Lust for a Vampire

In 1830 a renowned occult novelist called Richard Le' Strange (Johnson)is taken on to teach English at an exclusive finishing school for young girls in Styria. He falls in love with one of his pupils, the beautiful Mircalla (Stensgaard), but gradually discovers that she may well be the reincarnation of the evil vampire Carmilla Karnstein. Meanwhile in the village that neighbors the school, the locals are living in the grip of fear because it is forty years to the day since the vampiric Karnstein family reincarnated themselves in search of blood and village girls have been going missing.

Hammer's adaptation of Sheridan Le' Fanu's THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) had been successful enough to warrant a sequel, therefore Tudor Gates who had scripted the former was duly approached to script the next one. The result was a rather unsavoury brew of vampirism and lesbianism and veteran Hammer producer-writer Jimmy Sangster who was responsible for such Hammer classics as THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Dracula and THE NANNY was brought in to direct. It was his second outing behind the camera having made his directorial debut in 1970 with Hammer's spoof THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN. This went out on a double bill with Roy Ward Baker's SCARS OF Dracula and only did average business. Whereas Sangster had enjoyed the experience of directing the Frankenstein spoof, he apparently hated LUST FOR A VAMPIRE along with his star Ralph Bates. He and Bates were apparently horrified at the preview screening when they discovered a cheesy pop song had been inserted called STRANGE LOVE sung by an unknown Tracy over the love scene between Johnson and Stensgaard.

Viewed today, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE certainly has it's flaws, for a start there is the inept casting of BBC Radio One disc-jockey Mike Raven as Count Karnstein. His voice was dubbed to make him sound like Christopher Lee and in the reincarnation sequence, a close up of Lee's bloodshot eyes from Dracula HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE was used instead of making Raven wear the red tinted contacts and doing a close up on him. Raven also appeared in Amicus's Jekyll and Hyde film I MONSTER (1971). The film also lacks a convincing hero, Johnson's Richard Le' Strange is little more than a boozy womaniser who is content to chase after a schoolgirl and the basic premise is somewhat crude. The film also shares sets with SCARS OF Dracula, Hammer fanatics will no doubt recognise the somewhat impoverished looking castle set from that picture. Yet there is still some fun to be had here, Bates gives a strong performance as the schoolmaster who lusts after Carmilla and wishes to sell his soul to the devil and Sangster stages the shock scenes with some style, especially the scene in the ruined castle where Carmilla is brought back to life.

LUST FOR A VAMPIRE wasn't all that successful, but Hammer managed to squeeze in a third outing for the Karnstein's, TWINS OF EVIL, which is in it's own right a better film by far.

Lust for a Vampire is the second of Hammer's Karnstein films. While the first, The Vampire Lovers, was far from being great, it is a much better movie than this, the first sequel. The acting is weak, the male lead is very unsympathetic, Mike Raven comes across as a Christopher Lee wannabe, the sets are "too clean", and the plot is incredibly predictable. In all honesty, I've probably rated Lust for a Vampire too high. Other than a few good set pieces and Yutte Stensgaard, it's really doesn't have much going for it.

Set Pieces - The scene of Carmilla's resurrection may be one of my favorites from any Hammer movie. It's a wonderful mix of blood, nudity, and some Satanic mumbo-jumbo. The sight of the half-naked Carmilla literally covered in blood is not one that is easily forgotten.

Yutte Stensgaard - The best word I can think of to describe Stensgaard is "stunning". If she's in a scene, I defy anyone (at least any male) to not focus on her. She may not have been much of an actress, but as far as eye-candy goes, she's hard to beat.

In many ways this movie is little different from other Hammer horror films produced at the time . It has an inn that doesn`t take too kindly to strangers especially ones that don`t believe in vampires , it`s obvious that the " night " scenes were filmed during the day by sticking a blue filter over the camera lens and there`s some really dodgy effects and make up like the very obvious dummy at the film`s climax

What sets LUST FOR A VAMPIRE apart from other British horror movies at the time is some really superb ( For its day ) T&A on display complete with some lesbian kissing . It`s also good to see some old fashioned buxom women who have never heard of the phrase silicone implants . That`s something you don`t see in horror movies nowadays I can tell you

This definitely isn't the best Carmilla film (though the uncut version, unseen in the US, is highly erotic), yet it has a huge cult following largely due to the presence of Yutte Stensgaard. There are few one-hit wonder actresses in any genre who inspire such......lust. The edited US versions make this just another Hammer vampire film, the unedited version is definitely worth a look.

