Countess Dracula

Daughters of Darkness
Kat Ellinger

Print publication date: 2020

Print ISBN-13: 9781800348295
Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: January 2022
DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781800348295.001.0001

Countess Dracula
Kat Ellinger

DOI:10.3828/liverpool/9781800348295.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter probes into the history surrounding the real life serial killer Countess Elizabeth
Bathory. It also unveils several filmic interpretations of her story, with a view to establishing just
where Daughters of Darkness fits into the overall body of work concerning the infamous 'Blood
Countess'. Outright aggressive, cruel, and violent women have always been something of a taboo
subject throughout Western culture. The chapter considers the challenges of portraying a female
killer, as doing so can step right into realm of the taboo, which makes people uncomfortable. It is
perhaps because of this that Bathory has not enjoyed as much celebration on screen as her male
counterpart Dracula; himself in part said to be inspired by historical figure Vlad Tepes,
otherwise known as 'Vlad the Impaler'. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the sadist and
class themes inherent in Kümel's film.

Keywords: Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Dracula, filmic interpretations, serial killer, female killer, sadism, class
themes

There is something especially profane about the Bathory myth, which seems to have deterred
many filmmakers from attempting to approach the subject matter. Dracula (or Dracula’s) is a far
more romantic story, and in many ways a more conventional one, making it a lot easier to
translate to the screen. Bathory, by contrast, is the tale of a blood-crazed woman who is said to
have tortured 600-800 virgins to death, just for the hell of it. Tony Thorne makes a relevant
point, in his own study, which attempts to document the historical facts concerning Bathory’s
story, Countess Dracula, in arguing,

At least 320 films with a vampire theme were released between 1920 and 1990. Strangely,
for a medium and a genre that have thrived on exaggeration, the handful of horror films
which have been based on the legend of Elisabeth Bathory have shied away from
confronting the enormity of her wickedness. A straightforward dramatisation of the crimes
alleged against her in her lifetime — the murder of more than 600 women, genital
mutilation, cannibalism — would entail a bloodbath — figuratively and literally — that

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Countess Dracula

would stretch the tolerance of the most liberal of end-of-century censors and risk
unsettling even the most hardened aficionado of splatter movies. (2012: 18)

Logistical problems inherent in adapting the legend aside — bringing the numbers of potential
victims down has been one way to tackle this issue on screen — outright aggressive, cruel and
violent women have always been something of a taboo subject throughout Western culture. As
Lucy Noakes argues, ‘The binary distinction between the female life-giver and the male life-taker
has been so widely naturalised that when women do kill, they are often seen as more ferocious
and more dangerous than men’ (2006: 10). To portray a female killer, who takes life because she
enjoys it, who isn’t punished, whose actions aren’t explained away by curse, or neurosis, or
feeble-mindedness, is to step right into realm of the taboo, which makes people uncomfortable.
It is perhaps because of this that Bathory has not enjoyed as much celebration on screen as her
male counterpart Dracula; himself in part said to be inspired by historical figure Vlad Tepes, aka
Vlad the Impaler. However, as the very purpose of horror is often to explore the things that make
us feel uncomfortable, to venture into the taboo in order to allow us to examine the darker side
of humanity within a relatively safe space, (p.58) figures like Bathory, who challenge the status
quo by their very nature, are vital for the genre.

The aim of this chapter is to examine Daughters of Darkness in the context of its historical
origins concerning the Bathory legend, as well as part of a small cinematic canon of like-minded
films. The discussion will then open up to examine the themes of sadism, power, class and
gender inherent in Kümel’s film, some of which stem from the original legend, in order to
establish just what makes Daughters of Darkness a truly transgressive piece of cinema.

The Real Blood Countess

One person who wasn’t afraid to dip their toe into the murky waters of the Bathory legend was
French surrealist Valentine Penrose. The language employed in Penrose’s part-fictional account
of the life and times of Elizabeth Bathory, Erzsebet Bathory, La Comtesse Sanglante (1962), is
deliberately evocative, highlighting the countess’s wicked nature, as well as providing as an
explicit link to the otherworldly and witchcraft, for sensational effect, which is an approach used
throughout the text:

Erzebet had been born there, in the East, within the mould of sorcery, in the shadow of the
sacred crown of Hungary. In her there was nothing of the ordinary woman, who,
instinctively, would flee in panic before demons. The demons were already in her: in the
gloomy depths of her huge black eyes; and her face was pallid from their ancient poison.
Her mouth was sinuous as a little snake, and her forehead was proud as the former was
unflinching. (1962: 12)

It’s the stuff of real horror stories. Penrose is equally as unflinching, in delivering all the grisly
details of the woman’s crimes, whilst asserting that the Countess acted under the influence of
sorcery, which is one of the major themes of the book. While artistic flourish is often welcome in
the retelling of gruesome legends, especially for those who love to gorge on the gory minutiae of
human perversion, presentations such as these, where the line between fact and fiction becomes
blurred, and myth and superstition melt into reality, make getting the real story of the infamous
Blood Countess a difficult task indeed.

