This was a Franco-Belgian co-production and it not only exists in several radically different cuts, it was intended right from the start to be released in several very different versions. It’s not just a matter of different titles. These versions are so different as to almost constitute separate films. The version that matters is the French cut with the title La comtesse noire and in English-speaking markets entitled Female Vampire.
Franco had already eliminated most of the established vampire lore in Vampyros Lesbos, stripping the vampire myth down to its essential. It features a vampire who is an immortal creature who feeds on human blood and uses hypnotic powers to ensnare her victims. With Female Vampire Franco goes further. This vampire kills by draining the victim’s life force during sex. This is a reasonable idea given that vampirism has always been about sex. Franco just makes this explicit.
There is a plot but it’s minimalist to say the least. The Countess Irina Karlstein (Lina Romay) is a vampire, the last of her family line of vampires.
She does not want to kill but she must. She must kill to survive, and to satisfy her erotic cravings. She cannot stop herself. She is trapped. Having disposed of several recent victims she falls in love with a poet, Baron Von Rathony (Jack Taylor). She has no desire to kill him but she cannot see a way of avoiding doing so. That’s it for the plot.
But this is not a plot-driven movie - it’s all about mood and about the forces driving Irina.
This is not one of those Franco movies in which dreams and reality intersect, but Irina goes through her life in a kind of trance state. The forces that drive her allow her to have little awareness of anything else. She is entirely disconnected from human society (her muteness emphasises this).
Irina’s only connection with people is through her seduction and then destruction of them. Part of her tragedy is that she craves real emotional connections. There is still enough human-ness in her, enough of the woman, that she craves love but when she finds love with a man can she love him without destroying him?
Now for the extreme elements I mentioned earlier. These have nothing to do with violence. There is no gore. We not see a drop of blood. There is however a lot of quite explicit sex and an immense amount of very explicit nudity. These do serve a purpose. Irina is overwhelmed by her desires. There is the need to hunt. She hates doing so but it’s a matter of survival. And there are her uncontrollable erotic desires. The hunger for the life forces that she must devour and the hunger for sex occupy her every waking moment.
She seduces her victims by means of hypnotic powers so that they are similarly consumed by desire for her. The nudity emphasises that Irina is unaware of anything other than her physical cravings. The nudity does get the point across.
There is also the stylistic excess. The emphasis is all on mood. It does not in any way look or feel like a movie that is interested in reflecting straightforward reality.
While there is no sense that we are simply watching a dream Irina is so cut off from human society that her existence has a slightly dream-like quality. She is aware of her alienation from human society and from everyday reality. And the movie does have a misty dream-like non-real ambience. We’re seeing things from Irina’s point of view. Which means we’re not seeing things from a human point of view. Franco obviously wants us to feel that this is not quite reality in a straightforward way.
If we saw the world from the point of view of a leopard it would not look like our concept of reality and I don’t think any movie has more effectively conveyed the idea of the vampire as a predator driven entirely by instinct. But with the complication that she has a kind of dual nature, a vampire nature and a woman’s nature.
While La comtesse noire is a more interesting title perhaps Female Vampire is not such a bad title - she is a very female vampire.
There’s plenty of symbolism - the kite, lots of birds, the flapping bird hood ornament on Irina’s car, mist, etc. It’s not complex symbolism but it works.
La comtesse noire is even further removed from our conventional expectations of the vampire movie than Vampyros Lesbos. It’s closer in feel than any of Franco’s other movies to Jean Rollin’s vampire fever dreams. I love this movie but it is an uncompromisingly unconventional vampire movie. If you can accept that and if you’re not put off by a blending of extreme eroticism and artiness then it’s highly recommended.
