Blood and Roses (1960)

(on special assignment by Final Girl and her tremendous site.)

Annette Strøyberg keeps two Hope Diamonds where her eyes should be… big, blue, clear and cursed. It’s a good trick for playing a vampire, and they should teach it in acting class.

As I said, Annette has two Hope Diamonds for eyes, but she has two of other parts as well…. notably (but not MOST notably), personalities.

Annette plays Carmilla Karnstein, of the swingin’ Austrian Karnsteins: she who looks so much like that portrait of Millarca, the ancient vampire Karnstein aunt. And wouldn’t you know it? She walks, talks, thinks, and bites like Millarca, too.
What an identity crisis to befall a dreamy, modern maiden like Carmilla, already beset by crises! Carmilla has enough trouble lusting after her cousin Leopaldo (played by Mel Ferrer with the lisping nonchalance of a Carradine boy) without thinking she's Millarca... and so close to his wedding day! What's worse, it turns out her spiritual tenant is bi-sexual at the minimum. Lucky for her Leopaldo’s fiancée Georgia (Elsa Martinelli) is present with her beautiful swan appendage desperate to be bit.

I say Carmilla talks like Millarca, but, of course, I'm only guessing. I've learned from cruel experience that a body displaced from the Austrian countryside for even 400 years may retain its accent and become governor; so who's to say what Millarca sounds like? Not Roger Vadim (le Autuer). He refuses to tip his hat one way or the other regarding Carmilla's status, possesion-wise: she may be possessed by a vampire, she may be vampire batshit crazy; she may chew on the help like a pro goul, but she will not be seen sprouting fangs.

the help.

So Vadim, like Honest Abe himself, keeps an even brim on his cap; but (I correct myself) it isn't for lack of tipping: it's by tipping both ways simultaneously. Every artful shot in the picture tips toward vampire, but Vadim sprinkles in just enough contemporary pepper (jazzy music, modernspeak of "bitchiness" and other psychology) to sneaze us back to reality. The vampire business is too much fun, though, and in the end, any right thinking audience member wants to will Carmilla into ranks of the undead, evidence be damned. Hell, I'm still holding out that Leopaldo is a crypto-Nosferatian, what with his sonatas and his dark suits.

The Karnsteins would like to have you over for dinner...