Carmilla
CHARACTER
Carmilla is the eponymous anti-heroine of the novella by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, which originally appeared in his collection In a Glass Darkly. She has been the inspiration for countless movies and books, and has earned her creator an undisputed place in the history of the popularisation of the vampire mythos.
Carmilla was born into the aristocratic Karnstein family in 17th Century Austria. She was originally called Mircalla (the more observant amongst you will note this is an anagram of Carmilla), and changes her name whenever it suits her. She is the archetypal upper class vampire; a beautiful countess, whose youthful looks bely her age. It is almost certain that she was an influence on the vampires in Bram Stoker's Dracula, which appeared 25 years after the publication of Le Fanu's novella.
In Le Fanu's story, our first glimpse of Carmilla takes place hundreds of years after her birth. Over the years, she has developed an elaborate feeding ritual, that involves infiltrating the families of young girls and living alongside them, while she gradually drains their lifeblood over a period of weeks. The victim this time is a young girl called Laura (the narrator of the story), who lives with her father in a remote part of Styria. Carmilla is invited to stay with Laura and her father after her carriage is involved in an accident. She quickly insinuates herself into the household, and despite a certain strangeness in her habits and conversation, succeeds in seducing the unsuspecting Laura. This proves a fairly simple task, as Laura has a strange fascination with her newfound friend, stemming from a dream she had when she was just a small child. Little does she know that Carmilla is gradually sucking her dry of blood. The lesbianesque scenes that occur between Carmilla and Laura are surprisingly risque for the period. The girls spend many langurous hours kissing, fondling, and gazing into each others eyes. Carmilla even professes her love for Laura, though this doesn't stop her from continuing her nightly visitations:
"I felt it lightly spring on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side."
Fortunately, Laura's father has an acquaintance whose daughter just happens to have been Carmilla's previous victim. Once he has told his story, Carmilla's true nature is revealed, and her undead corpse is staked, beheaded and burnt.
THE STAGE
Strangely enough, Le Fanu's novella actually made it onto the silver screen before it was adapted for the stage. If things had been different, however, the first stage production could have taken place in 1928, when Hamilton Deane, co-author with John L. Balderstone, of the famous Broadway adaptation of Dracula, dramatized the story with his wife (actress Dora Mary Patrick), as a bargaining chip with Dracula's producer Horace Liveright, who was hesitating over committing to an American tour. The basic idea was that if Liveright refused to tour Dracula, then Deane would tour his adaptation of Carmilla, and corner the American market for stage vampires. In the end, Liveright relented, and the Carmilla project fell by the wayside.
It was not until 1937 that Carmilla had its theatre debut, courtesy of the Earl of Longford. Reviews were mixed. One reporter said it was, "as boring a play as I ever sat through in my life." , while another stated that it "undoubtedly gives the sensitive spectator an eerie thrill." The Sunday Times felt that the obvious lesbian subtext "causes discomfort by apparently giving bald statement to a theme which, in the theatre at any rate, is usually treated with delicate insinuation."
Across the Atlantic, New York's La Mamma Experimental Theatre Company produced a curiously stylised chamber musical based on Carmilla in 1970. This production was written by Wilford Leach. Owing to a knee operation, the staging was altered at the last minute to allow the actress who played Carmilla to remain permanently seated on a grandly carved Victorian sofa, from which singers' faces protruded like animated wooden masks. The piece toured internationally, had its score recorded as an original cast album, and was given several revivals, most recently in 1986.
THE MOVIES
The first film version of Carmilla was Carl Dreyer's moodily atmospheric 1932 film, Vampyr, which features a particularly memorable scene in which a young Englishman is buried in a coffin with a glass window. It is important to bear in mind, however, that although this film purports to have been inspired by Le Fanu's novella, the link often seems fairly tenuous. Even so, it is easily one of the most evocatively dreamlike films ever made. Vampyr was financed by a rich German baron, Nicolas de Gunzberg, who also acted in the film as David Gray, a young man pulled into the ambiguous vampire realm. The film was shot silent, with a sparse dialogue added later in French, German and English.
The next film version of Carmilla, was an extremely loose modernized version by Roger Vadim, called Blood and Roses (1961). The film's lesbian eroticism was significantly cut for its American release. It is widely regarded as something of a classic, partly because of Claude Renoir's accomplished cinematography. Film Quarterly called it "the most elegant and intelligent vampire film in decades."
