So it’s easy to take it for granted. But watching it now for the first time in many years I’m struck by just how startling it must have been at the time. That opening sequence! This is not how you begin a vampire movie. First off we know that we are not in central Europe or England in the 19th century. We are in Turkey. And the setting is contemporary.
The avant-garde music is most emphatically not what you expect in a vampire movie.
The erotic elements are also there front and centre right from the start. We get frontal nudity 60 seconds into the movie.
And then we find we are watching a night-club act. Of course there’s an erotic night-club act in most of Franco’s movies but in 1970 it wasn’t standard practice in horror movies.
And we are in seriously arty territory. This was the most arty period in Franco’s career. Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden (AKA Succubus, 1968) is full-blown surrealism with wild narrative experiments. This was a movie that numbered Fritz Lang among its admirers. Paroxismus (AKA Venus in Furs, 1969) is equally avant-garde. At this time Franco had reasonably serious art-house credentials.
It’s so long since I last saw this movie that I had forgotten that unlike most lesbian vampire movies this is not an adaptation of Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla. It’s an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And while there are some changes it is very recognisably and very consciously an adaptation of Dracula, at least to begin with.
Linda Westinghouse (Ewa Strömberg) works in a lawyer’s office. She is sent on a journey to the remote home of a Hungarian countess, Countess Nadine Carody (Soledad Miranda), who needs some legal document attended to. The Countess is a vampire. In fact the legal documents relate to an estate left to her by Count Dracula. So Linda at this stage is clearly a stand-in for Jonathan Harker. The Countess begins her seduction of Linda, at which point Linda obviously becomes a stand-in for Lucy Westenra (or Mina Harker).
Linda ends up in the care of Dr Seward (Dennis Price) who is clearly a combination of Dr Seward and Van Helsing. Dr Seward his under his care a mad girl named Agra (Heidrun Kussin) who is obsessed with the Countess Carody. Agra is obviously the Renfield character.
At this time period European directors like Harry Kümel (in Daughters of Darkness), José Larraz (in Vampyres) and Jean Rollin (in movies like The Nude Vampire and Shiver of the Vampire) were radically reinventing the vampire movie. Franco appears to be doing that as well but he isn’t really. He is drastically streamlining the vampire myth, jettisoning the non-essential elements of vampire, but he isn’t going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Countess Carody does not sleep in a coffin, she lives in a modernist beach house rather than a castle, she has no feelings one way or the other about garlic and she adores sunbathing.
But all the essential elements are there. She is an immortal creature who feeds on human blood. She has hypnotic powers. She is quite unequivocally a vampire.
So we have major elements of Stoker’s novel established and then Franco starts playing around with them. This is a movie of stylistic excess and as with Succubus the more we see the more we feel that maybe we’re moving in a dreamscape. And we get more touches of surrealism. We know we’re dealing with dreams part of the time. That’s made explicit. But where do the dreams end and where does reality start? And Franco included cool cabaret scenes not just because they were cool. They emphasise that we’re watching a performance. We’re watching the Countess playing a vampire on stage.
Soledad Miranda is mesmerising. She dominates the movie from start to finish.
There are no shadows, no night scenes. Everything is bathed in glorious sunshine. That’s ow Nadine likes it. A girl has to work on her tan, even if she is a vampire. Franco is going out of his way to avoid gothic horror clichés. But it doesn’t feel gimmicky. Soledad Miranda actually has the ability to convince us that she really is a sun-worshipping vampire. This movie is also a great example of Franco’s genius for finding strange but perfect locations.
Vampyros Lesbos is one of the most important movies in Franco’s filmography. This is Franco at his best. Very highly recommended.
The Severin Blu-Ray offers the German cut, Franco’s preferred cut. The Spanish cut was apparently quite different. The most important extra is a perceptive video essay by Stephen Thrower.
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