this is the original lesbian vampire page, but i transplanted it here to a separate page so i could use the index properly. i was a victim of scope creep. oh well.
my watchlist comes mostly from the wikipedia article and a lot of scrounging around. i once said (and i quote) "i've no intention of sucking the trope dry" but i think that ship has sailed. i am just some lesbian guy who likes vampires, not a media scholar. these are also not ranked, although some i'll "objectively" recommend as movies (marked with a 🦇), and some not necessarily, unless you're really going into the rabbithole.
for further reading, check out the chapter on vampires in andrea weiss' vampires and violets: lesbians in film.
last updated: 03/11/2024 — la novia ensangrentada (vicente aranda, 1972)
aka: blood and roses
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
available: rarefilmm — german dvd
horny rating: tame. a single boob (it's french)
in name only -ish adaptation of carmilla. wikipedia calls it erotic horror which it most definitely is not, the same way i didn't find carmilla as homoerotic as people'd have you think (like, she is the lesbian vampire blueprint but you're not getting much of her vampire lesbianing at all). once you put those things aside and take it for what it is, however, it's a nice and visually quite beautiful, subtle vampire film. it's set in modern day, but the isolated european estate also puts it in a somewhat timeless bubble, which i always enjoy aesthetically.
i wonder about the choice of possession by an ancestor. it's interesting to have this vampirism as something that arises from within, rather than transmitted. carmilla adaptations are an odd bunch. there aren't many, and i have yet to find one that feels like it makes good use of the story's setting, laura's extreme isolation, the relationship between her and carmilla. i'm overdue for a re-read — perhaps i myself am creating a different carmilla in my brain, but i think it's a good source material for an exploration of female monsterhood like ginger snaps for example, but through gothic horror. (btw i'm writing this after having watched the 2019 adaptation).
keep in mind however that the version i was able to watch is not the original release, which is 9 minutes longer. read the comments on that rarefilmm link. maybe i'd be more favorable towards the uncut version. this one doesn't resonate with me much on a thematic level, nor does it have enough schlock to be a fun romp, but i don't think it's bad at all.
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
horny rating: don't remember, somewhere between nudity and softcore i think
there's an uncanniness to the clear regency setting paired with the extremely 1970 hair and makeup. it's a little charming though — except for the occasional zipper. anyway, it's a decent movie, if a little convoluted. i think carmilla is a hard source material because it's kinda... not good. thank god for lesbianism making the adaptations more fun.
aka: cemetery girls
horny rating: softcore-ish? again, don't quite remember
classic setup: a young couple is invited to a secluded desert estate. and oooh i loved it! it's not perfect, and there's some anti-indigenous tropes in there for some reason, but it has a lot going for it. diane is gorgeous and her character is really compelling (well, within the constraints of the movie), and the use of red is beautiful. recommended, but i could fix it (make it queerer).
aka: las vampiras
available: internet archive
horny rating: softcore
watched it in german with spanish captions, which i'm fairly sure is a dub, but i dunno if that's original or not (like how nosferatu the vampire has both english and german versions, although scenes were actually re-shot for the english version — but i don't think all of them were? idk i watched it in german. anyway tangent over). whatever. the story is not very good — a vampire that lures women to her island and stuff, nothing revolutionary here —, but it's artsy and sexy, it has some gorgeous use of red, two strip sequences, and like. it's what it says in the tin, what the fuck do you expect from a 1971 european movie called vampyros lesbos? it's cool.
available: internet archive
horny rating: mostly just nudity
once again, a young, newlywed couple, in a massive, empty european hotel. beautifully shot, with gorgeous gorgeous use of bright vivid red and a stunning vampire. and this is the first time i see a vampire that hates running water! i say vampire but the movie is rather discreet and coy about it, which i quite liked.
aka: the shiver of the vampires
available: internet archive taken down
horny rating: softcore-ish, but not particularly sexy
first thing about this movie is it has a killer soundtrack, and often very pretty cinematography. surprisingly i even like the husband in this one (yes, young couple, isolated european estate), he's kinda got butch swag. of all the 1971 lesbian vampire movies i watched in 2022, this was probably the weakest (and least sexy, and really only a "lesbian" movie on a technicality imo), but it's also quite good. it's like a 3 and a 9 at once, and i recommend it just for how silly it gets at times, if nothing else.
