The Queer Corner | Surprise! Vampires have always been gay

The Queer Corner is a biweekly blog exploring LGBTQ+ community and culture.

Promiti Debi | Senior Staff Illustrator

By Rachel Bachy, Staff Writer
SEPTEMBER 2, 2021

This summer gave us a lot to talk about. It’s a tumultuous time for everyone, and marginalized communities are no exception. From the human rights crisis in Afghanistan to the transphobic health policies being pushed at home and abroad, we’re living through major history. Our 24-hour news cycle is constantly reminding us that we’re doomed, so I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about vampires. 

Pitt actually has a class on vampires called “Vampire: Blood and Empire” that I took in my sophomore year. It was an enlightening experience that confirmed many of my queer beliefs about vampires. Namely, that they’re cut from the same gay cloth as I am.

It’s important to note that the vampire’s historic sexual ambiguity did not come from a place of progress or diversity. Vampires were monsters, and sexuality was, too. The queerness of vampires was just as condemnable as their desire for human blood. Luckily for us, the vampire’s wealth of patchwork lore makes them a very moldable creature. Stephanie Meyer’s sparkling vampires look very different from the silent film star “Nosferatu” who looks very different from the undead depicted in medieval bedtime stories. Vampires’ supernatural abilities vary from story to story — they didn’t always sparkle — and many of their traits correspond directly to the historical circumstance in which they were written.

Vampire stories most likely originated as cautionary tales. The stories told children to be wary of diseased people and to avoid the woods at night, which are generally good ideas. The Middle Ages were full of disease, and one particular disease, porphyria, seemed to turn humans into monsters. Porphyria’s victims had receding gums and sensitivity to sunlight which gave the impression of otherworldly influences, though we know now that it wasn’t caused by anything supernatural.

Vampires were always more of a metaphor than a creature. Their shifting lore tells us more about the culture in which they were created than the supernatural monster. As vampire stories progressed, they began to caution more than just the night. They represented what their authors feared most. Here is where we begin to see the othered undead.

Just like our definition of the vampire, our definition of sexuality changes over time. In the 19th century, any expression of sexuality was taboo. Sex was for reproduction, not pleasure. Any suggestion to the contrary resulted in social stigmatization or worse. This fear of sex led to the sexy vampires we’re familiar with today. They weren’t necessarily queer, they were sexual in nature, which made them a monster to be feared.

Stories often explore sexual ambiguity, and we can find canonically queer vampires as early as the 19th century. The first lesbian vampire appeared in the 1871 novella, “Carmilla.” It problematically depicted lesbian love as predatory, but there’s a thrill in the existence of a Victorian queer narrative. While our modern-day culture has its issues with sexuality, sexual relationships between men and women have become the expected societal norm. It’s no longer something to be feared. In between these shifting lines in sexuality, we find more and more queer vampires. As the queer community grew in the 20th century, vampires as a metaphor for fear took a turn.

Today, vampires aren’t seen entirely as monsters. You can still find vampires in horror, but it’s a much more complicated representation. Vampires have taken on a loveable bad-boy image, popularized by shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the rise of the vegetarian vampire. These shows prove that it’s good to be bad, and queer fans definitely appreciate the subversion.

This summer, under the stress of an endless pandemic and the heat of a warming planet, TikTok entered what some lovingly call the “‘Twilight’ Renaissance.” It’s no surprise, really. Historically, vampire stories have risen to meet the fears of the day. Vampires opposed whatever norm was dominant, and they represented the real people who went against the societal grain. Today, we have a lot to be afraid of. Climate change, COVID-19, a general sense that the world is ending. We’re less scared of a dark room with a sexy beast inside. In fact, I know a lot of people who would probably enjoy that. Now, vampires don’t scare us. They comfort us.