(p.59) Tony Thorne, on the other hand, used only official documents, letters, and other
paperwork, much of which was difficult to procure — with half of the story lost to the mists of
time — in an attempt to construct a relatively accurate account of Bathory’s life:

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Countess Dracula

The opportunity to explore the myth and reality of ‘Countess Dracula’ for the first time is
an irresistible one for a writer. The persona of the Blood Countess is almost too rich in
significance. She is two Jungian archetypes—the wicked stepmother and the fatal
seductress — in one. She embodies so many modish end-of-century themes — she is an
alleged murderess… a vampire, a woman wielding power in a man’s world, and she is also
from far away in time and place, so the Bathory biographer can fantasise that he is an
early anthropologist, opening up new territory — in this case the forgotten Eastern half of
the European continent and the communities of 400 years ago. (2012: 26)

As the previous quote highlights, the fact that Bathory lived over 400 years ago makes bringing
the real truth to light somewhat problematic. There are the trial reports, and testimony of those
accused of aiding the Countess, to consider when building up a picture of what actually
happened. What becomes clear, through Thorne’s patchwork of information, is that Bathory lived
and reigned in a very different world to ours.

During her reigning years as Countess, Elizabeth Bathory was one of the most powerful women
in Hungary. Her uncle was Stephen Bathory, King of Poland and Prince of Transylvania. In
addition to this, her parents, Anna and George Bathory, were nobility of the highest order.
Elizabeth’s hand was pledged in marriage when she was just 10 years old to Ferenc Nádasdy,
the marriage taking place when Elizabeth was 15. The coming together of two powerful
Hungarian families was fortuitous for the young newly weds who are said to have acquired more
wealth than the royal family through their legal union —— and in fact, according to Bathory
historian Kimberly Craft (2009), the couple would often lend money to the Royal Court, much of
which was not given back. Ferenc would go on to become a decorated war hero, notoriously
cruel and ruthless in his methods. He spent most of his married life seperated from his wife, as
he fought in battle against invading Turk armies, which earned him the nickname the Black
Knight of Hungary.

(p.60) It was after Ferenc’s death that Bathory’s crimes are reported to have become more
prominent, although, as Craft explains, the countess already had a record for being needlessly
cruel to her servants before she became a widow. However, as historians such as Thorne have
explored — and it’s also a subject that becomes the main plot line for Juraj Jakubisko’s multi-
million dollar period epic Bathory (2008) — Elizabeth Bathory was a powerful woman in a time
when women had very little legal or financial power. Because her husband was away at war for
large portions of their time together, it was up to Elizabeth to run their sprawling estates, which
at one time was composed of over 16 castles alone. Therefore, she was a woman who could hold
her own in a man’s world. Even after her husband’s death, when it was customary for wealth to
transfer to male relatives, Elizabeth held on to her position, and demonstrated time after time
that she would not bow down to any man. She built up a close team of cohorts and aides, mainly
women, many of whom were implicated in her crimes. And because of this, as Thorne and
Jakubisko have both suggested (although the film by the latter is hardly historically accurate,
given it proposes the countess had an affair with Italian painter Caravaggio), the accusations
against Bathory could very well have been an attempt to strip the woman of her wealth and
power. György Thurzó, Palatine of Hungary, the man tasked with investigating local reports of
the Countess’ crimes — previously a family friend to the Nádasdys — certainly had a vested
interest in the case, given that he was able to further his own political and financial position
through the arrest of Elizabeth and her collaborators.

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Countess Dracula

Whether events were invented, exaggerated, or not — and the idea of the countess bathing in
the blood of her victims almost certainly seems to be a fabrication when you consider it does not
appear in any of the numerous testimonies given to the court during her trial — what remains is
the fact that the arrest of Elizabeth Bathory was a highly political move. And while the details of
Bathory’s crimes have since moved into the realm of legend, to be written and rewritten over
centuries, her position as a aristocratic noblewomen who possessed great power cannot be
denied. Kümel’s film, as we shall see in this chapter, explores the concept of class and power
perhaps more than any other Bathory-based film of its era. He also uses the idea of the
Hungarian 16th aristocracy as inherently sadistic, a context which is historically correct if
records are to be believed, to produce one of the most ruthless female monsters to come out of
the (p.61) canon of seventies vampire films, even if he fleshes out other aspects of the story
with supernatural and fantastical notes.

Bathory in Film
A Countess in Name Only
Prior to Elizabeth Bathory becoming an intellectual asset ripe for adaptation to horror film, her
presence in cinema seems to have been somewhat more abstract. For instance, there is an
obscure Czechoslovakian feature titled Odhalenie Alzbety Báthorycky (1965), which purports to
be something of satirical comedy, playing along the lines of a film within in a film. The film was
apparently taken off its theatrical run after no more than twenty showings. Like so much of
Czechoslovakian cinema from this period the narrative appears to act as a foundation to critique
a culture oppressed under communism through absurdist comedy. The film has little in common
with either the real story of Countess Bathory or any of the fictional horror films that followed in
her name.

