Les lèvres rouges

Plot synopsis:
Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory didn't die in 1613 walled up in her castle . She is still alive over 350 years later and still preying on young girls for their blood. Elizabeth [Delphine Seyrig] and her secretary Ilona Harxzy [Andrea Rau] have arrived at a hotel in Ostend, Belgium. Concierge Pierre [Paul Esser] is astonished to see the Countess again. He last saw her 40 years ago when he was but a young bellboy, and she hasn't changed a bit. It is winter, and the only other hotel guests are a newlywed couple, Stefan [John Karlen] and Valerie [Danielle Ouimet] Chilton, who are en route from Switzerland to England, where Stefan's mother lives. Elizabeth comments to Ilona that Stefan and Valerie are perfect, and they take the adjoining suite. Stefan is having a hard time telling his mother about his marriage. He makes one excuse after another when pressed by Valerie, even going so far as to ask Pierre, in front of Valerie, to put through a call to his mother while slipping Pierre a note that says, "Say there is no reply." Stefan is not anxious to get back to England and finds reason to hang around Ostend for another day or two or three.No one can go to Belgium without visiting Brugge, walking among its medieval buildings and taking a boat ride on its many canals. Stefan and Valerie are no different. While boating along, they make a stop where they find a crowd gathered outside of a building and an ambulance arriving. Wanting to know what is going on, they join the crowd and learn that a young girl has been murdered, her throat slit and all the blood drained from her body. And she wasn't the first. Three other girls have been similarly murdered in the past week. As the body is carried from house to ambulance, a strange look overcomes Stefan, who strains to get a look at the dead girl and hits his wife in the face when she suggests that they leave. This is a side of Stefan that Valerie hasn't seen before, and it scares her, especially when he and Elizabeth start talking about the history of the Bathorys, and Stefan seems positively mesmerized by Elizabeth's description of how she tortured the servant girls. To make matters worse, after Stefan finally does call his "mother", he suddenly starts beating Valerie with his belt. The next day, Valerie decides to leave Stefan, packs her bags, and goes to the train station. Just as the train is about to leave, Elizabeth shows up and convinces Valerie to give it another try. You can't give up after just a few days, she advises.Unfortunately, while Valerie was trying to run away, Ilona seduced Stefan, which wasn't too difficult. After they have sex, Stefan takes a shower. When he tries to pull Ilona under the running water, she screams as though in pain and grabs a straight-edged razor. In the tussle that follows, Ilona drops the razor and then falls on top of it, killing herself instantly. Just at that moment, Elizabeth and Valerie walk in the bathroom to find their naked bodies lying on the floor. Valerie has given up loving Stefan. Elizabeth doesn't seem upset at all about losing her companion. Her primary concern is what to do with the body. They take the body to the shore, where Stefan digs a deep hole. Elizabeth tosses in the body a bit prematurely, pinning Stefan under it, and the sides of the hole start caving in, burying Stefan along with Ilona. Fortunately, Valerie still cares enough to grab Stefan's hand and pull him out.Unknown to Stefan, Elizabeth has also been seducing Valerie with her kisses. When the three of them return to the hotel, Valerie chooses Elizabeth over Stefan. Now it's Stefan's turn to be jealous. He starts packing his clothes and orders Valerie to pack, too, but she refuses, so he slaps her around a bit more. Elizabeth and Valerie attempt to smother Stefan with a bowl, but it breaks, cutting Stefan's wrists. They drink up the blood and, when he is dead, they toss his body off the balcony. Elizabeth and Valerie attempt to make a getaway, but the sun is starting to rise. Elizabeth pushes Valerie to drive faster, faster, FASTER! Suddenly the car spins out in the morning light, and Elizabeth is thrown clear but lands impaled on a tree branch.Epilogue: A few months later, Valerie walks with a young man and woman, telling them how they will be the best of friends. But she speaks with Elizabeth Bathory's voice. [Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl.]

Tags: gothic, murder, violence, cult, atmospheric, haunting, psychedelic, revenge

Review:
And while I will be the first to laud the merits of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee's contributions to the cape, they look rather timid next to Countess Elizabeth Bathory (the luminous and sensual Delphine Seyrig) in "Daughters of Darkness." While Harry Kumel's film is one of the most aesthetically beautiful vampire pictures ever lensed, dripping with subtle sexual tension, it also presses forth with a feminist/lesbian subtext that's as alluring as it is clever.
The plot is relatively straightforward, and the film takes its time in establishing mood and atmosphere--Valerie (Danielle Ouiment) and Stefan (John Karlen) are newlyweds who are on the rocks only 3 hours into the marriage, and things are complicated further when Countess Bathory and her assistant, Ilona (Andrea Rau) check into the same deserted seaside hotel.