While “Twilight” itself isn’t queer, many fans found a queer community through the series. Themes of hiding, longing and being misunderstood resonate with minoritized groups. Books filled with teenage angst like “Twilight” are perfect for queer readers, and the vampire’s ambiguously gay history only strengthens this connection. Stephanie Meyer didn’t write a horror story, but her vampires still taught us about her own fears. From Bella’s pro-life fight to the stressed importance of marriage, “Twilight’s” vampires shed light on Meyer’s values. In “Twilight’s” renaissance, fans criticize these fear-filled traits to focus on the human stories behind the so-called monsters, and they’ve found creatures who look just like us.

Today’s vampires aren’t gay because we’re afraid of them — they’re gay because gay people think vampires are cool. They’re queer because they’ve always been queer. We’re finally able to write our own vampire stories, and they’re unsurprisingly full of love.

Rachel writes about queer culture, the queer community and navigating life beyond the binary. Talk to them at RAB252@pitt.edu.

HOW DRACULA’S DAUGHTER LEFT A HUGE MARK ON MODERN VAMPIRE FICTION

by Eric Diaz
May 28 2021 

Ask someone to name the most influential piece of vampire fiction ever, and they’ll probably say Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And in general, that is true. But the little-known sequel to Universal’s adaption of Dracula, 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter, might have had the biggest influence on modern undead storytelling. Granted, it took some 30 years for this entry—the tale of a bloodthirsty Countess who wishes she were a mortal—to sink its fangs into popular modern myth. So if Dracula is the father of pop culture vampires, then his daughter is their underappreciated mother.

Universal Pictures

The Original Vampire Sequel

When Universal’s Dracula hit the big screen in 1931, its interpretation of the title character permanently embedded the image of the Transylvanian count in the popular consciousness. No matter how many other on-screen Dracs there have been, Bela Lugosi’s performance created the template we all know. Every parody of Dracula, from Count Von Count on Sesame Street to Count Chocula, took their cue from Lugosi. Tod Browning’s film also cemented the notion of the vampire as an unrepentant bloodsucker, swooping into a locale and draining the town dry. Pure predatory evil personified.

Dracula‘s less celebrated sequel actually wound up a greater indicator of what the vampire genre would eventually become. However, it would take several decades to get there. Universal released Dracula’s Daughter five years after the Bela Lugosi original. Originally, the film was meant to be a father/daughter extravaganza. Oddly, it didn’t star Lugosi at all; Universal even paid Lugosi to not be in the movie, and a wax effigy of his face was created to stand in for his corpse. Instead, the entire focus was ultimately on the titular daughter of the Count, played by English/American actress Gloria Holden.

Cinema’s First Tortured Undead Soul

Universal Pictures

Dracula’s Daughter picks up right where Dracula ended, after Dr. Van Helsing had staked the Count through the heart. Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Holden), shows up in England with her manservant, Sandor (Irving Pichel); the pair steal her father’s corpse from Scotland Yard and cremate it in a ritual. All this in hopes that the destruction of his physical body would break her curse of vampirism.

Sadly, the ritual doesn’t work, and the Countess retains her bloodlust. Marya continues to hate her vampiric nature, and wishes to be free of causing harm to others. (Something dear old dad had zero problems with.) The Countess starts her nightly hunting again, hypnotizing her victims with her exotic jeweled ring. With her Joan Crawford eyebrows and Bette Davis eyes, she’s ’30s glamour with a Gothic edge, stalking the streets of London for prey.

Universal Pictures

She then gets the idea that a handsome young psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) can break her need for blood. Again, no such luck. Instead, she becomes romantically obsessed with him, which infuriates the jealous Sandor. In a very racy scene for 1936, the Countess takes in a beautiful street waif named Lili (Nan Grey) to “paint a portrait of her.” Instead, she feeds on her. The scene is so rife with lesbian subtext that it’s barely even subtext.

