductresses of the 1960s and 1970s. However, even then, a few sharp nails slashed through male domination of the myth. Consider the images, for example, of Mina/Eva, Lucy/Lucia and the brides in the 1931 Spanish-language version of Dracula.

The Spanish version was filmed simultaneously on the same sets, utilizing even the same hairpiece for the two counts. Producer Paul Kohner had recognized early on the power of Stoker’s novel and brought it to Universal Pictures. His control over the project was taken away, however, and given to Carl Laemmle Jr., along with the studio. In a kind of vampiric revenge, Kohner secured production control of the Spanish version. He wanted to top the English film, and in many ways he did.

He accomplished this in many technical ways, but Kohner also presented the women in the film as far more livid than those pallid femmes in the Hollywood version.

From the transparent negligees of his fiancée, heroine Lupita Tovar; to the overt sexuality of Lucy; to the feral, violent, madwoman quality of the brides (who embody the Rudyard Kipling figure of “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair”),8 the Spanish film offers far more titillating visions of female vampiros or ciuatateos.9 David Skal, in Hollywood Gothic, describes the sisterhood of

Spanish vampiras [as] wild, exotic creatures with flowing hair and low-cut gowns . . . one with teeth bared, and another . . . backlit in such a way that her nimbus of blonde hair frames . . . but a shadow. It is . . . one of the great

. . . images from the horror films of the 1930s.10

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And how do these girls spend their time when Dracula’s away?

As to the characterization of Mina/Eva, Tovar herself once said, “The wardrobe was different. . . . What they gave me were big décolletage—
what you would call sexy. I wasn’t even aware of it.” Both Mina/Eva and Lucy/Lucia are noir brunettes, wearing transparent black peignoirs to entertain the count. Tovar laughed, “When my grandson saw the film, he said, ‘Now I know why Grandpapa married you!’”11

In 1936, a brave attempt was made to maintain the gains of the dangerous fatal female by Universal, the Hollywood studio that gave us Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula. Dracula’s Daughter featured Gloria Holden as the unfortunate offspring of the count. Her favorite tidbit to succor her sorrow at being a vampire was tender female flesh, reiterating the lesbian echoes of Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 landmark novella of semi-Sapphic love, Carmilla.12

Countess Zaleska, Dracula’s daughter, is also sympathetically portrayed, an interesting reversal of traditional interpretations of Lilith-like women. After meeting renowned psychiatrist Dr Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) at a party, the countess tries to free herself of her hunger through psychoanalysis. Despite her seduction of the innocent waif Lily and her abduction of Dr. Garth’s girlfriend, the countess is a figure of both power and pity. For example, she fails a test proposed by Dr. Garth to control her desires. Her henchman Sandor, a 1930s Lurch with a jealous streak, plays a reversed role as he pimps for the countess, luring the cold and hungry Lily to Zaleska’s studio to pose for a painting. The innocent removes her blouse and lowers her chemise straps, querying, “Will I do?” Countess Zaleska’s unblinking reply, “Yes, you’ll do very nicely,” betrays her attraction to the young woman, as does her predatory advance upon her.13

Naturally, for her cupidity, she is pierced phallically by an arrow through the heart: “the female invert’s aggressiveness was what marked her as deviant and therefore dangerous, not her object choice. . . . It was the invert’s usurpation of masculine privilege that defined her sexuality.”14

Still, there is an interesting by-product of Countess Zaleska’s punishment. As Ellis Hanson notes in “Lesbians Who Bite,”

While [ Dracula’s Daughter] partake[s] of a politically dubious tradition of demonizing female sexuality, [it] also raise[s] the attractive possibility of a queer gothic, rich in all the paradox and sexual indeterminacy the word queer and the word gothic imply. . . . I am struck by a certain covert attraction to the vampire myth, certain identification with the creatures of the night, among even the most canonical of feminist theorists.15

We barely see the female and/or lesbian vampire appear again with any real force in American film for several decades. It is in sexually progressive Europe that Carmilla is reincarnated in a contemporary version of Le Fanu’s novella in the 1960 French film Blood and Roses.

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The lesbian element in vampirism represented the perverse fear of and desire for female sexuality felt by men in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bram Dijkstra wrote in 1986 a fascinating study of feminine evil entitled Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture; of course lesbian relationships in particular, and women’s sexuality in general, are part of that perverse idolatry. Andrew Schopp notes this in his essay, “Cruising the Alternatives: Homoeroticism and the Contemporary Vampire”: “Given its late nineteenth-century origins, we should not find it surprising that the vampire product both affirms and resists culturally and historically determined discourses of sexuality.”16

Thus it makes sense that much of the film imagery and literary depiction of the vampire in the latter part of the twentieth century would incorporate the homoerotic, and/or would be written by women, and would indicate that women’s desire for power, sexual freedom, and self-determination would be demonstrated in a variety of ways in the culture, not the least of which being the vampire myth.

Hammer Films of Britain made a great deal of money remaking old Universal Pictures horror movies during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Their vampires and virgins were voluptuous, bosomy creatures with false eyelashes and ample cleavage, giving as good as they were getting fang-wise. Whether they were Christopher Lee’s brides or victims, they represented the sex bombs that were popular in that era, but they also represented bloodthirsty women with a great deal of power both onscreen and at the box office. Clare Whatling asserts, “While it is largely true that . . . the lesbian vampires in the Euro-horrors of the 1960s and early 1970s were intended to appeal to a male heterosexual audience, I cannot agree that a pandering to male voyeurism necessarily inhibits the articulation of either lesbian identification or desire.”17

For example, consider Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire from 1970. Using the girls’ school film trope that goes back to 1931’s Madchen in Uniform and Lillian Hellmann’s The Children’s Hour, a lovely Scandinavian vampire has been reincarnated with the blood of a sacrificial virgin and goes romping through the classrooms and forests, sleeping with men and women alike. And again, while this film and others may be “much more indicative of a straight man’s fear of women’s sexuality than they are representative of any expression of lesbian desire,”18 at least the threat of Dracula has been replaced by Dracula’s granddaughters. As Benshoff notes in Monsters in the Closet, “The valorization of the monster queer as sexual outlaw, a counter-hegemonic figure who forcefully smashes the binary oppositions of gender and sexuality and race, has become a seminal stance among queer theorists and critics.”19

One of the most notorious of the Hammer vamps was Ingrid Pitt, who made a number of films for the studio. The most infamous was 1970’s Brode_WEB.indb 289

