{"id":3763,"date":"2013-11-03T09:22:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T08:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=3763"},"modified":"2013-11-17T05:10:04","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T04:10:04","slug":"daughters-of-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2013\/11\/03\/daughters-of-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughters of Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Daughters<\/a>
Daughters of Darkness<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Cinema

\nScreening as part of the BFI\u2019s \u2018Gothic\u2019 season. For more information visit the BFI website<\/a>

\nDate:<\/B> 16 + 19 November 2013

\nDirector:<\/B> Harry K\u00fcmel

\nWriters:<\/B> Pierre Drouot, Harry Kümel, Jean Ferry

\nCast:<\/B> Delphine Seyrig, John Karlen, Danielle Ouimet, Andrea Rau

\nOriginal Title:<\/B> Les l\u00e8vres rouges<\/i>

\nBelgium\/France\/West Germany 1971

\n96 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet), a good-looking young couple who have eloped, stay in an out-of-season hotel in rain-swept, depopulated Ostend. They are not exactly on honeymoon, just pausing in this luxurious yet faded interzone before the supposedly British Stefan, who has neither an English name or an English accent, takes his new bride home to his aristocratic mother \u2013 who, as we see in a cutaway shot, is a man in a dress (Fons Rademakers). Stefan also takes his belt to his wife during lovemaking, and shows signs of other kinks unusual in the clean-cut leading man of a horror movie \u2013 compare young bridegrooms in everything from The Black Cat<\/i><\/a> (1934) to The Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/i> (1975) for exemplars of straight values. The only other guests in the hotel are the Countess Elisabeth Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) and her pouting, tempting secretary Ilona (Andrea Rau). The aged clerk (Paul Esser) and a retired policeman (Georges Jamin) are certain that the Countess was here before, too many years ago for her apparent age, and is mixed up with unsolved murders that have left blood-drained corpses behind\u2026<\/p>\n

Harry Kümel\u2019s Daughters of Darkness<\/i> is an unusual horror film, depicting vampirism (and lesbianism) as a reasonable alternative to stifling or perverse male desires. It\u2019s cine-literate, casting Seyrig for her association with art cinema from Last Year at Marienbad<\/i> (L\u2019ann\u00e9e derni\u00e8re &#224 Marienbad<\/i>, set in another hotel in limbo) and dressing and coiffing her like 1930s Marlene Dietrich. But it\u2019s also creepily, delicately sophisticated, with a witty, evocative score by Francois de Roubaix and an interesting, unusual set of monstrous mannerisms. The Countess shimmers in a silver sheath dress and shows white, white teeth in her red, red mouth and waves a feather boa like the fronds of a poison anemone to attract the young couple into her coils in a distant echo of Dracula\u2019s victim-enveloping cloak. Bathory is named for the Hungarian mass murderess (who may have been framed) and recurrent film character, and Seyrig seethes sexually as she recounts the atrocities committed by her supposed ancestress, which excites the sneakily sadistic Stefan. <\/p>\n

There are moments of unsettling physical horror \u2013 Ilona\u2019s death, bleeding out in a shower after a blunder with a straight razor, foreshadows the death by running water of Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame) in Hammer\u2019s Dracula AD 1972<\/i> (1972) \u2013 but also of black farce and high-end erotica. For some unknown reason, a clutch of seemingly unrelated films told very similar stories in the early 1970s: Stephanie Rothman\u2019s The Velvet Vampire<\/i> (1971), Vicente Aranda\u2019s The Blood-Spattered Bride<\/i> (La novia ensangrentada<\/i>, 1972), Richard Blackburn\u2019s Lemora: A Child\u2019s Tale of the Supernatural<\/i> (1973) and Jos\u00e9 Larraz\u2019s Vampyres<\/i> (1974) all likewise revolve around vampire matriarchs seducing innocent girls away from lumpen men. These are films which exercise a vampire-like power of fascination. Far more steadily paced than the vigorous Hammer Gothics, likely to get distracted by some apparently minor element of art direction or costuming, and alert to the erotic potential of teeth against skin in a self-aware manner, they show the vampire genre had evolved to the point when films were being made by artists who knew what they were doing rather than directors perhaps unconsciously channelling the dreams and desires of their audiences.<\/p>\n

Kim Newman<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

Watch the original trailer:<\/B><\/p>\n