Daughters of Darkness

Kat and Samm return to talk about Walerian Borowczyk's transgressive take on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Gothic tale of duality, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, exploring one of the most perverse and empowering adaptations of the tale.

Kat and Samm return to explore the overlooked work of director John Hayes, in typically outrageous fashion. While many know Hayes’ horror efforts Dream No Evil (1971) and Grave of the Vampire (1972), his extensive work in exploitation, sexploitation, and pornographic film still remains widely unknown to all but a very few cult aficionados. This episode focuses on three different films from three different genres, Help Female Wanted (1968), Mama’s Dirty Girls (1974), and Baby Rosemary (1976), as Kat and Samm attempt to unravel the director’s career. Help Female Wanted starts out as a typical roughie, before leaving reality to travel into the warped fantasies of an emasculated man; sadism and necrophilia, and much much more, follows. Meanwhile, straight up seventies exploitation number Mama’s Dirty Girls is a late film for one-time Hollywood A-lister, and Queen of the Noir, Gloria Grahame. Grahame stars as an unscrupulous woman, who along with her band of sexually oppressed but overly flirtatious teenage daughters, is out to make her fortune by murder and deceit. And finally, Baby Rosemary, mixes hardcore pornography with occult fantasy, in one of the strangest coming of age tales to come out of the Golden Era.

Kat and Samm are back at long last to discuss the final films of beloved producer and director William Castle. Though he’s generally celebrated for gimmicky horror classics like The Tingler (1959) and House on Haunted Hill (1959), in this episode, they’re going to explore some of his underrated later titles and recurring themes. This includes films like The Night Walker (1964), a surreal affair starring screen legend Barbara Stanwyck, and the subject of Castle’s collaborations with renowned actresses like Stanwyck and Joan Crawford. Other topics include his children’s thrillers like I Saw What You Did (1965), and Castle’s sensitive use of teenage girl protagonists, and the brilliant and sadly neglected Shanks (1974). This beautiful, thoroughly creepy film was Castle’s final directorial effort and is a rare collaboration with the great Marcel Marceau, so it gets some long overdue love in this episode.

Kat and Samm return from a lengthy hiatus with this personal, boisterous episode that explores desire, consent, and sexuality by comparing two very different films: Nelson Lyon’s forgotten erotic classic, The Telephone Book (1971), and Paul Verhoeven’s challenging rape-revenge drama, Elle (2016). Made early in the porno chic period, before mainstream titles like Deep Throat (1972), The Telephone Book follows a young woman who becomes the target of an obscene caller. Instead of feeling victimized, she’s excited by the encounter and goes on a ribald odyssey through New York City to find her loquacious love. And though Elle’s approach is quite different, Kat and Samm discuss how it serves as an important counter example to the idea that such films can’t be made in recent years. Marking Verhoeven’s return to filmmaking in a decade, Elle stars the great Isabelle Huppert as Michele Leblanc, an unconventional business executive who is raped in her home by a masked attacker. Refusing to see herself as a victim, Michele becomes determined to learn her rapist’s identity and uncover his potential motivations. Hovering somewhere between domestic drama, rape revenge film, and black comedy, Elle explores complicated notions of power, consent, and intimacy.

In a very special episode, Kat and Samm explore some of their favourite things, unedited, unscripted, and unrestrained. The list was long, but they only made it to two subjects. Listen to the show to find out what they are…

Kat and Samm begin an exploration of the films of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar. This episode focuses on his collaborations with actor Antonio Banderas, beginning with 1986’s explicit serial killer film Matador, where a young would-be bullfighter (Banderas) confesses to several murders, though it’s immediately apparent that the real killer (or killers) is still on the loose. This was followed closely by controversial romantic comedy Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1989), where Banderas returns as a man recently released from an asylum who kidnaps a junkie actress (Almodóvar regular Victoria Abril), because he’s in love with her. He’s convinced that if he can just make her reciprocate his love, they could lead a happy life together. Almodóvar and Banderas teamed up again several decades later for the labyrinthine La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011). In this adaptation of Thierry Jonquet’s novel Mygale and Georges Franju’s film Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1960), a doctor (Banderas) experiments on the skin of a beautiful young patient (Vera Cruz), but all is not as it seems.