Although the girl survives the attack, she later dies when recalling the episode under hypnosis. Unable to free herself from her affliction, the Countess embraces it. She flees back to her home country of Transylvania; there, she lures her newfound obsession Dr. Garth to try to turn him into her eternal vampire companion. Sandor kills the Countess when he realizes she has chosen the new guy over him. The film’s “wicked woman” dies, per the demands of the regulatory Hays Code.

Life After Death

Universal Pictures

Dracula’s Daughter wasn’t the hit that Dracula was. Box office records from those days remain elusive; but the movie effectively ended the first Universal Monsters wave, until 1939’s Son of Frankenstein. Dracula’s Daughter only found a second life on the “creature features” of 1950s TV, hosted by the likes of Vampira. (Herself a “daughter of Dracula.”) There, a new generation latched onto the film. And some of those kids would grow up to make significant vampire content of their own, media that would change the landscape of undead fiction.

There are two key ways Dracula’s Daughter was influential. It was, by all accounts, the first on-screen representation of the reluctant vampire archetype. Instead of reveling in her evil ways, Countess Zaleska shunned and felt shame over her own bloodlust. She just wanted to be an ordinary mortal, despite clearly relishing in the hunt. Most vampire fiction in the years to come kept to the Dracula mold, including Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. But in the long run, the influence of his daughter would prove a stronger bloodline.

The Vampiric Offspring of Dracula’s Daughter

Universal Pictures

Dracula’s Daughter ultimately led to similar vampiric portrayals in the immensely popular TV soap Dark Shadows, and Marvel Comics’ Morbius the Living Vampire. Both Dark Shadows’ Barnabas Collins and Marvel’s Michael Morbius seek professional help to try to break their addictions, much like the Countess. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles don’t really go this psychiatric treatment route, but Rice would cite the movie as a childhood favorite. She even named the fictional vampire bar in her books after Dracula’s Daughter. Not to mention, she built her entire narrative across several books upon the notion of the remorseful vampire.

Universal Pictures

And then, there’s the lesbian angle. Decades before vampiric eroticism between two women in movies like The Vampire Lovers, Vampyros Lesbos, or The Hunger, Dracula’s Daughter played up the angle of same-sex lust. The novel Carmilla had famously already done this in the 19th century. But on screen, Countess Zaleska got there first.

Of course, given that this was the ’30s, this desire was explicitly coded as something perverse. Not exactly a positive portrayal. But in an era where LGBTQ people were essentially invisible onscreen, any representation was noteworthy. Even this relatively toned-down expression of homosexuality made Universal executives very nervous. Regardless, decades of onscreen vampiric lesbian women owe Dracula’s Daughter a debt.

At only 71 minutes long, Dracula’s Daughter is still a breeze to watch. And it has more Gothic atmosphere than similar Universal horror films of the era. Yes, it is campy to modern eyes. And its LGBTQ undertones are also extremely tame by today’s standards. But it is definitely worthy of one’s time. If only to discover the source of so many of the modern vampire storytelling tropes we enjoy so much in the 21st century.

From 'Dracula's Daughter' to 'Carmilla,' lesbian vampire depictions prove immortal

Beginning with early film adaptations of 19th-century novels to a present-day small-screen resurgence, the subgenre has proved to have serious staying power.

Kate O'Mara, Kirsten Betts, Pippa Steel, Madeline Smith and Ingrid Pitt Valo

 in "The Vampire Lovers."Moviestore Collection Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Oct. 30, 2021
By Elaina Patton


Sexual fluidity has been one of the hallmarks of vampiric portrayals throughout history. But lesbian vampires, in particular, have enjoyed a certain popularity. Beginning with early film adaptations of 19th-century novels to a present-day small-screen resurgence, the subgenre has proved to have serious staying power.

"I think part of it is just the appeal of vampires in general," said lesbian romance novelist Evelyn Dar, who runs a popular YouTube channel dedicated to lesbian entertainment. "They’re mysterious and dark. It’s taboo and sexy."