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The Vampire Lovers, another adaptation of Carmilla. It too is remembered primarily for its nude lesbian love scenes, but it also stands as a representation of women’s control of their own sexuality and of the genre. In an e-mail, Ingrid Pitt offered her perspective on her role in that film: I never knew anything about lesbianism when I made Vampire Lovers. Like everybody I had the odd encounter in the swimming pool shower but I always found it funny or I got pissed off. . . . I must admit I never thought a lot about it until I was asked to open a season of Lesbian Films at the National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank. It may sound naive but I had always thought of Carmilla as a story about a couple of bored girls lolling around with nothing better to do than get friendly.20

The Female Vampire as a power figure in those films, like the Male Vampire, embodied identical characteristics that threaten traditional hegemony. Thus Pitt had a thriving career as actress and author, and a website called www.pittofhorror.com, until her untimely death in November 2010. Her husband has instituted a Queen of Horror festival in honor of Pitt, which occurs every November; thus her influence as an erotic, iconic lesbian vampire has been lasting, no matter what her or Hammer Films’

intentions may have been.

We also see shadows of this powerful Other icon in Vampyros Lesbos (1971). Although dreadfully camp and filled with gratuitous nudity, this West German–Spanish coproduction was a European success and even spawned a 1995 dance compilation entitled Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party and a remake in 2008. The eroticism of the women in the film is dangerous and unabashed, indicative of the feminist and sexual revolu-tions of the era.

The year 1971 was good for vampish vamps, in that it also saw the release of The Velvet Vampire, a film that has also become, like Vampyros Lesbos, a cult classic. Featuring blond beauty Celeste Yarnall as Diane Le Fanu (a nod to Carmilla’s creator Sheridan), this production from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures gave viewers a heroine willing to feed on a married couple to fulfill her thirst.

Another important 1970s film with a lesbian theme was Daughters of Darkness (1971), which established Delphine Seyrig as a Sapphic pinup queen. In another retelling of the Elizabeth Báthory legend, Seyrig portrays a contemporary version of the woman who bathed in virgins’ blood.

While the film has been alternately called campy and erotic, it established Seyrig as a “queer cult actress.”21 Indeed, as Ellis Hanson points out,

“While lesbian vampire films are sometimes silly, they are never sweet.

They are violent, fetishistic, and voyeuristic; they are man-eating and phallic; they are bruisingly butch and fabulously femme.”22

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Hannah, Queen of the Vampires, advertised also as Crypt of the Living Dead, appeared as a B-movie in 1973 from Spain and offered a poster tag line of, “The undead die again . . . and again . . . and again!” A typical drive-in, multinational, low-budget film, it lacked the elegance of the Seyrig film, but at least it offered a powerful vampire queen wreaking havoc.

It is in fact from the late 1960s into the 1970s that we really see the erotic and increasingly complex depiction of vampire women in cinema who

“proliferated . . . sometimes inspired by the historical [Elisabeth] Bathory

. . . and often independent of any Dracula-style ‘masters.’” Director Jean Rollin’s films, including Rape of the Vampire (1967), Le Viol du Vampire (1968), La Vampire Nue (1969), Le Frisson du Vampires (1970), Requiem pour un Vampire (1971), and Lèvres du Sang (1975) were certainly sexploitation films with a twist of surrealism and authentic eroticism, positioning the female characters as sexually dangerous. Yet their popularity also helped to establish Rollin as a “horror auteur.”23

In the 1980s, the reconfiguration of the female vampire received further reinvigoration in 1983’s The Hunger, presenting a lesbian love scene between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon that is still discussed as a triumph of eroticism. In fact, in the documentary about LGBT depictions in Hollywood entitled The Celluloid Closet, Sarandon discussed her insistence that her character “didn’t need to be drunk” to be seduced by Deneuve.24 Instead, she goes to bed willingly with the French actress’s vampire queen, Miriam. Independent female filmmakers at the end of the 1980s were also producing lesbian vampire films, including Mark of Lilith from 1986 and Because the Dawn in 1988, presenting their protagonists not as male fetishes but as female objects of desire.25

There were also many heterosexual female vampires filling the screen.

We saw Kate Nelligan as a New Woman/feminist/sexual aggressor in the 1979 Dracula. Sadie Frost commanded the screen as a red-peignoir-clad Lucy in the 1992 Coppola film. Grace Jones offered a Jamaican post-punk blood sucker in Vamp (1986) . Kirsten Dunst’s Claudia in Interview with the Vampire (1994) established the young actress in her career and reenvisioned the vampire female as child. Jennifer Beals in Vampire’s Kiss (1992) took on Nicolas Cage’s hapless hero with impunity. Meg Tilly’s Carmilla (1992) was vulnerable and beautiful, offering a new interpretation of Le Fanu and Ingrid Pitt’s heroine. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both on screen (Kirsty Swanson in the 1992 film) and television (Sarah Michelle Geller) expanded the presence of female vampires onscreen while obvi-ating the blond airhead stereotype. Television’s Buffy also introduced a lesbian relationship between Tara and Willow as a subplot.

Women in more primary roles in vampire films, as “slayers” or as blood drinkers, have continued to appear over the last twenty-plus years. John Landis’s Innocent Blood (1992) “stars Anne Parillaud as Marie, a vampire Brode_WEB.indb 291

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who finds herself stranded in Pittsburgh alone and hungry. She refuses to take what she calls ‘innocent blood,’ and so must feed on criminals.”26 We have also seen a sympathetic female vampire in Elina Lowensohn, part of a dysfunctional and grieving vampire family in Nadja (1994). Another independent film, The Addiction (1995), featured Lili Taylor as a philosophy doctoral student who is attacked by a female vampire, and whose symptoms mirror those of hard drug addiction. Former porn star Traci Lords appeared as a bad girl blood drinker in Blade (1998), and Salma Hayak danced her way to George Clooney’s neck in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).

Vampiric film and television heroines have continued to appear in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Kate Beckinsale has cornered the market on leather cat-suited vampire hunters and death dealers in the disappointing 2004 Van Helsing, and as Selene in the four Underworld films between 2003 and 2012. The 2006 BBC television version of Dracula gave us a lusty Sophia Myles as Lucy, whose husband, Arthur Holmwood, afflicted with syphilis, brings the count to London to cure himself, meanwhile denying her consummation of their marriage—“I want you.

