Happy Birthday Sheridan Le Fanu!

Today is the birthday of Sheridan Le Fanu (28 August 1814 – 7 February 1873), an Irish writer of gothic tales, who MR James himself considered to be the master of the ghost story. As well as penning classic gothic novels such as Uncle Silas and The Wyvern Mystery, Le Fanu also wrote the ground-breaking novella Carmilla (1871) which was a huge influence on Dracula, and was adapted by Hammer as The Vampire Lovers (1970) starring Ingrid Pitt (which in turn would spawned the lesbian vampire subgenre).

In his short chiller Green Tea, he introduced us to Dr. Martin Hesselius, widely regarded as the first occult detective. The good doctor would reappear to explore other cases of the weird and the uncanny in the collection In A Glass Darkly (1872).

Many of his spookier stories were written for Christmas editions of Victorian magazines, making him also an influence on Dickens and the tradition of Yuletide ghosts stories, (with a TV version Schalcken the Painter being considered an unofficial member of the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas pantheon).

Now I was set to mark the anniversary of his birth with a reading of one of his fine ghost stories, however it got put back in the schedule by the sad death of George A Romero, and now will be bumped back a further week due to the loss of Tobe Hooper... However rest assured dear readers and listeners, that very soon you will make the acquaintance of Dickon the Devil...

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #11 - Devil Priest Pack Part XI

Yes, it's time once more to delve into the toybox of yesteryear, and have another pair of terrors from the original Horror Top Trumps. First up, we have this beaming down... 

Now then, here we have an genuine rarity! For despite looking up assorted alien invaders down the decades, I have yet to find a decent match for this chap! The lightning flash on his tunic certainly suggests an origin in the 1950s  but so far no matching monsters, Martian or otherwise, have yet been found. Some have suggested it is based on the titular Creature of Destruction (1967) but I remain to be convinced of anything other than a very flimsy passing resemblance. Most likely I think if the Martian Warrior has a definite origin, then it's a panel of an old and obscure comic book. In the mean time, keep watching the skies!

Now our next card is a similar cause of some confusion! Enter Mistress Vampire!

Now then most commentators have swung the direction of the legendary Ingrid Pitt - and let's be honest who can blame them! For Indeed Ingrid Pitt played some of the sexiest vampires ever to grace the screen, and it is hard not to think of her whenever female bloodsuckers are mentioned. However trawling through the assorted stills of her undead appearances in the Hammer classics Countess Dracula (1971) and The Vampire Lovers (1970), there isn't really a good match for the Mistress Vampire. Instead the closest we come is the following famous picture from her guest appearance in the celebrated Amicus anthology flick The House That Dripped Blood (1971).

However noting that this still only bears a slight resemblance to the card, another popular guess hails from the same era of Brit horror - another Hammer flick and a sequel to The Vampire Lovers - Lust for a Vampire (1971). Here's Yutte Stensgaard as Mircalla Herritzen the reincarnated/resurrected Carmilla Karnstein that la Pitt played in the earlier movie. 

Now if you can tear you eyes away from Yutte - c'mon you can do it! - yet another Hammer horror has been mooted as a source for Mistress Vampire. This time it's Lalla Ward, who would become more famous a few years later as the second Romana in Doctor Who. Here she is in Hammer's off-beat undead tale Vampire Circus (1972) 

Definitely closer, I think you will agree! However I think there is actually a better fit - and it is from The Vampire Lovers but surprisingly not Ingrid Pitt's Carmilla. Rather it's that character's previous incarnation who we see menacing Douglas Wilmer in the prologue, played by Kirsten Betts (later Kirsten Lindholm)

Yes, here I believe we have the winner, despite some (ahem) stiff competition from other memorable ladies from the early '70s blood and boobs era of classic Brit horror!

Echoes of Vampirism

For all of you fang fans awaiting the final chapter of my TWIDHARD marathon, here's a little slice of vampire history to be going on with...

The above picture is entitled The Vampire, the most famous work produced by British Pre-Raphaelite Sir Philip Burne-Jones. Now this gorgeous piece went on to inspire Rudyard Kipling to pen a verse of the same name -

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair--
(Even as you or I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand!

A fool there was and his goods he spent,
(Even as you or I!)
Honour and faith and a sure intent
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you or I!)

Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know that she never knew why)
And did not understand!

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide,
(Even as you or I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside--
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died--
(Even as you or I!)

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white-hot brand--
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)
And never could understand!'

And this poem in turn formed the inspiration for a famous silent movie A Fool There Was (which you can view online here), which launched the career of Theda Bara and in turn lead to the coining of the term 'vamp' for sexy, seductive and possibly dangerous ladies...

Ms. Bara was one of cinema's earliest sex symbols, and the first in a long long line of sexy vampires on our screens. However whenever I look upon Burne-Jones' picture, another later screen siren springs to mind...

Yes, the legendary Ingrid Pitt, pictured here as Mircalla/Marcilla in Hammer's classic The Vampire Lovers (1970) itself an adaptation of another landmark in vampire fiction, Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan le Fanu.

Now, the great success of The Vampire Lovers saw Hammer making two further films loosely derived from Le Fanu's classic - Lust For A Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1972) -but it also spawned a whole line of erotic and horror fictions dealing with sapphic vampirism ("the love that cannot spell its name" according to Dr Terrible's House of Horrible).

Obviously Burne-Jones could have had no idea his piece would inspire a whole genealogy of sexually alluring vampires, but one does wonder whether his muse had been sneaking a peek at the future time lines and spotted Ms. Pitt...