Vampires (13 page)

Lust For A Vampire (1971)
Ralph Bates as
Giles Barton.
Barbara Jefford as
Countess Karnstein
. Mike Raven as
Count Karnstein
. Michael Johnson as
Richard LeStrange.
Yutte Stensgaard as
Mircalla Karnstein.
Screenplay from characters created by J Sheridan LeFanu; Tudor Gates. Director; Jimmy Sangster

Synopsis

Author Richard LeStrange travels to Styria to pick up information for his new book on the occult. He is warned by the natives of the vampire practices at Karnstein Castle, but fobs it off as mere superstition. At the Castle, Countess Mircalla Karnstein is revived by the slit throat of a peasant girl. She is enrolled by her mother, the Countess, at the all-girl boarding school. LeStrange falls in love at first sight of Mircalla and bribes a substitute teacher to leave the area so he can take his place at the school. He is offered lodging with slimy lecturer and historian, Giles Barton, who has made a deep study of the Karnsteins. A girl is killed and Barton hides her body in a well. When further deaths occur, the townspeople investigate the mysterious doctor who has proclaimed a heart attack as the cause of death on each occasion. The doctor is no other than the Count Karnstein. Giles Barton is bitten by Mircalla when he pronounces her as the fabled vampire. As public outcry becomes too severe, the Karnsteins are attacked in their castle by torch wielding villagers. LeStrange tries to rescue Mircalla who in turn tries to bite him as a falling beam penetrates her heart.

Review

Danish born Yutte Stensgaard adds the childlike innocence to Mircalla that was missing in Ingrid Pitt’s portrayal. She is enrolled in the exclusive all girls boarding school and immediately begins to work her way through the students. She has no fear of running water as she indulges in midnight skinny dips with lesbian overtones with Pippa Steele. Her heterosexual virginity is taken by the author-come-substitute teacher, Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson), who falls in love with her at first sight. When she is confronted with a crucifix by historian Giles Barton, she seems unclear as to her vampire ancestry that she is in fact Countess Mircalla Karnstein. The most notorious shot of Miss Stensgaard sitting up in her coffin with fangs and covered in the blood of a peasant girl is unceremoniously hacked by the censor after a fairly competent resurrection sequence that would be woven into the tapestry of
Twins of Evil.
When the true realization of her origin comes to the fore, there is no end to her bloodletting as she works her way through the rest of the cast like some insatiable fanged libido automaton. Beautiful to watch and spending a lot of her screen time undraped, Yutte Stensgaard harboured Oscar ambitions as an actress and appeared in the sci-fi horror
Scream and Scream Again (1970),
but her further appearances culminated in a regular spot on the popular TV quiz show,
The Golden Shot
and the odd
Carry On
comedy. Twice married, she has a son, Sten. She refused to discuss her acting career for many years and was tracked to the US by a horror movie fan. In recent years, she has appeared at several fan conventions.

Slimy lecturer Giles Barton is played by Ralph Bates, substituting for Peter Cushing who dropped out when his wife became very ill. Fascinated by the history of the Karnsteins, he realizes through the acquisition of an old portrait that the student Carmilla is actually the centuries old Mircalla Karnstein. He informs no one of this find except the vampire herself, hiding evidence of her attacks on a student and even reversing the crucifix for her to authenticate his loyalty. Mircalla grants his wish to serve the devil and bites him in the throat as he dies with orgasmic relish. She leaves his corpse for all to find the next day, drained and discarded in the woods by the school grounds.

Count Karnstein is portrayed by horror star wannabe, DJ Mike Raven. His vocal intonations are echoingly dubbed by Valentine Dyall and his eyes are pointlessly substituted in one scene by Christopher Lee from
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968).
The Count is purely the invention of Tudor Gates as he never appears in the original novella. His clumsy insertion is all too evident as he seems to have power and exerts an unspecified influence over the doll like vampire, Mircalla, but he and the Countess stick to the shadows and fail to indulge in any vampiric activity. I began to wonder what happens after Mircalla has fed? Do the remaining family members guide her home through hypnosis and then batten onto
her
behind the stone walls of the castle like some midnight-virgin-gang-bang-of-blood orgy? Count Karnstein moonlights as a doctor and passes off each victim as succumbing to a heart attack. Tudor Gates lore of the vampire states that they rise every forty years to terrorize the village and that burning will only melt away the bodies of these fiends but leave their corrupt souls unharmed, so it is fair to assume that the Count and Countess still live on after the final credits as only Mircalla is staked at the fadeout. Frustratingly, the Countess (Barbara Jefford) doesn’t appear in the follow on movie and it is unclear whether Damien Thomas is stepping into Mike Raven’s shoes as the Count himself.

Mike Raven – real name Austin Churton Fairman - actually wanted to be a horror movie star. Certainly, he had the gaunt looks and an effete lisp that would be heard in
I, Monster (1971),
Amicus’ version of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
. He had the habit of wearing black with a red lined cloak in public and starred in two horror movies,
Crucible of Terror
and
Disciple of Death
both in 1972. Certainly fitting a lot into his pursuits, the DJ cum actor, jockey, sculptor, sheep farmer, writer and ballet dancer died in 1997 aged 62. He was buried in a grave that he had dug for himself on Bodmin Moor.