Likewise, Franco Bracani’s utterly strange ‘statement’ film Necropolis (1970) has virtually no
resemblance to the historical Bathory either. The loose connection comes through a character
played by Warhol Superstar Viva Hoffman, who, while not explicitly named ‘Countess Bathory’,
appears to be inspired (at least in a small way) by her. Bracani’s film is a surreal, fragmented,
free-form series of monologues, with no discernable narrative or plot. Mainly it flows from one
set piece to another, where characters offer up statements, many of which have even less
meaning than the narrative itself. At one point, actor Pierre Clémenti, after giving a rousing
speech, straddles a horse, with his naked body on display leaving little to the imagination.
Carmelo Bene (who had previously appeared in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex, 1967) makes
an appearance supposedly as The Devil. There is another part for ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’,
which is played by Bruno Corazzari.

Viva’s ‘Bathory’ is initially introduced giving a long rambling improvised monologue, in which
she cuckolds a male character in the room with her, commenting on his impotence and her need
for sex, which he can’t or won’t provide. This then moves into (p.62) another scene where the
actress is seen reading from an unnamed book — the prose of which is evocative of Penrose —
recounting the crimes of Countess Bathory. Viva is also seen tying up one woman’s wrists, and
seductively groping another.

What remains interesting about these two films, which have little in common with Kümel’s
feature, is the fact that they are both highly politicised, using Bathory as something of a
metaphorical statement, much like the real countess if you interpret her story as one relating to
political power and conspiracy. It is also important to note these films preceded any horror
adaptations of the myth. When Daughters of Darkness was made, the story was still a relatively

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Countess Dracula

new concept for horror, despite the fact many other female focused vampire films were being
made around the same time.

Bathory as a Horror Icon

Hammer Films’ Countess Dracula (1971) was one of the first films to take the subject matter
fully into straight up horrific territory, giving events a supernatural twist just for good measure.
Working from ideas found in the work of Valentine Penrose, Countess Bathory (Ingrid Pitt) —
renamed in the film title ‘Countess Dracula’ to cash in on the studio’s long-running and highly
popular franchise — uses witchcraft and the blood of young virgins to revitalise her aging skin.
Bathory convinces a young suitor she is a maiden, by posing as her own daughter, and is intent
on marrying him, her lust and vanity motivating her to take the lives of an increasing number of
innocent women. The countess then finds herself locked in a perpetual cycle of aging and
regeneration, with every new kill. She will stop at nothing to look younger and get the man she
desires, even if it means putting her own daughter at risk of harm.

Ingrid Pitt took up the role of the infamous Blood Countess, capitalising on the success she had
with Hammer previously, when she played Carmilla Karnstein for their Carmilla adaptation, The
Vampire Lovers. However, the Bathory of Countess Dracula is markedly different from the sexual
predator seen in The Vampire Lovers, even if Pitt portrays the character with more than a hint of
sadism. Instead, the focus is on giddy enthusiasm, and utter delusion, as a woman is driven to
take the lives of a number of girls because she gets so caught up in her own narcissistic fantasy,
in which she frantically struggles to turn (p.63) back the clock on old age in order to regain her
lost youth. Despite this, and the fact she is a woman of power, Pitt’s character is seen to rely on
the men around her, and is a far cry from the ruthless aristocratic noble woman seen in
historical accounts. If we compare Pitt’s Bathory to Seyrig’s, we find they are completely
different animals indeed. Pitt does have her moments of cold-hearted calculation, but is driven at
a maddening pace by the fact that just a few hours after she has bathed in blood, she begins to
age once again. Seyrig’s Countess doesn’t suffer this problem — while she too is compelled to
drink blood, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of urgency for her. Instead the narrative allows her
the space to develop her sadistic games at a somewhat leisurely pace.

Jorg Grau’s Blood Ceremony (1973) is another film which takes its lead from the Hammer
formula, rather than from Kümel’s. As a Spanish horror film from the Eurocult school of
seventies filmmaking, the focus is on sexuality and blood, as opposed to drama and historical
accuracy. Grau’s film, in a similar fashion to the aforementioned Hammer feature, focuses
heavily on the magic and mysticism line found in the pages of Penrose’s text, making much more
of the witchcraft angle than Peter Sasdy (the director of Countess Dracula) was able to. The
result is an enjoyable, earthy, sexualised romp into the world of Bathory, combined with a body-
count-by-numbers formula. The killings are amongst the most graphic in the Bathory canon, with
victims bled from the throat, like animal carcasses. Their blood is then fed through a hole in the
ceiling so that the Countess might bathe in it. Just like Countess Dracula, Blood Ceremony’s
Bathory is another fragile creature, one who is largely at the mercy of her own whims and
fantasies, making her, again, unlike the portrayal by Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness,
who by contrast is someone fully in control of her own destiny and power games.