Soon after came the first straightforward adaptation for British television in 1966, which was closely followed by a Hammer Horror version called The Vampire Lovers (1971) The Vampire Lovers escalated the girlish groping of the original story into a full-scale nude bedroom romp, and began Hammer's three-picture foray into the Karnstein legend. It is actually one of Hammer's better Gothic Horror films. Ingrid Pitt stars as the vampire Carmilla who enamors the daughter of a noble European family. It is slower paced than most modern films, but has stood the test of time thanks to the exotic sets and costumes, and the excellent acting of Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt.
The second film in Hammer's Karnstein trilogy was Lust for a Vampire (1970). This time the story was set in a nineteenth century finishing school. The erotic lesbianism went even further than before in Lust for a Vampire, and as a result, the film was heavily censored for its American release. The film begins with a fine pre-title sequence in which a young woman is given a lift in a black carriage, and taken to Karnstein Castle, where her blood is used to revive the dead Countess Mircalla. We are then introduced to Richard Le Strange, who contrives to get himself hired at an all-girls finishing school right next door to the castle. Almost immediately afterwards, young women start turning up dead. Meanwile, Le Strange falls in love with a mysterious and beautiful pupil at the school called Mircalla, who is altenately deadly and erotic, with people of both sexes. Finally a mob of angry villagers set fire to the Karnstein Castle, and a flaming piece of timber pierces Mircalla's heart. Yutte Stensgard stars.
Hammer's Karnstein trilogy concluded in 1971 with Twins of Evil, a dark brooding tale of vampirism and witch hunting. This film is set in the 17th Century, and begins with stern witchfinder, Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing), burning a young woman at the stake. Gustav's well endowed and recently orphaned twin nieces then arrive at his home. One of the twins, Maria, is a good and wholesome young lady and the other twin, Frieda, is the complete opposite. Following the arrival of the two girls, the scene shifts to Count Karnstein's castle, where we see the Count (Damien Thomas) sacrificing a young girl in order to call up the devil. The devil appears in the form of his long dead ancestor, Countess Mircalla, who bites him and turns him into a vampire. Later on, back in the village, Frieda happens to meet Count Karnstein. As a result of this meeting, Frieda sneaks out of her house that evening to meet the Count for dinner at his castle. Count Karnstein then turns Frieda into a vampire. Things become complicated when Maria's love interest, Anton, complains to the church authorities about Gustav's overzealous witch hunting activities, and Frieda is caught killing a villager by Gustav and his witchhunters. Twins of Evil is particularly memorable for the character of Gustav Weil, whose pious fanaticism thinly covers his own bloodlust. An interesting piece of trivia about Madeleine and Mary Collinson, who star as Frieda and Maria, is that they were the first twins to appear as Playmates in the October 1970, issue of Playboy magazine.
A more recent adaptation of Carmilla, produced in 1989 for cable television's Nightmare Classics series, shifted the setting to the antebellum American South. This time it's Meg Tilly who takes on the role of Carmilla. Ione Skye costars as the lonely southern girl who Carmilla befriends and attempts to lure into the world of the undead, and there is a brief appearance by Roddy McDowall. This is pretty much your typical vampire movie, except that Meg plays Carmilla much softer than one might expect.
Other noteworthy films which exploit Le Fanu's story are Crypt of Horror (1963), and Captain Kronos: Vapire Hunter (1974).
CONCLUSION
That concludes this brief venture into the history of the Carmilla phenomenon. Now, why not remind yourself where it all began? Simply click here, and you can read Le Fanu's original novella, complete and unabridged. Alternatively check out the pictures and sound clips below.
| P I C T U R E S | ||||
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Meg Tilly in Carmilla. |
Meg Tilly in Carmilla. |
Meg Tilly in Carmilla. |
Poster for Hammer's The Vampire Lovers. |
Poster for Hammer's Lust for a Vampire. |
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Poster for Hammer's Lust for a Vampire |
Poster for Hammer's Twins of Evil. |
Scene from Hammer's Twins of Evil. |
Scene from Hammer's Twins of Evil. |
Scene from Hammer's Twins of Evil.. |
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Scene from Hammer's Twins of Evil. |
Scene from Hammer's Twins of Evil. |
Scene from Hammer's Twins of Evil. |
Picture of Carmilla. |
Drawing of Carmilla by yours truly. |
| S O U N D S | ||||
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Visit the O Tempora Downloads page to download the following song by TWO WITCHES: |
CLIP TWO
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