On purely a plot level, The Vampire Lovers is a reasonably faithful reading of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) – albeit padded in the middle with scenes of Carmilla/Marcilla seducing the Morton household – something the other two Hammer Karnstein films could make scanty claim to. Unfortunately, the crude and obvious direction of the film’s appeal – to the sexual element – considerably obviates any of the atmosphere of the story. Sheridan Le Fanu’s original story was something delicate and subtle, where both sexuality and the deeper hideousness of vampirism lurked beneath a girlish naivete. However, The Vampire Lovers puts everything upfront. It is rife with heaving bosoms in lowcut necklines and push-up bodices. When the sexuality does get out of the bag, it comes with the giggly self-consciousness of an adolescent masturbatory fantasy. A scene with Ingrid Pitt chasing Madeleine Smith around and onto the bed with both unclothed is, when one considers that this is supposed to be a serious vampire attack, rather embarrassing. Director Roy Ward Baker does have his one moment of pure Hammer Gothic – the opening scene where Douglas Wilmer stands in a ruined abbey as a hooded figure slowly drifts through the mist, dropping its hood to reveal itself as a woman who tries to sink her teeth into his neck, only to have him decapitate her with a sword.

The Vampire Lovers makes for interesting comparison to Hammer’s original Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958). The plot followed by the two films is not dissimilar and there are other similarities such as the team of four vampire hunters led by Peter Cushing (although Cushing’s role in The Vampire Lovers is, despite his top-billing, a secondary one). The major change is in the attitude toward the vampire – Christopher Lee in Dracula was out-and-out animal evil; in The Vampire Lovers, sympathy has changed onto the side of the vampire. Her vampirism is seen more as a girlish lesbian affectation than a need to plunder people for their blood, while the film treats Carmilla’s desire to take Madeleine Smith away and live forever with her with surprising sympathy. In contrast, the vampire hunters are the usual bunch of cutting sword rationalist/religionists. In a dilemma that increased in the subsequent Carmilla films, the film’s sympathies are divided as to whether they lie with the vampire’s nascent sexuality or with the traditional forces of repression.

Ingrid Pitt gives a performance of unusual sympathy. There is one well written scene where she describes her fear of getting old. Ingrid Pitt’s thick native Polish accent suggests an effective alienness but at the same time she lacks a finesse with the emotional subtleties the part requires, resulting in a breathily melodramatic reading of the role – she seems perpetually on the verge of swooning. If anything, she suggests a female Bela Lugosi – thick-accented menace and doing all her acting by the dilation of her eyes.

Other adaptations of Carmilla include:– Vampyr (1932), Blood and Roses (1960), Terror in the Crypt (1963); The Blood-Spattered Bride (1972) and Carmilla (tv movie, 1987).

Director Roy Ward Baker became one of the directors to rise in the latter decade of the Anglo-horror industry. Elsewhere, Baker made Quatermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth (1967), Moon Zero Two (1969), Scars of Dracula (1971), Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) at Hammer; Asylum (1972), ... And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973) and The Vault of Horror (1973) at Amicus; and the post-Amicus The Monster Club (1980).