The Hammer House of Horror produced dozens of X-certificate horror romps in the sixties and seventies and their vampire movies were their most popular line. This 1971 production was a follow-up to ‘The Vampire Lovers’ and features many of the same characters. The sequence was based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 ‘Carmilla’; a novella which pre-dates Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. This romp follows vampire hunter Richard Lestrange as he tracks down Countess Mircalla the notorious lesbian vampire. Happily for the audience, she’s hiding out in a girl’s school.
Film scripts like this one tick a lot of boxes for collectors. They are genuinely rare; contain nuggets of original material and are often associated with big-name stars. This one is a cracker. Written by Tudor Gates, the shooting title was ‘To Love A Vampire’ and the script contains some revisions and over-writes in a variety of hands, not all of them trembling.
I’ll be selling this at the P.B.F.A Children’s And Illustrated Book Fair at the Kensington Olympia on Saturday 24th February.
Original script., 1971. First edition. Bound into the original card wraps.
