Bound By Blood

Christine Allen

Vampires have always been kinky. The most enduring condition of their immortal existence, consuming human blood, promises bared throats and chests and penetration by long, pointed teeth. That this penetration is a stand-in for sexual intercourse is a theory with a long history in analysis of vampire films. I propose that vampire films also harbor a more subtle and less understood facet of the spectrum of sexuality, namely what is commonly referred to as sadomasochism. This being a general term, and not a very descriptive one, I have broken my analysis into three different categories of kink; fetishism, bondage/discipline, and dominance/submission. These three categories do not represent all that is entailed in the term sadomasochism, they are merely those that I have observed to be recurring themes in vampire movies of all time periods, from all different countries, and with very different agendas. These insights have been inspired by my status as a professional dominatrix and the unique opportunities this affords to observe human behavior in the arena of kink.

FETISHISM

I use the term fetishism not at all in the Freudian or psychoanalytical sense but as it relates to kink and dominance. Fetishism usually relates to clothing or particular objects that are associated with domination, for example, spike-heeled leather boots or a military uniform. People can have fetishes for certain fabrics or materials, most commonly leather, patent leather, rubber, silk, or chains. In this arena of analysis, I offer Dracula's cape as a fetishized part of the vampire uniform. A black cape is such a staple of the vampire wardrobe that it has taken on significance and communicates information to the viewer. In the same way that a spiked dog collar can symbolize dominance, a long black cape can symbolize vampirism.

Some vampire movies include scenes of fetish clothing besides those that are commonly associated with vampires. In Tony Scott's 1983 film The Hunger, the vampiress Miriam (Catharine Deneuve) often wears clothing one would associate with a dominatrix. In the opening scenes after she and her lover John (David Bowie) have picked up a couple in a dance club she is wearing black leather gloves with chain mail gauntlets and a very severe hairstyle. Before she dispatches her victim she straddles him and imperiously pushes him away when he tries to touch her breast. All throughout the movie Miriam is clad in severe suits with cinched waists and padded shoulders, and always wears black leather high heels or boots. The most obvious example of the use of fetish clothing in The Hunger occurs when Miriam's image is haunting Sarah (Susan Sarandon), Miriam's next intended companion after John withers away. In one scene Sarah steps out of the shower and hallucinates that she sees Miriam in the bathroom mirror. In this one quick scene Miriam is shown wearing a complete dominatrix outfit; all black leather and chains with a collar around her neck. This symbolizes Sarah's growing lack of control over herself and the beginning of her submission to Miriam's will.

The Hunger's Miriam Blaylock was most likely influenced by the platinum blonde female vampire in Harry Kumel's 1970 film Daughters of Darkness. The very first scene in which we see the Countess Elizabeth Bathory is very highly fetishized, quite a grand entrance. A long, black, shiny car pulls up, driven by the Countess' servant, Ilona. The Countess steps out of the back seat and the camera shows us a languid shot of her black patent leather boot. As the camera pans up, we see that she is clad all in black and all we can see of her face is her bright red lips and pale skin on the lower half of her face; the rest is covered in shadow. What little we see of her face is fetishized even further by the black lace veil that obscures it. She commands Ilona to watch the luggage while she goes in to see about a room. As she enters the hotel, we see her tall boots again, and can now make out that she is wearing a long black patent leather trench coat with a high black fur collar. In a later scene in the film, after it has been established that she is a vampire, she wears a black patent leather cape; a variant on the traditional vampire cape. Her association with fetish clothing is consistent with the film's running theme of sadomasochistic and dominant relationships.

BONDAGE/DISCIPLINE

While fetishism is a subtle way to communicate information about possible sadomasochistic elements in a movie, some vampire movies have no qualms about including graphic depictions of bondage and discipline, including whipping and flagellation. Daughters of Darkness is based on the story of the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory who is supposed to have tortured and killed hundreds of women and bathed in their blood to maintain her youth. It's never explicitly stated in the film if the Delphine Seyrig character is supposed to be the actual Countess or one of her descendants. There is a scene where the Countess is recounting the legend to newlyweds Stephan and Valerie which doubles as a seduction of Stephan. Clad in a scarlet gown, she tells the grisly story of chaining up, torturing, and whipping young girls excitedly while caressing Stephan who appears to be in a trance-like state of arousal. Valerie, all dressed in white, is horrified by the tale and at Stephan's morbid fascination with it and the Countess but neither of them listen to her protests. Later, Stephan brutally whips Valerie with his belt, sadism having replaced sexuality in his relationship with Valerie. During this scene, he wears a bright red sweater, which matches the red dress the Countess had on in the seduction scene. After waking up in the morning next to Stephan who still clutches his leather belt in his fist, Valerie quietly packs to flee the hotel and leave her husband of only two days. Not willing to let her prey escape so easily, Elizabeth intercepts Valerie at the train station to convince her to stay. During their conversation about Stephan, Valerie tells Elizabeth that she feels degraded by the beating. The Countess tells her, "... he dreams of making out of you what every man dreams of making out of every woman. A thing - an object for pleasure." This is an ironic statement coming from her because that is exactly how she treats Ilona, her vampire servant, and exactly what she has planned for Valerie.

