The Movie: The Vampire Lovers (1970)
What Is It?:
Hammer’s first adaptation of le Fanu’s Carmilla.
Ingrid Pitt transcends the exploitation with her energetic presence and
committed acting. She plays a lusty vampiress who goes around biting and
bedding everyone in sight. Well, everyone but Peter Cushing. The depiction of a
predatory lesbian vampire is homophobic, but Pitt plays her with such humanity
that she earns our empathy much more so than her vacant-eyed victim, whom she
genuinely seems to love.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1814, Carmilla author Sheridan le Fanu is born.
