THE VELVET VAMPIRE 1971
Desert Sun, Velvet Seduction, Sand and Spellbound: The Hypnotic Bite of The Velvet Vampire 1971
If you ever find yourself rummaging through the far-out archives of 1970s cult cinema, The Velvet Vampire (1971), aimed squarely at the arthouse set, flows into focus like a bloody mirage of desire, surreal and seductive, equal parts sun-baked oddity and erotic slow-burn, a gleaming example of desert surrealism spun through vampire mythology. Produced under the legendary Roger Corman’s watchful eye, The Velvet Vampire was among the pioneering films released by his newly formed New World Pictures. Directed by Stephanie Rothman, a rare trailblazer among exploitation filmmakers, her work includes: It’s a Bikini World (1967), The Student Nurses (1970), Group Marriage (1973), Terminal Island (1973), and The Working Girls (1974); she also co-directed Blood Bath (1966). Rothman challenges and overturns the worn-out tropes and sexist clichés all too common in horror films. To satisfy the exploitation genre’s appetite for spectacle, Rothman’s screenplay, co-written with Maurice Charles and her husband Charles S. Swartz, barely scratches the surface of our vampiress Diane’s deeper, more poignant story; her aching loneliness and mournful longing for her long-departed husband remain largely unexplored.
The Velvet Vampire gleefully turns expectations on their head with a sly, playfully dreamy edge. Rothman sets her fanged tale in a landscape washed out with blinding light, where the supernatural feels at home amid Joshua trees and endless dunes. Daniel LaCambre’s cinematography leans into the contrast; the vast, scorching desert by day, painted in sharp reds and golden tones, becomes a stage for uncanny dreams and blood-red symbolism, heightening the sense of unreality. That imagery, coupled with Roger Dollarhide (studio engineer who collaborated with notable musicians such as Sly Stone) and Clancy B. Grass III’s wonderfully spaced-out score, lulls you into a trance where every sigh of the desert breeze and feverish note vibrates with seduction and threat.
“Susan, have you ever noticed how men envy us?”
“Envy us, how?”
“The pleasure we have that only we can have. We can’t help it. It’s just our nature, the way we are. And in their secret hearts, they hate us for it because they can never know what it’s like.”
The score of The Velvet Vampire carries a quiet ache, its melodies lingering with a sense of longing that draws you further into the film’s hypnotic imagery. Each note seems to pull you deeper into the modern mythology of its vampire tale, casting a subtle spell that links music and story in a way that has stayed with me and subtly reshaped how I see its imagery and meaning. It’s part of why I have remained a fan of this film all these years.
The plot, as offbeat as its milieu, starts innocently: the Golden Pair, a 70s horror film Adam and Eve, married couple Lee and Susan Ritter (Michael Blodgett and Sherry Miles), sporting that unmistakable California bleach-blonde glow, stumble into the orbit of the mysterious Diane LeFanu, (Celeste Yarnall, regal and mesmerizing) whose vampy allure and jet-black raven hair turn heads at the LA art scene’s tongue-in-cheek Stoker Gallery. Diane’s surname is an overt homage to Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, whose novella Carmilla (1872) is a foundational work in vampire literature and particularly influential in female vampire mythology.
No sooner have Lee and Susan declared two years of wedded bliss than Lee, wanderlust-ridden and restless, starts circling Diane like a sunburned moth to her shadowy flame. Diane, who only moments before proved her appetite and ruthless prowess in a swift act of self-defense, turns the tables and overpowers a man who tries to assault her, a moment that both establishes her power and subverts expectation. Not only that, but she gets to satisfy the need to indulge her cravings and drink from the scarlet well. When it comes to the two young blonde beauties, she welcomes their attention. Meanwhile, Susan finds herself adrift in the surreal swirl, trying to latch onto reality as desire, danger, and daylight all get deliciously tangled. The subtle touch of cunning darkness can undo pure innocence, can’t it?
Diane invites them to her isolated estate in the desert, a sensual, sunstruck vision, a crimson oasis, a sunlit purgatory where vehicles break down, dreams bleed into reality, and lust sizzles just beneath the skin.
When Diane extends her invitation to her Mojave hideaway, Lee is first in line, ever eager, barely concealing his enthusiasm, while Susan trails in his wake, her doubts piling up faster than she can voice them. The couple’s trek across the sun-bleached highways is a checklist of warning signs: oppressive heat pressing in from all sides, not another car in sight, sudden car trouble, and locals who size them up like they wandered into the wrong side of a waking dream. Every mile seems to whisper a fresh omen, but off they go, oblivious and unsure, straight toward Diane’s desert lair.