Spanish vampire movies seem to depict graphic and titillating scenes of sadism without reservation. Tombs of the Blind Dead (d. Armando de Ossorio, 1972), a combination vampire/zombie movie, opens with a torture scene leading to human sacrifice. A young woman is chained up and slashed to pieces by two horseman with swords as part of the "blood ritual", after which several white-hooded cult members descend upon her and suck the blood from her wounds and eat her flesh.

Another Spanish vampire movie with scenes of sadomasochism is Count Dracula's Great Love, directed by and starring Paul Naschy (1972). This is a very hardcore whipping scene, with an almost nude female victim being bullwhipped and having her throat slit as part of a ceremony to resurrect Dracula's bride. Three female vampires gather around the victim and suck the blood from the lash marks left on her by the whip. As sadistic as this scene is, it can't help but have a camp-humor element to it. There's something grotesque and yet hysterical watching Naschy, dressed in full Dracula regalia and makeup, wielding a bullwhip.

The French master of erotic vampire films, Jean Rollin, has several film with sadomasochistic overtones. Being in the surrealist/expressionistic vein of filmmaking, Rollin's whipping and torture scenes don't always fit in narratively in the plot of the film. Sometimes, due to loss of directorial control and overseas release of his films, the sadistic scenes were not even filmed by Rollin himself, but spliced in later to make the movies sleazier (Blumenstock 47). Nevertheless, almost all of his films contain plenty of kinky imagery and erotic domination. Le Viol of the Vampire (The Rape of the Vampire, 1968), Le Frissons des Vampires (Thrill of the Vampire, 1970) and Requiem pour un Vampire (Caged Virgins 1971) all qualify, but in the interest of not being too repetitive, only the latter film will be discussed in this paper.

Caged Virgins, the American release of Requiem pour un Vampire, (the actual title on the video version I rented said Dungeon of Virgins) is as ethereal as all of Jean Rollin's work. Two female clowns involved in a car chase end up escaping into the woods where one of them is almost raped and the other narrowly escapes being buried alive in an open grave. Now stripped of their clown regalia and wearing skirts, knee socks and braids, the two girls encounter a castle which harbors the last remaining vampires in existence. Sensing the girls' virginity, the lead vampire wants them captured to harvest their innocence to replenish the dying species. The lead female vampire, aptly named Dominique, wearing a black cape and brandishing a bullwhip, takes the girls to the dungeon where they witness a gratuitous and rough scene of chained, naked women being groped and whipped by the vampires' human slaves. Dominique sucks blood from the breast of one of the chained women, and the scene ends with a quintessentially Rollin image; a bat nestling in one of the chained womens' pubic hair (Lucas 31). The brunette girl is forced to participate in an "initiation" ceremony in which she sacrifices her virginity after being told, "you cannot be both virgin and vampire". Hair unbraided, she chains up and whips her still-innocent friend to torture her into telling about a mortal man she is protecting from the vampires. Although these scenes are the most obvious and gratuitous scenes of sadistic sexuality in Caged Virgins, the whole film, and almost every Rollin film is replete with the blending of vampiric and kinky surrealistic imagery.

The last entry in the bondage and discipline category of this analysis is a 1992 musical, The Vampyr, (d. Nigel Finch) a gory and erotic remake of the 1827 opera by Heinrich Marschner. There is only one quick scene of erotic bondage but it is worth examining for it's unconventional nature. The vampire, Ripley, (Omar Ebrahim) picks up a woman to have sex with and then drink her blood. During the sex scene, she ties his wrists to the bed with a long white scarf. This is the only scene I'm aware of in which the victim erotically dominates the vampire, and it appears to be consensual bondage. Most filmic scenes of bondage or discipline are presented in a negative manner as a form of torture by a depraved sadist or monster. The Vampyr is notable for including a bondage scene but turning the tables so that the kinkiness is part of the sex with a willing partner and not inflicted by the vampire on a victim against her will.

