REVIEW OF TELEVISION PLAY OF CARMILLA

Teleplay by Jonathan Furst.

 Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont.

A Think Entertainment Production with Showtime (1990).\

 

(ISSN 1932-9598)

 

 

 

            This hour long film for cable television takes many liberties with Le Fanu’s original, but, on its own terms, is quite good.  One of the major differences is that it is set in the Southern United States, specifically Louisiana, before the Civil War.  This setting provides an overlay of voodoo with a mysterious plague that is coming from the southern parishes.  As in F.W. Murnau’s film Nosferatu, the vampire is associated with pestilence.

            In this film there is a tension between modern medical science and the occult.  The medical doctor in the film asserts a medical cause for the deaths and the local police inspector presents an argument of vampirism, as does the black maid, Miss Hodges. Both Miss Hodges and the Inspector meet violent deaths at Carmilla’s hands.

            In this film, Carmilla’s victim is named Marie, but as in Le Fanu, her mother has died.  She longs for a friend, and as in Le Fanu, the arrival of one is aborted by illness and death—here as from disease, the plague.  In a sudden carriage accident in the road near her father’s plantation house, Carmilla is taken in, the only survivor of the accident.

            The lesbian implications of Le Fanu come across in the film, yet are tastefully handled.  The black maid, Hodges, is suspicious of Carmilla, who calls Hodges a witch.  There is some inference of voodoo here, as Hodges uses strings of colored beads to ward off evil.  Hodges is killed by a horde of vampire bats when caught at a vulnerable moment, obviously brought on by Carmilla. The central difference, however, from Le Fanu, is the fact that Marie’s dead mother is a vampire herself, and the equivocal ending is that Marie does or does not become a vampire herself.

            Technically and stylistically the film is well done—with moonlight scenes (actually filmed in daylight through a dark blue filter) and long dolly shots.  The camera most of the time is moving around the actors and sets, lending a languorous atmosphere, just as Carmilla herself is very “languid.”  The acting of Meg Tilly is good as Carmilla, but Ione Skye, as her victim, is a bit too one-dimensional.  Marie’s father is played with restraint by Roy Dotrice; but the rather campy Southern portrayal of Roddy McDowell as Inspector Amos is a flaw. The final scene involves the staking of several vampires in the family crypt (one is Marie’s mother), and unfortunately, there is some unintentional humor in the sequence.

            Given that Le Fanu’s famous female vampire has been the subject of many films, this one is the most restrained of them all.  It is well worth seeing, and is available from Cannon-Warner video.

 

Gary William Crawford