Strange Love

So, with that election result having completely fucked up any Christmas spirit I was beginning to feel, I decided that a dose of early seventies lesbian vampirism was what I needed to buoy my beleaguered morale over the weekend.  Consequently, I dug out my DVD of Lust For a Vampire, Hammer's 1971 follow up to the previous year's The Vampire Lovers. which had proven a hit for the company.  In fact, such was its success that Lust For a Vampire was rushed into production - despite being released in 1971, its copyright date is 1970, the same year its predecessor was released - and it looks a hastily put together film.  Everything about it feels slightly makeshift. It couldn't have helped that the original director, Terence Fisher, dropped out at short notice, followed by original star Peter Cushing.  They were replaced by frequent Hammer writer Jimmy Sangster and Ralph Bates respectively.  Sangster subsequently admitted that, despite having already directed Horror of Frankenstein for Hammer, he didn't really have a clue what he was doing.  For his part, Ralph Bates - who was much younger than Cushing and, despite being a good actor in his own right, was unable to bring the sort of gravitas his role required - once described Lust as the worst film he'd ever made. 

While Lust For a Vampire really isn't as bad as Bates thought, it certainly isn't top drawer Hammer, coming from the period when Gothic horror's cinematic popularity was waning and the company felt that ever increasing injections of sex were required to sell their films.  The interesting thing about Lust is how much it down plays the lesbian aspect which had been a big selling point for The Vampire Lovers.  While the lovely Yutte Stensgaard's Mircalla/Carmilla/Marcilla still goes in for a fair bit of female breast biting, she also falls for a man, as seen in the above clip.  This sequence is accompanied by the song 'Strange Love', performed by Tracy, a teen singer of the era who released a few singles, something I'd forgotten about until watching the film again yesterday.  It's introduction really is quite jarring - not only does it sound more like the sort of thing I'd expect to hear on the soundtrack of a 'Mondo' movie, it seems odd that it should be played over a scene of heterosexual vampire action.  While female vampire falling for mortal man might be 'Strange Love', I still think that lesbian vampire action is stranger.  (And certainly would have been viewed as such in the early seventies, where portrayals of lesbianism, vampire or otherwise, were considered 'daring').

Stensgaard, (a Danish actress who appeared a lot on British TV in the late sixties and early seventies, especially in sitcoms), has an unfortunate habit of going slightly boss eyed when in the throes of sexual ecstasy, or being staked, for that matter, which makes these scenes unintentionally comical.  (Mind you, that didn't stop me from a having a considerable crush on her when younger).  Which, effectively, is the film's entire problem - there are just too many loose ends, unintentionally comic sequences (virtually all of those featuring Mike Raven's Count Karnstein, for instance), for the film ever to work properly as a horror film.  It is very entertaining, though.  But one can't help but speculate on what might have been if Hammer's master of the Gothic, Terence Fisher had been at the helm.  Or if it had been Peter Cushing as the schoolmaster being seduced by young school girl vampires, (which might sound too sleazy for Cushing, but let's nt forget that only a few years earlier, he had appeared in another sleazy sex and horror film, Corruption, or his rape scene in the Fisher directed Frankenstein Must be Destroyed).