DOMINATION/SUBMISSION

Vampires almost always have slaves. One of the mainstays of vampire lore is Dracula's "Renfield" character. The eerie hiss of Dwight Frye's "Yess, Master" is a classic part of horror film history. In that case, Dracula seemed to get Renfield to do his bidding by using telepathic powers and promises of eternal life. Dracula also had brides. Although it was not clearly stated in the film, these three "strange sisters" seemed to have been vampires in their own right, yet somehow still submissive to the count. J. Gordon Melton writes, "the idea of the vampire brides emphasized the sexual nature of the vampire's relationship to his victims. The vampire attacked (raped) his victims and then tied them to him in a slavelike structure..." (62). In most vampire films, however, the vampires control their slaves by draining enough of their blood so that a connection is made, but not enough so that the victim either dies or joins the ranks of the undead. In many ways, these vampire/slave relationships mirror those of Mistress/slave or Master/slave relationships in the world of sadomasochism.

This is most apparent in Daughters of Darkness. The Countess has a lesbian vampire slave girl, Ilona, who obeys and serves her. In the first scene of Elizabeth and Ilona in their suite, Elizabeth is reclining luxuriously in a peignoir. Ilona asks her permission to "go out" that night, claiming that she "cannot wait another night" due to her hunger. The Countess replies, "yes you will, because I want you to" and calls Ilona to her. Ilona curls up on the floor at Elizabeth's feet like a pet, with Elizabeth even stroking her hair. Welch Everman contends, "...Ilona is more like a piece of the countess's property than a lover" (68).

Ilona becomes jealous when Elizabeth covets the young couple, Stephan and Valerie. Fearing replacement by Valerie, Ilona tries to spitefully flee from the Countess. After she states, "I'm leaving you!", the Countess calmly replies, "don't be ridiculous." Ilona begs for release, entreating, "please, set me free, I beg you, you don't need me anymore." Elizabeth counters, "Ah, but you need me, without me you'd have no life."

Once Elizabeth claims Valerie as her own by sucking her blood, Valerie is helpless to resist her commands when she is in the presence of the Countess. She becomes childlike and dependent upon Elizabeth. In one scene, Elizabeth is even dressing her, lacing her bodice and fixing her hair, then sending her off; "go and fetch him!"; to bring Stephan to the dinner table. After this, a dispute occurs over whose slave Valerie is. Stephan tries to get her to flee the hotel with him, but she is loyal to the Countess. Stephan angrily insists that she go with him, telling the Countess, "I am a man and she is mine! Valerie will do as I tell her!" Needless to say, the Countess's vampiric charisma wins out easily over Stephan's gendered imperative and attempt to reclaim his wife through violence. Neither Stephan or Elizabeth want Valerie for any other purpose than to own her; as Everman states, "there is no love in this film, only efforts by one person to control another. . . one either controls or is controlled; one is either master or slave, and the only way to keep from being a slave is to become the master" (70-1).

The theme of dominant and submissive relationships is explored in The Hunger through the fight for dominance between vampires and humans. The vampire Miriam establishes a mental link with Sarah so that she can control her even when they are not together. Before they have shared the blood exchange, Sarah hears Miriam's voice in her head, feels sadness while Miriam mourns for her dead companion John, and is even compelled to come and visit Miriam, showing up at her door and confessing, "I don't know why I am here."

During Miriam's seduction of Sarah, she takes the dominant role. After conveniently spilling sherry on her shirt, Sarah undresses in front of Miriam who is offering her a clean shirt to wear. Miriam treats Sarah's disrobing as a spectacle, voyeuristically sitting down and putting her feet up while unabashedly watching Sarah undress. Sarah becomes her object, something to be inspected, as she is potential property.

It is only natural for Miriam to want to dominate Sarah, and indeed all humans. After the blood exchange with Miriam, Sarah falls ill and submits to a blood test to appease her concerned boyfriend. The results show that "two entirely different strains of blood are fighting it out for dominance." They also show that the strain that isn't Sarah's "is not human. It's stronger blood than ours." As Nina Auerbach writes, ". . . Miriam is a dominant, superior consciousness who has survived centuries of arrogant imperial persecution (57)." The Hunger takes notions of dominance in vampire movies and takes it to the level of war between the species.This dominance that Miriam has over Sarah due to her genetic superiority is played out in their relationship similarly to that of a Mistress and her slave. Miriam tells Sarah,"You belong to me." In response to Sarah's threats to leave, Miriam coolly replies, "you'll be back. You'll have to feed and you'll need me to show you how. You're a part of me now, I cannot let you go."