In addition to Grau’s feature, two of Paul Naschy’s werewolf films draw inspiration from the
legend. In León Klimovsky’s La Noche de Walpurgis (The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman,
1971) Naschy’s doomed lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky has to fight against a medieval serial
killer, and vampire, Countess Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy (Patty Shepard), who has been

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Countess Dracula

unearthed from her grave by two nubile young students (Gaby Fuchs as Elvira, and Barbara
Capell as Genevieve Bennett). Although Klimovsky’s undead countess isn’t given the Bathory
name specifically, the character’s name ‘Nadasdy’ bears a reference to the family of Elizabeth’s
husband, Ferenc — Jess Franco also adopted this (p.64) name for Soledad Miranda’s character
in Vampyros Lesbos, which was explored in the previous chapter. Naschy would loosely remake
the film himself, in 1980, under the title of El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (The Return of the
Wolfman), changing the name Nadasdy to Elisabeth Bathory (played by Julia Saly), and adding
that all-important Penrosian witchcraft angle. While these two films play on the Blood Countess
legend as a form of overtly Gothic supernatural horror, they do share a certain affinity to
Daughters of Darkness, in that, for Naschy’s films the Bathory figure is purely a force of power
in her own right — not motivated by vanity, or influenced by other people — as is Seyrig’s
Bathory in Kümel’s film. Similarly, this power is used as a force to hypnotise, take control of, and
otherwise turn young women into brainwashed slaves and vampires themselves.

The Art of Countess Bathory

Part of the irony in Kümel’s motive to make a film that aligned with popular exploitation cinema
of the period is that Daughters of Darkness stands out from that herd because it connects far
more with European arthouse film than it does exploitation. Critics usually pick out the more
artistic elements of the film to lavish praise on, such as the director’s keen eye for colour motifs
and the use of other subliminal touches like the hidden subtext found in his use of flowers to
denote certain themes. Delphine Seyrig’s own reputation only strengthens this association; she
is an actress linked with the work of critically acclaimed auteurs.

On this basis, it could be argued that Daughters of Darkness has far more in common with the
work of, for example, Walerian Borowczyk and Miklós Jancsó than it does with Peter Sasdy’s
Countess Dracula or any of the Spanish horror films which were inspired by the Bathory name.
Like Kümel, Polish-born Borowczyk and Hungarian Jancsó were directors who had previously
impressed critics with ‘serious art films’ before moving to incorporate softcore sex into some of
their pictures (Jancsó used orgies and copious amounts of nudity to make a political statement in
Private Vices, Public Virtues [1976]; whilst Borowczyk, from Immoral Tales [1973] and The Beast
[1975] onwards, reveled in sex, and occasionally violence too). Despite the shift in focus, each
director, Kümel, Borowczyk and Jancsó, managed to keep their auterist signatures intact,
turning erotic film into an artistic statement and proving there really is no such thing as a
concrete (p.65) high/low divide when it comes to cinema. Both Kümel and Borowczyk would
later go on to direct episodes of an erotic French television series, Série rose (which aired in the
US as Softly from Paris, 1986-1991), with Kümel adapting stories from Nicolas Restif de La
Bretonne, Marguerite de Navarre, Niccolò Machiavelli and Guy de Maupassant, and Borowczyk,
Nicolas Restif de La Bretonne and Giovanni Boccaccio. The series is a good example of how the
two directors stand more or less on the same page when it comes to mixing decadent themes,
art and eroticism; although admittedly, Kümel’s film work has never been as graphic as
Borowczyk’s when it comes to sexual content.

Borowczyk’s own adaptation of the Bathory story is quite unlike many of the horror films being
made around the same time. The 30-minute short is one of the chapters that made up Immoral
Tales, starring Paloma Picasso as the infamous Blood Countess. The story plays out more along
the lines of a drama with elements of horror and eroticism. Bathory’s young aide, a girl
disguised as a male named Istvan (Pascale Christophe), is sent to the local village to collect girls
for the countess. The locals try and hide their daughters, but to no avail. The girls are found and
lined up, with the youngest and prettiest selected to attend the Bathory residence. Once there,

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Countess Dracula

they are made to shower. Thinking it’s all part of a game, the unwitting girls appear to be in
good spirits. As they are led to the countess’ bed chamber excitement turns to hysteria, and
things take a horrific turn for the worst in the expected fashion. Borowczyk avoids the typical
horror tropes of neck biting, or even cruelty and torture methods, instead choosing to make his
point by cutting away to the countess bathing in blood. In order to achieve authenticity, the
director reportedly used pig’s blood for the scene, thus making it stand out against the faker
looking (more genre oriented) Bathory histories on screen, where bright red stage blood is
usually employed.

