Les Levres Rouges

Though rumors of new Erzebeth Bathory movies have appeared with regularity over the last decade, Harry Kumel’s Les Levres Rouges (1971) remains one of the finest films about the Hungarian Blood Countess ever made. The Antwerp-born Kumel (who later made the strange Malpertuis, featuring a bed-ridden Orsen Welles) utilized an isolated hotel in the mysterious city of Bruges to set this classic in magical realism/horror. The medieval canals and blood red lips foreshadow, in a way, the Venice of Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Le Levres Rouges (aka Le Rouge aux Levres, Blood on Her Lips, Daughters of Darkness) featured Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad, Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) as Countess Bathory and Andrea Rau (a television star from Stuttgart in a Louise Brooks wig) as her charming and masochistic servant Ilona. A Belgian-French-German-U.S.-Italian production, co-written and dubbed into three languages, the film's cast and aesthetics set it apart from other 1970s lesbian vampire movies such as those by Jean Rollin, Jesus Franco, or Hammer Films. In place of the campiness of The Vampire Lovers, for example, Les Levres Rouges was marked with an enigmatic eroticness inspired by the isolation of its surreal setting and mood.