A Vampiric, Lesbian Phantasia
Words “erotic” and “horror” often go hand in hand. The human mind can be twisted and perverted, reveling in ambiguity and fluidity of sexuality. Harry Kümel’s Daughters of Darkness (1971) pushes the genre of erotic horror into aesthetic sensuality that relies on phenomenological expressions of both eros and terror.
A newlywed couple, Stefan and Valerie Chilton, are traveling through Europe when they stop in coastal Ostend. Nobody would want to spend cold winter days near the sea, and the grand hotel they choose is proof of that. Stefan and Valerie are the only guests and this alone creates an atmosphere of discomfort.
The arrival of two women quickly adds to the uneasiness Stefan and Valerie are experiencing. It’s nightfall, and a Hungarian countess, Elizabeth Báthory (played brilliantly by Delphine Seyrig) enters the grand hotel with strange familiarity. She’s accompanied by a young girl, Ilona, who appears to be her assistant. They’re in perfect contrast with each other. Ilona is inward and shy, dressed in subdued clothes, while Seyrig channels Marlene Dietrich in order to reveal Elizabeth’s personality.
It’s not hard to immediately conclude that Elizabeth and Ilona are vampires and Stefan and Valerie are the next victims. At first, it seems that Elizabeth has her gaze set on Stefan. She feeds into his penchant for sadism, further alienating Valerie from him. Valerie’s been uneasy about Stefan’s reluctance to introduce her to his mother, and the overt display of Elizabeth’s hold over Stefan and subsequent awakening of inherent sexual sadism further weakens Valerie’s already fragile spirit.
The game commences and Stefan quickly falls under Elizabeth’s spell. Valerie keeps resisting it, especially given the fact that Elizabeth’s psychological influence led Stefan to beat and rape Valerie. Everything Elizabeth does is geared toward not only separating Valerie from Stefan but also forcing her to develop deep hatred toward him, and toward men. After setting the trap for Stefan by persuading Ilona to seduce and have sex with him, Elizabeth pounces on Valerie. All men want the same thing according to Elizabeth. Valerie’s beginning to trust her and slowly moves away from Stefan.
Daughters of Darkness isn’t simply a vampire or erotic film. Kümel creates subtexts upon subtexts. Seyrig’s Marlene Dietrich appearance creates ambiguous sexuality, bringing to mind the games of gender fluidity of Weimar Germany. The brilliant colors, Seyrig’s red lips, and the perversions are reminiscent of Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969). Kümel, however, is more subtle and his take on sexual and vampiric deviancy is aesthetically cleaner. The echoes of darkness are heard through the hotel’s corridors but the opulence is always balanced with vampiric asceticism. Elizabeth’s lesbianism is sexual and erotic only to a certain extent. She’s more driven to lead Valerie (a woman) away from Stefan (a man) in order to continue feeding on the blood of humans. But this feeding takes on many different forms, and the primary mover in this case isn’t gothic vampiricism but gothic, lesbian misandry.
In her book, Sexual Personae (1990), Camille Paglia rightly points out that Daughters of Darkness is not a “splattering” horror movie. It's terror is clean and stylized. It’s what Paglia calls “a classy genre of vampire film… a psychological high Gothic.” In this case, “High Gothic is abstract and ceremonious. Evil has become world-weary, hierarchical glamour. There is no bestiality. The theme is eroticized western power, the burden of history.” She continues, “Butchery is not the point of vampirism. Sex–domination and submission–is. Gothic horror must be moderated by Apollonian discipline, or it turns into gross buffoonery.”
One can’t accuse Daughters of Darkness of buffoonery. Unlike American films, this stylization enhances and elevates human alienation. It’s as if the whole world has died or disappeared, and the four protagonists (including the fearful concierge) are the only people on Earth. Time doesn’t exist, and this is especially true of vampires. The imposition of negative timelessness is always on the horizon, and this immortality is attractive and repellant to the victims. They want to be dominated in some way because they can’t feel life enough. They want to be awakened by the intersection of pain and pleasure. Here, Kümel brings another element: a high-class boredom of the wealthy. Elizabeth is rarely satisfied except when she dominates.
Paglia writes, “Nature, like the vampire, will not stay in its grave.” At the end, Elizabeth’s body is burning, but her evil, vampiric spirit lives on in Valerie. Death is just another entrance, another transition into domination and submission.