Lust for a Vampire (1971)

a.k.a. Love for a Vampire / To Love a Vampire
Directed by: Jimmy Sangster

I started my little Carmilla-marathon yesterday with The Vampire Lovers and tonight it’s time for the second movie in Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy: Lust for a Vampire. Where The Vampire Lovers actually lifted a lot of the story from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella, this one has really nothing at all to do with it. We get Carmilla, and that’s all… What we didn’t get is Ingrid Pitt reprising her role as Carmilla, the luscious lesbian vampire. Instead we got the Danish actress Yutte Stensgaard and, not that I wanna be an asshole towards Yutte, that’s just not good enough. Where Ingrid’s Carmilla was an ferocious creature if needed, Yutte’s Carmilla feels much more weaker and not at all that dangerous.

When it comes to sequels the film companies usually throw in more of the stuff that made the first flick a success… if it was bloody, more blood! If it had nudity, more boobs! Yeah, you know what I mean. It probably has a lot to do with the british censors sticking their damn noses into the production, but this flick is definitely tamer than The Vampire Lovers. Sure, we get some nudity (courtesy of English school girls apparently always walk around topless in their rooms at school), a tiny bit of blood (the tagline “Ghoulish! Gory! Ghastly!” is pretty misleading as you don’t get much of any of it) and this time around Carmilla isn’t that much into girl on girl action as she was in the first flick… shit, her love interest in this movie is a dude. For shame! For shame, Hammer!!!


The film is set in 1830’s Styria and starts with a satanic ritual sacrifice of a blonde peasant girl (and maybe I’m so wrong now, but that girl sure looked like the blonde vampire that got decapitated in the opening scene of The Vampire Lovers… could be her, there are at least two more actors from that movie in prominent roles in this one as well), the girl’s blood is used to resurrect Carmilla herself. The dude doing the satanic stuff does his best to look like Christopher Lee, and they even used some close up shots of Christopher Lee’s red eyes from Scars of Dracula during the ritual. Always nice to save a penny or two and use shots from other movies…

Then we meet the novelist Richard Lestrange (Michael Johnson), who decides to visit the ruins of Castle Karnstein, even after having been warned at the local pub about the vampires still being around up there… even though they were killed 40 years ago (that’s Baron Hartog’s doing from the first flick), the vampires know how to resurrect themselves (and that’s no lie as we saw that ourselves in the opening scenes of this movie!). While Lestrange visits the castle he runs into some young women in capes that he mistakes for being vampires, only to discover they are part of a field trip from the nearby young women’s finishing school… After having been invited to come and visit the school by the teacher Giles Barton (Ralph Bates) he ends up there when Countess Herritzen (Barbara Jefford) and her young niece Mircalla (Yutte Stensgaard) arrives.


Being the horndog that he is he immediately have the hots for Mircalla and even manages to elbow his way into a job at the school… anything to be close to this blonde hottie, I guess. Meanwhile, Mircalla is getting friendly with an American girl at the school, Susan (Pippa Steel, who just happened to play Laura, the first girl killed by Carmilla, in The Vampire Lovers), but after a midnight skinny dip Mircalla sinks her teeth into Susan’s neck and she’s done with. She’s unceremoniously dumped down a well, but someone saw her…

Giles Barton (he's the one who saw Mircalla kill Susan and dump her body) has been studying the history of the Karnsteins and the local histories of vampires, and after having found a picture in one of the books of Mircalla where she is named Carmilla Karnstein he puts two and two together. He confronts Mircalla, begging to be turned into a vampire as well, but the Karnstein family doesn’t need sniveling idiots like him so Mircalla sinks her fangs into his neck as well and it’s bye bye, creepy teacher. Barton’s body is found by some students the next day and instead of immediately calling for the police the headmistress of the school (Helen Christie) decides to keep this a secret with the help of Countess Herritzen… just imagine the scandal if people knew that students and teachers disappear or end up dead at the school!


Susan (the American girl) is still considered missing and thanks to a teacher, Janet Playfair (Suzanna Leigh), who think the girl’s father and the police should be contacted, Susan’s father is now on his way to find out what’s going on at the school and what has happened to his daughter… and if that wasn’t bad enough for the school and the Karnstein vampires, the villagers are getting restless preparing their pitchforks, rakes and lighting up their torches…

After The Vampire Lovers I suspect that any movie would feel like a letdown, but this really is sub par Hammer horror. At times it felt like I was watching a period drama more than a horror flick as the love story between Lestrange and Mircalla took up too much time. Time that Mircalla should have been spent with more blood sucking and more frolicking around together with nude chicks… Yeah, when you have the original lesbian vampire, why the hell have her fall in love with a man??? Stupid, stupid…


I also feel that unusually many actors/actresses in this flick did a really bad job with stiff acting, non-acting (it’s hard to act probably when you’re really a model and got the job only because of your looks) or just looked tired. Ralph Bates as the creepy teacher Giles Barton was damn great though, a bit campy probably, but the one that stood out in this movie. The scene where he tries to persuade Mircalla to turn him into a vampire, by first shoving a cross in her face and then slowly turn it upside down to show her that he’s evil as well is my favorite in the film…

Now it’s time to check out the third flick in the Karnstein Trilogy: Twins of Evil for the first time in many years, but from what I remember that one was better than this one… anyway, stick with The Vampire Lovers if you want some great Hammer vampire/Carmilla action.