The Karnstein Trilogy is a series of Hammer lesbian vampire films.
- The Vampire Lovers (3 September 1970)
- Lust for a Vampire (17 January 1971)
- Twins of Evil (3 October 1971).
These are all based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella, Carmilla. This book is pretty much where we get the “lesbian vampire” trope. But it works from the earlier trope of vampires feeding on young women. The Victorians were very concerned about young women enjoying sex, and these narrative tendencies are representations of this fear.
The book focuses on the evil deeds of Mircalla Karnstein. She is a vampire who has lived for at least 200 years. The people in the area believe her family destroyed. So she uses two anagrams of her first name: Millarca and Carmilla, from which the title of the novel comes. Her MO is to worm her way into wealthy households. And then she preys on the women in the area. And perhaps most surprising for an 1872 novel, she bites and sucks blood from her victims’ breasts! (This is only done in the first the films.)
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
The first of the Karnstein Trilogy, The Vampire Lovers, is a pretty close adaptation of the book. Marcilla (Ingrid Pitt) and her Countess mother (Dawn Addams) attend a ball at the home of General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing). The Countess must go see a sick friend and leaves Marcilla there. Over the following months, Marcilla slowly drains the General’s niece, Laura (Pippa Steel), of her blood. She disappears after Laura dies. The Countess does the same thing again although it is now with her niece who now goes by the name of Carmilla.
The film is pretty slow going for the first half. And the actions of the characters don’t make a lot of sense, given that everyone knows what’s going on. It is only when the second woman, Emma (Madeline Smith), gets sick that the other characters act appropriately and we get some dramatic momentum.
Of course, this is all part of the plan. The film is very sexy. It was the first Hammer film to feature naked breasts (there’s even a brief view of some pubic hair). This was a big deal for the time. It’s still well-done. But it does make the plot drag.
Another issue is that the plot is clearly a metaphor for the dangers of female sexuality. So at the end, it is only men who are involved with the rescue. It feels pretty lame today.
Just the same, the film works. And it features two decapitations and a wonderfully gruesome staking. One cool bit features a young man throwing a cross-shaped knife at Marcilla, which causes her to fad away.
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
This one looks as good as the first but with an even less compelling script. Fourty years after the events in the first film, the Count (Mike Raven) and Countess (Barbara Jefford) Karnstein resurrect their daughter, Carmilla (Yutte Stensgaard). And then they put her in a finishing school, like you do for 250 year-old women!
A visiting novelist, Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson), sees her and falls madly in love like he just hit puberty. So he cons the English teacher to go out of town so he can teach Carmilla, who goes by Mircalla. Then people start dying with bloody holes in their necks. But it’s early in the film so nothing is done. One of the students goes missing and nothing is done.
Meanwhile, the headmaster, Giles Barton (Ralph Bates), learns who Mircalla is and pleads with her to let him serve her. But she just kills him. And LeStrange sleeps with Mircalla because she seems to actually be in love with him. Not that you can tell. Stensgaard is a very limited actor.
Eventually, the dance teacher (Suzanna Leigh) takes action bringing the missing student’s father, the police, and ultimately the whole town to address the problem. LeStrange rushes to save Mircalla, even though he has known that she is a vampire. But she dies when a burning beam impales her. But her parents live, apparently with the idea of setting up the third film.
Even more than the other films, this one feels very much like a Doris Wishman nudie-cutie. There’s even a scene early on with all the girls arrayed on steps wearing colorful gowns as you would see in a nudist camp film. This is fine. And all the women in the film are beautiful. But other than a large selection of naked breasts, you could see all this in a prime-time TV commercial. And this really does negatively affect the film’s pacing. It isn’t even like The Vampire Lovers, where we at least get an exciting second half.
Another problem is LeStrange as the main character. He isn’t likable. The English teacher he tricks is pretty cringe, but what LeStrange does is mean. And it is all so he can get close to a young schoolgirl. I was extremely disappointed that he wasn’t killed at the end. Instead, it is implied that he lives happily ever after with the dance teacher.
Lust for a Vampire isn’t terrible. It is quite watchable. But it is unaffecting. Ralph Bates’s performance is the only thing here that really stands out. And there isn’t much of it here.
Twins of Evil (1971)
The Karnstein Trilogy ends with Twins of Evil. It breaks with the plots of the first two films. It seems very much like screenwriter Tudor Gates just grafted the Karnstein mythos on to an existing idea (ie, something involving sexy twins).
Orphaned twins (Mary & Madeleine Collinson) move to Karnstein to live with their kind aunt (Kathleen Byron) and fundamentalist uncle, Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing). He spends his time trying to destroy vampires as the leader of the Brotherhood, even though he really just burns alive sexually active young women. The main emotional throughline in this film is wanting to see this small-minded demagogue killed.
Anton Hoffer (David Warbeck) is the good young man and romantic lead. In contrast, Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) is the antagonist. He sacrifices a young woman to Satan, who sends Mircalla to turn him into a vampire. Very soon, he turns the “bad” twin, Frieda, into a vampire. Ultimately, the Brotherhood captures her. But Karnstein switches her with the good twin, Maria. She is only saved by the heroic Anton.
This is the strongest film of the Karnstein Trilogy. The plot hangs together and the characters are strong. But it is the least sexy of the films despite starring the Collinsons, who were the first twins to be Playmates of the Month in Playboy. It also suffers from featuring a banal lead vampire.
The biggest problem with Twins of Evil is that it isn’t a lesbian vampire film. It’s a pretty standard tale of a male vampire preying on young women. The fact that one of the women is keen for this doesn’t matter all that much.
The Karnstein Trilogy Today
Ultimately, I think this trilogy is weak. All the films are sexy but that isn’t much of a selling point today. And it comes at a high cost. The plots are over-complicated. They lack momentum. And it’s largely hard to care all that much about the character.
Apart from the scripts, Hammer did an excellent job producing these films. But Hammer long worked by creating very sober and even high-brow films that included violence and blood as a shocking element. When they introduced nudity, it was not for shock value. In fact, it is well-integrated into these films and seems very normal. But this went with a reduction in violence and blood. And so the stories just lay on the screen with little passion.
But I don’t blame Hammer. They needed to try. And they produced three very watchable films. But they don’t compare to the best of the Dracula series. If you look around the internet, you will generally find positive reviews. But I think this is just because they are Hammer films. The individual films have been poorly released on disc and available for streaming only on commercial-supported sites like Tubi. And the trilogy itself has never been released as such. I think that says it all.
The Vampire Lovers (1970) poster via IMDb under Fair Use. Lust for a Vampire (1971) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use. Twins of Evil (1971) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.