That appeal, however, was a double-edged sword for lesbian representation. For decades, and particularly during the subgenre’s heyday of the 1960s and ‘70s, vampire narratives were a dominant means of getting lesbianism on-screen. And the associations between sapphic love and bloodthirsty villains stuck.

“They were evil. They were sexually deviant. They almost always had to die,” Dar said of those popular depictions.

A movie poster for "Vampyres." Everett Collection

“It had to do with the status anxiety that straight men must have felt during those years, between the rise of the second wave of the women’s movement and after Stonewall. There was a kind of fear about lesbians that could be articulated in the vampire film,” said Andrea Weiss, a film professor at the City College of New York and author of “Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film.” “And also quell that anxiety by having the vampire be destroyed or become heterosexual at the end.”

The association between gay love and monstrosity proved to be pervasive in film and television, and this — in addition to the genre’s undeniable “camp” factor — has contributed to the reason horror has such a unique place in gay culture. On one hand, horror is unrivaled when it comes to queer visibility. On the other, it’s notoriously demonized and has perpetuated damaging stereotypes about gay people.

Early Hollywood loved its horror, but it wasn’t too keen on lesbians — or unorthodox women, for that matter. Hence, most of the big horror hits of the era were about monstrous men, like “Frankenstein,” “The Wolf Man” and, of course, “Dracula.” Hays Code restrictions, which attempted to police the morality of film productions, dictated that women were portrayed as borderline asexual innocents. That meant any discussion of sexuality, much less homosexuality, had to be done via subtext.

“Every time you turn on a TV show now, it’s almost mandatory that there’s a lesbian in it. It used to be the exact opposite: It was mandatory that there couldn’t be a lesbian in it,” Weiss said. “A large part of the appeal for lesbians was looking for these moments in overwhelmingly heterosexual cinema and repurposing them, reconditioning them for their own use.”

The first, most famous and perhaps only example of an early Hollywood lesbian vampire film is 1936's “Dracula’s Daughter,” Universal Pictures’ follow-up to its massive 1931 hit “Dracula.” In it, Dracula’s progeny, Countess Marya Zaleska, played by a stone-faced Gloria Holden, tries to free herself from her father’s curse but ultimately gives in to temptation, kidnapping a young woman and holding her hostage in Transylvania.

The film’s subtext is not about romance but rather an early on-screen example of the predatory homosexual. Much of that had to do with the studio’s bending to the will of censorship requirements, revising the script and making publicity efforts to demonize the relationship. But despite the watchful eye of censorship officials, Universal couldn’t control the monster it created, and the film became a reigning example of early cinema’s fascination with gay desire.

The golden era

“Dracula’s Daughter” and other coded takes on lesbianism lit a cultural fire that exploded in the ‘60s and ‘70s. As censorship and restrictions on nudity waned, lesbian vampires morphed from closeted predators to full-blown bloodthirsty seductresses.

The portrayal of their victims changed, as well. Men were either slavish henchmen or oafish prey. Women, however, were eyed as potential companions — more than just food, if not equals.

“One of the reasons people might like the lesbian vampire trope is it has a built-in good girl-bad girl trope. You see it a lot in lesfic, as well.” Dar said, referring to lesbian fiction. “It plays with that sense of danger that a lot of us like.”

“Who else are you going to be cool with climbing through a window at night while you’re sleeping? I’ll leave my window unlocked, but only for the vampire,” Dar, who recently produced a video about lesbian vampire films, said with a laugh.

Early films from this sapphic vampire golden era flirted with the good girl-bad girl eroticism that would come to dominate — and plague — the genre. One of the most famous is French director Roger Vadim’s “Blood and Roses” (1960). It’s a lavish portrayal of a woman who is driven mad by jealousy and her resulting obsession with a vampiric legend. It was one of the first adaptations of what would become the most popular source material for the genre: Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella “Carmilla.”

