Halloween Countdown Day 5: The Vampire Lovers!

Every Halloween season, I try to watch a bunch of Hammer horror films, and I feel that's especially appropriate this year, as Hammer Productions has returned with Let Me In.

I'm curious to see where Hammer goes with its revival, but in the meantime, let's look at one of the classics produced by the company in the past.



(I love how this poster--which has nothing to do with the actual movie, by the way--provides the warning "Not for the mentally immature!" In other words, "Don't giggle at the sexy lesbian parts!")

One of the more notorious Hammer productions was The Vampire Lovers (1970), directed by Roy Ward Baker and based on Sheridan Le Fanu's great early vampire novel, Carmilla (1872). Like Hammer's other adaptations, this plays fast and loose with its source material, but it remains a solid vampire movie from a time when Hammer films were starting to slip in quality.

In the late 60s and early 70s, Hammer went looking for other source material, as the main franchises--Dracula and Frankenstein--were wearing thin. Le Fanu's Carmilla seems like a logical choice, especially as the story's lesbian undertones could be exploited by a studio that was further pushing the boundaries of sex and violence in its movies.

The film opens in a typical Hammer milieu: a gothic castle surrounded by a fog-strewn moor. Voice-over narration from Baron Hartog explains the situation--he has dedicated his life to destroying the Karnsteins, a family of vampires that was responsible for his sister's death. He also explains the vampire rules for this story, in that vampires can only be killed by a stake through the heart or decapitation. He then proves this by slicing the head off of a hot blond vampire who is trying to seduce him.

The importance of this opening won't be clear, however, until much later in the movie, as Baron Hartog pretty much disappears until the end.

Years later, General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing, who cuts a fine figure in a Prussian officer's uniform) holds a fancy ball, which is attended by a mysterious Countess (Dawn Addams) and her daughter, Marcilla (Ingrid Pitt). However, soon after their arrival, the Countess is called away by a pale man in black, who gives her some news that requires her to leave immediately. The General offers to let Marcilla stay at his estate and serve as a companion for his daughter, Laura (Pippa Steele), until the Countess can return.

This whole scenario turns out to be a scam orchestrated by the Countess so Marcilla can infiltrate the household and feed on young Laura. Over the course of several evenings, Marcilla comes to Laura in the form of a cat, and then proceeds to feed from her breast. Every night, Laura wakes up screaming while also getting progressively weaker. In typical vampire story fashion, the General and the local doctor chalks the weakness up to anemia, and both miss the supernatural explanation.

Laura dies, and Marcilla and the Countess take their scam back on the road, working their way into the Morton house, with their young daughter, Emma (Madeline Smith). When Mr. Morton goes away, Marcilla, now known as "Carmilla," has the run of the house, seducing both Emma and her attractive governess (Kate O'Mara). The film generates much of its tension from Carmilla savvily overcoming obstacles and potential exposure before her vampire identity is finally revealed. In the meantime, though, Ingrid Pitt and Madeline Smith get down to some sexy times.

Interestingly, the plot of this movie follows that of Bram Stoker's Dracula even better than any of the other Hammer Dracula movies. In particular, when Morton becomes aware of his daughter's plight, he enlists the help of the General and Laura's boyfriend, Carl (Jon Finch, in his first film role). The General and Carl have also tracked down an aged Baron Hartog in order to take advantage of his expertise in killing Karnstein vampires. So, like Dracula, the male characters band together to combat the danger created by the female vampire. In general, the movie raises a few interesting gender issues.

The movie follows its own internal logic well enough, though it doesn't quite match the standard vampire rules. Carmilla travels during the daytime frequently, though she does have some photosensitivity, and we see her reflection in mirrors quite often. Also, the vampires don't reproduce through biting, but instead only feed. The cross and garlic still work, though, as well as staking and decapitation.

Though the film comes to a satisfying conclusion, a couple of loose ends are left dangling. We never really learn the true role of the Countess, for one. Baron Hartog claims that he killed all the Karnstein vampires but one--Carmilla--so the Countess is probably not Carmilla's real mother, and it's not clear if she's a vampire. Also, the mysterious, pale man in black appears to watch all the events of the film unfold, but we never find out who he is or what purpose he serves.