Though there are so many warning signs, as victims are apt to do in these stories, the blissfully unaware daydreamers at the abyss push forward, ignoring every setback until their car finally gives up, leaving them stranded on a desolate stretch of sand, baking under the desert sun, with nowhere to go. Then, as if conjured by the heat itself, Diane appears in her canary yellow dune buggy, bright, bold, and perfectly timed to deliver them from their sandy dead-end.
As soon as the trio arrives at Diane’s haven in the desert, all those familiar Gothic tropes get turned inside out. Forget misty moors and looming stone castles, here, we’re greeted by a villa ablaze with sunlight, its isolation punctuated by stretches of cracked earth and shimmering heat. This is vampirism reimagined, where the harsh light of day dissolves old shadows, the sand takes the place of cobwebs, and sunlight itself becomes a challenge to ancient nocturnal rites. Yet for all its sun-soaked bravado, Diane’s world hasn’t entirely ditched tradition, and just over the rise, a cemetery keeps its own secrets buried under relentless blue sky. Diane relies on Juan (Jerry Daniels), her fiercely loyal companion, who handles the messy business of keeping her thirst satisfied all the while blending old legends with something unmistakably, eerily new.
Once Diane has coaxed Lee and Susan into her sun-scorched sanctuary, the boundaries dissolve and her strange ritual begins. Her presence becomes a mirage, distorting their sense of reality, part seduction and watchful intent; she becomes an enigmatic trespasser in their dreams. Both Lee and Susan tumble through the same surreal, uncanny nightmare. Diane fractured and shifting at its center, a specter whose true motive remains a mystery. That flicker of uncertainty, what Diane really wants with her beautiful guests, is the thread of suspense that runs through The Velvet Vampire, leaving us wandering in uncertainty right beside them, caught somewhere between attraction and unease.
What begins with hospitality soon twists, as Diane preys on both husband and wife, folding them into her web of erotic tension, vivid nightmares, and lurking violence. Rothman, infusing the script with her own genre-savvy wit and feminist self-awareness, lets the vampire as seductress skewer both convention and expectation. Yarnall, at once hypnotic and haunted, delivers a performance that hovers compellingly between camp and cool detachment; Blodgett (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls 1970, The Carey Treatment 1972), with sun-bleached good looks, is both predator and prey. Lee actively pursues Diane, jointly participating in the charged triangle of seduction and tension. His motivations and actions reveal a certain self-serving and opportunistic nature; his attraction to Diane leads him to ignore his wife’s discomfort, and he becomes as much a pursuer as the pursued.
Scene after scene unravels with dreamlike slowness: blood-red linens and desert hallucinations; Diane gliding in her dune buggy like an apparition torn from a Magritte canvas. The house, overseen by the hulking Juan, is less a sanctuary than a bizarre arena for the couple’s undoing.
Lee has fallen prey to Diane’s seductive grip, lured and drained in intimate fashion, a scene that’s more sensually unsettling than overtly gruesome, with blood and eroticism intertwining beneath the film’s hallucinatory atmosphere. Blodgett’s demise is marked by his gradual succumbing rather than outright gore; it’s the fatal embrace of the vampire, the slow seepage of life, and the surrender to forbidden desire that does him in.
Sherry Miles as Susan teeters between ingénue and liberated survivor. The most striking moment comes as Susan, desperate and traumatized, flees from Diane’s clutches. Her escape turns into a chase through sand and sunlight, culminating in a climactic Greyhound bus chase where sunlight and a flash mob brandishing crucifixes spell Diane’s demise in a spectacle of modern-meets-mythic absurdity and where the ordinary suddenly collides with the supernatural.
The memorable scene in The Velvet Vampire unfolds at the climax, as the sun-drenched tension finally boils over into surreal violence. Diane LeFanu, our exquisitely dark temptress, finds her powers waning under the relentless desert sun. When Diane approaches Susan, intent on claiming her, only to be repelled by the crowd flaunting crucifixes, it turns the mundane everyday world into something mythic and strange. Diane collapses, her skin blistering and bloody under the oppressive daylight, leaving behind a haunting silhouette and a splash of vivid crimson in the dust.
