Top Ten Lesbian Vampires

Go to any search engine of your choice and type in the phrase “Lesbian Vampire.” The results will include a fair amount of scholarly essays, pure porn, a Wikipedia article, reviews to more than a few very cheap movies (as well as some of much higher quality), places where you can purchase anthologies as well as quite a lot of fan fiction bringing together such diverse characters as Caroline from “The Vampire Diaries” to Jessica from “True Blood.”

In other words, the trope of lesbian vampire isn’t going anywhere. Begun with Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic “Carmilla” it went on to pop up in such films as “Dracula’s Daughter,” “Mark of the Vampire” and “Vampyr” before the 1960s arrived with the sexual revolution. What followed was (among other things) an explosion of sapphic undead on-screen.

Here is my own list for the ten best of these on-screen, big or small, so far. Please feel free to share your own!

Pamela from “True Blood,” bumped up this last season from recurring to regular cast member. Cool, even icy, with a level head and a sense of style that cannot be denied. While undergoing torture, she never seemed to lose her composure. Yet at the same time she’s shown fierce loyalty to Eric, her maker–a relationship of great love but totally lacking any sexual tension. The actress who plays Pam offered a fascinating idea for this upcoming season. She stated in an interview that she’d like to see Pam in love–not slinky and in control at all but rather nervous, insecure and terrified. You know, like everyone else in love for the first time.

Carmilla (aka Mircalla) in the Hammer classic “The Vampire Lovers” which remains, for all its schlock, one of the most faithful adaptations of Carmilla ever made. Ingrid Pitt did such a fine job the studio wanted her back for the two sequels, but she refused when the character was rewritten to…well, have no character. But in that one film she created an icon, a melancholy creature fated to slowly consume the life of those whom loved, in the end almost welcoming her own destruction.

Lemora from the film of the same name, sometimes called (erroneously) Countess Dracula. Handsome rather than beautiful, she presided over one of two factions of vampires fighting for control of a strange town. Yet she still found time to seduce a choir-singing school girl in search of her father. Perhaps the most disturbing of the lot, since Lemora was evidently not only a vampire but a pedophile.

Willow Rosenberg spent most of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as a witch, but who could forget the two episodes where her undead doppelgänger from an alternate history showed up? According to rumor, she was born out of a Halloween costume when Allyson Hannigan asked the makeup folks to make her a vampire one year. Somebody saw her and the rest, as they say, was history. VampWillow signature lines included “Bored now” and of course the utterly salacious “Wadya say? Do you wanna be bad?” She said this to our Willow, in an effort to corrupt and seduce (making her the only known vampire to have licked her own neck).

Sophie Ann from “True Blood” is the Lesbian Vampire Queen of Louisiana. Just the title alone is too deliciously tawdry for words! When we actually met her, she met out expectations complete with superb (if slightly tacky) wardrobe, a harem of blood slaves (but she prefers girls, at least when it comes to sex), and an addiction to yahtzee. Go figure.

Miriam Blalock from the motion picture “The Hunger,” played by the great Catherine Deneuve. According to her flashback, she was draining people of blood in Ancient Egypt, but in the modern-day she seduced Susan Sarandon to the strains of Leo Delibes’ “Lakme.” Opera has never seemed so erotic.

Elizabeth Kane in the film “Eternal” who is pretty obviously intended as Erzebet Bathori, the so-called Blood Countess of Hungary. In this film the crooked cop investigating his own wife’s disappearance soon meets his match in the undying vampiress who devoured her.

Uta Refson (spell it backwards) appeared in two episodes of the Showtime series “The L Word.” She was a visiting lecturer on eroticism and the vampire. She was also extremely strong (freakishly so) and very intense, as series regular Alice was lucky enough to find out (in a truly hilarious bit of business involving mirrors). Just see it if you can. Too funny!

Countess Kronsteen from the over-the-top spoof “Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust” created by (and starring) Steve Coogan. She’s a voluptuous, slightly older woman determined to have her way with the young girl on her honeymoon, and sprinkles her lines with double entendres. One of her best lines is when the gallant bridegroom runs her through with his sword, and she calmly asks “Is it in yet?”

Countess Bathory from “Daughters of Darkness,” a wonderful cult film from 1971. The Countess herself comes across as an undead Greta Garbo, her velvet voice purring sweet poison into the ear of a lonely young bride (that is right–purring not pouring) whose husband is not at all what he seems. Unusually for actors playing vampires, she genuinely comes across as old enough to be terribly bored, as well as inhumanly skilled at the art of seduction.

 

By david

David MacDowell Blue blogs at Night Tinted Glasses.  He graduated from the National Shakespeare Conservatory and is the author of The Annotated Carmilla. and Your Vampire Story (And How to Write It) as well as a theatrical adaptation of Carmilla.

15 comments

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  3. Not a bad selection. I would have included Spike’s girlfriend Drusilla (Juliet Landau). She was a somewhat psychologically damaged vampire. She was somewhat unstable and thus unpredictable. Spike had a weird relationship going with her.

    Of the Hammer films featuring women vampires I have always liked Vampire Lovers and Twins of Evil.

  4. Willow is my al time favorite she’s hot and sexy and I wish they would have made some more episodes of her being the bad ass witch or vampire. I do have to admit I liked her more as an evil witch then as a vampire just because as a vampire she still had the soft voice and her way of going was still very soft. while when she was a dark wiccan witch she stopped being fragile and became a real super villain. (referring to the session where she became psycho ’cause of Tara’s death)
    Do you have an article were you do an synopsis of the characters of buffy the vampire slayer? I would love to read some about that.

  5. Great list. Lemora is a masterpiece.

    A couple of notable bi vampiresses:

    Lilith from Razor Blade Smile.

    Jennifer from Jennifer’s Body.

      1. Right; she was technically a demon-possessed reanimated corpse. But I put Jennifer in a category I call VBN (Vampire But in Name) since she was undead, subsisted on living humans, and retained much of her original personality and intellect. Other VBNs in my opinion are Temptation from Def By Temptation and Clarimonde from that episode of The Hunger. But sure, it’s controversial; Jennifer’s Body is one of Leila’s ‘Is it or Isn’t It?’ and Taliesin’s ‘Vamp or Not?’

  6. Carmilla from Vampire lovers and Countess from Daughters of darkness! Carmilla had rich romanticism and although Countess was yet another glamorized real-life serial killer (please!), the movie and character had lot of elegance.

    1. Oh, and Clarimonde from Hunger is technically succubus, but she keeps herself alive by priest´s love/lust?

      1. Right, I think that she subsists on his love because when he renounces her she ‘dies.’ (For the time being.) In addition, in the original short story La Morte Amoureuse she’s a full blood-drinking vampire.

        1. Yes, she is! And although TV version is well-made and Audrey Benoit is impressive succubus, original story is unbeatable!

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