Come to bed, my husband.”27 Becoming a vampire herself, she berates her husband for his frigidity when she asks just before she attacks him,

“Was I not what you wanted?”28 His consummation of their marriage with a stake through her heart reflects badly upon him, not Lucy. Her best friend, a spirited Mina (Stephanie Leonidas) loses Jonathan Harker in this version and regrets having kept herself pure, but she is also a fearless working woman who helps to defeat the count.

Television also saw the popularity of Moonlight, also featuring Sophia Myles, on the CBS network in the United States in 2007–2008. Although it was cancelled after only one and a half seasons, the popularity of the program, about a vampire private detective named Mick St. John (Alex O’Laughlin) and his human friend and journalist Beth Turner (Myles) inspired a massive (and ultimately unsuccessful) write-in campaign attempt to save the series. Blood Ties from Canada, based on the Blood Books series by Tanya Huff, featured a vampire crime fighter helping a human female colleague. It only ran for one season on the Lifetime channel in the United States, but again, both series offered strong costarring women.

Thirst (2009), a South Korean film directed by Park Chan-Wook, won the Jury Prize at Cannes that year, offering a vampire priest in love with a woman who not only lies to the priest so he will kill her husband, but who bravely chooses to become a vampire and then meet the sun with him.

In 2009’s Daybreakers, the heroine, Alison, is turned into a vampire, but

“[a]ppalled at what she has become, Alison refuses to drink her ‘blood ration,’ feeding on herself instead.”29

A truly inspirational postfeminist vampire is the young, tragic heroine of Let the Right One In, filmed in 2008 and based on Swedish novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel. Eli, the ageless heroine, defends her friend, Brode_WEB.indb 292

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the bullied Oskar, and they find a home in one another despite her violent need for blood. She represents a powerful sister/friend/lover/maternal female, giving new hope to an unhappy male child. Remade in the United States as Let Me In in 2010, both films received critical acclaim.

One cannot ignore the teenage market as well. With major booksellers like Waterstone’s in Britain and Barnes and Noble in the United States now featuring sections on “Paranormal Romance,” we can see that a young generation has been drawn to the world of the undead. The Vampire Diaries inspired not only a popular television series but a number of novels about vampires and their pubescent adventures. Of course, the Twilight series of novels by Stephenie Meyer and subsequent five films (drawing out the last of the four novels for larger box office results) begat worldwide Twi-hard fans who breathlessly read the books, saw the films, bought the soundtracks, and followed the romance of lead actors Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. But one must remember that Stewart’s Bella is “not just a girl who falls in love with a vampire but a girl who becomes a vampire.”30

The shape of things to come: Such relatively recent projects as Buffy the Vampire Slayer , The Vampire Diaries , True Blood , and Twilight have reimagined the ancient vampire myths for a twenty-first-century audience. Courtesy of Mutant Enemy/20th Century Fox Television.

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It is in literature, however, that women have really taken control of the power and eroticism of the female vampire. An entire genre of writing has emerged, for example, that can be labeled only as lesbian vampire writing. Anthologies such as Daughters of Darkness and Dark Angels, edited by Pam Keesey; Night Bites: Vampire Stories by Women, edited by Victoria A Brownworth; and Stephen Jones’s Vampire Stories by Women, feature stories by lesbians or about lesbians, all reinterpreting vampire legends from feminist perspectives. African American lesbian author Jewelle Gomez produced both The Gilda Stories: A Novel featuring a black lesbian, and the novella Louisiana 1850, dealing with issues of slavery and economic independence as well as sexuality. Her female vampire protagonists run a bordello that is also a part of the Underground Railroad.

Hispanic author Terri de la Pena’s short story “Refugio” addresses gang problems in the barrio by offering a lesbian middle-aged nurse who turns troubled gang members into vampires who can help alleviate their community’s problems. Her vampire chooses “muchachas y muchachos to carry on after me” to help “en nuestra lucha” (with our struggle) with gangs and drugs.31

Perhaps the penultimate tribute to this trend is the camp play Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, which had a long off-Broadway run and featured actors in drag. Lesbian or heterosexual, women have asserted themselves as a major force in the depiction of the vampire myth at the end of the twentieth century. Although Elton John’s 2006 Broadway musical Lestat, based on Anne Rice’s hero, was a flop, the idea that producers were willing to risk millions of dollars on such a venture further demonstrates the power of the vampire, and Carolee Carmello, in the role of Lestat’s mother, Ga-brielle, was nominated for a Tony award.

The most important vampire book of the 1970s was Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, published in 1976. Rice herself is heterosexual, but her hero, Louis, and his antagonist, Lestat, suggested the love that dare not speak its name in this and other sequels, and hit a note with readers who were about to face the specter of AIDS in the 1980s. The notion of blood as life bringing and life destroying was prescient in Rice’s book, and the movie version “delivered a compassionate memorandum to a world in need of empathy, the message being that neither Aids nor drug addiction are a choice.”32 Rice’s book also signaled the co-opting of the vampire as metaphor for Otherness, whether that is as an LGBT person or HIV-positive survivor or feminist, as well as hearkening back to the disease-obsessed nineteenth century. Rice has, of course, become an industry now, producing innumerable vampire characters and filming both Interview and the 2002 The Queen of the Damned with the late African American actress/
singer Aaliyah. She has also returned to the gothic after her temporary abandonment of the genre for her Christianity; having now renounced Brode_WEB.indb 294

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the Catholic Church, and as the proud mother of gay author Christopher Rice, the author is again a reigning queen of the vampire legend.

The list of female writers, both gay and straight, producing vampire fiction is extensive. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has published a very popular series of novels about the sympathetic Count Saint-Germain, beginning with Hotel Transylvania in 1978. Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series features a female detective who just happens to consort with vampires, the detective genre being yet another claimed by women writers and readers in the last two decades. Meredith Ann Pierce wrote The Dark-angel Trilogy. African American writer Tananarive Due has published two books, My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood featuring a middle-class Black family whose patriarch is a five-hundred-year-old revenant. Tanith Lee publishes extensively, as have Nancy Collins, P. D. Cacek, Poppy Z. Brite, Alejandra Pizarnik, Lois Tilton, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Vivian Vande Velde, Melanie Tem, Jeanne Kalogridis, the aforementioned Stephenie Meyer, and the late Angela Carter. Their vampire figures vary from predator to crimestopper, but their very variability demonstrates the flexibility of the myth and its female propagators.