In the end, Yarnell’s Diane is not brought down by a man but by the inescapable will of fate itself, by the collective force of sunlight and superstition. Her end is reminiscent of classic vampire tales but staged with a psychedelic edge, fitting the film’s surreal spirit. With its blend of mythic horror and offbeat 70s style, this moment stands out as a creative synthesis of the film’s hypnotic visuals, seductive tension, dark fantasy, dreamlike mood, and eerie climax.
In case you’re wondering, in The Velvet Vampire, Diane LeFanu’s vulnerability to daylight evolves over the course of the film. Early on, Diane is able to move through the sun-drenched desert and urban spaces by carefully shielding herself, wearing wide-brimmed hats and concealing clothing, which allows her to resist the harmful effects of sunlight. This adaptation permits her to navigate the world with relative freedom, blending unsettlingly into the daytime environment despite her vampiric nature. But this protection is fragile and conditional; as her protections slip, notably in the climactic finale, the sunlight reveals itself to ultimately be lethal. Diane’s endurance is limited and linked to the way she is able to conceal herself. Finally, it’s the sunlight that strikes her down, asserting the undeniable natural law that the film plays with to underscore the conflict between the supernatural and the harsh desert reality. Nuanced, this subverts and reinterprets classic vampire lore about their historically documented weaknesses to fit the film’s surreal, sunny mythos.
Much like the Belgian cult gem Daughters of Darkness, The Velvet Vampire explores the eroticism, allure, and disruption that embraces a sexually fluid, female vampire with non-binary desires, brought to the fragile terrain of an uneasy marriage. Both films delve into the ways desire and identity complicate romantic connection, suggesting that the vampire’s obsession with the couple isn’t just predatory but also a catalyst for transformation, exposing cracks in the relationship while offering tantalizing glimpses of freedom beyond conventional boundaries. Held under this light, the vampire is less a monster than an agent of erotic possibility and existential unrest, shifting the heart of fear from external threat to the inner turmoil of longing and dissatisfaction.
The Velvet Vampire may not boast the polish of its European arthouse contemporaries, yet what works in every frame is that it feels soaked in a low-budget Technicolor mirage, a unique, trippy tension of subtle comic moments, psychosexual gamesmanship, and sun-poisoned dread. Rothman’s sly direction is coupled with haunting visuals and the serpentine, groovy score, which is sonically winding, sinuous, and unpredictable.
The haunting and cyclical melody evokes the repetitive, hypnotic quality of an adult lullaby, a velvet sonnet, an elegant reverie, a whispered requiem, with a bright, metallic timbre that lends a mesmerizing, slightly antique feel, which fits the film’s blend of psychedelic and horror elements. The score includes spaced-out synths and folk instruments (such as acoustic guitars), which add layers of warmth and eeriness. The repetition draws us into the film’s hypnotic and surreal narrative. The music’s cyclical structure reinforces the trance-like immersion into the desert setting and the modern vampire mythology the film explores, making it simultaneously romantically trippy and haunting.
Unforgettable is the presence of Celeste Yarnall, which earns this film its cherished slot in the twilight parade of cult vampire cinema. Yarnall left a distinct mark on film and television through the 1960s and 1970s, celebrated for her striking, classically beautiful looks, often described as photogenic and glamorous, with a poised screen presence. She was named the Foreign Press Corps’ “Most Photogenic Beauty of the Year” at Cannes in 1968 and “Most Promising New Star” that same year. Yarnall’s most iconic role aside from Diane LeFanu in The Velvet Vampire, where her enigmatic glamour defined the film’s eerie energy, is her appearance as Yeoman Martha Landon in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Apple,” and as Ellen opposite Elvis Presley in Live a Little, Love a Little, where she inspired the song “A Little Less Conversation.” Her career also included the ’60s exploitation film Eve (1968), also known as The Face of Eve or Eve in the Jungle, in which she stars as a jungle goddess, and the Filipino horror, gore-heavy Beast of Blood 1970. Often referred to as a Scream Queen and swinging chick of the ’60s, she had a flawless, camera-ready style that truly made her stand out.
Every now and then, I get the itch for that blood-soaked, sun-drenched desert, and nothing scratches it quite like a visit with The Velvet Vampire, just to get my dose of kicks from the wild, 70s brand of female vampirism. And, the desert night still hums, and Yarnall’s hypnotic bite deserves a closer look—so stay tuned for my next midnight unhurried rendezvous with this film at The Last Drive In!
