Hey
goth fans, it’s adaptation time! In the spotlight this month is a Victorian
vamp-tastic classic, Carmilla!
Carmilla,
the original novella, is one of the earlier literary incarnations of everyone’s
favourite bloodsucking fiend (beating Dracula to the punch by a whole 25
years) and, as such, has been adapted many times for many different medium;
stage, screen, Youtube series, even an opera. Grab your cape and prosthetic
fangs and let this post take you on a haunted carriage ride through some of the
more notable incarnations of this of the OG Lady of the Night.
Carmilla
– Sheridan Le Fanu.
(Illustration from The Dark Blue by D. H. Friston, 1872) |
Carmilla
was originally serialised in the short lived magazine, The Dark Blue,
between 1871 and 1872 and later released as part of Le Fanu’s short story
collection, In a Glass Darkly. (While The Dark Blue is little
remembered today, in its day it drew some serious literary clout back in top
hat times, with contributions submitted by Ford Maddox Brown, Gabriel Rossetti,
A.C. Swinburne and William Morris). The tale is built on, by then, classic
gothic tropes (desolate castle + alluring stranger + mysterious illness =
awesome) but Le Fanu added some of his own ingredients to the mix to create
something new. The most striking to the modern reader is the depictions on
female homosexual desire. While it isn’t explicated stated that the two leads
are engaged in a sexual relations and, in the Victorian era the physical
boundaries of female friendship were marked differently than they are today, I
mean, come on, the heroine wonders if Carmilla is really a boy in disguise
coming to woo her, such is Carmilla’s erotically charge conduct towards her
(lesbian subtext 4LYFE!). Other interpretations read the text as allegory of
the political situation in Ireland, with Carmilla playing the role of a
parasitic Catholic and our heroine Laura as the threated Protestant ruling
class. It was said that Le Fanu was inspired by sources such as Antoine
Augustin Calmet’s Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or
Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, et al. (which sounds totally baller) and
Samuel Coleridge’s unfinished poem, ‘Christabel’. Carmilla’s characterisation
was said to be informed by Le Fanu’s experiences of living with his mental ill
wife, whose death he never fully got over.
Vampyr
(1932)
German/French
co-production, Vampyr, is a loose adaption of the directed by Carl
Theodor Dreyer. The plot concerns a student of the occult, Allan Grey, who,
upon spending a night in the inn of a village, finds the place in thrall of a
vampire menace. The film is dreamlike and plain weird in parts, intentional so;
Dreyer said he ‘Wanted to create a waking dream on screen and show that horror
is not to be found in the things around us but in our own subconscious.’ Its
unusual filming techniques, such has filming scenes through gauze, have more in
common with experimental film Le Chien Anadalou than your average horror
flick. The trance-like imagery and disjointed narrative was met by contemporary
audiences with indifference and confusion. After a screening in Vienna a full
scale riot broke out after the theatre refused to refund punters’ money. Vampyr was the director’s first film
using sound. Dreyer still used title cards extensively; dialogue was keep to a
minimum and was littler there was had to mouthed three times over by the actors
in French, English and German, to allow for dubbing later. Most of the cast
were not profession actors either; the village doctor was found on a Paris metro
and our hero, Allan Gray, was played by a French born Russian noble as a
condition for bankrolling the film. If that sounds up your alley, then the
whole thing can be found for free on YouTube.
The
Vampire Lovers (1970).
The
first of Hammer Horrors trilogy of Karnstein films, The Vampire Lovers
was one of the more faithful adaptions up until that point. At the time of
filming, Hammer was suffering from one of its periodic slumps. Unable to
compete with a new wave of grittier horror films, it decided to double down on
the other strand in their cinematic arsenal: boobs. Unlike most of Hammer’s
output, this story did not originate as an in-house production, it was brought
to them by outside producers who figured a Carmilla adaption would sell
well and pitched it the most appropriate studio. Hammer turns the sexy up to
eleven including full frontal nudity and actual gay kissing. While not
particularly explicit by today’s standards, it was considered fairly racy at
the time. Keeping the film from become an exploitative shlock-fest was the
character and performance of Carmilla (played by Ingrid Pitt), who was
portrayed with sympathy and depth. This could be down to the director Roy
Barker, who is recorded as saying he had tremendous respect for the source
material. In addition, this version has a be-caped Peter Cushing beading the
vamp and holding up the severed head dripping Kensington Gore; what more could
you ask for is your 70s horror flick?