In the ‘70s, the industry’s enthusiasm for sex and violence reached a fever pitch. Exploitation films like 1974's “Vampyres” and 1973's “The Devil’s Plaything,” which had more in common with soft-core pornography than cinema, proliferated.

“You could get away with a certain kind of borderline pornography in a horror film that you couldn’t get away with in other films,” Weiss noted.

A still from "The Vampire Lovers."Hammer Films

“The Vampire Lovers” (1970) stands out as one of the more “humanizing” and romantic films of the era. It’s the first in a trilogy based on Le Fanu’s “Carmilla,” made by legendary production company Hammer Films. Although considered daring at the time for its depiction of sapphic seduction, the so-called Karnstein Trilogy, named after Le Fanu’s Countess Karnstein, feels misogynistic by contemporary standards. But “The Vampire Lovers,” widely regarded as the best of the three, definitely has its temptations — not least of which is star Ingrid Pitt.

Sexploitation titles, a subgenre of exploitation films, were geared toward men rather than lesbian audiences. The characters “acted as lesbians, but they were very much coded as heterosexual women so that they appealed to straight male audiences,” Weiss said.

Some international directors during this period managed to make films that had one foot in the realm of exploitation and the other in art house — and held more appeal for women. Spanish director Jesús Franco’s “Vampyros Lesbos” (1971) is a stylish film with an entrancing psychedelic score. The director’s favorite leading lady, Soledad Miranda, is cast as Dracula’s heir, who haunts the dreams of Linda, an American lawyer working in Istanbul. Where its more mainstream contemporaries drifted into the ridiculous or tawdry, “Vampyros Lesbos” has a transcendent, sophisticated quality that has been attributed to Franco’s expert eye.

Other cult favorites of the era that took a more elevated approach are “Daughters of Darkness” (1971), “The Blood Spattered Bride” (1972) and “Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary” (1975).

Banished to the fringes

Things cooled off considerably in the decades following the lesbian vampire boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Big-franchise horror dominated the landscape, and lesbian vampires were largely banished to the fringes, most often appearing in adult films. But, occasionally, they grabbed the attention of a more artful eye.

Perhaps the most widely beloved lesbian vampire movie came at the beginning of this transition: “The Hunger” (1983). Though some debate its merit as a standalone film, it features one of cinema’s most stylish and talented love triangles: Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. It introduced a new kind of vampiric decadence with its over-the-top fashions and exquisitely cool cast, the influence of which can be seen in later films like “Interview With the Vampire” and “Only Lovers Left Alive.” But it’s best known for the iconic sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon.

Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve in "The Hunger."

©MGM / Courtesy Everett Collection

That sex scene became a coveted jewel for lesbian audiences during the repressive ‘80s. When Dar made a video about classic lesbian films that included “The Hunger,” she said she was reminded of the significance of the film, which also happens to be her favorite of the genre.

“I had a lot of people that were older than me saying, ‘I watched that movie so many times because that was all we really had,’” she said.

Weiss also recalled the fervor around “The Hunger,” like “Daughters of Darkness” before it: “In a way, those were spoofs on the lesbian vampire iconography, done in the art house tradition. They still played with the representation that appealed to men, but they also appealed to women. They were much more ambiguous about the message embodied in the lesbian vampire figure.”

A lesser-known but equally notable film is Michael Almereyda's “Nadja” (1994). It combines surreal, black-and-white visuals with plenty of existential angst. Its impressive cast includes Peter Fonda, Martin Donovan and Elina Löwensohn — as well as executive producer David Lynch, who makes a cameo as a hapless morgue attendant. Even without the lesbian vampires, “Nadja” would be essential ‘90s viewing.
A feminist makeover

In the past few decades, vampires have undergone a massive cultural makeover, becoming more inclusive and socially aware. The late aughts offered one of the more complex vampire films ever made: the Swedish genderqueer romantic horror “Let the Right One In.” And, in more mainstream entertainment, lesbian vampires got a feminist update.