In the end, The Vampire Lovers is a solid vampire movie with a lesbian twist. It pushes the envelope of sex and violence compared to earlier Hammer films, but it looks positively constrained alongside those of the following years. Ingrid Pitt stands out as one of the great female vampires in Hammer history, and Madeline Smith makes a nice transformation from sweet innocent to willing companion to physical wreck in the course of the film. However, while the movie tends to focus on the female characters, great actors like Peter Cushing and Jon Finch are underused. And like a lot of Hammer films, it has a rather weak second act, but it is otherwise stylish and well-made.

Here is the trailer for The Vampire Lovers:



Ingrid Pitt would return to Hammer films the following year in Countess Dracula, the movie I will be covering tomorrow.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Hammer Week: Fear in the Night!

While Hammer Films is best known for their gothic horror films featuring Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, and various other creatures, they also produced a series of suspense thrillers in the 60s and 70s. These thrillers have not fared so well over time, mainly because their contemporary setting tends to date them, but also because they lack the sex and violence that the gothic horror films are often known for. However, these "mini-Hitchcocks," as they were known around Hammer studios, are often quite well done.

One such film is Fear in the Night (aka Dynasty of Fear and Honeymoon of Fear), written and directed by Jimmy Sangster and starring Judy Geeson, Ralph Bates, Joan Collins, and Peter Cushing.

Most of the film takes place in a quaint British boarding school run by Headmaster Michael Carmichael (Cushing). A young woman named Peggy (Geeson) has just married a teacher at the school (Bates), and as the movie opens, Peggy is packing in preparation for moving to her new home, which, for some reason, she hasn't seen yet. The night before she leaves, she's attacked by a one-armed assailant in her room. However, because she has a history of mental breakdown, no one seems ready to believe that she was assaulted, including her new husband. The suspense in this movie then stems from the question: is she imagining these attacks, or is she being gaslit?

Once she arrives at the school, she hopes that its isolation will provide safety from her unknown attacker, but that is not the case. On an afternoon alone in her cottage, she is attacked again by the same one-armed man.

While wandering around the empty school, Peggy is introduced to Headmaster Carmichael, who is sitting in a classroom listening to recordings of students in a Latin class. Carmichael, as played by Cushing, does not put one at ease: he describes his bizarre fascination with knots, and he has a creepy conversation with Peggy about her hair (where he also reveals that he has a prosthetic arm!). It goes without saying that Cushing is the red herring in the film, but he is perfectly effective and creepy as the imbalanced headmaster.

Joan Collins also appears in the middle of the film as Carmichael's wife, Molly. Her introduction is also creepy: just as Peggy is admiring a cute bunny rabbit in the woods, Molly walks up and shoots it. She then proceeds to carry the bleeding rabbit carcass around for the next few minutes, later offering it to Peggy as a housewarming gift. Other than this and one other scene later in the film, however, Joan Collins has little to do here, so her billing in the film (and the DVD packaging that features her prominently on the front cover) are a bit misleading.

The film manages to build suspense slowly, with long, silent scenes of Peggy exploring her new location. Writer/director Jimmy Sangster says on the DVD commentary for the film that many of these sequences were shot to pad the film out to 90 minutes. That may be true, and some viewers may complain that the movie is slow going at first, but I found these scenes worked to help develop the sense of dread that permeates the action.

And no matter how slow the first half of the movie is, it picks up considerably in the last half-hour, with a series of twists that continue to throw Peggy off and undermine her mental stability. The whole plot becomes wildly preposterous, but the characters acknowledge the preposterousness. I don't want to spoil it because I did find it all great fun and genuinely surprising. In fact, on watching the film a second time, I found it held up well--none of the movies twists violate anything that happens in the first half of the movie.

