The Vampire Lovers: Hammer Adapts Carmilla

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000

By 1970 Hammer had a problem, and it was a problem of its own making. For a decade and a half the studio had ruled Gothic horror with its Draculas and Frankensteins, its plush colour and its heaving décolletage, and the formula had aged into something the newer, franker cinema of the era was starting to make look quaint. The Vampire Lovers was Hammer’s answer: an adaptation of a novella older than Dracula itself, made just as British censorship loosened its grip, that reset the studio’s register for a new and more permissive decade. It is a transitional film in the exact, literal sense — you can watch Hammer changing gears inside it.

Roy Ward Baker - vo.rs

The Vampire Lovers: Hammer Adapts Carmilla