Beginning in the late 2000s, Alan Ball’s wildly popular HBO series “True Blood” (2008-2014) acted as a kind of precursor to the progressive and campy mainstream content that’s now taken over.

Pam from "True Blood."HBO

“True Blood” has it all: vampires, fairies, witches, werepanthers and, of course, Pam. With biting one-liners and a withering stare, Pam mercilessly rules over small-town Louisiana and the vampire nightclub Fangtasia. Thanks to her character and a host of other queer storylines, the series received high marks for representation and won multiple awards from LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD during its star-studded tenure. It was also one of the first productions to feature a Black lesbian vampire in a central role.

More recently, there’s been a slew of offerings characterized by progressive values and questionable quality. The woman-driven Canadian web series “Carmilla” (2014-2016) generated enough interest to be adapted into a feature-length film.

“It’s campy, it’s cheesy, but I love the fact that they reappropriated the lesbian vampire so that it stopped being about this evil predator for the titillation of men,” Dar said. “It’s still sexy, still titillating, but just in a different way.”

A still from "Bit."

Nick Cafritz / Provocator

A growing selection of young adult content has also helped renew interest in the genre. In the feminist revenge thriller “Bit” (2019), the main character, played by transgender actress Nicole Maines (“Supergirl”), moves from Oregon to Los Angeles and connects with a group of queer feminist vampires who target predatory men. And Netflix’s upcoming teen vampire series “First Kill” is generating a fair amount of buzz among lesbian audiences.

While the messaging of the new crop of lesbian-inclusive vampire content is more progressive, many of the newer titles lack the rich cinematic history of the earlier fare — even if the classics did have problematic themes.

“Eventually, we have to stop being happy that things just exist. Things need to actually be good,” Dar said. “I don’t think the appetite has been satisfied. If I’m saying my favorite vampire film was made in the 1980s and it’s 2021, there’s still a lot of room there.”

 VAMPIRE STORY CARMILLA DID EVERYTHING DRACULA DID FIRST

by Shelly Jay

May 25 2021 • 

Thanks to a fortuitous combination of copyright law, family networking, and Bela Lugosi’s suave-as-heck acting chops, the character of Dracula–once a minor character who spent a lot of dusty time on a shelf–has become the most iconic vampire in history. And most of the quintessential vampire characteristics–seduction, glamour, animal transformation (because why not, right?)–we associate with Dracula himself, and Bram Stoker’s novel of the same name.

 

But just like that infamous quote about Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, another vampire has been doing everything Dracula did, backwards and in high heels and for longer than Dracula’s even been around. (For more of Nerdist’s Vampire Week, click here!)

Hammer

 

In 1872, a full 25 years before Dracula hit shelves, J. Sheridan Le Fanu published Carmilla, a dark, psychologically horrific, and startlingly subversive novella that not only came before Dracula, but influenced it. Narrated by its protagonist, Carmilla is what we now consider to be a picture of the vampire plot: Laura, a young woman who lives alone with her wealthy father, befriends Carmilla, a mysterious, beautiful stranger.

They begin an intense, shockingly (for 1872) sexually charged friendship, with Laura finding herself both enthralled and disturbed by Carmilla and her own feelings towards Carmilla’s almost obsessive nature–until, after a series of unexplained deaths of nearby young women and the arrival of a “priestly doctor” (hello, Van Helsing trope, how are you today?) who eventually reveals that Carmilla is in fact Millarca, an ancient vampire who has been preying on young women for decades. Sound familiar?

Elements of Carmilla are all over Dracula, from aesthetics (particularly of female vampires, namely the “rosy cheeks, big eyes, full lips, and almost irresistible sensuality“), to plot points and character tropes (seductive vampire? Check. Confused victims? Check. Knowledgeable vampire hunter? Check.), to narrative framing devices (both written as first person accounts from the victims).