This last comment seems to imply that Miriam is also a slave to the needs and desires of her own vampirism. Now that she has enslaved Sarah, she has no choice herself but to keep her as her companion.

In the operatic The Vampyr, Ripley has a young business protege named Alex who is also his slave. They are both already enslaved by money, power, and cocaine in their high-powered 1980s business lifestyle. It is in the business world that Alex serves Ripley, because when Ripley's vampirism is disclosed Alex turns against Ripley to save the woman he loves. Ignorant to Ripley's vampirism, Alex still sings:

Will he ever set me free?/will he never let me go?/will I always be the servant?/will he always be the master?

It is the sheer power and charisma that Ripley holds due to his vampirism that enables him to command Alex, not Alex's knowledge of Ripley's vampiric powers. Just as in Dracula where Renfield covets the Count's undead state, Alex covets the position Ripley holds in the business world.

Depictions of dominant and submissive relationships are still prevalent in vampire movies. The most recent vampire movie released to date, From Dusk Till Dawn (d. Rodriguez/Tarantino) makes an explicit comparison between vampires and sadomasochistic relationships. The kinky aspect of vampiric power is explored in a couple of scenes involving the bewitching female vampire, Satanica Pandemonia (Salma Hayek). During her exotic dance on stage in the "Titty Twister" club she makes Ritchie Gecko (Quentin Tarantino) worship her foot in front of everyone in the bar. Foot worship is a standard part of a slave's duties to his Mistress, and one which emphasizes the humiliation and degradation of the slave. This is exploited to the fullest in a later scene where Seth Gecko (Robert Rodriguez) is on the bar floor on his back and at the mercy of this vampire Mistress. Pinning him to the floor with her bare foot, she tells him, "I won't drain you completely; I will keep you as my slave. You aren't good enough to drink human blood so I will feed you with the blood of stray dogs and you will learn to lick the dogshit from my boots at my command. Since you will be my dog, I will name you Spot." This sequence clearly is meant to invoke a Mistress bullying a slave in a typical relationship based on dominance and submission and acted out through the dehumanizing ritual of foot worship.

Aspects of fetishism, sadomasochism and erotic dominance have been present in vampire films since the early years and are becoming even more up front in their kinkiness. Horror maven Clive Barker traces the vampire film's connection with sadomasochism back to Dracula, "when Dracula bites his virgin... she's experiencing in the moment of being bitten, and therefore dying, something which is actually quite close to pleasure at the same time. And that ambiguity's absolutely plain, even in the most straightforward, on-the-nose Dracula movies" (Olley 20). Vampires are not the typical cinematic monsters; in fact, they are usually quite attractive. Even while the innocent victim is being rescued and the vampire staked, there is some ambivalence that maybe joining the ranks of the undead may not have been such a terrible fate after all. Despite what we all "know" about why the vampires are the bad guys, their existence is appealing and their ambiguities are fascinating enough to overcome any fear of them. They are unique in the history of monsters; their erotic appeal urges young virgins to open their bedroom windows, brush their hair off of their throats, remove their crucifixes and await the kiss of the vampire. In much the same way as the submissive slave awaits the lucky day when he might have the honor of serving his ultimate Mistress.

WORKS CITED

Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Blumenstock, Peter. "Jean Rollin Has Risen From the Grave!" Video Watchdog No. 31, 1996: 36-57. Count Dracula's Great Love. Dir. Paul Naschy, 1972. Daughters of Darkness. Dir. Harry Kumel. 1971. Dracula. Dir. Tod Browning. Universal, 1931. Everman, Welch. Cult Horror Films. New York: Citadel, 1993. Le Frissons des Vampires. Dir. Jean Rollin, 1970. From Dusk Till Dawn. Dir. Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino. 1996. The Hunger. Dir. Tony Scott. MGM, 1983. Lucas, Tim. "Versions and Vampires." Video Watchdog No. 31, 1996: 28-35. Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1994. Olley, Michelle. "Sympathy For the Devil." The Best of Skin Two. Ed. Tim Woodward. New York: Masquerade, 1993. 20. Requiem pour un Vampire. Dir. Jean Rollin, 1971. Tombs of the Blind Dead. Dir. Armando de Ossorio, 1972. The Vampyr. Dir. Nigel Finch. BBC, 1992. Le Viol of the Vampire. Dir. Jean Rollin, 1968.