Sexy vampire film which helped provide an extra lease of life for Hammer horrors, leading to two other films about the Karnstein vampire family (Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil), but a number of others inspired by it (Vampire Circus, Countess Dracula, Count Kronos). Peter Cushing is in this, as well as George Cole and Jon Finch, but the real star is Ingrid Pitt, fabulously sexy as one of the Karnsteins.
Pitt stays at Cushing’s house and seduces and kills his daughter (Pippa Steele); then moves to Cole’s house, where she seduces and tries to kill his daughter (Madeleine Smith). For variety, Pitt also seduces and kills a village girl, and seduces another girl staying with Smith (Kate O’Mara); for variety even seduces the male butler – but that’s only so she can get at Smith.
Pitt is a standout, wearing a series of voluptuous gowns (which she takes of from time to time). Her character is quite complex – she’s not out-and-out evil, she has feelings; she loves Smith, but Smith thinks their fling is only a casual thing; she also hates funerals, because everyone close to her dies. It’s not hard to see why she’s still remembered so fondly even though she only really starred in two Hammer horrors, this and Countess Dracula.
Smith’s performance is less skilled, but it is effective and she has a naïve quality which works well. (I love it how Smith is all playful and fun except just before Pitt is about to pash her when she goes into this zombie trance, as if she's preparing to plausibly denying having a good time. The scene where Pitt seduces O’Mara is far more sexy because O’Mara looks like she knows what she’s getting into.) The constant cutting to a man in black just gets irritating after a while. And of course the film has definite misogynistic overtones with this posse of blokes all getting together to try and kill Pitt to stop her converting Smith to a life of lesbian vampirings. But this is definitely one of the best later Hammers, well directed by Roy Ward Baker and full of interesting, sexy touches.
No comments:
Post a Comment