D.H. Friston, 1872

 

While many of today’s fans associate Carmilla with the incredibly queer web series and its equally delightful movie, the genre’s first lesbian vampire has been seducing impressionable girls for nearly 150 years. And looking great doing it. So why, if Carmilla did everything first (and, arguably, better), don’t we consider her the founding queen of the vampire genre rather than its niche, queer cousin?

 

Vampire literature, prior to the days when it was less about fighting for your life and more about dramatically attempting to survive high school with your paranormal boyfriend, was effective as a genre because it capitalized on some of the purest human fears. Of the forbidden, of something “worse than death,” and, perhaps most damning, of the other. “Vampires are our fictional cipher for the outsider, and represent the embodiment of our cultural fears of the unknown,” writer Annabelle Williams explains in her essay comparing the two iconic vampires. But while both texts take the other-as-danger approach, Stoker’s novel comes at it from what would have been, and in many ways still is, a far less threatening angle.

Netflix

 

In addition to being a very scary vampire, Dracula is also a foreigner to British soil. Stoker, an Irish writer, didn’t fail to drape him with subtext about colonialism and Celtic gothic tropes. His predisposition is making more vampires, but also with land deals and empire. But that was nothing compared to the threat that Carmilla, as essentially an erotic thriller, presented to a Victorian reader.

As Williams writes,

“Sure, [Dracula] turns Lucy Westenra into a vampire, but the text itself is more concerned with his real estate holdings and the dynamics of the vampire hunters…Carmilla, however, embodied the otherness of feminine desire and queerness. The taboo of vampirism superseded the taboo of lesbianism. Because she existed outside the social contract, she was allowed to exist as her sultry self. But the threat is still there: this time, though, Carmilla as a character and as a symbol poses a threat to the patriarchy.”

 

Carmen Maria Machado, who edited the 2019 reprint of Carmilla, took it a step further. In a hilarious and mind-bending interview discussing her introduction to the new edition, she took a break from elaborate meta-jokes about LeFanu’s work and her own, Machado says,

“The connection between narratives of vampires and narratives of women—especially queer women—are almost laughably obvious. Even without Carmilla, they would be linked. The hunger for blood, the presence of monthly blood, the influence and effects of the moon, the moon as a feminine celestial body, the moon as a source of madness, the mad woman, the mad lesbian—it goes on and on…It is somewhat surprising to me that we have ever imagined male vampires at all.”

 

The overt female sexuality and lesbian undercurrents of Carmilla may have banished it to the back bookshelves of the genre, but that suppression may actually have saved it. Dracula, despite its fame and prominence, really doesn’t hold up to a modern reader. In her book Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina Auerbach writes that Dracula, for the most part, now functions less as a novel and more as a reference text: “There are many Draculas, and still more vampires who refuse to be Dracula or to play him.” Williams acknowledges this as well, noting that “Stoker’s novel popularized tropes of the vampire myth ranging from garlic to coffins, and the sheer endurance of Dracula as a character put all subsequent Western vampire fictions in conversation with the Count.”

Smokebomb Entertainment

 

But while Dracula has the popularity, Carmilla actually still functions as a novel–and an enjoyable one. Even now, the text holds up as pure psychological horror. From the way Laura, the narrator and Carmilla’s victim, writes about the way Carmilla makes her feel,

 

The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons… It will never desist until it has satiated its passion and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of a connoisseur, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship.” (136) (Girl, are you okay??)

 

to the way vampirism itself is written to originate,

 

“How does [vampirism] begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire.” (138) (Yikes!)

 

Carmilla still works–not just as a story, but as one that is just as seductive as it was when it was originally published. Williams writes, “The animating force behind our interest in vampires is the connection between desire and death, sex and sin.” We think of Dracula as a relic. Carmilla is spared that historical scrutiny in part because it was never as famous as its Transylvanian successor, but also because her story continues to resonate today. The tale of obsession, queer desire, and Gothic intrigue feels as enthralling in 2020 as it did in 1872.