At first glance it might be easy to draw a connection between Daughters of Darkness and the
Bathory of Immoral Tales through the most obvious route concerning their respective
approaches to eroticism, with both films placing more emphasis on an artful direction than many
of the horror exploitation pictures of the period. And while this may be correct, at least to a
certain extent, Borowczyk and Kümel’s narratives unite on a much deeper level; the key to which
can be found within the interpersonal relationships between of some of their key players. Both
directors chose to portray Bathory as true to her history, as a callous aristocrat and somewhat
emotionally detached from her (p.66) actions, viewing lower-order people as servants, or in the
case of Kümel’s film, a minor annoyance, who should know their place. Yet, conversely, the
women also demonstrate an intense desire to be worshipped, and they do this by enslaving their
assistants, so that they may not only fulfill their blood lust, but their emotional and sexual needs
too.

Although Bathory’s assistant in Immoral Tales appears to have power in her position — the
power to select young girls from the village; the privilege of sharing a bed with her master (as
Ilona does in Daughters of Darkness) — it is still very clear who is in charge of the relationship,
and when stripped down to its core, the dynamic can be seen as nothing more than one of
master and slave. Any suggestion of romance is in fact built on a bed of coercion and
resentment. We see this exact same feeling of bitterness found in the behaviour of Bathory’s
companion in Immoral Tales — as well as an obvious desire to be free from enslavement — in
Ilona’s character in Daughters of Darkness. Bathory responds in a way that reinforces the reality
of the situation, demonstrating quite clearly the girl has no choice or agency in her current
situation. Ilona, like Istvan in Immoral Tales is there by contract, subservient to the countess.

In the case of Daughters of Darkness, this dynamic is repeated again in Bathory’s

relationship with Valerie, another lower-class person with whom the Countess develops a
strange infatuation. Brigid Cherry describes this as stemming from ‘Elizabeth’s superior
aristocratic attitudes toward others’, continuing,

She [Bathory] is controlling, as when Ilona tries to leave her and Valerie tries to reject her
advances. Her demand that ‘You must be nice to me; soon you’ll love me as I love you now’
after kissing Valerie’s palm and leaving the imprint of her red lips can be read as of the
dominant aristocratic demands on inferiors, staff and servants, and even lovers. Even
though Valerie says she despises her (as her serfs might despise their master) Elizabeth
will not let her go — she claims ownership of Valerie. (2014: 228)

If you take these two films and then compare them to everything else in the Bathory filmic
universe, especially those features that sit unambiguously in the horror and exploitation fields,
one thing that becomes startlingly obvious is that none of the others appear to possess this
particular dynamic: a close bond between Bathory and her female confidante that could

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Countess Dracula

otherwise be described as a Sadean relationship angle, one based on the power structures
involved in social class. For example, in Hammer’s (p.67) Countess Dracula the Bathory figure
is cruel to her servants, but she does not develop any kind of emotional bond with them at all,
keeping a distinct distance (although they are still slaves, there is a lack of a Sadeian angle).
Instead, her ardour is turned towards other members of the nobility. And in other films, such as
the Spanish horrors previously mentioned in this chapter, Bathory either works alone, and then
brainwashes her minions — in the way Count Dracula would — or in the case of Blood
Ceremony, she is seen working with a witch but does not take up any sort of sexual or romantic
relationship with the woman.

Final mention in the arthouse bracket does need to go to Jancsó’s highly surreal The Tyrant’s
Heart, or Boccaccio in Hungary (1981), which appears modelled more on films like Fellini
Satyricon (1969) than anything in the Bathory canon. Teresa Ann Savoy — who had previously
starred in the director’s Private Vices, Public Virtues — is cast as Bathory; this time modelled as
an incestuous vampire of sorts, and mother to the central protagonist. The film couldn’t be any
more different to Daughters of Darkness in style and substance, but its emphasis on eroticism
and striking visuals does put them in the same camp to some degree. Both films also play with
the notion of decadence and the aristocracy. However, unlike Kümel’s vision, Jancsó’s film holds
little appeal to genre fans.

De Sade, Cruelty, Power and Class

As far as the Bathory legend goes, especially as an increasing amount of time goes by, the
episodes which led to the arrest of the countess have been wildly exaggerated and taken
out of context. For example, the Guinness Book of Records holds the countess on record as
being ‘The most prolific female murderer and the most prolific murderer of the western
world’ (n.d.), stating that Bathory ‘practised vampirism on girls and young women. She is
alleged to have killed more than 600 virgins in order to drink their blood and bathe in it,
ostensibly to preserve her youth’ (n.d.). Yet, no evidence of vampirism has ever been found
in any of the official reports of her crimes, and the number, while still high, has been
placed as much lower — if court testimony is to be believed, anywhere between 60-200 —
by serious scholars who have studied the facts surrounding the Bathory case in some
depth. (p.68) Getting a clear picture is easier said than done. Modern historians
attempting to solve the mystery of what actually happened have found the research
processes complicated and fraught with difficulties. For the two major historical studies
which exist at the time of writing this book, those by Tony Thorne and Kimberley Craft, the
respective writers accessed archives in Hungary, churning over hundreds of letters, court
reports and testimony, much like a modern day detective would, in order to fit together the
clues. A lot of the material has been found to be incomplete, leaving nothing but the
imagination or speculation to fill in the gaps. To add in extra complications, all testimony
has to be viewed with a critical eye, given the fact that, as was par for the course during
the era, it is likely that the first-hand evidence — for example, the confessions from
Bathory’s circle of helpers — was gathered under extreme conditions: torture, deprivation
and fear. That’s not to say there is no story there. Indeed, despite these issues some
consistencies can be found.