Like THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (1970), this is one of the most reviled Hammer efforts - but, again, I found it not that bad after all! Still, being one of the countless vampire-themed outings from the studio, it does feel like a tired rehash of better films; actually, it happens to be the middle part of Hammer's "Karnstein Trilogy" (inspired by J. Sheridan Le Fanu's classic short story "Carmilla") - if, admittedly, the least of them. As was the case with THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) and would be again with TWINS OF EVIL (1971), the main behind-the-scenes credits weren't the usual Hammer stalwarts: producers Harry Fine and Michael Style, screenwriter Tudor Gates and composer Harry Robinson. While the latter's score is appropriately grandiose for the most part, the love song - apparently inserted without director Sangster's consent, or even knowledge - is a total embarrassment!

It starts off well enough: all-too-typical material, to be sure, but very atmospheric (Carmilla's reincarnation, for instance, or the scene where hero Michael Johnson is surprised at the dilapidated Karnstein Castle by three cloaked female figures he takes to be vampires) and reasonably entertaining for all that. Other effective moments include: Carmilla's botched seduction of the Suzanna Leigh character; a couple of falls down a well, rendered stylized by the use of slow-motion; and the climax with the vampires trapped inside their flaming castle (lit by the inevitable torch-bearing villagers).

However, following the demise half-way through of top-billed Ralph Bates (yet another impressive turn from Hammer's candidate to replace Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee), the film slowly falls apart; reportedly, Cushing was supposed to have played the scholar/would-be vampire disciple - but I can't help feeling he'd have been both too old and ill-suited for the role. Similarly, Sangster replaced Terence Fisher: it would have been interesting to see Hammer's top director tackle "Carmilla" - but I wonder how he'd have handled the erotic aspects of the story. With its full-frontal nudity and scenes of lesbian love-making, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS had been credited with pushing the boundaries of permissiveness in Hammer horror - and this certainly follows in that tradition, with the script coming up with every possible excuse to have its scrumptious female cast disrobe!

The film does suffer from the lack of a star cast or even those familiar Hammer faces (other than Bates, that is): there's no denying that leading lady Yutte Stensgaard looks great throughout but, ultimately, she makes for an inadequate vampire (since she's depicted as being more pathetic than evil); Suzanna Leigh, then, is an equally attractive heroine; Barbara Jefford and Mike Raven, however, don't exactly ignite the screen as the Karnstein descendants (he was an especially poor choice and Hammer apparently realized this, to the extent that they had his voice dubbed by Valentine Dyall - while close-ups of Christopher Lee's eyes were roped in to 'aid' his character display the requisite fierceness!); Helen Christie is unintentionally funny as the headmistress of the school (where a good deal of the action takes place), who breaks down at ill-fated Police Inspector Harvey Hall's interrogation after a girl goes missing - which she fails to report immediately so as not to damage the school's reputation!

In the Audio Commentary, Sangster explains how he was dismissed by the producers (with whom he never saw eye to eye) during the editing stage. Suzanna Leigh spends more time discussing her career (in particular the actress' brief stint in Hollywood) than her contribution to the film proper, also mentioning her role in an episode of Hammer's JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN (1968-9) TV series - that, incidentally, was entirely filmed in Malta - and, at one point, even describes an out-of-body experience she went through in the mid-70s! However, Leigh does recall the atmosphere on the set of LUST FOR A VAMPIRE as being somewhat tense - with the troupe divided into two camps (one of which was snobbish about the profession, while the other kept a good-humored attitude towards the whole thing). Curiously, no mention is made at all of the film's literary origins - or, for that matter, the fact that it formed part of Hammer's Karnstein trilogy!