When a young woman (Kirsten Lindholm) out performing her chores accepts a ride from an expensive looking coach, she finds herself charmed … by an unearthly and monstrous power. Her blood will bring life back to the long dead and unleash an ancient evil upon the land. Carmilla/Mircalla Karnstein (Yutte Stensgaard) has returned to life forty years after Baron Joachim von Hartog last destroyed her.
Given a place in a local all girls’ boarding school, she will be released into a smorgasbord of nubile flesh and fresh blood … However, as she slakes her thirst, she draws attention. History professor Giles Barton (Ralph Bates) knows quite a bit about her family’s history … but will he be an agent in her destruction or will he become another victim? And while gothic novelist and lothario Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson) is a non-believer in the horrors he writes about, he will soon find himself drawn into strange events and sinister seductions … but will he rise to the challenge?
And the man in black from the first film, here identified as Count Karnstein (Mike Raven), remains in the shadows, orchestrating nightmares while grinning like a madman. Jimmy Sangster takes over the reins from Ray Ward Baker and helms the second entry in Hammer Films’ Karnstein trilogy with a campy gothic horror feature, Lust for a Vampire (1970).
Taken as a standalone picture, Lust for a Vampire is not a bad gothic horror piece. It feels like a fair continuation of the themes and situations Hammer Films was known for in the 1950s. The cast does not include Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee to ground the thing (though Mike Raven does a fair Lee impression whenever he speaks), but it’s not bad. The setup: heroic humans versus evil vampires, go!
Taking this picture as a follow-up to or a continuation of The Vampire Lovers (1970), however, is where the trouble really begins. That film made some interesting strides in its storytelling, bringing a dominant female antagonist to the fore and feeling a freedom with some saucy text and ease with alternate sexualities. It was a piece that was unafraid to make the men look like buffoons and actually slyly made Ingrid Pitt’s Carmilla the real protagonist (she is certainly the most active character; everyone else reacts to her plot advances).
By comparison, Lust for a Vampire loses a lot of the forward movement that piece made. It cannot help but feel like a retreat from something more transgressive than Hammer had been making and a return to much more familiar, safe territory. The protagonist here is a cad, who is more interested in chasing young girls than in interacting with the plot. Sure, LeStrange can be read as a sendup of the chauvinist male at a script level, the film enjoys sharing his gazes and indulgences. He is not so much a flipside to the Man in Black character so much as the same character but with a heartbeat. Gone the presentation of any strong women (though Barbara Jefford’s Countess Karnstein comes close). Gone the ease with presenting character sexuality and thus allows for questioning or bisexual intrigue on camera.
In fact, the production was a troubled one, with producers pushing actors and story elements (as well as an inappropriate pop song in the middle of the picture). The screen story may well have started out as an adaptation of a piece scenarist Tudor Gates wrote for Mario Bava about a killer stalking a girls boarding school. Those elements are where the picture is actually strongest. Having the Karnstein elements added muddles the waters a tad. The internet is choked with numerous “could have been” speculations about directions the picture might have taken, had it used a more seasoned director (Terrence Fisher was tied, but had to bow out due to injuries from a car wreck) and different casting (Peter Cushing would have returned, but he had to tend his sick wife). We can speculate until the cows come home about how different a movie we might’ve ended up with, but in fact the flick we have in the can is the only one we can judge the strengths and weaknesses of.
While the compromises are there, and the casting of Yutte Stensgaard was out of the director’s hands (she was a pick from Hammer bigwig James Carreras after Ingrid Pitt turned down the role), the flick is a fun romp. It doesn’t take itself seriously, and neither can we. There’s a level of camp that works with the various elements, a lovely and colorful visual style thanks to cinematographer David Muir, and a few fun twists and turns in the plot. One of the major characters not at all related to the murders winds up hiding at least one of the bodies in a bid for attention from Carmilla—wanting to become a thrall.
Again, sex is teased here with some dollops of nudity and a love sequence (made utterly baffling by the choice of a pop song to accompany it, trying to compete with 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of all things). The many bared breasts still don’t feel terribly necessary to anything. They were shocking at the time (as well as titillating, of course) but taken in context here, the nudity still tends toward the forced side of the equation.
The performances include several interesting turns.
Ralph Bates cuts a quirky figure as the historian with an interest in the Karnsteins. His character is first introduced when LeStrange goes to the castle (despite or perhaps in spite of numerous warnings to stay away from fearful villagers) as someone who has been visiting the place with a trio of his fetching students. Later, he is a roommate for LeStrange once the author takes up residence at the boarding school, posing as a teacher if English literature. Barton is possessed of the powers of Batman, since he can practically disappear at a moment’s notice.
Michael Johnson plays the cad well and he has some range. The character of LeStrange starts out belittling village superstitions and then gets his wits scared out of him by an encounter at the castle. His attentions fixate on all the lovely girls at the local boarding school, specifically on the Mircalla character (thus the Lust for a Vampire title, which was occasionally changed to Love for a Vampire in some markets). He plays the role with a kind of dry wit, and is utterly believable as the self-absorbed git. In fact, his character honestly believes his claims nineteenth century fiction to be the height of the field (despite this being 1830 and therefore only three decades into the century in question).
The picture includes a few cheeky returns of actors from The Vampire Lovers, including Harvey Hall as a snarky inspector and Pippa Steel as a schoolgirl. Both of the actors played characters who died in that first Karnstein flick, Hall as a butler and Steel as General Spielsdorf’s doomed daughter). So, the odds of them making it out of here are poor to say the least. They brighten the screen when we see them, finding obvious joy with their roles.
Yutte Stensgaard is lovely as the part requires, but she’s not up to the task of playing the part Ingrid Pitt made such an impression with. There’s a coolness and a naivete to the role, which feels somewhat off compared tothe earlier film’s version of a character who takes great pleasure in seducing and sowing suffering.
And Mike Raven makes several odd choices as the Count, including pitching his voice low and speaking in a specific and moderated manner that brings to mind a not-terrible Sir Christopher Lee impression. It’s quirky, a little too comic, and it nevertheless feels oddly appropriate for a character that seems like a third tier Chris Lee character.
Taken on its own, Lust for a Vampire is a silly but entertaining entry in Hammer Films’ school of gothic horror pictures. It has a fun vibe, though some of the thematic elements are a bit hard to accept these days (LeStrange is a creepy, really, and almost impossible to root for). As a part of a larger trilogy playing with J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s famed vampire work and a follow-up to The Vampire Lovers, the picture is much less involving. Instead of continuing to push the envelope (as 1970’s Daughters of Darkness did), it retreats into the more comfortable and familiar territory of a Hammer film from a decade prior (though with nudity).
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Lust for a Vampire is available in Blu-ray and VOD editions.
Next, we will take a look at the more recent film Spiral (2020), which finds a pair of gay parents discovering some unsettling truths about their neighbors. It is currently playing on Shudder and is also available in VOD editions.
Writing for “Karnstein, Part Deux: Lust for a Vampire (1970)” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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