Signal A Running Record of Findings from the Internet / October 1, 2026

Lesbian Audiences Turned the 1970s Vampire Film Into Camp

Katie Rife argues that lesbian viewers in the first years of gay liberation took two films made for men, Roy Ward Baker's The Vampire Lovers and Harry Kumel's Daughters of Darkness, and read them against the grain. A monster built out of male anxiety about female sexuality became one of the only available images of desire on a screen. Rife works through the scholarship of Andrea Weiss and Bonnie Zimmerman, reads the performances of Ingrid Pitt and Delphine Seyrig closely, and brings in Mikaela Clements on what those figures still offer. It is a reception history built on what audiences did with the films rather than on what the films intended.

Read the story By Katie Rife · The Brooklyn Rail
Lesbian Audiences Turned the 1970s Vampire Film Into Camp
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