The Velvet Vampire tries for an air of ethereal arthouse exploitation and lands somewhere between Jean Rollin and Ted V. Mikels (whose Girl in Gold Boots landed on MST3K and for good reason). I suppose Rollin, even at his best, isn't any LESS cheesy than The Velvet Vampire, but he employs a dream logic that makes his films feel like trashy poetry, whereas this film just has characters who can't behave rationally to save their lives.
The main problem is the couple targeted by Diane LeFanu, possible vampire. They're pretty sleazy and unappealing even from the beginning, so when they allow themselves to be seduced by the vampire you're not really sure if they're falling under her hypnotic spell or just emotionally immature hedonists who probably never should have gotten married in the first place. That might be intentional, though, since director Stephanie Rothman keeps it ambiguous as to whether Diane is actually a vampire (as in the creatures of legend) or merely demented. Nothing overtly supernatural happens in the film, with the possible exception of some shared dreams; atypical of vampire characters, Diane casts reflections, seems at least resistant if not fully immune to sunlight, and rarely kills her victims by biting them on the neck--some other, more mundane methods are usually employed, like knives and pitchforks.
The whole affair is given an arthouse sheen with slow pacing and a few surreal dream sequences in the desert, flavored with slow motion and raga rock in a kind of Woodstock/Jim Morrison mysticism. The character of Diane prefigures Anne Rice's bread-and-butter mix of enigmatic eroticism, hunger, tragedy, and loneliness...not that Bela Lugosi's Dracula didn't have passages where he adapted a forlorn, haunted visage. I wouldn't be surprised if the opening scene of the Buffy TV show, which lays out its thesis by having the seemingly innocent and virginal female turn out to be the true predator in what seems like an otherwise typical horror scene, was influenced by some midnight showing an adolescent Joss Whedon caught of The Velvet Vampire on TV. Not to mention the vampires here exist in the sunny California climate that was always giving Angel trouble on his spin-off, even if the Mojave Desert is a far cry from suburban Sunnydale or Los Angeles.
Perhaps the most striking scene occurs at the end, where Diane brazenly chases the wife through a crowded bus terminal and across busy city streets. Usually in fiction, even the most powerful vampires prefer to keep their identity secret, hiding behind a charming and urbane smile in the guise of your handsome neighbor or that eccentric but ultimately harmless kook who lives in that creepy mansion on the hill. They tend to perform their dirty work under cover of darkness. Diane, on the other hand, seems to have no fear of being exposed in a metropolitan area; you get the feeling that if she catches Susan, she's going to sink her teeth into that throat in front of dozens of witnesses and authority figures, draining her victim's life right there on the street. I thought that was a neat idea and would love to see it in more vampire media--after all, what do vampires really have to fear from the police if bullets don't kill them, bars can't hold them, and they lack a heartbeat to pump a lethal injection through their bodies?--although I guess the not-canonical-until-Nosferatu idea that sunlight represents a vampire's certain demise is too well-ingrained into the broader mythology at this point to give us many bloodsuckers walking around at high noon. Alas.
Overall, The Velvet Vampire is an intriguing curio if you're into '70s exploitation and pulpy drive-in cinema. I just wish it had as much depth of thought as its idiosyncratic and ponderous style seems to imply.
The main problem is the couple targeted by Diane LeFanu, possible vampire. They're pretty sleazy and unappealing even from the beginning, so when they allow themselves to be seduced by the vampire you're not really sure if they're falling under her hypnotic spell or just emotionally immature hedonists who probably never should have gotten married in the first place. That might be intentional, though, since director Stephanie Rothman keeps it ambiguous as to whether Diane is actually a vampire (as in the creatures of legend) or merely demented. Nothing overtly supernatural happens in the film, with the possible exception of some shared dreams; atypical of vampire characters, Diane casts reflections, seems at least resistant if not fully immune to sunlight, and rarely kills her victims by biting them on the neck--some other, more mundane methods are usually employed, like knives and pitchforks.
The whole affair is given an arthouse sheen with slow pacing and a few surreal dream sequences in the desert, flavored with slow motion and raga rock in a kind of Woodstock/Jim Morrison mysticism. The character of Diane prefigures Anne Rice's bread-and-butter mix of enigmatic eroticism, hunger, tragedy, and loneliness...not that Bela Lugosi's Dracula didn't have passages where he adapted a forlorn, haunted visage. I wouldn't be surprised if the opening scene of the Buffy TV show, which lays out its thesis by having the seemingly innocent and virginal female turn out to be the true predator in what seems like an otherwise typical horror scene, was influenced by some midnight showing an adolescent Joss Whedon caught of The Velvet Vampire on TV. Not to mention the vampires here exist in the sunny California climate that was always giving Angel trouble on his spin-off, even if the Mojave Desert is a far cry from suburban Sunnydale or Los Angeles.
Perhaps the most striking scene occurs at the end, where Diane brazenly chases the wife through a crowded bus terminal and across busy city streets. Usually in fiction, even the most powerful vampires prefer to keep their identity secret, hiding behind a charming and urbane smile in the guise of your handsome neighbor or that eccentric but ultimately harmless kook who lives in that creepy mansion on the hill. They tend to perform their dirty work under cover of darkness. Diane, on the other hand, seems to have no fear of being exposed in a metropolitan area; you get the feeling that if she catches Susan, she's going to sink her teeth into that throat in front of dozens of witnesses and authority figures, draining her victim's life right there on the street. I thought that was a neat idea and would love to see it in more vampire media--after all, what do vampires really have to fear from the police if bullets don't kill them, bars can't hold them, and they lack a heartbeat to pump a lethal injection through their bodies?--although I guess the not-canonical-until-Nosferatu idea that sunlight represents a vampire's certain demise is too well-ingrained into the broader mythology at this point to give us many bloodsuckers walking around at high noon. Alas.
Overall, The Velvet Vampire is an intriguing curio if you're into '70s exploitation and pulpy drive-in cinema. I just wish it had as much depth of thought as its idiosyncratic and ponderous style seems to imply.