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.
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Original script., 1971. First edition. Bound into the original card wraps.