Ads by Kiosked

Pushkin Press

 

Between her much stronger narrative and her incredible potential appeal to lovers of proper sexy vampires, Carmilla is way overdue for a renaissance and the mainstream renown she deserves. While we wait for studios to catch up with what queer fans of the vampire genre already know, love, and write great fanfiction about, the book itself is available any time.

 

Waiting, just like Carmilla herself, to seduce you.

The Classic Universal Vampire Who Deserves a Reboot (That Isn't Dracula)

The classic Universal vampire movie, Dracula's Daughter, and the tragic protagonist, Countess Marya Zaleska, deserve a modern horror reboot.

BY KAY HANIFEN

SCREENRANT

PUBLISHED MAR 27, 2021


The classic Universal horror film Dracula's Daughter deserves a reboot for its fascinating female lead, Countess Marya Zaleska. The 1936 monster movie is the sequel to Dracula — but unlike Bela Lugosi's unapologetically evil Dracula, Countess Zaleska, played by Gloria Holden, is a tragic figure desperate to live a normal life. With the success of 2020's female-centered The Invisible Man reboot reigniting interest in the Dark Universe, Countess Zaleska's story has the potential to offer a fresh take on Dracula, one of the most adapted characters in media.

Inspired by J. Sheridan Le Fanu's novel Carmilla and "Dracula's Guest," a "deleted chapter" of Bram Stoker's Dracula (published as a short story in the collection Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories), Dracula's Daughter begins moments after the previous movie ends. However, due to copyright restrictions, the movie was limited to only using characters from Dracula who appeared in "Dracula's Guest." As a result, the action is mainly focused on Countess Marya Zaleska, who is trying to overcome her "unnatural desires." Eventually, she gives up — accepting her "monstrosity" — and lures the psychiatrist Dr. Garth to Dracula's castle by kidnapping his secretary, Janet. He agrees to trade his life for Janet's, only for Zaleska's manservant to turn on her before Scotland Yard kills him. Garth and Janet are reunited and live happily ever after.

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At seventy minutes, the Universal classic horror movie is short but reveals a lot of potential for the character of Countess Zaleska. It portrays her as a tragic figure fighting against her nature, but still leaves plenty of room for writers and directors to fill in the gaps in her history. Little is known about her relationship with Dracula since he couldn't be prominently featured in the movie. Fleshing out their dynamic offers an opportunity to show a rarely seen-side of Dracula while also giving him a rival who is his equal. Female vampires are often relegated to subservient roles in the Dracula stories, often characterized as his demonic "wives" with very little depth. Dracula's Daughter could subvert that by making the story about the Countess, with Dracula taking up the supporting (or even antagonist) role.

Dracula's Daughter is also notable for its lesbian subtext, which is surprisingly overt for a film made during the Hays Code. Fundamentally, Dracula's Daughter is the story of a woman trying to fight her "unnatural desires" through both religious rituals and modern psychiatry. In 1936, it presented a clear analogy for the experience of being homosexual in America — and the subtext was not lost on the gay community. Zaleska has since become an icon of queer cinema, and she deserves to be celebrated for that in an updated version of Dracula's Daughter. A reboot could thus offer a more modern perspective on the Dracula story while honoring the Countess' queer legacy: such an approach could eschew some of the problematic aspects of linking her queerness to her vampirism and instead tell a story about self-acceptance. With the right writers, Zaleska can become as much of a romantic hero as Dracula in some of his most recent interpretations.

A Dracula's Daughter reboot has the potential to be a strong entry into the Universal Dark Universe while also adding some much-needed female monsters. A Bride of Frankenstein reboot was previously in the works, and the much-maligned The Mummy reboot featured a female take on the classic monster, so remaking a fascinating female vampire would follow the established trend — and may be the perfect addition to the team.