When Hammer Films Went Too Far: THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970)
Hammer had decided to make a bold decision with its vampire franchise. They decided a bisexual, pansexual vampire was the way to go.
Poster: It took me a second as a teenager in 1970 to grasp the concept of the poster for THE VAMPIRE LOVERS. A lead vampire woman closing in on a man. Check. A line of vampire women behind her coming to attack the victims chained to the wall. Check. Then I noticed the victims on the wall. Man. Woman. Man. Woman. What the hell!?!
Watch THE VAMPIRE LOVERS by clicking this underlined link here!
I got to spend a weekend with Ingrid Pitt at a horror film convention and was actually let down to discover that none of the actresses in THE VAMPIRE LOVERS had any interest in women and scenes of them coming on sexually and vampirically would end with the women laughing.
The movie had developed my bidar with women. It would take me years to understand, but the sight of these beautiful women locked into my mind an appreciation of what would become lipstick lesbians. Which I had no way of knowing didn’t actually exist in 1970. Yet every single long term relationship I had would be with bisexual and lesbian women. At one point in college, I even lived in a lesbian commune for a year and half. I didn’t know when I met the models, actresses, dancers they were bi when I met them, but it always came out when the relationship got serious. How on earth could I watch THE VAMPIRE LOVERS and not want to meet the most beautiful women on earth?
Photo: To me as a teenager these were real lesbians!
Friends of mine know I am not fond of Woke obligatory lesbian and gay scenes. Throwing in a scene of 2 men kissing that can be easily removed when the film is sold to China is just bad writing. In THE VAMPIRE LOVERS the pansexual scenes can’t be cut out. They are the plot!
Click this underlined link to watch THE VAMPIRE LOVERS
There had always been an undercurrent of sex in the Hammer vampire films, but as censorship rules fell away it was decided to make Sheridan Le Fanu’s erotic female vampire tale Carmilla into a film. The Dracula franchise was showing signs of wear and new blood was needed, so to speak.
Gone were shots of women’s cleavage, we were seeing breasts!
Photo: Ingrid Pitt as Carmilla. She would not be confused with Christopher Lee!
I would argue that even though audiences in the U.S. were confused as to how to react to the film and it only did so- so business, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS was a groundbreaking vampire film. There would be no THE HUNGER , VAMPYROS LESBOS, DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE, VAMPYRES and many other films that exist only because THE VAMPIRE LOVERS opened the door.
Photo: Madeline Smith and Ingrid Pitt.
Watch THE VAMPIRE LOVERS by clicking here
BEHIND THE PAYWALL: THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE!
Quentin Tarantino sparked renewed interest in this Spanish horror film, putting it on many of his top ten lists and naming a chapter of his “Kill Bill Vol. 1” book after it. Director Vicente Aranda, the film attained cult status not only for its erotic horror themes, but for its rejection of fascism in Francoist Spain.
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