Lesbian vampirism is a trope in 20th century exploitation film that has its roots in Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's novella Carmilla (1872) about the predatory love of a female vampire (the title character) for a young woman (the narrator):
In essence, this was a way to hint/titillate at the taboo idea of lesbianism in a fantasy context outside the heavily censored realm of social realism (Weiss 1993). Also, the conventions of the vampire genre — spec...
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Lesbian vampirism is a trope in 20th century exploitation film that has its roots in Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's novella Carmilla (1872) about the predatory love of a female vampire (the title character) for a young woman (the narrator):
In essence, this was a way to hint/titillate at the taboo idea of lesbianism in a fantasy context outside the heavily censored realm of social realism (Weiss 1993). Also, the conventions of the vampire genre — specifically, the mind control exhibited in many such films — allow for a kind of forced seduction of presumably straight women or girls by lesbian vampires.
Dracula's Daughter (1936) gave the first hints of lesbian attraction in a vampire film, in the scene in which the title character Gloria Holden preys upon an attractive girl she has invited to her house to pose for her. Universal highlighted Countess Zaleska's attraction to women in some of its original advertising for the film, using the tag line "Save the women of London from Dracula's...
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