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With nudity and sexual proclivity loosened across the first world’s various censor boards, the vampire film finally got to embrace the eroticism of the genre in the 1970s. For the past few decades there have been many sex films involving the vampire; Belgium’s Daughters of Darkness is the most artful and moody of the spicy lot. There’s a flower-eating “mother”, a mysterious man on a bicycle, and an ornate Transylvanian hotel where a Countess (Delphine Seyrig, known to cinephiles as the indomitable Jeanne Dielman) and her assistant (Andrea Rau) lament that their world hardly has any remaining virgins, and thus the Countess’ ritual of bathing in the blood of 800 virgins for her healthy sheen, is beginning to wane.
Enter a newlywed couple who’ve already fallen out of love with each other (she is Swedish, and thus not of “good blood”, which is hardly a concern of a vampire) and are thirsty to explore other lovers. This liberating combination makes the hotel a feeding ground for sexual exploration, feastings, and a killer soundtrack.
Harry Kümel’s film is grindhouse fare for those who prefer a touch of class. And Seyrig, a veteran of international arthouse films for Alain Resnais and Chantal Ackerman, provides one of the classiest femme vampires, while Rau is one of the most alluring—particularly when her silky seduction movements perfectly compliment the serenely surprising trap-door score.
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