I also like this movie because of its star, Judy Geeson. Geeson was among the group of mod young British actresses in the late 60s and early 70s who emerged in the wake of Julie Christie's popularity. She's in To Sir with Love--a movie I like a whole lot more than I know I should--and her career, at its peak, alternated between horror films and bawdy comedies. Danny Peary's description of her in his essential reference book, The Cult Movie Stars, explains exactly how I feel: "she was likable and had a 'look' that makes some of us nostalgic when we see her on screen." In Fear in the Night, she really gets the shit kicked out of her, and it's difficult to say that she ends up triumphant in the end. The movie posters all highlight her victimization as the key selling point of the film.



Here's the trailer. Unfortunately, the trailer spoils the big twist at the end, so watch with care if you plan on seeing this movie.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Hammer Week: Night Creatures!

One of the nice surprises in the Hammer Horror Series DVD set that came out in 2005 was the inclusion of Night Creatures, aka Captain Clegg (1962).

This little known Hammer gem adapts the story of Dr. Syn, from the 1915 novel by Russell Thorndike, though here the character's name is changed to "Dr. Blyss." Other than the name, however, the movie follows the basic story faithfully. The story takes place in the late 18th century, with Dr. Blyss as the reverend in the British port town of Dymchurch. Blyss (Peter Cushing), however, is secretly the notorious pirate Captain Clegg, who is believed dead after being hanged in prison. Instead, Clegg reformed (somewhat) and made his way to Dymchurch, where he also helps the town escape economic depression with a large-scale liquor smuggling operation that occasionally catches the attention of British authorities.

The smugglers, led by Blyss and also including a young Oliver Reed, put on phosphorescent skeleton costumes and ride around the local swamp as the "Marsh Phantoms," who effectively scare away the curious and the superstitious. However, a group of British soldiers, led by Captain Collier, come to investigate reports of smuggling, and they prove much more difficult to dissuade.

This story doesn't fit the typical Hammer Horror model, as there is little of the supernatural or other horror elements (though there is some tongue trauma reminiscent of The Mummy). The "Marsh Phantoms" are certainly visually effective, but the audience knows from the beginning that these are men in costumes, so they are not meant to scare us. It is, however, an entertaining adventure story, and the fact that the heroes use costumes--including a creepy scarecrow disguise--makes this film Halloween-appropriate.

But, like the best Hammer films, this one is dense and efficient. It clocks in under 90 minutes, as most Hammer films do, but it manages to squeeze in a pretty complicated plot with many obstacles, villains, and sudden turns. But what stands out about this film for me is Peter Cushing's performance as Dr. Blyss/Captain Clegg.


Even moreso than Christopher Lee, Cushing is a staple of Hammer films, and he nails both the stoic heroism of Dr. Van Helsing and the obsessed villainy of Dr. Frankenstein. But he played those two roles in particular so often, that it's nice to see him give a different kind of performance. And here, he seems to be having more fun than normal, even getting the chance to laugh once in a while.

Here's a link to the trailer, which makes the film seem more like a horror movie than it actually is.

Soon after this film was released in 1962, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color ran their own version of the Dr. Syn story--The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh--starring Patrick "Number 6" McGoohan as Dr. Syn, which may be one reason why Night Creatures/Captain Clegg is not as well known as other Hammer films. On November 11, Disney is going to release Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, in a DVD set that includes both the three-episode series from 1963 and the re-edited theatrical release version, Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow. I loved the Disney version when I was a kid, but I haven't seen it since, so I'm curious to see if it holds up. It's too bad Disney can't put this out before Halloween.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Hammer Week: The Mummy!

The first Hammer horror film I ever saw, though I was far from aware of the Hammer brand, was The Mummy (1959). I saw it, like much of my early exposure to classic horror movies, as a 3:00 Movie on WPIX when I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s.

And, like many of the horror movies I watched at that time, it scared the shit out of me.