The massive success of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels, and the HBO television adaptation True Blood, has extended the reading and viewing public for vampires as well as generated enormous amounts of revenue. For example, Jacob Klein on his website HBO Watch noted in February 2012, just before the start of season five, that the series is one of HBO’s top three programs; when the program goes into syndication, each episode will earn approximately $800,000.33

Clearly the vampire myth continues to find new blood for new audiences in the new millennium, shapeshifting with the times, evolving as it must in order to stay alive. Stacey Abbott has observed, “Perhaps just as the vampire came to embody the transition between the industrial and the postindustrial, the new vampire to emerge will again engage with . .

. the spirit of ‘renewal and disintegration’ that defines modernity by no longer being linked to the Old World or the New World, but rather embodying the global.”34 In April 2013 the Cannes Film Festival added into competition Only Lovers Left Alive, about two vampires who have loved each other for centuries. Starring Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, and John Hurt, and directed by Jim Jarmusch, the critical attention given to this film, which “many pundits predicted would vie for the Palme d’Or,”35 helps to legitimize the genre as well as the challenge an actress can find portraying a complex blood-drinking heroine. Another new film, Byzantium, directed by Interview with the Vampire’s Neil Jordan, features Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan as mother and daughter vampires, respectively. Although Clara is a pimp and a prostitute, her daughter Eleanor wants to be a writer, introducing a new trick into the Brode_WEB.indb 295

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tired bag of old ones. Arterton’s character is also fiercely unrelenting in her concern for her daughter, and as director Jordan notes, “[T]here’s a cool feminist fable in here, about women who steal something from the male fraternity of vampires and use it for their own ends.”36

Dracula continues to reincarnate as well. Universal Pictures recently announced it will be filming a new version of Bram Stoker’s tale, starring Luke Evans, in Northern Ireland in the summer of 2013; one hopes his costar, Sarah Gadon, who is currently a Cinema Studies student at the University of Toronto, will be given a role reflecting a twenty-first-century feminist ideology. Additionally, NBC television in the United States will be screening a series in the autumn of 2013 entitled Dracula starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, whose desires for revenge will be tempered when he falls for a young woman who seems to be, in a borrowing from the 1992 Coppola film, the reincarnation of his dead wife. A woman’s bare neck appears in the foreground of the advertisements of the program, indicating traditional female vulnerability, but one again can hope that the production will allow his love to have a more proactive persona.

The victimized virgin of the early nineteenth century has become the red-carpet-walking star of the twenty-first century and shows no sign of playing dead. At a time when the word “vampire” has as much of a dangerous cachet as the word “feminist,” more and more women continue to be fascinated by the children of the night, and the bittersweet music they make.

NOTES

Portions of this essay were originally published as “The Postfeminist Vampire: A Heroine for the 21st Century” in Journal of Dracula Studies 5 (2003) and are reprinted here with the journal’s kind permission.

1. Phyllis A. Roth, “Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” in Dracula by Bram Stoker, ed. Nina Auerbach and David J Skal (New York: W.W.

Norton, 1997), 411.

2. Mary Wilkins Freeman, “Luella Miller,” in Vampire Stories by Women, ed.

Stephen Jones (London: Robinson, 2002), 219.

3. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, “Good Lady Ducayne,” in Vampire Stories by Women, ed. Stephen Jones (London: Robinson, 2002), 403.

4. Ute Lemper, “Ich bin ein Vamp!” by Marcellus Schiffer, Geza Herczeg, and Robert Klein, Berlin Cabaret Songs (Decca, 1996), compact disc.

5. T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land,” in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. Nina Baym, 7th rev. ed. (New York: W.W. Norton:, 2007), 651.

6. Mommie Dearest, directed by Frank Perry (1981; USA: Paramount, 2006).

7. Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film (London: Penguin, 1993), 90.

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8. Rudyard Kipling, “The Vampyre,” in Hollywood Gothic by David J. Skal (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 42.

9. Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film: From “Nosferatu” to “Interview with the Vampire” (New York: Limelight Editions, 1997), 18.

10. David J. Skal, Hollywood Gothic (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 166.

11. Leonard Wolf, Dracula: The Connoisseur’s Guide (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 218.

12. Raymond T. McNally, “In Search of the Lesbian Vampire: Barbara von Cilli, Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ and the Dragon Order,” Journal of Dracula Studies 3 (2001): 12.

13. Dracula’s Daughter, directed by Lambert Hillyer (1936; USA: Universal Pictures, 2007).

14. Lynda Hart, Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (London: Routledge, 1994), 9.

15. Ellis Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” in Outtakes: Essays in Queer Theory and Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 183–84.

16. Andrew Schopp, “Cruising the Alternatives: Homoeroticism and the Contemporary Vampire,” Journal of Popular Culture 30, no. 4 (Spring 1997): 232.

17. Clare Whatling, Screen Dreams: Fantasising Lesbians in Film (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997), 69.

18. Harry M. Benshoff, Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997), 195.

19. Ibid., 231

20. Ingrid Pitt, e-mail to the author, February 28, 2002.

21. Benshoff, Monsters in the Closet, 191.

22. Hanson, “Lesbians Who Bite,” 188.

23. Jason Buchanan, “Jean Rollin,” The New York Times, 2010, http://movies

.nytimes.com/person/61231/Jean-Rollin/biography (accessed April 15, 2013).

24. The Celluloid Closet, DVD, directed by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (1995; USA: Sony Pictures, 1996).

25. Weiss, Vampires and Violets, 107–8.

26. John Landis, Monster in the Movies (London: Darling Kindersley, 2011), 24.

27. Dracula, DVD, directed by Bill Eagles (2006; UK: BBC Films, 2007).

28. Ibid.

29. Ken Gelder, New Vampire Cinema (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 131.

30. Newman, “Deadly,” 33.

31. Terri de la Pena, “Refugio,” in Night Bites: Vampire Stories by Women, ed.

Victoria A. Brownworth (New York: Seal Press Feminist Publ., 1996), 27.

32. Chris Sullivan, “Long in the Tooth,” Guardian (London), April 6, 2002, The Guide: 4–7.

33. Jason Klein, HBO Watch, February, 2012.

34. Stacey Abbott, Celluloid Vampires (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 219.

35. Nigel M. Smith, “Cannes Adds Jim Jarmusch’s Tilda Swinton-Starring Vampire Tale to Competition among Other New Titles,” Indiewire, April 26, 2013, www.indiewire.com/article/cannes-adds-jim-jarmuschs-tilda-swinton-starring-vampire-tale-to-competition-among-other-new-titles# (accessed May 17, 2013).