aka: requiem for a vampire, caged virgins
available: internet archive taken down
horny rating: gets to be straight up erotica, but not when it comes to the lesbians >:(
the story is lightweight at best, the two protagonists end up in a castle full of vampires, and are chosen to become vampires themselves, as the patriarch is getting old and weak and needs uh fresh blood to keep the uh bloodline (un)alive. absolutely nothing to write home about as a movie — horror, vampire, erotic, or otherwise.
the movie takes what feels like forever to set itself up, and it's a really weird nonsensical intro at that. but the clown costumes are pretty cute. rollin's costumes kinda slay overall. one of the female vampires is serving Hard, slaying absolute penis, should have gotten the full 90 minutes of screen time etc., especially on the 18th century menswear she first appears in. very gabrielle de lioncourt.
as far as the lesbian vampire trope goes however, no clue why this was even on the list. extremely heterosexual movie. please let the hot woman vampire go crazy on those titties like the men do or so help me god.
aka: the blood spattered bride
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
available: tubi (english dub)
horny rating: average nudity
the story has nothing to do with the book it's based on, but it's a pretty straightforwardly a movie about men's control, abuse and subjugation of women, making it a pretty good thematic adaptation of carmilla.
the theme is present from the very beginning, when we see our newlywed couple arriving at a hotel, on their way to the husband's mansion (? castle?). the wife, susan, has a vivid vision of being killed and raped by a man, her wedding gown torn. once they get to the castle, her husband tears the dress in exactly the same way.
carmilla here appears both as a representation of susan's hatred of her controlling husband, and as a supportive friend and lover helping her realize the extent of her unhappiness and how to free herself from it / him. both of them are blood spattered brides. and again, it's a very good depiction of her, though she doesn't appear that much.
now. while this is a compelling movie, especially for the first two acts, don't misunderstand me. this ain't exactly a feminist masterpiece. it dips into man-hating lesbian territory, putting the viewer / narrative into the husband's perspective as soon as susan really starts turning into herself. no longer about the psychological horror of heterosexual marriage, the movie turns towards how much it'd suck if your wife was a lesbian that hated you. i suppose this is also accurate to the book's structure huh.
overall, a pretty interesting entry on the lez-v history, even if i'm not granting it the recommendation bat.
available: youtube (85 minute cut)
horny rating: n/a
goes without saying that the lesbian vampire deeply overlaps with, and perhaps is even a subset of, the predatory lesbian trope. i guess you could argue that's one reason it's so prevalent in the first place (another being of course sexploitation). nowhere is this as evident as in this movie, since the core of it is the titular vampire preying on 13-year-old lila lee — her past victims having all been girls around her age. even before any vampires appear, lila is already being preyed upon by men as well; while there is thankfully no physical abuse, the threat repeats itself.
i bring up the predatory lesbian, but i don't hold it against the movie. predation is the entire point and theme afterall. lemora is a different type of vampire from the others in this page. she already holds so much power over lila — lila is already so vulnerable — that she doesn't even need her vampirism to control her.
oh i don't know what i'm trying to say in this review / comment. although i didn't quite like it, it's an interesting movie. the version i watched cuts twenty entire minutes of runtime, and you can feel it. in praise of shadows talks about this on his video about it, i don't think the uncut version can be found online. at least not without more digging than i feel inclined at the moment.
aka: der fluch der schwarzen schwestern, vampire ecstasy, veil of blood, plaything of the devil, the curse of the black sisters. ← that's how you know you're watching genuine trash cinema
available: tubi (uncut, as vampire ecstasy)
horny rating: softcore
this one goes past erotic horror into just. horror themed erotica, which is fine, but the plot is so thin and the movie so monotonous — turns out there is in fact such a thing as too many frontal shots of boob grabbing. sure the women are beautiful and their heavy 70s makeup slays but that's just juvenile, do something else. i stopped midway through not to jack off but to make a bagel sandwich. that's not a good sign! you made lesbian vampire porn boring!
the vampirism is super lacking too, this a bloodless affair. the story is explicitly about a cult's plans to revive the spirit of a vampire baroness killed by the nearby villagers, so she can have revenge on the descendants of said villagers. they have some magical powers achieved through lesbian sex rituals, mostly just making people horny and controlling / influencing their actions? which is like. a hypno porn premise i guess. but it could work really well for vampire powers on a genuine horror movie. come on give me some fake blood already. even after the baroness is revived on another woman's body, she doesn't feel like a threat at all, in no small part because we never got reason to care about these characters. and we still don't really get blood and deaths or anything. boo. hiss.
in short, this would be a pretty good movie to post stills and gifsets of on tumblr, but nothing else. an hour and forty minutes is a lot man.