Specifically, the flashback scene that reveals the origin of the Mummy etched itself in my memory like very few movie scenes at the time. Nothing is particularly graphic in this scene, but enough is suggested that activated my young imagination. I was especially disturbed by the scene of the priest Kharis (Christopher Lee) having his tongue cut out. We see the clamp go down on his tongue in a medium shot, and then the film cuts to a reverse shot from behind Kharis's head, as the guard slices the tongue off, though the cut is not visible to us (this sequence is used in the preview below).

This series of shots best encapsulates my appreciation of the early Hammer horror films. They are slightly more graphic in their violence than the classic horror movies of the 30s and 40s, but they still rely heavily on suggestion--the suggestions, however, are more disturbing.

Other than this long flashback scene, Christopher Lee doesn't get much to do as the Mummy in this film. However, he is still effective as Kharis, with an imposing presence, a slow, lumbering gait, and expressive eyes that reveal his inner conflict toward the end of the movie. And Peter Cushing once again plays the hero role that he nailed in so many of these movies: the deadly serious hero who is utterly, single-mindedly convinced that the supernatural exists and must be destroyed.

The Mummy is among the first group of classic horror revisions that Hammer undertook, with the creative team of writer Jimmy Sangster, director Terence Fisher, and producer Michael Carreras on board as they were for The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula. Unlike those other two movies, however, The Mummy varies little from the basic plot of the Univeral Mummy movies: the Mummy sets out to seek revenge on those British archeologists who desecrated the tomb of the queen he protected.

The Mummy does have problems with an overt colonialism that's never really challenged, and this may affect the way the movie ages. England is presented as the locus of order, which is only disrupted by the intrusion of a chaotic, foreign, Eastern influence. Also, Cushing provokes Mehemet Bey, the Mummy's keeper, by insulting his religious beliefs. But, despite those inevitable problems with this particular property, The Mummy serves as a model for Hammer horror at its best: a lean, efficient, and effective movie, with a creative team and ensemble of actors at the top of their game. Though the movie no longer gives me nightmares like it did my 7-year-old self, I find that the shocking moments in this movie still earn their shocks honestly, and the Mummy itself is well-designed and haunting.

Here's the trailer for The Mummy, which highlights many of the qualities I've referenced above.


Next: An atypical Hammer film.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: The Brides of Dracula!

I teach Bram Stoker's novel Dracula almost every semester in an introduction to literature course, so I have a certain fondness for vampire films. But, as I tell my students every semester, the "quality-to-crap ratio" is pretty off balance in the genre, and I've given up on seeking out new vampire films unless they have something extraordinary to recommend them. I do, however, frequently extoll to my students the virtues of the Dracula cycle from England's Hammer Studios, despite the presence of many duds in the final years of Hammer productions. The Hammer films were known for kicking up the sex and violence from the Universal horror cycle while also featuring a fine repertory of actors: most notably, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The series started with Horror of Dracula (1958), a very loose adaptation of the Stoker novel with Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing and Lee as Dracula. Lee wouldn't return to play Dracula for another eight years in Dracula--Prince of Darkness (1966), and even in that film, it takes more than half the movie for Dracula's servant to revive his master from the ashes of his fate in the first film. (The conclusion of that movie also featured one of the worst ways to defeat a vampire: Dracula is frozen in a lake. That doesn't defeat him--it just makes him someone else's problem later.)

In between those two movies, however, Hammer put out a couple of very good vampire movies: Brides of Dracula (1960) and Kiss of the Vampire (1962). Kiss of the Vampire, unfortunately, devolves from an awesome opening scene, where a mysterious, possibly drunk man stumbles into a somber funeral and suddenly thrusts a shovel into the grave and through the casket. When a scream and fountain of blood emit from the casket, several attendants faint and the man walks away. The camera then goes into the grave and through the casket to reveal that the young woman being buried is really a vampire! Unfortunately, the rest of the film does not live up to the opening, though it's still enjoyable.


I really enjoy Brides of Dracula, despite the false advertising of the title. While there are several vampire brides, Dracula is nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have Dracula's apprentice, of sorts: Baron Meinster, played by blond actor David Peel.

