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The mysterious figure rising out of the fog is uncloaked as a lambent maiden, the nobleman with saber drawn is paralyzed by this vision, fangs sprout when her bosom touches his crucifix—quite the ebullient Hammer overture. "Murderers from beyond the grave" is the terse description of vampires in 19th-century Austria, from household to household the seductive menace moves like a plague or perhaps a liberator. The visiting brunette (Ingrid Pitt) at the waltz has her pick of suitors, the blonde belle (Pippa Steele) warns her beau but he corrects her: "Nonsense. She's looking at you." Nightmares drain the lass and teeth marks on breasts finish her off, the fiend leaves for her next conquest with the victim's uncle (Peter Cushing) in hot pursuit. Le Fanu's "love into adoration and abhorrence," painted not in Fisher's baleful reds but in Roy Ward Baker's moonstruck blues, bathed less in viscera than in erotic trembling. The vampiress in her latest guise scoffs at the ingénue (Madeline Smith) who dreams of being swept off her feet by a hirsute knight (Jon Finch), unbottoning each other's bodices is their preferred pastime. A midnight raid (POV floating toward a window, farm girl tossing in bed, zoom into screaming mother) demonstrates the genre in miniature, elsewhere the cadaverous Man in Black (John Forbes-Robertson) atop his horse curiously resembles Piccoli's Marquis from La Voie Lactée. Modernity mingling with antiquity in a land (and a studio) where subterranean cravings are no longer concealed, medicine embraces superstitious garlic while softcore nudity expands a classical mise en scène. Gliding through it all is Pitt's lustrous lynx of a bloodsucker, a rich Sapphic subconscious loosening corsets and dodging phallic stakes. "The trouble with this part of the world is they have too many fairy-tales!" With Kate O'Mara, George Cole, Dawn Addams, Douglas Wilmer, Ferdy Mayne, and Kirsten Lindholm.
--- Fernando F. Croce |