This campy & sexy gothic horror reminds us that the myth of the vampire has always been queer
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we continue our Halloween season exploration of how various horror sub-genres reflect the queer experience with 1970’s The Vampire Lovers.This week, we sink our teeth—or rather, our fangs—into the history of vampires, particularly as the embodiment of queer desire, eroticism, and one of the earliest and most consistent symbols and icons of lesbianism.Although Dracula is undoubtedly the most famous vampire in popular culture (with hundreds of appearances, he is the second most portrayed figure in film history, second only to Sherlock Holmes), and most of the preconceptions of what we think a vampire is and acts like derives from him, Drac’s not the first vampiric figure to exist in fiction.
Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.Before Bram Stoker’s tale in 1897, there were portrayals of vampiric-like characters in poems, weekly penny dreadfuls, and short stories.
Most notably, the 1872 novella Carmilla tells the story of a young woman being preyed upon by a seductive female vampire.Carmilla not only predates Dracula by nearly 25 years, but it is the first embodiment of an archetype that would reappear over and over in film, literature, and other forms of fiction: the alluring and irresistible female vampire that preys over young women and enchants them to either bleed them dry or turn them into one of their own.
Throughout horror history, this trope is used as a way to openly portray same-sex attraction, taboo relationships, and otherwise forbidden desires in a way that would trespass codes and heavy censorship.There have been a handful of film versions of Carmilla over the years, with varying levels of fidelity in the adaptation of the lesbian themes.