36. Trevor Johnston, “Between the Lines,” Sight and Sound, June 2013, 30.

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Index

Unless otherwise indicated, italicized title entries indicate motion pictures. Poems, paintings, and other objets d’art are listed in quotation marks. Pages numbers in boldface refer to photographs.

Addams, Dawn, 118

Barely Legal Lesbian Vampire Lovers

Aldrich, Robert, 27

(2003), 22

Allen, Woody, viii

Basic Instinct (1992), 38, 42–43

Almereyda, Michael, 45–46, 49–50, 52,

Bates, Ralph, 124, 127

54, 55–56, 65

Bathory, aka Bathory: Countess of Blood Amis, Suzy, 54

(2008), 140, 148–156

Argento, Dario, 73

Báthory, Elizabeth, aka Ersbet/

Arnold, Jack, 103

Erzsebet Nádasdy, 16, 30, 107,
art cinema (movement), 32, 74, 85–86,

109–110, 138, 220–224, 226–227, 286,

92, 220

290–291

Ashton, Winifred, aka “Clemence

Bava, Mario, 23, 68–81, 116

Dane,” 24

Because the Dawn (1988), 34, 291

Auerbach, Nina, 8, 223, 237, 245, 262,

Bellour, Raymond, 31

272, 277, 279

Bellow, Saul, 132
auteur theory, 85, 221

Bergman, Ingmar, 24, 221

Avatar (2009), 5

Berlin: Symphony of a Great Society

(1927), 49

Baker, Dorothy, 24

Betts, Kristen, 116

Baker, Roy Ward, 116

Beyoncé, aka Beyoncé Knowles, 14

Balderston, John L, 47, 186

Bigelow, Kathryn, 15, 131, 135, 266–282

Bara, Theda, 9, 29, 36, 37–42, 44, 126, Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, The

133, 286

(1972), 24

299

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300

Index

Black Sunday (1960), 23, 68, 69–81, 116, Cole, George, 120

118, 121

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 7, 107, 248

Blacula (1972), 195–203, 207

Collinson, Madeleine, 133

Blade (1998), 195, 211–213, 292

Collinson, Mary, 133, 134

Blood and Roses (1960), 32–33, 82,

Conrad, Joseph, 4, 6, 119

83–93, 116, 119, 220, 231, 240, 288

Coppola, Francis Ford, 15, 178, 185,

Blood of Dracula, aka Blood Is My

189–192, 291, 296

Heritage (1957), 12, 238

Countess, The (2009), 140, 148–153, 155

Blood Ties (TV series), 34, 292

Countess Dracula (1971), 30, 138, 140–

Borwczyk, Walerian, 141, 145–147

145, 148

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), 15, 172, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The

189

(1954), 103

Breton, Andre, 49

Cronenberg, David, 235, 236, 239, 240,

Brides of Dracula (1960), 13, 115, 224

247

Bowie, David, 254, 255, 259, 263

Cult of the Cobra (1955), 12

Browne, Porter Emerson, 9

Cushing, Peter, 117, 118, 133

Browning, Tod, 11, 45, 54, 178, 181,

184, 188, 256–257

D’Agostino, Albert S., 51

Brownmuller, Susan, 13

Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957), 12

Brymer, Louise, 53

Daughters of Darkness (1972), 31, 32,

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 268, 291, 293

219–232, 290, 294

Byrne-Jones, Philip, 9–10

Decter, Midge, 13

Deleuze, Gilles, 97, 99, 109–110

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (1919/1920), Delpy, Julie, 148, 153–154