available: internet archive
horny rating: softcore
a young couple camps on their van in the woods, near a dilapidated estate, the woman feeling uneasy about the general atmosphere, and in particular of two women (who're the lesbian couple of the movie, rather than a single vampire seducing female victims) she saw in the road. she's obviously right. a man gives one of these women (fran) a ride home, gets seduced, wakes up disoriented with a cut in his arm, you know how it is. if there's one thing about 70s movies is that there'll be hitchhiking. seems to have been an efficient method of getting victims as an attractive female vampire.
this movie has a really nice soundtrack and atmosphere, and sometimes there are some fixed shots framed in that delightfully voyeuristic way, like in the best fixed camera videogames. it's somewhat unexpected in a movie where no one is actually being stalked or observed (as in a slasher), but i'll take it.
it's a pretty good movie. i wish we saw more of harriet (the young wife), and of fran and miriam's relationship (particularly miriam's character, she's quite charming. although to be fair it was her first acting role). the kill / feeding scenes are mostly also sex scenes, and it really nails them, although i feel they can end somewhat abruptly, like they were cut from a longer or more explicit version.
aka: female vampire
available: internet archive
horny rating: it's erotica
countess irina is the protagonist and the vampire and instead of blood she needs to drink sexual fluids. vampirism here is a family curse, which makes me wonder how that works? well, i guess only oral sex kills the victim. anyway, i feel the best way to approach this movie is to split this review by theme.
the story is really fucking flimsy. we never really get to know the characters enough to care, and while the deaths are more or less being investigated that has no stakes at all. i think irina's story of fearing intimacy due to killing everyone she fucks could be a very compelling tragedy. are there any erotic tragedies? most likely. need to seek them out. but yeah, a lot of the 104 minute runtime is sex, which is the point, but doesn't quite help with the absense of story.
the sex is very beautifully shot (like the rest of the movie! this is a gorgeous movie!). franco was great at erotism. despite this being the hardcore cut (at least i think it is from the runtime), it's not as explicit as i'd have thought. not a criticism, just bringing it up. it's still nice, and irina's autoerotic scenes are beautifully tragic (there's one at around the 50 minute mark that's my favorite part of the movie probably). also the eponymous countess' breasts are in fact eponymously bare for much of the movie. like he really wasn't lying with that title.
the horror isn't. i think a monstrous protagonist can still make for effective horror, but there isn't really any tension. god there isn't even any blood! which. i mean it makes sense since she's not really a blood vampire but idk. a little disappointing. plus, all her kill scenes are also sex scenes and they're accompanied by a bossa nova version of her theme (except for the climatic (?) one where it's just silent until her usual theme kicks in because it's meant to be sad that she kills him) so um. you're not really tense about them. honestly i think the tragic climatic sex might have been the most tense of the bunch just because of the soundtrack. honestly wouldn't even call the film horror-themed. vampyres had much better sucking-while-fucking scenes, even if the cinematography wasn't as good.
the lesbian vampirism could have been much better utilized (or rather used at all!), specially when it comes to the theme of isolation and fear of intimacy. again, this really ought to have been a full blown tragedy like la morte vivante. and honestly i think you're doing yourself a disservice when you make a vampire movie in name only like this one. the kills are all purely clean, she walks in daylight, and while she does transform into a bat (off screen, but i don't begrudge the lack of budget) that's pretty inconsequential. so this can only be in this list on a technicality all things considered.
aka: lips of blood
available: internet archive taken down
horny rating: very. frequent and gratuitous nudity :)
this one should not be here, and i'm only including it because it was on wikipedia's list — i have removed it to save others the annoyance.
so, quick summary and review: this isn't a vampire movie in the traditional sense. there are plenty of vampires but that's mostly inconsequential tbh. the story follows a man who encountered a strange woman one night in his childhood, and is reminded of this fact by seeing a photo of the ruins where this happened. he then starts seeing visions of her. and shows himself a little too eager to open random coffins. the story is thoroughly mid (if i'm being generous), and features no lesbian vampires whatsoever. boo. hiss.
there's a rare hardcore version of this film called suce moi vampire, that rollin kinda disavowed. the post has a still with two women about to kiss, so maybe that's why the movie wound up labeled as featuring the trope, but i also kinda doubt that. one of life's mysteries.
available: internet archive taken down
horny rating: softcore but don't get excited
this is a period piece, and while the costumes are as beautiful as i've come to expect from rollin, you can't really tell it's 1905. anyway, a thief with some gold coins (fairly unimpressive prop tbh, i'd have at least tripled the amount) flees from a rival gang (?) into a castle, where there are two women who more or less aid him. stuff happens involving the gang, but that's got nothing to do with the vampires themselves. once the sun sets and he's safe from the gang, he's invited to stay for the owner's reunion / party / ritual, and we get more or less to the vampire part.
