Primer: Erotic vampire films

Robert Eggers’ version of Nosferatu opens with a breathtaking sequence of dark psychosexual romance, as melancholy maiden Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) is beckoned by a mysterious figure out of her bedroom and onto the manicured lawn of a dignified manor home. Her white nightgown billows behind her under blue moonlight, and she moans and twitches, to quote my own review of the film, “in what could either be torment or ecstasy.” The commingling of death and desire in that moment is edgy and erotic, planting a corpse-flower that never quite blossoms during the rest of the film. The philosopher George Bataille argued that death and sexuality are linked, in that each allows a person to escape the prison of the self, either temporarily or permanently. Bataille, a specialist in transgression who wrote several books on the subject, was French. And in his native language, the term for orgasmic bliss is la petite mort—the little death. The trouble with death, of course, is that there’s no coming back from that particular transcendent experience. But what if there was? That possibility is key to our fascination with vampires.

There are two ways you can go with a vampire: The shambling corpse whose very touch brings pestilence, or the romantic bloodsucker offering eternal devotion and desire. (Eggers combines the two in Nosferatu—a bold move, although it’s arguable whether it’s a successful one.) The latter, with their penetrating fangs and commingling of bodily fluids, are sexier to all but the biggest freaks. And entire subgenres exist to cater to this edgy fascination—experiencing the ultimate taboo thrill and getting away with it, by dying and living again—at every level of cinema, from mainstream movies to adult fare. 

Beginner

If you’re primarily interested in the romantic side of vampirism, Count Dracula is your man. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation of the source material, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, should be the first stop for anyone looking to swoon; the lush production design and candlelit cinematography add much to the blushing crimson atmosphere, as do the opulent avant-garde costumes by the legendary Eiko Ishioka. But the characters have more blood pumping through their veins as well: Sadie Frost’s Lucy is positively feral in the role—her seduction by Dracula in his animal form is especially charged—but the romance between Mina (Winona Ryder) and the Count (Gary Oldman) is an all-timer as well. 

That being said, don’t count out the sex appeal of OG Dracula Bela Lugosi. A struggling actor from Hungary, Lugosi starred in Tod Browning’s iconic horror film after playing Count Dracula on the New York stage; as Karina Longworth notes in the “Bela and Boris” series of her podcast You Must Remember This, Lugosi bragged about getting steamy letters from “sexually repressed” young women who saw Dracula on Broadway, and continued to emphasize the character’s sex appeal—and his own as a romantic leading man—when Dracula became a massive hit in the spring and summer of 1931. 

But old-fashioned European nobility isn’t the only kind of vampire waiting to seduce willing viewers. David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve make a statuesque pair as bisexual vampires who troll new-wave clubs for blood in The Hunger (1983), while Bill Paxton’s grimy, bloodsoaked sex appeal is palpable in Kathryn Bigelow’s unfortunately hard-to-find vampire Western Near Dark (1987). A similar dive-bar bawdiness permeates From Dusk ‘Till Dawn (1996), featuring Salma Hayek, an albino Burmese python, and writer/co-star Quentin Tarantino gifting himself a moment where Hayek sticks her foot in his mouth. Or perhaps the slinky nu-metal vibes of Aaliyah in the tub in Queen Of The Damned (2002) might be more to your Y2K-obsessed taste? (Don’t mind the bad reviews from the era—even the one published on this very website.)

Intermediate

While some of the movies mentioned above do contain nudity and sex scenes (you read the premise of the article, right?), they’re still Hollywood fare. Once you’ve watched all of those, you’re going to have to get comfortable with seeing a lot more bare skin, as we break the surface of mainstream cinema and dive into B-movies from the ‘60s onwards. This category is obscenely broad, and encompasses everything from titillating direct-to-video fare like Embrace Of The Vampire (1995) with Alyssa Milano to heady allegorical art films like Bill Gunn’s masterpiece Ganja & Hess (1973). 

This is where you’re going to encounter basically the entire lesbian-vampire subgenre, which—like the many overt and covert Dracula adaptations seen in their straight counterparts—owes a massive debt to a single text: Carmilla, the 1872 novella by Sheridan Le Fanu. The godmother of all Sapphic bloodsuckers takes many forms in cinema; I’ve written extensively about Carmilla and what it means elsewhere. But three adaptations to remember are the campy Hammer production The Vampire Lovers (1970), starring Ingrid Pitt and an eye-popping amount of cleavage; the harder-edged The Blood-Spattered Bride (1972), whose opening sexual-assault scene is tempered by a lesbian vampire commanding her protégé to “destroy his masculinity!;” and Blood And Roses (1960), the most sumptuously shot bisexual love triangle this side of Challengers. 