49–50

Denault, Jim, 46

Cahn, Edward L., 12

Deneuve, Catherine, 16, 30, 252, 254,

Cameron, James, 5

259, 291

Campbell, Joseph, 8

Devil Is a Woman, The (1935), 12

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 9

Dietrich, Marlene, 12, 228, 252

Caravaggio, 149–153

Domergue, Faith, 12

Carmilla (novella, 1872), 7, 9, 24–25,

Douglas, Michael, 42

83–93, 107, 115–116, 118, 140, 288,

Down, Lesley-Anne, 142, 144

290

Dracula (novel, 1897), 9, 24, 27, 38, 45, Carreras, Michael, 115, 116

50, 83, 103–104, 140, 154, 173–191,

Castle of Blood, aka La Danza Macabra 226, 237, 240, 276, 285

(1963), 23

Dracula (1931), 11, 54, 256

Cat Girl (1957), 12

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), 115

Cat People (1942), 11, 12

Dracula’s Daughter (1936), 11–12, 20,

Chambers, Marilyn, 234, 235, 242, 244,

25, 32, 44, 45–65, 116, 131, 288

249

Dracula’s Daughter (1972), 97

Chartier, Alain, 5

Draper, Herbert James, 6

Chopin, Frederic, 55, 57–62

Dryer, Carl, 11, 221

“Christabel” (poem, 1800), 7, 107, 248

Dunst, Kirsten, 158, 160, 291

Christofe, Pascale, 145

“Cinderella” (traditional fairytale), 142

Eastwood, Clint, 15

Cinema Journal (publication), 50

Easy Rider (1969), 49

Cleopatra (1917), 39

Ebert, Roger, ix, 1

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Index

301

English, Marla, 12

Head, Edith, 52

Et mourir de plaisir (1960), 107

Heart of Darkness (novella, 1899), 6

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

Herzog, Werner, 12
about Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask

Hillyer, Lambert, 11, 45, 47–48, 50–51,

(1972), viii

57

Hinds, Anthony, 12–13

Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 24

Hitchcock, Alfred, 122, 131

Fatal Attraction (1987), 38

Holden, Gloria, 11, 20, 32, 44, 46, 52, Faust Myth, The, 110

64–65, 116

Female Vampire (1973), 97

Hopper, Dennis, 49

Ferrer, Mel, 82

Horror of Dracula (1958), 12–13, 115,

Finch, Jon, 119

183, 188

Firestone, Shulamith, 13

Hough, John, 133

Fisher, Terence, 12, 13, 124, 178, 183

Hudson, A. E. 4–5, 6

Flesh and the Devil (1927), 12

Hunger, The (1983), 16, 30, 32, 95, 231, Fonda, Bruna, 34

252–264, 268, 281, 291

Fonda, Jane, 14

Hurt, William, 153–154

Fonda, Peter, 53

Fool There Was, A (play, 1909), 9

Immoral Tales (1974), 140, 145, 146,

Fool There Was, A (1914/1915), 9, 29,

147–148

37–44

In a Glass Darkly (fiction anthology),

Ford, Anitra, 1

1872), 7, 116

Fox, The (1966), 27, 31

Innocent Blood (1992), 15, 131

Franco, Jess, aka Jesus, 94–111, 220,

Interview with the Vampire (1994), 158–

270, 284

170, 229, 291, 294–295

Freda, Riccardo, 69

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), 1–2,

French New Wave (movement), 85

15–16

Freud, Sigmund, 8, 16, 47–49, 109, 116, I Vampiri (1957), 69, 75

143

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), 3, 16, 292

Jakubisko, Jurab, 148–149, 153

Jarman, Derek, 55

Ganja and Hess (1973), 195, 199–203

Jefford, Barbara, 125

Garbo, Greta, 12, 252

Jennifer’s Body (2009), 95

Gates, Tudor, 25, 116, 124–125, 133

Johnson, Michael, 126

Gladwin, Polly, 34

Jolie, Angelina, 14

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 110

Jones, Ernest, 9

Goldstein, Amy, 34

Jones, Grace, 16, 194, 207–209, 291

Green Mansions (novel, 1904), 4, 6

Jump Cut (publication, 1981), 26

Green, Nigel, 142

Grey, Nan, 20

Keats, John, 5–6, 122

Killing of Sister George, The (1968), 27

Halperin, Victor, 50

Kinski, Klaus, 12

Hammer (Studio), 12, 13, 25, 74, 115,

Kipling, Rudyard, 9, 39–41

277, 287, 289–290

Kusama, Jennifer, 95

Harrison, Sandra, 12

Hayek, Salma, 3, 16

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (poem,

Hays Production Code, 83

1424), 5

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302

Index

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (poem,

Mayne, Ferdy, 116

1819), 5

Melziner, Jo, 51

La cripto e l’incubo (1964), 107

Metropolis (1927), 49

Lady Gaga, 14

Meyer, Nicholas, 1

“Lady Lilith” (painting, 1868), 7

Millet, Kate, 13

Laemmle, Carl, 55, 287

Monroe, Marilyn, 103

Lagerfeld, Karl, 104

Moonlight (TV series), 34

Lamia, 2, 4, 5–6

Moriarty, Prudence, 53

Landis, John, 15, 131

MPAA rating system, 83

Lang, Fritz, 49, 51

Mulvey, Laura, 7, 100

La noche de los sexos abiertos (1983),

Munch, Edvard, 8

106

Murnau, F. W., 49, 50

Last Year at Marienbad (1961), 94, 131

Murphy, Eddie, 203, 206, 212

La Vampire Nue (1969), 23

Murphy, Peter, 256–258

La Viol de Vampire (1967), 23

Lee, Christopher, 23, 37, 115

Nádasdy, Ferenc, 139

Le Fanu, Sheridan J., 7–8, 24, 83–93,

Nadja (novel, 1928), 49

107, 115–116, 118, 120–124, 126, 129, Nadja (1994), 45–49

133, 140, 153, 288, 290–291

Near Dark (1987), 15, 16, 131, 266–281

Leigh, Suzanna, 127

Necronomicon (1969). See Succubus Lemoine, Michel, 98

(1969)

Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009), 22

New Gallery, The, 9

Let Me In (2010), 160, 165–169, 293

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 123

Let the Right One In (2008), 160–169

Nort, Natalie, 105

Lewton, Val, 11

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), Lilith, 4–6

49, 54, 178–189, 224, 237–240

Lord Byron, aka George Gordon, 8,

Nosferatu (1979), 12

126

Novak, Kim, 131

Lorna, The Exorcist (1974), 106

Lowensohn, Elina, 46, 52

“Ode: Intimations of Immortality”

Lugosi, Bela, 10, 11, 12, 37, 50, 54, 172, (poem, 1804), 119

231, 238, 257, 287, 288

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” (poem, 18xx),

Lust for a Vampire (1972), 10, 29, 124, 122

125–133

O’Mara, Kate, iv, 121

Lynch, David, 45, 50

Opera (1987), 73

Lyne, Adrian, 38

Ottinger, Ulrike, 23

Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 104

Ottoman Empire, 139, 154

Ovid, 71

Mack-Nataf, Isiling, 34

Macumba sexual (1983), 106

Persona (1965), 24

Madonna, 14

Picasso, Paloma, 145, 146

Margheriti, Anthonio, 23

Pico, Gianfrancesco, 71

Mark of Lilith (1986), 34

Picture of Dorian Gray, The (novel,

Marlowe, Christopher, 100

1890), 104

Martinelli, Elsa , 82

Pitt, Brad, 158

Mastrocinque, Camillo, 107

Pitt, Ingrid, iv , 20, 112, 114, 117, 118, Matthais II, King of Hungary, 148–149

120, 138, 142–143, 151, 289–291

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Index

303

Playboy (magazine), 115, 133, 138

“Snow White” (traditional fairytale),

Polidori, Dr. John, 8, 75, 227

141

Powell, Frank, 38

Sontag, Susan, 24

Pre-Raphaelite Movement, 6

Spillane, Mickey, 102–103

Prest, Thomas Preskett, 8

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), 1

Protestant Reformation, 139

Steele, Barbara, 23, 68, 69–71, 76, 77, 78–79, 116

Queen of the Damned (2002), 194, 195, Steele, Pippa, iv, 118, 128

214, 215, 294

Steiner, Max, 55

Stensgaard, Yutte, 10

Rabid (1977), 235–248

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 8

Raven, Mike, 125

Stewart, James, 131

Regiment of Women (novel, 1915), 23

Stoker, Bram, 24, 45, 47, 50, 75, 83,

Rejaunier, Jeanine, 116

103–104, 140, 153, 154

Renaissance, The, 5

Stoker, Florence, 47

Requiem for a Vampire (1971), 270

Stone, Sharon, 42

Resnais, Alain, 94, 131

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

Reynaud, Janine, 94, 97

The (novella, 1886), 8

Rice, Anne, 158

Stroyberg, Annette, 82, 116

Robertson, John-Forbes, 118

Student of Prague (1913), 49, 50

Rodriguez, Robert, 16

Succubus (1969), 94, 95–111

Roemheld, Heinz, 55, 64
surrealism (artistic approach), 90–91,

Rollin, Jean, 23, 24, 27

96, 106, 118, 131

Romantic Movement, The, 5

Swift, Taylor, 14

Rosetti, Dante Gabriel, 6–7

Rye, Stellan, 49

Talbott, Gloria, 12

Rymer, John Malcolm, 8

Tarantino, Quentin, 16

Tepes, Vlad, aka “Vlad the Impaler,”