The picture which emerges shows that Bathory’s motive for her crimes was likely to have
been far more mundane that the whisperings of witchcraft and blood-filled baths which
surround the legend today; less sensational, perhaps, but in a way far more horrific. It’s
easier to understand a serial killer under the terms of pathology: in Bathory’s case a

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Countess Dracula

woman so mad as to believe she can stay young forever by killing young virgins, and then
bathing in vats of their blood. The ‘real’ case of Countess Bathory tells an entirely different
story altogether.

Unless it is understood that a culture of cruelty — not violence, but deliberate cruelty —
was endemic in the era that has come to be known as the early modern, the Bathory story
cannot be unravelled. The celebration of this culture has something common to all of
Europe at the time and its practice had been embedded in Hungarian life, almost
institutionalised, since the atrocities suffered by the peasantry in the early sixteenth
century. Treacherous, rapacious nobles brutalised their own countrymen for short-term
advantage and ignored the long-term effects on the prosperity and vitality of the whole
nation.

(Craft 2009: 449)

What this culture of cruelty translates to in the case of Countess Bathory is systematic,
sustained, violence toward her staff — many of whom were young girls brought into her home to
serve her — in the name of enforcing order and compliance. Allegations (p.69) in the original
documents, despite discrepancies over numbers, do build a coherent view, with witness
testimony corroborating the confessions of Bathory’s collaborators. The catalogue of crimes
listed include (but are not limited to): excessive beatings or torture as punishment for minor
infractions — for instance, a girl who was found to have stolen money had a coin burned into her
hand — and very much more of the same for anything that was seen as resistance to following
orders; including slowness caused by tiredness or less than perfect work. A number of the
reports cited by Craft and Thorne suggest girls were regularly stripped naked and exposed to
the elements; for example, made to stand outside in cold water up to the necks for hours at a
time, or left out in brutal winter weather conditions without clothing. Tools were employed to
carry out torture such as pincers and pokers. It was commonplace for Bathory’s team of
collaborators to implement the violent acts supposedly at their master’s request. Girls were
regularly seen at the castle beaten black and blue, or in various states of bad health due to
impoverished living conditions, which only added to the ill-effects of constant abuse. Food and
sleep were often withheld from the girls as a form of torture. Other violent acts, such as biting
(not in a vampiric way) and pinching, were reported across several witness statements. The
countess would often resort to verbal humiliation whilst carrying out punishments, mocking the
girls or insulting them with terms like ‘whore’.

Even though people were appalled with Bathory’s behaviour at the time of her arrest, when you
consider the context of her crimes, it becomes understandable. Bathory lived in an era where a
feudal system operated, meaning lower class people were considered serfs or peasants, property
of their respective lords and ladies, who dehumanised them as a result. It is also widely
considered that the countess learned some of her behaviour from her husband, who set a
ruthless example:

… stories already circulated amongst the servants that he [Ferenc Nadasdy], too, enjoyed
torturing servants and teaching his wife ways in which to discipline them. He was already
known to be ruthless on the battlefield and sought retribution against his enemies in
atrocious ways. At least once, he ordered the execution of captured prisoners ‘in the most
heinous way possible.’ He was also known to dance with the dead bodies of his enemies
and throw their severed heads into the air to play ‘catch’ and kickball with them.

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Countess Dracula

(Craft 2009)

(p.70) The overwhelming sentiment we can take from this information amounts to an obvious
feeling of entitlement inherent in the mindset of nobility of the period. This exact same attitude
lies at the very core of Kümel’s film. Daughters of Darkness may also riff on popular vampire
myth seen in cinema of the era, as well as the notion that the countess, as an immortal, needs
blood to stay young, but the very thing that makes Seyrig’s character so compelling comes from
a historical basis: she is a narcissist who views herself above all others by birthright, not a
damned creature, or agent of Satan, or even a vampire tortured by a curse. This not only ties her
to an interesting historical perspective, but it also makes her a particularly unique figure in
cinema too, especially when her gender is taken into account.

Ironically, as suggested by Craft, the real life Bathory’s crimes finally caught up with her
because she became too careless about events which were happening under her command and
started to attack girls of a higher social class. She felt she was so powerful that she was above
the law. Bathory in Daughters of Darkness appears to hold this same disdain for any authority
figure who dares to question her or interfere with her business; this is evident in the way she
treats both the retired cop and the concierge.

