Love for a Vampire, To Love a Vampire
A vampires lust knows no boundaries
Rating: 3/10
Running Time: 91 minutes
UK Certificate: 18
On DVD
Matching its sex-obsession only with its outright silliness, Lust for a Vampire represents all that became a bit crappy about Hammer horror movies in the late 60s and early 70s.
In this, the second instalment of Hammers Carmilla trilogy (adapted from the book by Sheridan Le Fanu), Yutte Stensgaard plays the horrifically-dubbed lesbo-vamp whose fangs are the cause of much shrieking amongst the nubile young boarders at a European school for hotties.
When cynical horror novelist Richard Lestrange (Michael Johnson) turns up and lands a job as the English teacher (which, hilariously, involves tricking the REAL English teacher into going to Vienna for a month), he soon gets the hubba-hubbas for our garlic-hating villainess. Ah, but can he convert her to straightness with his manly and slightly sleazy ways? And will he discover her blood-sucking secret? And just who is the bloke skulking around in the bushes with the v-shaped hairline?
A bored-looking Mike Raven plays the head of the local castle-dwelling vampire family (they never just stay in a normal house, do they?) who mutters a bunch of nonsense at the start about joining the dead with the undead, and Suzanna Leigh floats around in the background as fantastically-named PE teacher Janet Playfair.
Jimmy Sangster, better known for his writing than his directorial capabilities (he scripted Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein and The Mummy, among loads of others) helms this daftness, much of which makes little sense. Characters declare undying (or should that be undead?) love for each other seemingly at random, rules of how to dispose of vampires are stated only to be ignored at the drop of a hat, and the girls at the school seem to wear clothes only so that they can be conveniently whipped off whenever the camera passes nearby.
It probably seemed erotic at the time, but these days absurd would be a better word to describe it.
It's Got: The sporadic use of colour filters, making parts of it look like they were filmed through old Quality Street wrappers.
It Needs: A stake through the heart and plenty of garlic.
DVD Extras Just a trailer. Lust for a Vampire is one of the movies included on the 5-disc Hammer Horror Selection box-set. DVD Extras Rating: 1/10
Summary
A nonsensical piece of ogle-fodder from a studio with its better days firmly behind it.