"Daughters of Darkness" is the type of moody, character-driven piece that plays like a sensual sister to George Romero's similarly unique "Martin." As my comment title implies, this is an excellent film, required viewing for fans of horror and great art alike..
Whilst this is a perfectly cast movie, one would have to say that Delphine Seyrig as the countess Elizabeth Bathory runs away with the show in a screen-stealing performance.
The film maintains an exceptionally eerie and surreal atmosphere throughout its 100 minutes, the score is one of the most beautiful and ingenious horror film soundtracks I've ever heard, and Delphine Seyring is wonderfully eerie and seductive at the same time in the role of Countess Bathory.
The real, terrible story of this sadistic countess, who is often referred to as the "Bloody Lady", however, is an immensely popular topic in Horror literature and film, and the Erzsébet Bathory story also provided a basis (as well as a villain) for this particular film.Newlyweds Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet) are staying at a Belgian hotel in the middle of nowhere, when two more guests arrive - A mysterious and tempting countess (Delphine Seyring) who is accompanied by a pretty young girl (Andrea Rau)..."Les Lèvres Rouges" is a film as beautiful as it is eerie, mysterious and surreal.
The greatest quality of the movie, however is the mesmerizing atmosphere which is even fortified by the beautiful and hypnotic score.All said, "Les Lèvres Rouges" is an excellent, immensely eerie, beautiful and atmospheric Horror film, and THE classic of the Lesbian Vampire sub-genre that Horror lovers can not afford to miss!.
The whole thing exudes the scent of an absinthe dream, the contours of a flowing red dress.Superficially it is about a couple of newly-weds - but who, as the film opens with them having sex in a train cabin, openly declare that they don't love each other - who find themselves stranded in Ostande and move in to a strangely empty hotel for a few days.
It is important to note that she is played by the actress who starred in Marienbad for Resnais, which this film alludes to; in the mysterious hotel setting with its expansive balustrades, in the twilight wanderings, in the sense of time revoked and sensations amplified.She is the architect of all this, building around these people the desires that will yield them to her.
The follow-up to Kümel's "Malpertuis" (from Jean Ray's book),"Les Lèvres Rouges " has got a much simpler screenplay and ,with one exception no great stars (no Orson Welles,Michel Bouquet,Susan Hampshire ,Jean-Pierre Cassel.....)....One star ,but what a star!Delphine Seyrig was one of the greatest stars France had ever had.She mesmerized her audience as no actress of her generation could;her death was a major loss for the European cinema.She could play the fairy godmother of "Peau D'Ane ",the dumb bourgeois lady of "Le Charme Discret De La Bourgeoisie" or the legendary bloody countess -many historians do not believe in those blood baths -with the same aplomb;three parts so different and the same woman with the same suave voice -you MUST hear her speak,a dubbed version would be a disaster;so make sure you get a DVD with subtitles.I have always thought Belgian directors were very good at creating a supernatural atmosphere without using a ton of special effects;like Delvaux in "Un Soir Un Train" ,Kümel makes the simple picture of a train which comes to a standstill.The baroque hotel will remind some users of "L'Année Dernière A Marienbad" ,Seyrig's debut in France.It's to state the obvious to write that Seyrig steals every scene she is in and fortunately she's featured in many scenes ;the three other leads seem bland by comparison and it takes all the talent of the director to pull them off."Les Levres Rouges" gave a renewed life to the vampire movie ,like Polanski's "the fearless vampire killers" did in the precedent decade .A strong lesbian interest in this movie too:Seyrig was so hot she could appeal to both men and women..
Delphine Seyrig and her supporting actresses prove those people wrong.This film reminds me of the equally classic MARY, MARY BLOODY MARY, another movie about vampires that aren't really vampires.
The concierge Pierre advises that the place is empty since it is out of season and they become aware of three murders in Bruges.In the same night, the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Delphine Seyrig) arrives in the hotel with her secretary Ilona Harczy (Andrea Rau) and Pierre swears that she had been in the hotel forty years ago with the same appearance.
Delphine Seyrig plays the Countess Erzsebet Bathory(a real historical figure who murdered hundreds of young women in her quest for immortality).In the film,Bathory and her young female companion (Andrea Rau)cross paths with a young couple,Valerie and Stefan who are honeymooning during the off-season in Europe.At first the couple seem fairly normal, but things quickly sour,as the woman is shown to be emotionally unstable and the man is very violent and turned on by death.Their relationship is also undermined by homosexuality on both sides.There are intimations that Stefan is in thrall to an older man back in England and Valerie soon falls under the spell of the ageless and beautiful Countess Bathory."Daughters of Darkness" is a mesmerizing and hypnotic masterpiece of lesbian vampire film.The use of color is extremely stylish,the mood is fantastic and the atmosphere is chilling and sexually tense.The visual beauty of this film is simply phenomenal!.
