The Female Vampire
1) Elisabeth Batsory
- earliest of female vampires reincarnation released by motion pictures in 1970
* Historical Elisabeth Bathory
- portrayed as keeping young women and sucking their youth to restore its translucence
“Countes Dracula”- 1971
-Director: Peter Sasdy
→ blood as an elixer of youth: living woman rather than bloodsucking vampire
* the stress in this film is on the psychology rather than the metaphysics of Elisabeth Bathory’s attacks on younger women
*aside from blood being taken from virgins, personal vampirism is depicted as conditioned by aristocratic insensitivity
→ in the end she is walled in her chamber, not as a vampire, but as a madwoman
2nd adaptation
Daughters of Darkness 1970
- heavy makeup to conceal longevity
- describes Elisabeth as a Vampire in the traditional sense, and while it emphasizes the erotic aspects of her blood lust, it concedes a sensitivity to water and daylight as limitations to her power
→ seduces, rather than attacks prey : to make prey a companion
Ritual of Blood- 1973
- restores the Bathory character to a perod setting but obscures the question of her vampirism in much the same way as countess Dracula
2) Carmilla Karnstein
Sheridan Le Fanu- 1871
- created novella of sixteen chapters the Countess Carmilla Karstein.
- under the guise of the being a “discovered manuscript”, it is not only an antecedent of the alternating first person “diary” from which Stoker was to employ in the DRACULA, but also the first major treatment of a female vampire in literature
→ contrary: her conflicting impulses towards narcissistic love and annhilation compel her to seek out victims of her own age and sex→ reflections of herself “cruel love”
Et mourir de plasir (Blood and Roses)
- Roger VAdim- 1960
→ Carmilla has an incestuous energy, possibly hidden behind masks or explode in fireworks display, never dies, but draws the soul from body
- replaces it with her own in an eternal, parasitic transmigration
- The viewpoint is from Carmilla
- Carmilla- figure, in Terror in the Crypt (1963), called Lyuba
→ physical and psychic presences→ suffocating victims with strength of will
- lesbianism is de-eroticized in films in terms of scenes of physical interaction between Carmilla and her lover-victim → more of a physical control
3) Other Daughters of Darkness
Dracula’s Daughter- (1936)
-Maria (counts daughter)- murders for blood→ mesmeric powers as she attacks a young man in the street
- indifferent with victims as sexual objects
- views herself a normal woman possessed by an hereditary disease
- aware of her uncontrollable bestiality, yet, the female figure here is seen as more sympathetic than most
* the notion in film of the vampire as a demon or as a victim of its own evil desires finds an example much less frequently in women and then usually only in the form of minor or supporting characters
The Velvet Vampire –(1971)
* the style of this fls is day-lit desert landscapes, yet with a final scene is with low lit interiors to contrast downtown Los Angeles
- this Vleve Vapire never makes the female figure’s campirism more than an inexplicable abbreviation, or, like her for need for velvet- (fetish?)
4) Vampyr
In A Glass Darkly
- Le Fanu
→ a volume of tales containing Carmilla
- Vampyr a horror film: an ontology of terror which constricts and obscures material reality leaving the vierwer puzzled
- Victims bound in a coffin, yet still alive (déjà vu – dream like)
- “ terror in a dream of a dream”→ far beyond fantasy where the images are ortrayed as real
*Thanks Kendahl*
1) Elisabeth Batsory
- earliest of female vampires reincarnation released by motion pictures in 1970
* Historical Elisabeth Bathory
- portrayed as keeping young women and sucking their youth to restore its translucence
“Countes Dracula”- 1971
-Director: Peter Sasdy
→ blood as an elixer of youth: living woman rather than bloodsucking vampire
* the stress in this film is on the psychology rather than the metaphysics of Elisabeth Bathory’s attacks on younger women
*aside from blood being taken from virgins, personal vampirism is depicted as conditioned by aristocratic insensitivity
→ in the end she is walled in her chamber, not as a vampire, but as a madwoman
2nd adaptation
Daughters of Darkness 1970
- heavy makeup to conceal longevity
- describes Elisabeth as a Vampire in the traditional sense, and while it emphasizes the erotic aspects of her blood lust, it concedes a sensitivity to water and daylight as limitations to her power
→ seduces, rather than attacks prey : to make prey a companion
Ritual of Blood- 1973
- restores the Bathory character to a perod setting but obscures the question of her vampirism in much the same way as countess Dracula
2) Carmilla Karnstein
Sheridan Le Fanu- 1871
- created novella of sixteen chapters the Countess Carmilla Karstein.
- under the guise of the being a “discovered manuscript”, it is not only an antecedent of the alternating first person “diary” from which Stoker was to employ in the DRACULA, but also the first major treatment of a female vampire in literature
→ contrary: her conflicting impulses towards narcissistic love and annhilation compel her to seek out victims of her own age and sex→ reflections of herself “cruel love”
Et mourir de plasir (Blood and Roses)
- Roger VAdim- 1960
→ Carmilla has an incestuous energy, possibly hidden behind masks or explode in fireworks display, never dies, but draws the soul from body
- replaces it with her own in an eternal, parasitic transmigration
- The viewpoint is from Carmilla
- Carmilla- figure, in Terror in the Crypt (1963), called Lyuba
→ physical and psychic presences→ suffocating victims with strength of will
- lesbianism is de-eroticized in films in terms of scenes of physical interaction between Carmilla and her lover-victim → more of a physical control
3) Other Daughters of Darkness
Dracula’s Daughter- (1936)
-Maria (counts daughter)- murders for blood→ mesmeric powers as she attacks a young man in the street
- indifferent with victims as sexual objects
- views herself a normal woman possessed by an hereditary disease
- aware of her uncontrollable bestiality, yet, the female figure here is seen as more sympathetic than most
* the notion in film of the vampire as a demon or as a victim of its own evil desires finds an example much less frequently in women and then usually only in the form of minor or supporting characters
The Velvet Vampire –(1971)
* the style of this fls is day-lit desert landscapes, yet with a final scene is with low lit interiors to contrast downtown Los Angeles
- this Vleve Vapire never makes the female figure’s campirism more than an inexplicable abbreviation, or, like her for need for velvet- (fetish?)
4) Vampyr
In A Glass Darkly
- Le Fanu
→ a volume of tales containing Carmilla
- Vampyr a horror film: an ontology of terror which constricts and obscures material reality leaving the vierwer puzzled
- Victims bound in a coffin, yet still alive (déjà vu – dream like)
- “ terror in a dream of a dream”→ far beyond fantasy where the images are ortrayed as real
*Thanks Kendahl*