Beyond Carmilla, there’s Daughters Of Darkness (1971), the classiest lesbian-vampire art-horror movie. Jeanne Dielman herself, Delphine Seyrig, stars as Countess Elizabeth Bathory; the Countess is chilly, imperious, and utterly fascinating, but eternal life gets boring after a while, particularly for members of the idle aristocracy. And so the Countess and her equally listless lover Ilona (Andrea Rau) amuse themselves by seducing a young bride on her honeymoon in an empty seaside Belgian resort in winter. A similar dynamic plays out in Stephanie Rothman’s underrated The Velvet Vampire (also 1971), albeit with a completely different aesthetic: The film takes place in the arid, alien landscape of the California desert, and features cinema’s only—at least, the only one I know about—dune buggy-riding bisexual vampire seductress.

This intermediate space is also home to the major auteurs of naked-vampire cinema: French filmmaker Jean Rollin, who actually made a movie called The Nude Vampire (1970), and Spain’s Jesús “Jess” Franco, whose Vampyros Lesbos (1971) is the ne plus ultra of groovy nonsensical ‘70s softcore smut. Both men liked making movies that placed lithe naked hippie chicks in musty crypts and castles—both were European; they have lots of access to skulls over there—and both specialized in what we’ll call a “dreamlike atmosphere.” But at this stage, it’s best to stay on the surface with established sleazeball classics. 

For Rollin, that means his early quadrilogy of vampire films: The Shiver Of The Vampires (1971) is the best of these, and the most accessible. There’s also Rollin’s masterpiece (and my personal favorite) Fascination (1980), full of ravishing Gothic imagery and incredible dialogue (sample: “You’re beautiful like that. With his blood on your mouth.”) 

Meanwhile, Female Vampire (1973) will serve nicely as an introduction to Franco’s signature quirks and fixations—he had a lot of them, including dizzying zooms into untamed thatches of ‘70s pubic hair—as well as one of the great cinematic love stories: That between Franco and his muse, Lina Romay. They stayed together for more than 30 years, and made 109 movies together. Romay took her clothes off for most of them, well into her middle age, and Franco’s camera regarded her as a goddess. It’s kind of sweet, really.

Advanced Studies

One gateway into the deepest circles of vampiric perversity is to watch actual hardcore pornography. Compared to the legions of softcore movies on the theme, there are fewer “XXX” vampire movies than one might think—only about a baker’s dozen of them exist, often borrowing aesthetics from popular vampire films of their era. When exploring these films, don’t be fooled by a fantastic title: Take The Mad Love Life Of A Hot Vampire (1971) from the notorious Ray Dennis Steckler, whose films, while lovable in their own goofy way, are a tough sit even for avowed trash-heads. 

In the end, there are only two major hardcore vampire movies, and they’re both mixed bags. Gayracula (1983) is pretty much what it sounds like, full of the shag-carpet-and-poppers atmosphere one would hope for in an all-male extravaganza like this one. It’s the giggly, put-on-at-a-party type of porno, with some astonishing touches like blatant musical theft (yes, that is the Young Frankenstein theme) and the line, “want some hot fuck-hole?” 

The second horny cornerstone of this sub-subgenre, Dracula Sucks (1978), takes itself way more seriously, which is too bad. It’s a straightforward Dracula adaptation, which is fascinating in this context, and it stars some of the biggest names of its day. Sadly, these names also try to prove they’re “real actors,” which results in both bad acting and boring sex scenes. If you must, try to find the more explicit 74-minute version, and not the softer, more tedious 94-minute one. 

Given the paucity of XXX vampire movies, allow me to suggest another way in: The more problematic, more explicit, and/or less polished underbelly of vampire exploitation and softcore films. Take Blood For Dracula (1974), which is not a movie I’d recommend to just anybody, despite featuring a delicious camp performance from one Mr. Udo “the blood of these whores is killing me!” Kier as the titular Count. There’s some sort of satire of sexual mores in here, but let’s not mince words: This movie is rapey as hell. 

The lesbian-vampire movie Red Lips (1995) doesn’t have this problem. Instead, this grimy, NYC-shot horror flick belongs to the SOV (shot on video) subgenre, whose grainy VHS aesthetic is so tied to amateurism in the popular lexicon that they require a galaxy-brain approach to what makes a movie “look good.” If you can open your third eye far enough, this is actually a fantastic movie, featuring a powerhouse lead performance from grunge goddess Ghetty Chasun and a genuinely sweet Sapphic romance alongside all the bathtub scenes and Gen-X slacker humor. 

A similar open-mindedness is essential as one digs deeper into the filmography of vampire cinema’s perverted uncle, Jesús Franco. There are those who regard him as a genius; he’s definitely an auteur, with a distinctive shambling surrealism to his films that makes you feel like you’ve OD'd on cough syrup. The sensation gets stronger as Franco started to lose his faculties in the ‘90s and ‘00s—which didn’t stop him from making movies, but did result in brain-boiling SOV deep cuts like 2005’s Snakewoman. 

The Oscarbate podcast recently spent over a year on a mission to watch every one of the 200+ Franco films in existence—let them guide you through the ninth circle of Franco hell. By the time you get to Killer Barbys Vs. Dracula (2002), you may start to feel a familiar, hypnotic sensation: Déjà vu.