The Vampire Lovers
The Vampire Lovers is a 1970 film from the UK, directed by Roy Ward Baker, running 87 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic.
- Year
- 1970 · 1970s films
- Country
- UK
- Runtime
- 87 min
- Director
- Roy Ward Baker
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (24/100)
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic
Hammer clocks that the censors have loosened and sends Ingrid Pitt to make the most of it.
Hammer noticed that British censorship had relaxed and answered with Le Fanu's Carmilla, sending Ingrid Pitt through the bedrooms of the local gentry as the Karnstein vampire who seduces their daughters before she drains them. It is the studio's first film to make the lesbian subtext plain text, franker in nudity and appetite than anything it had done, with Peter Cushing on hand to drive the stake. It launched the Karnstein trilogy and the permissive last phase of Hammer horror.
The missing Hammer vein, and the one where the studio stopped pretending.
Trailer
The numbers
Nobody has rated this yet. Be the first to make a claim you'll have to defend.
Your call
Where to watch
Legal options in USA
Links open in a new tab (↗). Availability data via TMDB and changes constantly, so confirm on the service. Legal options only. Checked 7 Nov 2026. All options ↗
Discuss with AI
Open a chatbot with a question about this film already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, plot detail, or where to find a copy.
The cycle in depth
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
Filed alongside
Vampyros Lesbos
Franco's most watchable. The soundtrack outlived the film by decades.
Black Sabbath
Three stories, one Karloff. The Wurdulak segment is the best thing Bava shot.
Hercules in the Haunted World
Bava shoots Hades in gel colours. Looks like nothing else in the cycle.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
The film that invented the Amicus anthology, dealt out as tarot on a train.
Inferno
Argento's sequel to Suspiria. Even less plot, even more colour. A building that is alive.
Black Sunday
Bava's debut as director. Barbara Steele and a mask full of spikes.
The House That Dripped Blood
Four Robert Bloch stories, Cushing and Lee on hand, and barely a drop of the title's blood.
I Vampiri
Freda walked off Italy's first sound horror; Bava finished it. The whole euro-gothic shelf starts here.
The Whip and the Body
Bava and Christopher Lee doing sadomasochism the censors did not catch.
Planet of the Vampires
Bava builds an alien planet out of fog and two rocks, and Alien quietly borrowed the skeleton.
The Curse of Frankenstein
The film that built Hammer, in blood-red colour the censors hated.
The Awful Dr. Orlof
Where the entire Franco machine started. Everything he made for forty years is in here somewhere.