What becomes really interesting about the class aspect in Kumel’s film is its direct link to
literature, with the director apparently rejecting the atypical ‘female’ vampire found in Carmilla,
in favour of a more masculine decadent model. As Brigid Cherry observes:

The roots and history of vampire fiction also cast the gothic vampire in the hierarchy of
the social order, notably as a decadent aristocrat, Countess Bathory being the female
counterpart to Count Dracula (both vampire narratives drawing on bloodthirsty historical
rulers from Eastern Europe). Elizabeth’s costumes in Daughters of Darkness directly
connect her with moneyed and leisured aristocracy. In her position as a titled woman of
leisure drifting around Europe, Elizabeth is akin to Byron’s Augustus Darvell and Polidori’s
Lord Ruthven — ‘vampire dandies created by nineteenth century bohemians’ as Milly
Williamson describes them.

(Cherry 2014: 227)

In many ways the film can be seen as a natural forerunner to Anne Rice’s Interview with the
Vampire, which would be published four years later in 1976. Although Rice’s novel embraces
certain aspects of Gothic ruin — the very things Daughters of Darkness (p.71) rejects — the
main protagonist, Lestat, holds many of the same characteristics as Seyrig’s Bathory. Lestat is
fuelled not only by blood lust, but a penchant for fine living. He seems to live by Bathory’s motto:
‘nothing in life is ever serious’. Companionship in both Daughters of Darkness and Interview
with the Vampire takes on a deeply existential level, and there is a relationship with cruelty
found in both vampires that appears to transcend the conventions that dictate vampires are
violent because of an animalistic predatory drive. These vampires torture because they enjoy it.
In fact, in the case of Daughters of Darkness, this primal level of vampirism is completely
excluded from the narrative. Bathory is cruel because she wants to be, and most importantly
because she can afford to be, not because she needs to be.

In favouring cruelty over primality Daughters of Darkness opens itself up to other possibilities:
those with a distinctly Sadeian flavour. Bathory isn’t just a wealthy socialite, a direct descendant

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Countess Dracula

to the Gothic dandies and Byronic heroes, as suggested by Cherry, she’s an outright libertine too
— this is another aspect she shares in common with Rice’s Lestat.

It is through reading the elements of de Sade inherent in Daughters of Darkness, especially

when informed by the writing of Angela Carter, that its most feminist inclinations become
apparent. In Sadeian Women and Ideology of Pornography (1978), Carter argues,

He [Sade] enlarges the relation between activity and passivity in the sexual act to include
tyranny and the acceptance of physical and political oppression. The great men in his
novels, the statesmen, the princes, the popes, are the cruelest by far and their sexual
voracity is a kind of pure destructiveness; they would fuck the world and fucking, for
them, is the enforcement of annihilation… But his great women, Juliette, Clairwill, the
Princess Borghese, Catherine the Great of Russia, Charlotte of Naples, are even more
cruel still since, once they have tasted power they know how to use their sexuality as an
instrument of aggression… A free woman in an unfree society will be a monster. Her
freedom will be a condition of personal privilege that deprives those on which she
exercises it of her own freedom. The most extreme kind of this deprivation is murder.
These women murder. (1978: 27)

Kümel’s Bathory certainly fits this mould. She is a monster in every sense of the word, (p.72)
even if the director only insinuates the great darkness that lurks within her. Kümel takes a
similar approach to sex, leaving much for the viewer to read between the lines, but it is clear
that Bathory’s power is also tied to this aspect of her persona, and power play is linked not so
much to money — although this clearly provides Bathory with the freedom to travel and gives
her a sense of entitlement — but seduction and sexuality. In this respect, Countess Bathory is the
ultimate Sadeian Woman, being someone who has expertly learned to navigate the world using
sex as an instrument for destruction. Unlike Countess Dracula, or even Carmilla, she is not at
the mercy of an uncontrollable libidinal energy. Instead, she understands that this energy can be
used as a tool of oppression, aggression and manipulation, and has spent centuries refining her
technique, thus making her unstoppable when it comes to getting what she wants.

Daughters of Darkness arguably anticipates Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of
Petra Von Kant (1972), which was based on Fassbinder’s own play. Fassbinder’s film, while not
horror, exhibits the same sense of claustrophobia evident in Kümel’s film, which stems largely
from the themes of obsession, sadism and co-dependency inherent in the narrative, as much as it
does the power games played out on a landscape dominated by female characters. It is perhaps
not surprising, given the similarities between Petra Von Kant and Countess Bathory that the
actress Delphine Seyrig would go on to play Petra on the stage in a production for New End
Theatre Hampstead in 1977, where she was paired with Angela Pleasence (from Symptoms,
1974), and Jenny Runnacre (the star of Dereck Jarman’s Jubilee, 1978). Fassbinder’s 1972 filmic
adaptation of the play stars Margit Carstensten as the titular Petra, a recently divorced fashion
designer. Exclusively seen in her bedroom, which also doubles up as a lounge and office, Petra is
often seen barking out orders to her assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann); the latter, who seems to
suffer in passive silence, caters to her employer’s every whim, even completing her design work
for her. Petra’s demands frequently border on sadism, with Marlene taking the role of the servile
masochist — not unlike the dynamic between Ilona and Bathory (although Petra is a lot harsher
in her attention toward her own secretary). While the character of Petra is much more fragile
than Countess Bathory, they do share some of the same character traits when it comes to the
type of skills they employ in the manipulation of their charges. Similarly, they are both

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Countess Dracula

narcissists, demanding to be loved by the women they try to control, which in both cases
reaches sickly suffocating heights (p.73) of obsession. Likewise, Petra, like Bathory, is an older
woman, who uses her power, wisdom, and money, to her advantage, and is often seen flipping
between maternal protector, insecure demanding lover, and cruel manipulator in order to get
what she wants.

