[Pride 2021] Why Am I Different? Finding Myself in 'Crypt of the Vampire'

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m obsessed with lesbian vampire films. Hell, anyone who has followed me on Twitter for more than five minutes has probably gathered as much. It’s my favorite niche subgenre, it’s my favorite topic of my writing and critical analysis, it’s my favorite thing to yell about ad nauseam. I’ve been cultivating my knowledge on these films for a few years now. They hold such a special importance to me – and it all started when an obscure little B-movie called Crypt of the Vampire (also known by its US release title Terror in the Crypt) found me at a tumultuous time in my life.

Picture it: the mid-2000s. It was during that hazy post-high school purgatory occupied by those of us who didn’t have a college/career plan lined out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I did nothing. I ultimately took a couple of short-lived jobs I hated before deciding to attend the local community college so I could hopefully qualify for a job I didn’t hate (side note: I didn’t find one). I was aimless and disillusioned, and instead of feeling like I had my whole life ahead of me, I was consciously aware of time passing me by.

I was also in the middle of a sexual identity crisis and nursing a broken heart. Near the end of high school, I’d fallen hard for one of my closest friends, who returned my feelings but was much farther along in her journey of self-acceptance than I was. She knew what she wanted, while I was too afraid to admit that I wanted it too. I wasn’t ready, and instead of just saying I’m not ready, I pushed her away and caused us both a lot of hurt. I still carry some of that hurt with me.

Needless to say, I was a bit of a mess. And during this messy period, movies were my solace. It was during this time that I started expanding my love and knowledge of old horror films, making regular trips to Suncoast Video (RIP) to grab anything with a familiar name attached to it. Karloff and Lugosi, Lee and Cushing, Vincent Price: these guys were my constants. Their films felt like home to me, cozy and comforting, and I immersed myself in them with abandon.

In this pre-streaming age, you could also find some pretty rad public domain titles at stores like Dollar Tree around Halloween. This is where I picked up a double feature DVD of lesser-known Christopher Lee films, Horror Hotel (1960) and Crypt of the Vampire (1964). I had never heard of either of them, I had no idea what they were about, and I couldn’t wait to dig into them.

I also had no idea that the latter film would alter my perception so drastically. It both took me out of my comfort zone and forced it to expand to include the parts of myself I was hiding from. To say that it changed my life sounds dramatic but stumbling across Crypt of the Vampire put me on a path that leads directly to this very moment, to the fact that writing about horror films – and lesbian vampire films in particular – is an important part of my life.

The film kicks off in familiar enough territory: a young woman is killed by an unseen vampire. We’re then transported to an isolated castle in some nonspecific part of Eastern Europe, where another young woman, Laura, is plagued by nightmares of her beloved cousins meeting grizzly ends -- nightmares that have a habit of coming true. Laura lives in the shadow of an ancestor, Cira of Karnstein, a witch who vowed revenge on her family for executing her. All signs point to Laura being Cira’s reincarnation, unconsciously picking off members of the Karnstein clan one by one. Laura’s father, Count Karnstein (Lee), hires Friedrich Klauss, an historian from London, to do some digging in the family dirt and hopefully uncover something that will set all their minds at ease. Friedrich immediately takes a liking to Laura, who is too busy doing sad girl shit to give him more than a passing glance.

In a dramatic turn of events, a carriage crashes outside the castle walls. A woman emerges with her unconscious daughter, who is in “delicate health,” and needs a place to stay while her mother hurries off to continue her very important journey. Laura immediately suggests that the daughter, Lyuba, should stay at the castle, and when Lyuba regains consciousness she and Laura lock eyes and the music shifts to a lilting romantic score. We then cut to Laura watching Lyuba sleep (naked) in the guest room. When Lyuba wakes, Laura tells her she’s beautiful and they hold hands and promise to be very good friends.

And reader, I was shook.

At this point in my life, I was unfamiliar with Carmilla. The wild, wonderful world of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Gothic novella and its numerous film adaptations had not yet opened to me, so I truly had no idea that this movie was going to be gay. It caught me completely off guard and not only forced me to face some of the feelings I’d been trying to bury, but it showed them in a setting that felt familiar. I’m not going to tell you that watching this movie made me suddenly acknowledge and accept that I’m a lesbian – there were still years of processing and figuring shit out to go – but it was a big step in the right direction.

Technically, this was not the first time I’d seen lesbian desire or encountered queerness onscreen. Catherine Zeta-Jones’ flagrantly bisexual Theo in The Haunting (1999) had made a huge impression on me at a younger age. I also distinctly remember renting Embrace of the Vampire (1995) from the local video store and watching it locked in my bedroom while my parents were asleep, with the volume turned low lest I alert them to my clandestine activity, to catch a glimpse of girl-on-girl action (hi mom).

But Crypt of the Vampire affected me in a different way, perhaps just because it's lesbianism was so unexpected, or because it came about in a context that already felt like home to me, or because it was all subtextual. (And I use that term lightly, because the film’s “subtext” literally leaps off the screen and slaps you in the face.) Maybe it was because of the bittersweet familiarity of Laura and Lyuba’s relationship; as they laughed and frolicked and gazed into each other’s eyes with knowing smiles, I would surely have been reminded of the easy intimacy I’d shared with my friend, still fresh in my memory. The way we would casually hold hands in the hallways at school or lie close to one another at sleepovers. The inside jokes and secret smiles we shared. It was so glaringly obvious that we weren’t just friends, long before we ever realized it.

Laura’s internal struggle was familiar as well. She was fighting against a part of herself that she couldn’t accept, that she and those around her perceived as abominable, something that needed to be stamped out. “Why am I different?” Laura asks. “I want to be like all the other girls.” She just wants to be normal. That’s what I wanted too.

But I also wanted Laura and Lyuba to ride off into the moonlight together, regardless of vampirism or family curses or whatever. That’s not how the movie ends – turns out Lyuba, not Laura, is Cira of Karnstein in the flesh, who intended to either kill Laura or whisk her away into the dark world of vampirism, lesbianism, and all sorts of other unsavory (re: exciting) things. Friedrich and Count Karnstein find Lyuba/Cira’s tomb (she’s in the tomb, yet also somehow in the woods trying to lure Laura into her carriage… listen, just go with it) and destroy her.

I’d seen enough horror movies and vampire movies in particular to know how these things usually end, so any disappointment I might have felt did nothing to diminish the impact the film had on me overall. Nowadays, I’m very familiar with the traditional Heteropatriarchy Saves the Day! trope that makes up the third act of many a lesbian vampire film. And while that trope is ripe for analysis and criticism, I can also look at it differently from what the creators most likely intended. The narrative might want us to believe that Laura is free of what makes her “different” and that she leaves her past behind to start a happy new life presumably with Friedrich, but she is irrevocably changed for having known and loved Lyuba.

I like to think that Laura’s smile at the end of the film, as she rides away from Karnstein castle with her father and Friedrich, isn’t because she’s happy to take up her role as dutiful daughter and wife. It’s because she knows something they don’t: that she is different and it’s not a curse. It’s not something she should be afraid of, but something she can now embrace – thanks, in part, to Lyuba.

I’m projecting, of course. Because now, some fifteen-ish years after seeing the film for the first time, I know that I am different and I embrace it – thanks, in part, to Laura, Lyuba, and Crypt of the Vampire.

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