In this final part of their series inspired by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956-1984, Kat and Samm discuss unclassifiable French director (and writer) Alain Robbe-Grillet. Known for his surreal and often controversial arthouse and erotic films, this episode focuses on three of his titles in particular, and centers on his collaborations with actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and his wife, Catherine Robbe-Grillet. The first of these, Trans-Europ-Express (1966), follows a director (played by Robbe-Grillet himself) who discusses the plot for an upcoming film he’d like to make while onboard the titular train. It concerns a man (Trintignant) smuggling drugs, or perhaps diamonds, across Europe, who is interrupted by a sadomasochistic affair with a strange woman (Marie-France Pisier). The second of these is the sublime and surreal Glissements progressifs du plaisir (Successive Slidings of Pleasure, 1974). A young woman (Anicée Alvina) is imprisoned in a remote convent for murdering her lover, though the crime may have been consensual. Based loosely on Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière, this traverses sadomasochism, violence, and the occult, resulting in a singular and hypnotic work. Finally, they discuss Robbe-Grillet’s follow up, La jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire, 1975) about a the botched kidnapping of a banker’s young daughter (Alvina again), who is “protected” by a detective (Trintignant) by being placed in a violent, otherworldly brothel where women are set ablaze.

In the third part of their series inspired by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956-1984, Kat and Samm explore the work of French poète maudit Jean Rollin. First, they discuss Rollin’s colorful, Franju-inspired second feature, La vampire nue (1970) aka The Nude Vampire, about a suicide cult’s obsession with a young female vampire. Their leader, a nefarious businessman, tries to use medical science to unlock the secret in her blood, while his son has fallen in love with her and hopes to set her free. Also discussed is Rollin’s iconic Fascination (1979), about a turn of the century cult of women who routinely drink human blood and are set upon by a young criminal who thinks he has taken them prisoner; this film encapsulated many of Rollin’s favorite themes, including female agency, sexual power, and the transgressive potential of violence. Finally, Kat and Samm discuss Rollin’s devastating yet poetic La morte vivante (1981) aka The Living Dead Girl, about a young woman who wakes up in an animalistic state after years of death, but is nursed back to health by her devoted childhood friend. Unfortunately, she craves human flesh and blood in order to survive, setting in motion a tragic chain of events.

Kat and Samm continue their series inspired by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ cult cinema bible, Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984. This time they explore the work of prolific but divisive Spanish director Jess Franco, who made the first Spanish horror film (1962’s Gritos en la noche aka The Awful Dr. Orloff) and went on to make reams of sex, horror, and all-around cult films. This episode looks at some titles from his early career, like Miss Muerte (The Diabolical Dr. Z, 1966), but primarily focuses on three of his films: first, the enigmatic and beautiful Paroxismus aka Venus in Furs (1969), where a jazz musician witnesses a woman’s murder but comes to find that she might not be dead after all. Also discussed is the delightful De Sade 70 aka Eugenie (1970), an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom. Maria Rohm and Jack Taylor star as a couple who coerce an innocent teen back to their remote island to educate her about sex… and sadism. Finally, they turn to another loose adaptation—of Cornell Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black—with She Killed in Ecstasy (1971), one of the last films Franco made with his early muse Soledad Miranda. She stars as a young widow, whose doctor husband was driven to madness and suicide by his colleagues’ destruction of his unconventional research.

With this episode, Kat and Samm begin a new four-part series inspired by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ seminal film book, Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984. Here they explore a few key films from Jose Larraz, one of the directors explored in depth in Tohill and Tombs’ book. This Spanish-born artist, writer, and director made some of his most famous films in England, such as Vampyres (1974), which was explored in Daughters of Darkness episode two. Here the focus is on Symptoms (1974), The Coming of Sin (1978), and Black Candles (1982). Symptoms, which was recently uncovered after it was believed to be lost for decades, existing only in bootleg form, is Larraz’s masterpiece. The film follows a disturbed young woman (Angela Pleasance) spending a few days in her family’s country house with her friend Anne (Lorna Heilbron), but Anne soon begins to hear strange things happening at night. The Coming of Sin similarly follows two women in a country estate: a wealthy amateur painter (Patricia Granada) and a young gypsy girl, Triana (Lidia Zuazo), temporarily staying with her. Triana suffers from a disturbing, recurring nightmare about being assaulted by a naked man on horseback (Rafael Machado), and soon he shows up at the estate just as she and the painter begin an affair… The fun and sleazy Black Candles utterly lacks the dreamy, surreal qualities of Symptoms or The Coming of Sin and was disavowed by the director himself. Also set an isolated house, this follows a group of Satanists who prey on a woman (Vanessa Hidalgo) investigating the mysterious death of her brother. Goat sex and orgies ensue.