the first five or so minutes have a lot of (aesthetic) promise but it's a very very boring movie. the two halves of the movie feel quite disconnected, and there isn't much horror or killing in either, although the second half is better. it feels almost like it could have been fixable, but i struggle to think of something better than just turning it into morgane et ses nymphes (1971) but with vampires. that would still mean a mediocre movie come to think of it, but we'd get rid of the terrible male lead (which i was not expecting would become the lead) and replace him with eva and elizabeth as leads (which feels like the movie wants them to be). as it stands, there's not much in terms of vampirism and the lesbianism is so limp that i think it's more objectionable than sexploitation.
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
available: youtube
horny rating: chaste
so. this is a polish tv movie. i do not understand a word of polish. there are no subtitles in any language. so yeah, i'll judge this purely on aesthetics and making use of my knowledge of the original story (and other movie interpretations of it).
it is quite beautiful, with great shot compositions. candles leave a ghostly trail which i don't know if is simply a quirk of the filming or an intentional choice but looks very pretty regardless. the vampiric power sequences make incredible use of the likely budget of two cents and a piece of lint — the repetitions and rewindings feel very unreal.
as for the story, it pares down the novella a bit, but hits the main plot beats. the dynamic between laura and carmilla is also overtly homoerotic and lands pretty well. of course, not much to say here since i understood basically none of the dialogue.
all in all, i think it's a shame i couldn't properly understand it. were i skilled in the audiovisual department i'd love to edit it into a silent movie, with a funky soundtrack filled with distortion. hmm shoegaze carmilla silent movie yum! god imagine if we had gotten a german expressionist carmilla adaptation. (look i know vampyr (1932) is a loose adaptation and it is in my watchlist regardless of that, but seems that they removed the lesbian overtones so.)
anyway yeah! give this one a watch if you're deep into the weeds of carmilla! and please please let me know if subtitles exist.
aka: the living dead girl
horny rating: full nudity, mostly tame
catherine valmont rises from the dead. she's less the typical vampire and more a revenant — she kills and drinks blood but her demeanor is that of a hollow creature, a ghost of her former self. she's haunted by a profound sadness at her own death, and yearning for her childhood love, helene. theirs is a beautiful beautiful blood-drenched tragedy.
although the effects are dubious, the blood is the most beautiful vivid red and this is truly a good movie that deserves a cult classic status, at least within the tragedy and horror and self-destruction obsessed lgbtq demographic. apparently there's a 64-page essay booklet that came with a dvd release which i'd love to take a peek at. however the blurb on amazon's page (it's unavailable anyway) swaps helene's name with that of another character, so that seems a little fishy. regardless, really enjoyed the movie.
adaptation: the hunger, whitley strieber
horny rating: occasional softcore. it's sexy. don't lose hope!
sexy little movie with a sharp artistic direction. i'd split the story in two acts: in the first, we follow a vampire's lover, who despite his immortality finds himself rapidly aging; in the second, we have the medical researcher who becomes the vampire's new target. both acts are quite compelling even if they don't entirely mix with one another.
the movie's aesthetic is definitely its strongest suit, with visuals and music both working very well together. it's gorgeous and moody, which goes well with it being more thriller and drama than horror. the aesthetic value alone is enough for me to recommend it.
i will say though. what is it about vampire media and white ancient egyptians. they're very brief flashback scenes but man is it weird.
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
available: youtube
horny rating: chaste
part of the nightmare classics anthology tv series, this adaptation gets a little loose but still recognizable as its source material. it's set around the us civil war and handles the black characters painfully stereotypically. one of the moments near the end where marie (laura)'s mother is revealed to have been turned into a vampire is baffling. otherwise, however, i think this is quite good. it often has the feeling of a fairytale, reminding me somewhat of labyrinth (1986) (← guy whose brain chemistry was shaped by watching it religiously growing up).
this page (currently, as i write this) starts with a carmilla adaptation, and as i say a lot, they baffle me a bit in general. i think the thing about them is the story predates dracula, but all adaptations were made in a world where the latter is the platonic vampire. i think this tension is pretty evident here, and it's quite interesting on the meta-level. the story is mostly about the homoerotic friendship between marie and carmilla, but the men in the narrative work to twist it into a dracula-like, marie made into a helpless mina. i doubt this was the intention, but i don't think i'm reading too deep either.