Saldana, Zoe, 5

8, 154

Sanders, Denis, 1, 16

Time After Time (1979), 1

Sangster, Jimmy, 124–125

Titanic (1997), 148

Sarandon, Susan, 30, 291

To Love a Vampire (1971). See Lust for a Sasdy, Peter, 30, 141

Vampire

Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 2

Tourneur, Jacques, 11, 12

Scott, Tony, 95, 253, 255, 256, 258, 259,

Trio (novel, 1943), 24

263

True Blood (TV series), 34, 281, 293, 295

“Second Coming, The” (poem, 1919),

Turner, Simon Fisher, 46, 55–56, 63

122

Twilight (film series), 34, 160, 166–168, She-Creature, The (1956), 12

268, 281, 293

Shelley, Barbara, 12

Twins of Evil (1971), 29, 133, 134, 135

Shelley, Percy Byshe, 126

Two Orphan Vampires (1997), 169–170

Shock (1977), 78

Shrek (2001), 142

Ulmer, Edgar G., 12

Simon, Simone, 11, 12

Universal (studio), 45, 47, 55

Sin (1915), 29

Smith, Madeline, iv, 20, 112, 118

Vadim, Roger, 82–93, 107, 119

Smith, William, 1

Vamp (1986), 16, 194, 207–209

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304

Index

Vampir (novel, 1932), 24

Victorianism/Victorian era, 5, 6, 8,

Vampira, 238

24–25, 38, 54, 84–85, 123, 125, 127

“Vampire,” aka “Love and Pain”

Victoria’s Secret (chain), 14

(painting, 1899), 8

Vierges et Vampires (1971), 23

“Vampire, The” (painting, 1897), 9

“Vampire, The” (poem, 1897), 9,

Warren Publishing, 14–15

39–41

Wasp Woman, The (1959), 12

Vampire, The (book, 1819), 8

Waterhouse, John William, 6

Vampire, The (1910), 29

Waxman, Franz, 55

Vampire Diaries, The (TV), 34

Wayne, John, 2, 275

Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), 195, 198,

Wegener, Paul, 49

203–214

Wenk, Richard, 16, 207

Vampirella (graphic novel series), 15,

Werewolf of London, The (1935), 51

242

Whip and the Body, The (1968), 78

Vampire Lovers, The (1970), iv, 20, 22, White Ladies (novel, 1935), 24

25–26, 28, 33, 112, 115–123, 125–127, White Zombie (1932), 50

129, 132, 290

Wiene, Robert, 49

Vampyre (1932), 11

Wilde, Oscar, 104

Vampyres Lesbos (1971), 97

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 127

“Varney the Vampire” (magazine

Wordsworth, William, 119
serial, 1845–1847), 8

Wright, Jenny, 16

Verhoven, Paul, 38, 42–43

Vernon, Howard, aka “Howard

Yeats, William Butler, 122

Varnon,” 102

Young, Francis Brett, 24

Vertigo (1956), 131

Vetri, Victoria, 2

Zaleska, Countess, 11, 12, 288

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About the Editors

Douglas Brode is a novelist, graphic novelist, produced playwright, Hollywood screenwriter, film and TV historian, and multi-award-winning working journalist. His more than thirty-five published books include Virgin Vampires, or Once Upon a Time in Transylvania, a retelling of European vampire lore, illustrated by Joe Orsak in a manner that self-consciously recalls the golden age of Hammer horror. Brode divides his time between Syracuse, New York, where he teaches courses in popular culture at the University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, Department of Television-Radio-Film-New Media, during the fall semes-ters, and San Antonio, Texas, in the winter and spring, where Brode offers varied cinema studies courses for the Department of Philosophy, Classics, and Humanities, The University of Texas, San Antonio.

Leah Deyneka holds an MA in nineteenth-century literature from King’s College, London, and has written extensively on literature, film, media, and popular culture during her academic career. She is the coeditor of Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology; Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology (Scarecrow Press); and Otto’s ABC’s.

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About the Contributors

Aalya Ahmad has a PhD in comparative literary studies, specializing in horror fiction. She has taught courses in English and in women’s and gender studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, and published work on monstrosity, gender, and the horrific. Her research interests include feminism, postcolonialism, diaspora, and horror spectatorship.

Victoria Amador is assistant professor of English at the American University of Sharjah. She has taught at universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East. Her research interests include the golden age of Hollywood, fashion history, and gothic film and literature. She is currently writing a critical biography of actress Olivia de Havilland for the University of Kentucky Press.

Giselle Liza Anatol is associate professor of English at the University of Kansas. She has published Bringing Light to Twilight : Perspectives on the Pop Culture Phenomenon (2011), an edited collection of essays, and is in the midst of a book-length manuscript entitled The Things That Fly in the Night: Images of Female Vampirism in Literature of the African Diaspora.

Brigid Cherry is a research fellow in communication, culture and creative arts at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, UK. Her research focuses on horror cinema and fan cultures, particularly the female horror film audience. She has recently published work on horror fan canons, feminine handicrafting in vampire fandom, projected interactivity in Supernatural and Twilight fan fiction, and Doctor Who fans’ responses to 307

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About the Contributors
the return of the series. Her book on Horror for the Routledge Film Guide-book series was published in 2009, she is coeditor of Twenty-First-Century Gothic published in 2011 and had an edited collection on True Blood published in 2012.

Alexis Finnerty is a media studies graduate student at Syracuse University. She has presented her paper “Self-Efficacy in Star Wars Online Fan Communities” at the 2012 AEJMC national conference and her paper

“Public and Personal Issue Conflicts in Television Shows” at the 2013

ACA/PCA national conference.

Anthony J. Fonseca is library director at Elms College. He has published four readers’ guides to horror; articles on music, horror readership, and academic libraries; and is a regular contributor to various encyclopedias.

His current projects include an encyclopedia of zombie phenomena and a book on marketing libraries.

Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith is an independent scholar living in Northampton, Massachusetts. A former director of a music education center and librarian, Goldsmith has published articles on film music, popular music, and academic libraries. Her current projects include books on Jim Morrison’s music reception and a book on marketing libraries.

Lindsay Hallam teaches film and media at the University of East London. She is author of the book Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure, Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film (2012), has been published in several journals, and has contributed chapters to the books Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives (2010) and Fragmented Bodies: Transnational Horror across Visual Media (2013).