Carmilla: A Vampire Tale (1970)
Rock n roll! This telling of Carmilla
adapted the novella into a rock/chamber opera., It was created by the
innovative East Village theatre company La MaMA, written by Wilford Leach and
scored by Ben Johnson. The two main characters, Laura and Carmilla, spend most
of the play sat next to each other on a couch, singing into microphones. The rest
of the characters are played by wooden faces carved into the couch – the actors
covered their face in wood-like make up and peered through holes whilst
crouching down behind the couch. It was praised for its use of multi-media
stage design, with film projections running in the background through most of
the play. It had a fair amount of success too, enough at least to take it on
tour through Europe. Today the production has something of a cult following;
recordings of the play surface in second hand markets from time to time, but it
is a bit of a collector’s item now. Definitely due for a revival.
Carmilla
– webseries (2014)
Brining
the legacy of Carmilla into bang up to date is Canadian webseries Carmilla,
first screened on YouTube. The series ran for three seasons and one mini
‘pre-season’ and has been made into a feature length film, which, at the time
of writing, should have just been released. The action takes place in a Silas
University (a nod to Le Fanu’s novel ‘Uncle Silas’) where Laura, a journalism
freshman, begins keeping a vlog (I love that YouTube and other such online
platforms have given us the opportunity to reshape the epistolary novel in a
way that makes sense to modern audiences and that creators seem hellbent on
reviving classical literature as the testing ground for this new medium). Soon
after started the vlog, Laura’s roommate disappears and is replaced by the
mysterious Carmilla. Carmilla is a vampire very much in the Byronic mould, dark
and just a wee bit moody. You would too if you were at three hundred and odd
years old and still forced to do your mother’s bidding, in this case, bringing
her all the nice young girls you meet to be used as human sacrifices. The two
fall in love, there’s intrigue, character growth, all that good stuff. In a
radical break with the previous adaptations, the relationship between the two
leads isn’t used as evidence of Carmilla as demonic and ‘other’ nature;
Carmilla’s sexuality just is, with other elements in the show providing the
threat to the safety of the heroine. The series has been praised by, well,
everyone, but has found a special place in the hearts of many in the LGBTQ
community for its positive depictions of queer identity. It’s free on YouTube,
so go check it out.
Honourable
Mentions
Polish
TV version (1982) – Super hard to find rendition of the novella, this black
and white Polish adaptation is overall pretty faithful to the original text.
This adaptation brings Laura’s isolation to the fore; she is starved for
interest and pleasure and this need informs how she interacts with Carmilla.
The ending strongly hints that Laura too becomes a vampire.
Nightmare
Classics: Carmilla (1989) – Ever wanted to know what Carmillla would be
like if it was set in the antebellum south? Now you can! This American
mini-series focuses more heavily on the dysfunctional relationship between
Laura and her father and lets her play a much more active role, eventual being
the one dispatch Carmilla.
Castlevania
(1987 – 2014) – Couldn’t resist mentioning this one. Carmilla is a recurring
boss character in the Castlevania franchise and acts as the henchman of
Dracula (she is waaaaay into Dracy). Which kinda sucks as Carmillla is an
Independent Woman TM, but does mean that she is wicked powerful. She loves
bathing in blood, organised witch trials for those who wouldn’t side with her
Dark Lord and in one incarnation drops fireballs at you whilst draped naked
over a floating skull. That is just cool.
Claire Healey is a lover of all things dark, moody, and eye-liner-y, and, if you couldn't tell, a huge fan of Carmilla and its many adaptations. Sheffield Gothic is firm in the belief that Claire does not go around befriending women in the hope that they will join her in vampiric endeavours.
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