errata: when i wrote this (june 2023) it had been a year since i'd read the novella. and i uh. misremembered it. by saying laura is made into a mina i meant, of course, not book mina, but the perception of her as a damsel in distress. the thing is, however, i remembered that rather backwards. laura is entirely stripped of her agency in the latter half of the book, and this movie is absolutely faithful in recreating the feeling i had when (re)reading — the story derailed by men, laura pushed to the wayside, carmilla no longer afforded dialogue or personhood or anything. so while this makes the movie kinda lame in my eyes for not reimagining this aspect of the book, it's also not quite its fault.
although i didn't give it a bat, i do think this is a pretty valuable watch, for a certain kind of person at least. it's not the most aesthetically interesting (well. it is an absurdly low quality copy) or anything particularly impressive story-wise, but it brought me a new perspective.
available: rarefilmm.com, internet archive
horny rating: tame
a textural movie, as promised by my bloody valentine playing as soon as the movie begins. the low resolution pxl 2000 footage used in parts is, of course, stunning and made exactly for me. and it reminds me of how dracula is fuzzy in shinichi sakamoto's #drcl midnight children. it distances us from the events being shown, and adds a dreamy layer.
i bring up style before i do story because it doesn't bring much new to the table in that regard. not that it's uninteresting — i loved nadja's character in particular, i love a melancholic vampire — just that it isn't what makes the movie stand out. it's on the drama rather than horror side of things; while nadja is dracula's daughter (and hates his guts), vampirism is just another thread in the multi-fiber tapestry that is this movie.
by the way, rarefilmm's summary is incredibly strange, describing another movie entirely.
horny rating: quite a bit, mostly in the wrong ways. it's painfully hetero. plus the movie is unsexy.
the nature of time means this review will spoil my thoughts about the next one. oh well: can the 2000s redeem themselves after night fangs (and the non-vampire lesbohorror haute tension)? um. not really no.
ok so here's the movie structure / summary. 2004 canada. elizabeth bathory (one and only) kills a cop's wife. big mistake because now i am forced to watch a cop action protag fighting to convict her and prove his innocence as she makes him look more and more suspicious and my eyes start glazing over because i don't give a shit about any of that. get this pig out of my screen oh my god. the dykeish swagged girl with the glasses would be a much better protag in every single way, just make her 21 or whatever and we're golden. this is fucked.
now. yes part of that is just personal genre taste mostly. i think action cop revenge movies suck shit, and this isn't a particularly good one, but a certain kind of man would eat it up. more importantly, it doesn't feel like that's what it's going for at first, and then it pulls the rug out from under you and now you're stuck with him instead of watching an european vampire do her thing!! god they don't even let her fuck the women she's seducing? she kills far too soon. play with your food please and thank you. honestly even beyond tongue in cheek horniness, i genuinely think the movie doesn't give the vampirism scenes enough time to breathe.
and it's a shame! i think there's potential here, really clear for the enlightened (lesbians) to see... even if you keep the detective thing, make the lead a regular woman who's drawn into investigating the disappearing women, have her be seduced by the countess, some mutual destruction cat and mouse style. pretty basic stuff. dial down the orientalism too it's fucking bizarre that they go to venice to have "odalisques" at a party? what the fuck is going on and what does italy even have to do with any of this, bathory was hungarian. least racist francocanadian i have to assume.
available: tubi, ridiculously low quality. not that you should bother
horny rating: some nudity but it's rather sexless imo. too bad and boring to be horny
oh yeah this is trash. this is garbage. one of the (1 star) imdb reviews is titled "ooh unpleasant" and while i disagree with some its reasoning i love that sentence. though i'd use it for horror that i like instead. well let's get to it.
so, lesbian professors lupe and jennifer intend to gain eternal life. well, lupe more than jennifer. their inspiration is the one and only countess bathory (her pop culture interpretation anyway), and they kill a virgin to bathe in her blood and become vampires. it works but... not exactly as intended. they're animalistic vampires (in behavior, not appearance), and the story shifts the focus away from them immediately, so they get absolutely no pathos or depth or literally anything. the protagonists are then just Some Guys (they're students). and they're not guys i care about in the slightest.
dialogue (and acting) and character motivation is sooo bad. it's interesting that there's no easy way to pin-point what makes for fun entertaining garbage and what makes awful grating garbage. even beyond the purely utilitarian style being boring as all hell, it makes every character sound the exact same. it's also extremely and overtly homophobic in such a trite and juvenile way that the overall feeling is that a 9th grade bully wrote it to mock me.
