Thoughts on Daughters of Darkness

    On Metrograph’s streaming page for members, I watched Daughters of Darkness, a 1971 European erotic horror film directed by Harry Kümel and starring Delphine Seyrig, John Karlen, and Danielle Ouimet.

    The film centers on a newlywed couple, Stefan (Karlen) and Valerie (Ouimet) traveling through Europe. They stay at a Belgian seaside hotel, and at nightfall, the Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory arrives, with her “secretary” Ilona (Andrea Rau). The middle-aged concierge remarks that he had seen the countess forty years ago at the hotel when he was a child, but that she has not aged. She takes the suite next to the couple, and Valerie, translating Flemish from her fluency in German, reads of a series of child murders in the area, each a girl whose throat was slashed.

    Elizabeth makes the acquaintance of the couple, being mysterious and seductive, having a Marlene Dietrich-like glamour to her with her pencil-thin eyebrows and platinum bob. She takes a fixation on the couple, particularly Valerie, while Ilona works on seducing Stefan. Elizabeth is most likely a vampire, and her charm takes hold over Valerie.

    The film has a high art feel to the vampire film, not over the top campy, and Seyrig brings a lot of grace and elegance combined with a quiet threatening presence to her role as Elizabeth. The film takes advantage of the now-debunked myth that the real-life Elizabeth Báthory was a vampiric serial killer who bled young women to stay young, as that it is now considered a blasphemous rumor.

    The film also challenges Stefan’s gender identity as a man and his view of women, like how he refuses to call his mother in England and sees his wife, who he married after a short time knowing her, as his trophy wife and property, while Elizabeth, though she preys on Valerie, values her as more of an individual and kindred spirit.

    Bryan White of the Bring Me The Axe! podcast writes: “Gender stands at the center of the movie. It’s the entire operating principle. Stefan, as the film’s lone male character of consequence, regards Valerie as a thing to be owned or mastered. Through the first half of the movie, the matter of Stefan’s mother looms heavily over everything. He is uncomfortable at the very mention of her. He bribes the man at the hotel’s desk to aid him in his avoidance of his mother."

    I liked this movie. I normally am not into these kind of 70s lesbian vampire movies, but I saved the recommendation from the YouTuber Be Kind Rewind, and it was lovely to watch the great Delphine Seyrig drink up this role.