Also, the poster claims that the vampire "turns a girls' school into a Chamber of Horrors," but the movie fails to live up to that tantalizing promise as well. However, we do get the return of Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing, putting this film in continuity with the rest of the Dracula cycle. So, minus Christopher Lee, this film has everything I love about the Hammer Dracula films, including the gothic setting and the psychosexual horror elements. The film was also directed by Terence Fisher, who directed most of the great Hammer horror films.

The film opens, as so many of these Hammer films do, with a young woman, Marianne, arriving in a strange village, near an all-girls school where she's about to start work as a teacher. Her carriage stops at an inn along the way, and the villagers start behaving strangely, refusing to serve her and advising her to move along. However, her carriage suddenly leaves without her, and the villagers all clear out of the inn for some mysterious reason. Moments later, thundering hooves can be heard from another carriage, and the Baroness Meinster enters the inn. She begins striking up a conversation wit Marianne despite the protestations of the innkeepers, who seem to know something about the Baroness. Soon, the Baroness has convinced Marianne to spend the night at Castle Meinster before embarking on the last leg of her journey in the morning.

I'm a sucker for this kind of opening--you see it in a lot of Hammer films, as well as movies like Die, Monster, Die!, which I commented on in an earlier post. These villagers have been living with this unspeakable horror their entire lives, and their moral system is so completely tuned to self-preservation that they easily sacrifice a total stranger.

While getting settled in her room at Castle Meinster, Marianne steps out on her balcony and sees a beautiful young man chained up in a room below. When she asks the Baroness about this, she responds that her son is "ill." Later, Marianne again looks out to the balcony to see the young man apparently trying to leap to his death, fearing the worst, she rushes to the room to save him. The young man then explains that he is the Baron Meinster, and his mother keeps him prisoner in the room. Feeling sympathy, Marianne resolves to help him escape.

Throughout these opening scenes, the viewer is in the same position as Marianne, assuming that the mother is the monster here, keeping her innocent son chained in his room. However, once Marianne allows him to escape, we learn that the truth is far worse: he's a deadly vampire, and his mother was the only one keeping him from running amok in the nearby villages. We also learn, though, that the mother has had to make some serious moral compromises to keep her son this way--she frequently would bring him young women to satisfy his hunger, and Marianne was soon to be the next victim.

The mother/son relationship is just one of the elements that make this movie interesting. Once the Baron is free, the first thing he does is transform his own mother into a vampire by biting her neck in a scene that does more than imply incest: "He has taken the blood of his own mother," she explains to Van Helsing as willingly allows herself to be destroyed by him later in the movie.

Van Helsing appears in the village at the behest of the local priest, who is trying to convince villagers that something must be done about the recent deaths of many of their young women. Peter Cushing's Van Helsing is coldly methodical. He's long since dealt with the emotional and moral issues of destroying vampires, and he has little time or patience for those who wish to treat the vampires as if they were still their loved ones.

My favorite part of this movie, though, is the climax, which contains one of the more clever methods of destroying a vampire. Van Helsing tracks a recently turned vampire bride to an old windmill, where The Baron soon arrives with Marianne. In the ensuing fight, the Baron bites Van Helsing and leaves him to his transformation. Van Helsing, however, acts quickly, cauterizing the bite wounds with a hot blacksmith's iron and dousing the burn with holy water. This does the trick, and he returns to the fight. The Baron then attempts to escape by torching the windmill. As the Baron runs away, Van Helsing makes his way to the top of the windmill, jumping on the blades and turning them so that their shadow, when cast across the Baron's path, make the form of a cross. The Baron then collapses dead in the shadow. This may be a bit silly, but it shows some of the inventiveness of these early Hammer horror films.

There are two good Hammer horror DVD boxed sets that I know about. The "Horror Collection" contains six movies all together, including three Dracula films: Horror of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, and Taste the Blood of Dracula. Unfortunately, the set skips Dracula--Prince of Darkness, and therefore confuses the continuity between movies. Brides of Dracula , along with Kiss of the Vampire, can be found on "The Hammer Horror Series," which features eight movies on two disks with no extras.