this movie unashamedly hates its women. the first three vampires are lupe, jennifer and the girl they sacrifice, amy. their first victims are a group of five, of which the two girls get unceremoniously axed, while a guy gets turned (and the two other guys leave unscathed). and that guy speaks rationally when he's hit by the sun, and is cared for by the other characters, and becomes one of the new protagonists (at least i think that's him, it's hard for me to tell). while the women are just. effectively gone.
some bad movies are just bad cinema, good ideas that failed, bad ideas that tried. this is not that though. this is the godawful shit tier school project of your most unpleasant classmate.
adaptation: the moth diaries, rachel klein
available: youtube, 360p
horny rating: uh chaste but also more or less explicit in acknowledging the sexuality of it? but also the protagonist / pov character isn't the one being bloodsucked and also they're 16
putting aside the moments 20 minutes in where a teacher (who's a creep. BEGONE) looks at the camera and tells us of the themes in classic vampire fiction. and the absolute trenches of early 2010s aesthetics. and the rather shallow approach i believe might not be in the book (which i'll check out at some point). this is exactly the sort of stuff suited for lesbian vampire fiction. all-female isolated setting! weird friendships that definitely have no erotic undertones to them! sex and bloodsucking as intrinsically linked!
we could have had it all is what i'm saying.
they should show this movie to as many young girls as possible and then give them unlimited funds and see what art comes of it. tbh.
yeah in all seriousness: this movie has a great premise as it shows the vampire predation from the eyes of a third party who's jealous as hell of the whole thing, whether she'd admit it or not. but it fails when it doesn't really get deep enough into her psyche and relationships. it brings a lot of things to the table and then just kinda leaves them there, uneaten, attracting flies? also i think rebecca should be wayy more repressed, especially as a contrast to the rather laissez-faire airs of her classmates and up to an extent the school itself.
also i think it pairs well with styria for comparison's sake. similar time period and (up to an extent) themes, but that one has a much better execution.
aka: curse of styria, angels of darkness
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
available: i downloaded it from zoechip
horny rating: chaste
set in 1989, in a rotting, crumbling castle, this movie looks muted and moody as all hell. i don't usually favor desaturated movies like this (i favor expressionistic monochromes or argento colors, no in-between), but here it works very very well and you can tell it was a conscious choice.
i love lara's characterization. she truly feels like the core of the movie, and is very centered from the start. rather than living in styria her whole life, we start the movie with her and her father moving into the castle. we don't really know much of her past, besides the fact that she was recently expelled from a boarding school, but what it felt like to me (← projecting) is that she grew up somewhat isolated from her peers, and now we have a geographic isolation as well. regardless, even as she is restricted, the sense of agency her character is given here is really good.
the movie uses carmilla as a stepping stone for a different story. i haven't watched much folk horror, so i won't ascribe that label to it, but it is definitely country gothic territory, and quite good at that. vampirism takes a bit of a back seat (i have my qualms about the idea mentioned by the director that we have to subvert vampirism for it to stay relevant — the tropes are only silly if you don't take your own movie seriously! —, but i digress), but its subtlety works alongside the other themes of repression and isolation.
really reccommend this one! it can get a little bit clumsy here and there but it's got a lot of good in it. warning for self harm and suicide though, be mindful if those trigger you.
really made me crave lebanon hanover, if you're curious as to what i'm listening while writing this review.
available: tubi
horny rating: just nudity (including the elusive penis)
since it's influenced by 70s european lesbian vampire movies, i was excited to get to this one, and i waited until i had more than a few of those under my belt. it was fun to catch the references (it even has the unavoidable sheer pastel polyester robes) and all but i'm gonna judge it on its own merit.
this is a fantasy movie, the setting being entirely disconnected from reality, which makes it quite unique and off-kilter. you can never really get a foothold of normalcy, which is always interesting in a movie.
there's also a level of B-movie camp that's honestly just not fun enough to hold its own weight. i wish it instead leaned into the more arthouse side of its inspirations, which would also strengthen the feeling of a fairytale that it has. it's a stylistic choice i ultimately respect on an ideological level but by god it makes the movie hideous. the movie looks protestant. you don't want your vampire movie looking protestant.
i debated whether i should give this one a bat or not, but the more i thought of it the less it deserved such a stamp of approval. it is unique enough that it deserves to be highlighted, but i simply don't think it's actually good or particularly enjoyable. it feels like it could have been, and the premise is fresh, however that's just not enough. it doesn't even have tribadism.
