Lesbian Vampires

I was watching Joseph Lazzar's film, Vampyres, recently and began to think about the lesbian vampire
film as a subgenre of the horror movie. I find it curious that the lesbian vampire movie should have
developed into a distinctive subgenre while the gay vampire movie has not. I mean, the myth of
vampirism has an element of homoeroticism built right into it: vampires orally exchange bodily fluids.
There is a sado-erotic content, too, that dovetails nicely into some of the more socially unacceptable
varieties of gay culture (and what, if anything, is Al Pacino and William Friedkin's film, Cruising, but a
gay vampire movie without the vampires?). A lot of this is obviously cultural. It is a widely known fact
of life in the movies that if you show two women kissing, you will titilate most of the audience, while, if
you show two men kissing, half the audience will walk out of the theater. Lesbianism certainly tickles
the erotic fantasies of many straight men. It is not surprising that most dyed-in-the-wool exploitation
movies, from Russ Meyer's Vixen, through Caged Heat and the women-and-prison movies, all the
way up to the recent Jet Li movie, Romeo Must Die, include lesbian eroticism of some variety. Actual
gay vampires don't show up in the mainstream until the movie version of Interview With the
Vampire, but Interview isn't very good.

Which goes a long way towards explaining why lesbian vampires form their own distinctive grouping
of films.

Of course, part it comes from the literature. Carmilla, the grand dame of lesbian vampires, is older than
Dracula. Bram Stoker borrows liberally from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella. He also mines the
Elizabeth Bathory myth. There is nothing in Vlad the Impaler's blood-soaked biography to suggest
vampirism, so Stoker appropriated it from his distant cousin. Elizabeth Bathory is said to have
murdered some 650 women in order to bathe in their blood. For the blood is the life, you see--it keeps
one young and beautiful....How could a writer of horror fiction ignore so grotesque a monster?

The movies have been all over lesbian vampires since the late sixties. Most of the movies in this
particular ghetto are dreadful, but many of them are interesting in spite of that. At least one filmmaker,
the French director Jean Rollin, has made an entire career out of lesbian vampires. Direct to video soft
core lesbian vampire movies without number have appeared over the last several years. It's a sizeable
chunk of films.

As a service to the curious, I am going to list a bunch of these movies even if I haven't written about
them. I won't link to them until I have a review ready. These movies are becoming more widely
available thanks to the folks at Anchor Bay Entertainment and Redemption Home Video.

Blood and Roses
Countess Dracula
Daughters of Darkness
Dracula's Daughter
The Embrace of the Vampire
The Hunger
Lust for a Vampire
Twins of Evil
The Vampire Lovers
Vampyres
Vampyros Lesbos
The Velvet Vampire