So, it is actually almost empty, until the couple, Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet) make the acquaintance of sophisticated Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig), who just might be THE Elizabeth Bathory of real-life infamy, and her sultry companion, Ilona (Andrea Rau).Enhanced by lovely music composed by Francois de Roubaix, the movie, just like its cagey main character, has a certain, seductive allure going for it; it's hard not to be captivated by Seyrigs' performance and hang on to every word she speaks.
In fact, as this story plays out, The Countess doesn't seem as bad as Stefan turns out to be.The other actors do a fine job of reinforcing the notion that a substantial part of acting is REACTING, as their characters feel the influence of this sexy stranger.
Character details like this are given throughout; Stefan reacts with more than casual curiosity to being present at a murder scene, and when he and the Countess recount the horrific acts of Elizabeth Bathory, it arouses them more and more; Valerie yells at them to stop, and is it the sordid nature of what they speak, the fact that they're getting turned on, or both, that is unnerving Valerie?
Andrea Rau as the Countess' lover Illona doesn't have to do much other than look pretty, but she gives a hysterical and haunting, if brief, showcase during her particularly nasty bathroom death scene - possibly the film's saddest and most cringe-inducing set piece.
Its story has a honeymooning couple Stefan and Valerie end up at a deserted hotel in Ostend where the only other guests are a pair of unusual women, one of whom it turns out is the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory.Like the later Don't Look Now (1973), Daughters of Darkness uses the strange mood of an off-season resort to great effect.
It's a film that operates in several ways.These things all in themselves would ensure that Daughters of Darkness would be a classic within the genre but it doesn't even take into account the presence of Delphine Seyrig.
And you just as sure can't make a horror film simply by dealing thematically with vampires; you also need some scares (the movie's one potentially scary scene - in a shower - is badly edited).
Indeed, Bathory's not above seducing Valerie's sadistic husband (played by John Karlen) with descriptions of her family's brutal past.Otherwise, Daughters of Darkness is an engagingly odd and visually arresting - venture into vampire-land.
It's a slow paced European lesbian vampire erotic drama about a couple on honeymoon who happen to meet the gorgeous Countess Elisabeth Bathory, who actually existed in the 17th century.
Daughters of Darkness is often quoted as a horror movie, Gothic/vampire tale, actually is far more than that.
It focuses on other aspects of human condition behind the theme and the plot, Delphine Seyrig proves when she is anything but scary, indeed a mirror of a society, which are developed through a purely French cinema of the 70 decade in the form of film making, enjoying performances from a handful of actors in a superb camera work and a a no less magnificent soundtrack, creating an atmosphere very own, much like the scenes chosen and the acting itself.You can see this film as a horror movie entertainment fleeting, but in this case do not expect a creepy experience, or watch the movie expecting nothing and feel that the film does not aim high flights, but a stunning purity..
During this time, you see a lot of nudity and the Countess clearly is grooming Valerie to be her next sexual play thing.Around the time "Daughters of Darkness" came out, in the 1970s, there seemed to be a trend involving lesbian vampires.
A newlywed couple staying at the same hotel becomes intrigued with the events and start a private investigation, but the countess also spotted the couple and has a couple of diabolical plans of her own."Daughters of Darkness" is wondrously stylish and tasteful, and certainly not the sleazy lesbian vampire exploitation flick many people mistake it for.
The term 'Lesbians Vampires' is something you would associate with the likes of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin with their trashy seventies horror flicks, but here director Harry Kümel has taken the theme and crafted a beautiful piece of Gothic art out of it, and thus Daughters of Darkness is surely one of the best movies of it's type.
It soon transpires that there have been a lot of deaths in the area surrounding the hotel and as the plot develops, we soon realise that the countess' interest in the couple is mostly focused on the beautiful Valerie...Daughters of Darkness is very artistic - the set design, costumes and locations used are all stunning to look at, and this bodes well with the plot.
Unlike other lesbian vampire films, this one isn't all about sex scenes; rather it's more about the Countess seducing the couple at the hotel.
Upon arrival at their seaside hotel, the couple are joined by the enigmatic Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) and her companion, Ilona (Andrea Rau), who have shown up amid a rash of bloody murders in the area.
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS is a superior vampire film, drawing on the Bathory story, bringing it into the late twentieth century, and imbuing it w/ a haunting, artistic flair.
The eyes of the Countess are upon her immediately, and with the assistance of her servant/partner Ilona, played by European Playmate Andrea Rau, who definitely gives us everything one could wish for in a performance.There is so little vampire lore in this film that when one sees it, it is somewhat of a shock.
They encounter 2 women: Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) and Ilona (Andrea Rau), around the same time that young women are popping up dead, drained of blood.
Actually, I had originally planned to get this in August along with that batch of horror film DVDs from MGM and Warner, but I literally couldn't wait until then!Even though I was expecting to like DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, I must say that, by the end of it, I absolutely loved the film.