oh yeah, let's talk about lesbianism. look, i can be lenient with older movies (and often i don't even have to! that's why i even have a horny rating in this page to begin with). however the year is 2016. we're past blue is the warmest color, it's the year the handmaiden came out yknow. they can explore each other's bodies. suck a lil' titty. jesus they could at least make out more than once (at least when it happens they're all bloody 😳). we can get sexy with it. maybe sexploitation is passé but erotism is forever!
all in all, it's a disappointing movie. you're better off watching the movies that inspired it. hopefully in the coming years we get to see more things drink from that well and produce better results.
adaptation: carmilla, sheridan le fanu
horny rating: chaste (there's just kissing)
only putting it in this page because it's technically an adaptation (the only one with carmilla as the actual title in fact correction: there are two tv movies — the 1989 nightmare classics adaptation as well as a 1980 polish one. but if you're reading this in order you already know that. sorry for spreading misinformation online) and it feels appropriate. the movie doesn't just play coy with vampirism: it's not even there at all, left up to interpretation. carmilla gets treated as a vampire but there isn't any real evidence; if you were to ask me, i'd say she's not, the myth of the vampire used as a scapegoat by the governess. which is thematically fitting when it comes to the vampire anyway. not that it matters! leaving it ambiguous was a choice, the question doesn't need answering.
i cannot put my finger on it but i didn't care for this movie's costumes and overall styling. they just feel noncommittal and impersonal. swagless even. even beyond historical accuracy or whatever. it does have some great close ups of insects though, which is always nice. i like the overlapping of sexual and medical imagery too, it makes a lot of sense for an isolated girl like lara, your hands on another person's guts as the ultimate intimacy. shame there isn't more of it, and the theme is more or less dropped. the movie keeps itself grounded and lowkey, but tbh i'd amplify this angle into the core aesthetic and lens through which to develop lara and carmilla's relationship. mostly because i love it when girls kill.
overall, the movie is a pretty decent if forgettable gothic romance, which isn't a bad thing to be. i'm sure it's a hit with the sapphic teen crowd.
horny rating: chaste (lame)
so this movie's been on my radar for longer than i've actually known of the trope, and i never bothered, as it so often happens. wasn't missing out on anything. like i say about a lot of (especially queer) mediocre stuff, i'd probably have liked it in high school, before i had a better frame of reference.
the minor stuff: positive — yeah duke is quite hot 😳. negative — i'd like to have a word with the costume, makeup and hair departments. please for the love of god this should have been the butch vampire movie. or at least a wee bit more dykeish. they would not all fucking pluck their eyebrows and wear eyeliner and massive mascara'd lashes. get rid of all the skinny jeans too. WHERE'S THE HOT BUTCH VAMPIRE. I'M STARVING.
now for more important matters: what's this movie like..... trying to do. not even gonna get into genre because i made peace with not every vampire movie being horror (or romance, post-twilight) so yeah let it be coming of age fantasy whatever. my issue is with themes and story. it feels like it really wants to say something, do a little girl power feminism, if we're being charitable even criticize girl power feminism for its frequent gender essentialism but it never commits fully, so it's more like a messy "maybe feminists are right but they're too mean :(" thing?
ok let's summarize first. laurel's a trans girl from some small town. she graduates and goes visit her brother in los angeles, where she meets duke and her girlies at the club. she's turned into a vampire and learns the rules: no glamouring other vampires, no turning men into vamps. the second rule is because men are already powerful enough that they shouldn't be trusted with the spicy supernatural stuff, and they're also because duke used to be one of the three brides of dracula (← that name wasn't used for some reason? rasputin plays during his scene on the flashback btw), enslaved by him (and explicitly through glamour despite her lesbianism) until they used the distraction of vampire hunters to kill him and escape. he was too powerful and didn't fully die but she keeps his smoldering heart in a safe.
cool so laurel hasn't been feeding because morals or guilt or whatever (and there's this cool power fantasy montage where they kill shitty men). while arguing with her brother (she hasn't been answering calls or replying texts and her high school friend attempted suicide) she snaps and bites him and then (no longer on an empty stomach) realizes she fucked up (many such cases). she goes to the girlies for help because she believed there was an antidote, but of course there isn't and she has to kill him. she doesn't wanna so she revives the other bride (who has been locked away for turning a guy in the cold open), who in turn revives dracula. we learn duke has been lowkey using his glamour (gained from eating his heart little by little). laurel kills dracula and throws duke in the hole. laurel says power should be shared and now everyone gets to eat a little bit of his heart. the end.