Dr. Murray Leeder is the author of Halloween (2013) and has published articles in the Journal of Popular Film and Television, the Journal of Popular Culture, Clues, Early Popular Visual Culture, and the collections Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema and The Universal Vampire.

Cynthia J. Miller is a cultural anthropologist specializing in popular culture and visual media. She is the editor of Too Bold for the Box Office: The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small (2012) and coeditor of Cadets, Rangers, and Junior Space Men: Televised “Rocketman” Series of the 1950s and Their Fans; Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier; and Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology.

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About the Contributors

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Kendall R. Phillips is professor of communication and rhetorical studies at Syracuse University. He is the author of Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter and the Modern Horror Film (2012) and Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture (2005).

Janet S. Robinson teaches film for the Film Studies Department and the Libby Arts Residential Academic Program at the University of Colorado–

Boulder. In 2012, her chapter on David Cronenberg’s Crash was published in The Dark Side of Love: From Euro-Horror to American Cinema. She also leads an annual student trip to the Telluride Film Festival. In addition to her position at CU-Boulder, she is currently pursuing a PhD in media studies from the University of Marburg in Germany, where she will teach in the summer of 2014.

Carol A. Senf has been hooked on vampires ever since the 1970s when she discovered Dracula and Montague Summers. She is pleased that she could turn that interest into a career, having written one book and numerous articles on Dracula and three books on Bram Stoker.

Jack W. Shear is an instructor of English, literature, and rhetoric at Bing-hamton University. He is the author of “The Reader’s Idle Talk: Gossip in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones” (in Literary and Cultural Intersections during the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Marianna D’Ezio, 2008), and the forthcoming “Spectres of Apartheid: Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf” in Gothic Topographies (ed. Paivi Mehtonen and Matti Savolainen). His main areas of research and publication are the fields of the gothic, nineteenth-century decadent and aesthetic literature, and gender studies. He is currently working on a monograph about the connection between family and political anxieties in gothic fiction.

Lauren E. Strong is a vampire enthusiast who received her MA in art history from the University of Cincinnati in 2009. Her fascination with vampires prompted her to write her thesis on female vampires in art, literature, and film. She lives in Dayton, Ohio, where she is a sales rep for a wine company by day and adjunct instructor for a local college at night.

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is professor of English at Central Michigan University and the author or editor of sixteen books, including The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters (2013), The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema (2012), Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (2008), and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2007).

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About the Contributors

Andrea Weiss is an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and nonfiction author. Her books include Paris Was a Woman (1995), Vampires and Violets (1993), and, most recently, In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story (2008). They have been translated into French, German, Korean, Swedish, Japanese, and Croatian. She holds a PhD in history and currently is professor of film/video in the Department of Media and Communication Arts at the City College of New York.

Paige A. Willson is assistant professor of costume design and technology at the University of Houston. As a costume designer and mask artisan, she has worked with many groups nationwide, such as The Alley Theatre, The Houston Shakespeare Festival, Karen Stokes Dance, and Stephan Koplowitz Task Force.

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Document Outline

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction

- Chapter 1. The Lesbian Vampire Film: A Subgenre of Horror

- Chapter 2. Sans Fangs: Theda Bara, A Fool There Was, and the Cinematic Vamp

- Chapter 3. Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique: An Analysis of Set Design, Lighting, Costume, and Music in Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja

- Chapter 4. A Beautiful Life of Evil and Hate: The Vampire-Witch in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday

- Chapter 5. Blood and Roses (1960): Realizing the Vision of Carmilla

- Chapter 6. Soft Focus, Sharp Knives: The Projection of Vampiric Fantasy in Jess Franco’s Succubus

- Chapter 7. Heritage of Hammer: Carmilla Karnstein and the Sisterhood of Satan

- Chapter 8: “Your Tale Merely Confirms That Women Are Mad and Vain”: The Uncanny Rendering of Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s Life as Vampire Legend

- Chapter 9. The Dangers of Innocence: An Analysis of Film Representations of Female Vampire Children

- Chapter 10. The Women of Dracula Films: Brides, Daughters, and Fierce Opponents

- Chapter 11. Narratives of Race and Gender: Black Vampires in U.S. Film

- Chapter 12. Daughters of Darkness: Vampire Aesthetics and Gothic Beauty

- Chapter 13. The Sick Rose: Rabid and the Female Science Vampire

- Chapter 14. “You Said Forever”: Postmodern Temporality in Tony Scott’s The Hunger

- Chapter 15. Liberating the Vampire, but Not the Woman: Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987)

- Chapter 16. Dracula’s Postfeminist Daughters in the Twenty-First Century

- Index
- About the Editors
- About the Contributors

Table of Contents

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction

- Chapter 1. The Lesbian Vampire Film: A Subgenre of Horror

- Chapter 2. Sans Fangs: Theda Bara, A Fool There Was, and the Cinematic Vamp

- Chapter 3. Alienation, Essentialism, and Existentialism through Technique: An Analysis of Set Design, Lighting, Costume, and Music in Dracula’s Daughter and Nadja

- Chapter 4. A Beautiful Life of Evil and Hate: The Vampire-Witch in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday

- Chapter 5. Blood and Roses (1960): Realizing the Vision of Carmilla

- Chapter 6. Soft Focus, Sharp Knives: The Projection of Vampiric Fantasy in Jess Franco’s Succubus

- Chapter 7. Heritage of Hammer: Carmilla Karnstein and the Sisterhood of Satan

- Chapter 8: “Your Tale Merely Confirms That Women Are Mad and Vain”: The Uncanny Rendering of Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s Life as Vampire Legend

- Chapter 9. The Dangers of Innocence: An Analysis of Film Representations of Female Vampire Children

- Chapter 10. The Women of Dracula Films: Brides, Daughters, and Fierce Opponents

- Chapter 11. Narratives of Race and Gender: Black Vampires in U.S. Film

- Chapter 12. Daughters of Darkness: Vampire Aesthetics and Gothic Beauty

- Chapter 13. The Sick Rose: Rabid and the Female Science Vampire

- Chapter 14. “You Said Forever”: Postmodern Temporality in Tony Scott’s The Hunger

- Chapter 15. Liberating the Vampire, but Not the Woman: Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987)

- Chapter 16. Dracula’s Postfeminist Daughters in the Twenty-First Century

- Index
- About the Editors
- About the Contributors