Joseph Sheridan LeFanu is mixed into the delirious action as Richard LeStrange played by Michael Johnson. He is researching a new book on the occult and scoffs at the local’s tales of vampires and warlocks. Hoodwinking the new teacher into leaving for Vienna, he substitutes his post at the All-girls boarding school to get nearer to the goodies on hand
. He is luckier than most as he gets to grips with Carmilla in the best possible way, and finds himself falling in love with her.

“But men are amongst their victims too!”
  Informs a frightened innkeeper and LeStrange is only saved from Mircalla’s fanged attentions when a burning beam stakes her. Leaving Karnstein Castle older and wiser, he finds love with teacher Suzannah Leigh, whose
confession of loving him had me stumped as they had shared no scenes together of any kind of intimacy before this.

Lust For A Vampire
was a very troubled production that Sir James Carreras spent no time in putting together on the heels of
The Vampire Lovers
. Terence Fisher was to direct originally, but became incapacitated through illness and Jimmy Sangster has spoken many times of outward interference. The song ‘
Strange Love’
and its origins still remain a mystery to the cast, as does the singer, ‘Tracy’, but the score was written by Frank Godwin. Like its predecessor, there are no mentions of the vampire’s power emanating from their grave clothes and I found it to be a very uninvolving film. I literally had to watch it three times before I wrote this review.

Twins of Evil (1971)
Peter Cushing as
Gustav Weil.
Mary Collinson as
Maria Gellhorn.
Madelaine Collinson as
Frieda Gellhorn.
Damien Thomas as
Count Karnstein.
David Warbeck as
Anton Hoffer
. Isobel Black as
Ingrid Hoffer.
Dennis Price as
Diedrich
. Luan Peters as
Gerda
. Kathleen Byrom as
Aunt Kathy.
Screenplay from characters created by J Sheridan LeFanu; Tudor Gates. Director; John Hough

Synopsis

Maria and Frieda Gellhorn are beautiful twins who arrive at the village of Karnstein after the death of their parents. They are taken under the wing of their uncle a Puritanical witch hunter named Gustav Weil and inaugurated in the local girl’s school run by Anton Hoffer and his sister, Ingrid. Their arrival in the village gleans more than a passing interest from the depraved aristocrat, Count Karnstein. Karnstein Castle perched high in the mountains and overlooking the village is notorious as rumours spread very quickly about the debauched gatherings and satanic practices that go on behind its stone exterior. The Count himself admits to becoming increasingly bored by his servant’s excuses and side-show attempts at conjuring up the devil. He sends the charlatan packing and uses an intonation of his own after murdering the peasant girl tied to the altar for his amusement. Unbeknown to the Count, the altar rests above the tomb of Mircalla Karnstein. When the peasant girl’s blood reconstitutes her, Mircalla rises and seduces, then bites Count Karnstein, turning him into one of the undead.

Meanwhile, Frieda has dreams of escaping from the tyrannical Weil household. She escapes into the forest in pursuit of Karnstein castle and is apprehended en route by Karnstein’s servant Joachim. The Count wastes no time in putting the bite on Frieda and she is soon terrorizing the village and the surrounding countryside, while her identical twin Maria takes sound beatings from her uncle Gustav’s belt on Frieda’s behalf.

Schoolteacher Anton is threatened by Weil and his hysterical witch hunters, The Brotherhood, for speaking out to the authorities about their ungodly acts of burning innocent girls at the stake for witchcraft. When Ingrid Hoffer is killed by a vampire and Frieda is unmasked as one of the undead after an attack on a member of the Brotherhood, Gustav Weil intends to burn his niece at the stake. He is outwitted however, as Count Karnstein kidnaps the virginal Maria and substitutes the good twin for the bad twin in the local jailhouse. As Anton checks on Maria, he barely escapes her vampire twin and stops The Brotherhood just in time before they burn Maria. In the ensuing climax, Gustav and The Brotherhood descend on Karnstein castle armed with crosses and axes on Anton’s advice. Frieda is decapitated by Gustav who is killed by his own axe by Count Karnstein. As the vampire turns his attention on Maria, he is staked by a well-aimed spear by Anton through the heart and dissolves into a long undead corpse.

Review

Mircalla Karnstein returns very briefly in this second sequel to
The Vampire Lovers.
Tudor Gates’ third screenplay drops the lesbian angle in place of a more potent heterosexuality in the comely shape of the Playboy twins, Mary and Madelaine Collinson. They are forced to live with their Uncle Gustav – Peter Cushing chewing the scenery in arguably his best role for the company. Their Aunt Kathy is none other than Kathleen Byrom, the spurned nun who goes mad in the 1955 film,
The Black Narcissus.
Gates plays with the
cliché
of the good twin and the bad twin that had formed many of the plots of
film noir
in the forties with the advancement of trick photography and actors playing their own doubles. The good twin wants to relax and have a quiet life, whilst the bad twin wants to meet Count Karnstein.