so uh yeah see what i mean about the messy anti-feminist undercurrent? the mean dyke was just as able to get mad with power as any man, the poor straight girl gets back into the clique, boys are fine. the movie won't outright say it, and if asked the director (a man) would probably not admit it, but uh. you can tell it's there. on more competent hands you could have themes of comphet with dracula and the brides. you could tap into the weird veiled bioessentialism from my high school feminist collective in particular (ok and girlboss feminism as a whole). hell you could forget about that and just give me sweet sweet self indulgent lesbian vampire schlock of the horniest variety. but instead this is just a lukewarm movie with a mediocre script, its only claim to any relevancy being some limp nods to "social issues".
aka: theresa and allison, theresa + allison (i've just seen it stylized in a few ways and wanna cover all bases honestly)
available: plex, filmzie, fucking uhh xumo play (region locked to the us)
horny rating: oh quite a bit
this has deep indie energy and i really love that for it. the camerawork and color grading are great and moody. it has a rather unique angle and premise, and manages to be horror while still having a vampire protagonist, but it's also rather cheeky and funny at times. it's rather similar to vampire the masquerade: bloodlines in tone. it just stands out from the rest of this list in a good way!
i'm lowkey obsessed with how this movie gives a literal in-universe basic setting rundown ten minutes in. like yeah every media has different rule for vampires so let's all get in the same page first. it's certainly a choice but it's a kinda fun one. but i'm leading with an inconsequential detail. in a way, just like the movie does with that scene.
theresa is a freshly turned vampire and she's not really dealing well with the whole killing people thing. allison is an older vampire ("older" being a bit of a stretch as far as vampire movies go though; she's like 60ish) and perfectly fine with that. the movie mostly explores theresa coming to terms with her monsterhood and stuff. that's a dry ass summary because, beyond me sucking shit at summaries, it's really a character piece, and we're just here to see theresa. and that's great. she's fairly interesting to watch.
now, of course, this does have a 4.3 rating on imdb. and that's meaningless of course but it doesn't not stumble a bit. the movie starts off some threads that it doesn't follow up on, and i can't even begrudge it for that. there's simply not enough time — despite being a solid two hours (it doesn't really feel overlong, with a pretty good pacing). under the surface of this world there's a dense and ancient web of vampire politics that we only ever see glimpses of. and while i'd love to see that explored, theresa is just some nobody, turned a month ago after a one-night stand gone wrong. she's entirely out of her depth, of course she won't see much of the dark underbelly. so honestly? that was probably a good call. although it comes with a downside: we don't actually really get to focus on theresa's relationship with allison. bit of a missed opportunity to explore a louistat (loustat? louis and lestat) -esque dynamic here.
one more thing: you know that quote about yuri being about lesbianism without identity or something? that's rather true about the lesbian vampire trope as well. i think theresa might be the only character here that's written just as a lesbian, separate from her vampirism. that's a neutral statement btw. unlike even bit, where laurel is sapphic and duke is explicitly a lesbian but those are mostly background things. idk just found it rather interesting. still no butches though. it's also very white.
anyway, in short, i found this movie super compelling, definitely check it out if you're looking for something different but still a little familiar.
horny rating: n/a
ok so not a movie, it's an ONA, but at five episodes the runtime is basically that of a movie anyway, even though the structure is different. this little anime is set in a never ending war between humans and vampires, and centers around a human teenager and the vampire queen, both of them disillusioned and unhappy. while there's no romance in the story itself, the vampire protagonist, fine (pronounced fee-ne [listen i can't spell english pronunciation for shit]) is heavily lesbian coded, and i liked the anime, so it's worthy of this page.
the vampire designs are really quite unique and interesting, and the art style is overall nice. the two protagonists have a good dynamic, i love them both. the story is rather short, and it left me craving more, because it's just enjoyable (well. it's not fluff but you know what i mean) and i'd like to spend more time with the characters. and that's pretty good praise in my book. as long as it feels complete, i'd always prefer something short that leaves me yearning than something overlong that shoots itself in the foot.
so yeah, if you're hanging out in this page, this anime will probably appeal to you even if it's not the vampire yuri of all our dreams. give it a shot on your free anime website of choice (i like aniwave). or netflix. it's a netflix anime. (if the idea of a vampire netflix animation sends a shiver down your spine because of castlevania... me too brother. i won't be reviewing it but there's lesbian vampires there btw. not worth it though, i still have nightmares about the 15th century g-string (unrelated))