The Vampire Lovers (1970): Hammer Horror, Ingrid Pitt & The Lesbian Vampire craze

Sharpen your stakes and protect your daughters because this week we're entering the wonderfully gothic, increasingly racy world of Hammer Horror with 1970's The Vampire Lovers.

By the dawn of the 1970s, Hammer's familiar formula of castles, cleavage and Christopher Lee was facing competition from a new generation of increasingly explicit cinema. The answer? More blood, more nudity and, in The Vampire Lovers, one of horror cinema's most enduring figures: the lesbian vampire.

Directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing and Kate O'Mara, the film was adapted from Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, a vampire story that actually predates Bram Stoker's Dracula. We explore how Hammer transformed it into the first instalment of its Karnstein trilogy and helped launch a cycle of lesbian vampire films that became a distinctly provocative corner of 1970s horror.

But who exactly was The Vampire Lovers made for? We dig into the film's complicated legacy, asking whether its lesbian relationships offered rare queer visibility at a time when that was almost nonexistent—or whether they were primarily designed for the heterosexual male gaze. And when female desire is ultimately destroyed by men restoring the traditional order, is Hammer reinforcing the status quo or accidentally giving queer audiences someone far more interesting to root for?

We also celebrate the extraordinary life of Ingrid Pitt, whose journey to becoming one of Hammer's greatest icons was every bit as remarkable as her screen career.

And in Culture Corner, we're travelling back to Britain in 1970: the news stories, television and chart hits—including the inescapable "In the Summertime"—plus major changes to British film censorship that allowed filmmakers like Hammer to push sex, nudity and horror further than they had before.

Sexy, camp, gothic and dripping with subtext, The Vampire Lovers captures Hammer at a fascinating crossroads: an old studio trying to survive a new decade by discovering that apparently the answer to everything was more vampires and fewer nightdresses.

Join us as we sink our teeth into one of Hammer Horror's most fascinating cult classics.

We watched The Vampire Lovers on Amazon Prime Video. Click here

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