That may be because the film's director did not treat it as a horror film in the first place (and he still doesn't consider it as one) but instead supplied it with a distinctly personal and uniquely 'arty' look where the color red is predominant.The film's very opening sequence is an unusual and boldly erotic one, a passionate sexual encounter between our two protagonists, the newly-wed couple Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet); the only other film I know of which starts in this way is the Donald Cammell/Nicolas Roeg collaboration PERFORMANCE (1970).
In this regard, the coda of the film where she is seen wearing a cape and seducing two new (I daresay unattractive) victims (suggesting that the story will repeat itself) is unconvincing and seems tacked-on; in fact, I found it to be the one undeniable false note struck by the film during its entire running-time (although, as Kumel explains in the Commentary, the epilogue was needed so as to show that evil was not destroyed with the Countess' death but was to live on through her lover).The film's sparse, austere settings, particularly the Hotel Astoria, is reminiscent of Alain Resnais' impenetrable art-house classic LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) and fit the dream-like mood and deliberate pace of the film perfectly.
Since the film was shot at the start of the Seventies and the character of the Countess is said to have stayed at that same hotel some forty years before (i.e. the early Thirties), Kumel's modeling of Seyrig's interpretation of Bathory after Marlene Dietrich as she appeared in Josef von Sternberg's films, is no mere homage by a film historian turned director (which Kumel actually was) but also an accurate rendering of the acting styles and social mores of the period.
It's a pity therefore that her work after DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS is so hard to track down nowadays, with Bunuel's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972) and Fred Zinnemann's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (1973) being the best-known, although one would think that she was always worth watching.If Delphine Seyrig referenced Marlene Dietrich, the short-cropped hairdo sported by Andrea Rau (playing Bathory's long-suffering secretary/lover Ilona) makes one think, intentionally so, of Louise Brooks as she appeared in G.W. Pabst's PANDORA'S BOX (1928) and DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (1929).
Whilst not an actress in Seyrig's class, Rau possesses an intensely captivating and physical presence, or as Harry Kumel himself puts it, 'Andrea was a natural she had no inhibitions, maybe because she had done porno.' Kumel downplays all vampiric lore in his film, so that the fleeting moments in which they appear (like Bathory casting no reflection in the mirror) take you by surprise.
Even so, I have all the three movies I mentioned earlier on pre-order at the moment and am looking forward to watching the last two for the first time, particularly COUNTESS Dracula which is a cruder retelling of Elizabeth Bathory's exploits, with Ingrid Pitt and Lesley-Ann Down stepping in for Delphine Seyrig and Andrea Rau. Three aspects of the film I haven't tackled yet are Eduard Van Der Enden's fabulous cinematography, Francois De Roubaix's wonderful music score and the screenplay.
"Daughters of Darkness" is a fresh take on the vampire lore, using a character in the guise of a real-life vampire -- the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, cousin to the elected King of Poland -- who was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment for satanic practices in the early 1600s by the Holy Roman Emperor; the Countess bathed in the blood of thousands of peasant girls in order to gain eternal youth & beauty.In this story, the Countess -- alive & well in 20th century Belgium -- comes across a pair of newlyweds whom she wants to make her next victims -- or her next playmates; for much of the movie the jury is out on which fate she desires most.This is a fascinating film that falls short of being perfect.
Like other great movies, the images and the overall feeling of the film stay with you long after specific details might fade.
I didn't think Ouimet needed to bring any acting into this film, I felt the director was using her beauty, hypnotic(..a term I throw around a bit too much, but that's the reaction I felt so I use it here)as it was, to frame artistic shots within the frame with John Karlen.I also liked how the director won't reveal Countess as a vampire, per se, instead showing her blood drinking in one particular scene(..probably my favorite of the film, when Seyrig isn't given the camera to do her thing)from afar.One thing that many might criticize(..that doesn't bother me)is the deliberate slow pacing.
Namely, the cinematography is gorgeous, the acting either overblown or wooden, the dialog absurd, and the story - well, the writer should be patted on the head and sent back to school, with the script posted proudly on the refrigerator.What I liked: as I said, the camera-work was marvelous, Delphine Seyrig does a marvelous job as the 'vampire' who wears her heart on her sleeve, and her secretary, played by Andrea Rau, is beautiful, with perhaps the best actual acting in the film.
Danielle Ouimet plays the wife that Stefan seems strangely unwilling to introduce to his mother.They are staying the same hotel is the magnificent and sensual Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig), who the desk clerk swears stayed at the hotel forty years earlier and has not changed at all, and her ward Ilona (Andrea Rau).
Daughters of Darkness is one of those films where the viewer can generally be sure of what will happen from one moment to the next, but it's still interesting enough to keep watching.