Blood Harvest: The Cult of Countess Bathory

The subject of social class is a particularly relevant one when taken in the political context of the
era in which Daughters of Darkness was made. Toward the end of the 1960s, and into the early
’70s, civil unrest, especially amongst students and young people, was exploding all over the
western world. This resulted in a variety of protests, which were often violent, especially in
Europe and America, as people expressed the frustration they felt at war, capitalism and civil
rights violations. As a result, there were a number of genre films made around the turn of the
decade that took a satirical approach to presenting their subject matter and reflected or
criticised social issues of the time. In Italy in particular, where wealthy industrialists were
increasingly being (p.74) accused of corruption and exploitation of workers, there emerged a
prevalence of rotten aristocratic decadent villains in horror films — most notably in the giallo
cycle — the likes of which can be understood in terms of exposing the evils of capitalism,
privilege and wealth.

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Countess Dracula

Within this very specific social context the vampire becomes the perfect metaphor for powerful
and wealthy people or establishments, who literally suck the lifeblood out of those they exploit in
order to retain their positions of privilege. Films of note which cover this theme made within the
period include Corrado Farina’s cynical 1971 feature Hanno cambiato faccia (They Have
Changed Their Face), which concerns itself with using the vampire as a symbol for capitalism.
For Farina, the vampire is not so much the Gothic bloodsucker of old, but instead, a high-
powered executive coming up with advertising campaigns in order to brainwash the masses.
Within the narrative vampires attack counterculture and anti-establishment values, and villainy
is associated with the coerced assimilation with capitalist ideals. Tonino Cervi’s Queens of Evil
(1970) took a similar route, but used witches, instead of vampires, to reflect more or less the
same point of view.

Meanwhile, Jean Rollin’s La Vampire Nue (1970) partly focuses on a suicide cult, which operates
from a bourgeois Parisian townhouse. The collective is run by a corrupt businessman, who is
found to be keeping a vampire prisoner so that he may learn her secret of eternal life. In order
to feed her he tricks cult members into giving up their own lives, in order to provide a ready
supply of fresh blood. The members believe they are doing so for a higher purpose, but the truth
is it’s all about one man’s greed and selfish desire.

Although it does not feature vampires of the supernatural kind, offbeat giallo film The
Bloodstained Lawn (1973) (which also incorporates elements of science fiction) casts an equally
critical eye on the subject of power and privilege. Marina Malfatti and Enzo Tarascio star as an
eccentric, rich and ruthless couple, who lure unsuspecting victims to their secluded mansion so
that they may drain their bodies for blood. Generally the people they ensnare are considered
socially unacceptable by the couple; people who stand in direct opposition to their bourgeoisie
values — for instance, a pair of hippies and a tramp are among those who are targeted as
appropriate fodder for the bizarre industry.

(p.75) Alain Jessua’s Shock Treatment (1973) is another film which mines this particular vein.
Set at a state of the art health spa, run by the enigmatic Docteur Devilers (Alain Delon),
members of the social elite who lodge there are offered his mysterious miracle treatment, which
reverses the effects of aging without the need for plastic surgery. Jessua’s film also offers up
some thought-provoking commentary on cheap migrant labour for extra measure.

1979’s Thirst, directed by Rod Hardy, has much in common with Jessua’s film, but goes further,
bringing in Bathory specifically — or at least her name — by introducing members of her
bloodline, who are operating a global organisation called The Brotherhood. The Brotherhood
maintain their supply of sustenance by farming people who are kept there by coercion and
manipulation, in a large high-tech facility that resembles a spa or sanitarium and houses
‘milking’ machinery for blood-letting. The idea of Bathory as a godlike figurehead for a cult had
already been used in Joe Sarno’s Vampire Ecstasy (1973), but that particular film came with no
overt political messages. Thirst, on the other hand, is teeming with them. As one high-ranking
member explains, ‘We are a simply a superior race of people who over the centuries have proved
that the drinking of the vital human essence confers youth, power. It’s the ultimate aristocratic
act.’ Once again we are back to the core of Bathory’s historical story, and the idea of heritage
and entitlement. One could almost imagination Seyrig’s Countess speaking this line herself.

Daughters of Darkness may not deliberately channel the social climate of the era, but it does
own a very small place in this subset of films because of the obvious class aspects inherent in
the narrative. Kümel may not have been as cynical as many of the filmmakers mentioned here,

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Countess Dracula

but he was certainly on the same page when it came to exposing the rotten core of wealth and
privilege. (p.76)

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