Kat and Samm conclude their four-part series on the films of Elio Petri with a discussion of his final three features. The great Daria Nicolodi — at her most erotic — costarred in La proprietà non è più un furto (Property is No Longer a Theft, 1973), Petri’s absurdist, highly political crime film about a young man (Flavio Bucci) who is sick of being destitute and robs a well-off butcher (Ugo Tognazzi). Even more bizarre is Petri’s utterly unique follow up, Todo modo (1976), which reunited Petri with his two most important male leads, Marcello Mastroianni and Gian Maria Volontè. In this chilling drama, a political leader (a white-haired Volontè) gathers with his party and his spiritual adviser, a Catholic priest (Mastroianni), at a monastic retreat, but someone begins murdering them one by one. Petri’s last feature film is another surreal, absurd drama Buone notizie (Good News, 1979). A downtrodden media executive (Giancarlo Giannini) struggles with a barrage of violent content in his job, strife in his married life, and political tension in the city, including assassinations and bombings — he’s also confronted by an old friend who is mentally ill. Bizarre and often bleak, but loaded with moments of comedy, Good News includes many of the themes that obsessed Petri throughout his career: a battle of sexes, changing gender roles within Italy, sexual repression, leftist political ideology, the effectiveness of terrorism, and — most of all — man in the midst of an existential crisis.

Kat and Samm continue their in-depth investigation of Italian filmmaker Elio Petri, this time focusing on two of his collaborations with actor Gian Maria Volonté: his most famous film, Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, 1970), and his most overtly political, La classe operaia va in paradiso (The Working Class Goes to Heaven aka Lulu the Tool, 1971). Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion stars Petri as a high-ranking detective who murders his mistress just to prove to himself that he can get away with the crime — even if the evidence stacking up against him is right under the nose of the police department. A masterpiece of political and personal paranoia, it focuses on one of Petri’s most beloved themes: man in an existential crisis. He would use the same theme for The Working Class Goes to Heaven, which again stars Volonté, but in a completely different kind of role. His character, Lulu, is the perfect cog in the industrialist machine — a top worker in a rural factory — but an accident leaves him questioning his place in the world. His wife leaves him and he joins up with a group of protesters, but he can’t figure out what he has been working so hard towards — or what he is even fighting for as a political agitator, leading to a surreal, downbeat conclusion.

In episode 18, Kat and Samm continue their retrospective of Italian director Elio Petri with a look at his first three color films: La decima vittima (The 10th Victim, 1965), A ciascuno il suo (We Still Kill the Old Way, 1967), and a film discussed during one of their earlier art giallo episodes, Un tranquillo posto di campagna (A Quiet Place in the Country, 1969). One of Petri’s most beloved and uniquely stylized films, The 10th Victim is a futuristic, sci-fi tale about an advanced society that redirects violence into a spectacle known as the Big Hunt, where contestants turn state sponsored murder into popular entertainment. Much darker in style and tone is Petri’s follow up, We Still Kill the Old Way, an existential crime film that marks his first collaboration with actor Gian Maria Volontè, who stars as an unassuming professor whose friend (giallo regular Luigi Pistilli) is murdered in a Sicilian village. The only clue is a series of anonymous notes compiled from letters cut out of a local religious magazine and when the police refuse to follow this trail, the professor is determined to find the murderer’s identity. Similarly paranoid but far more oneiric is A Quiet Place in the Country, which is Petri’s only film that can really be described as a giallo, but contains all of the director’s core themes: a man in an existential crisis, emotional and financial exploitation, and tense gender dynamics.

In episode 17, Kat and Samm kick off an ongoing retrospective of Italian director Elio Petri, which will cover all the feature length films of his career. Known for his leftist politics, uniquely stylized films, and bold interpretations of genre, there’s no one quite like Petri and it’s a mystery why he’s so neglected compared to contemporaries like Antonioni, Pasolini, and Bertolucci. This first episode is an in depth discussion of some of his least seen films, three black and white titles he made in the early ‘60s at the beginning of his career: L’assassino (The Assassin, 1961), I giorni contati (His Days are Numbered, 1962), and Il maestro di Vigevano (The Teacher from Vigevano, 1963). Though generally marketed as a murder mystery or existential crime thriller, L’assassino follows a egotistical dandy (played by the great Marcello Mastroianni), who is picked up by the police after one of his lovers is found dead. While the lead detective (Petri regular Salvo Randone) seems determined to find him guilty regardless of the truth, he experiences something of an identity crisis. Randone returned to start in I giorni contati, a tragi-comedy about a plumber who witnesses a man die of a heart attack and decides to quit his job so that he can finally embrace life to the fullest, though things don’t go quite as planned. And finally, Petri’s only genuine comedy is Il maestro di Vigevano, an equally hilarious and grim look at the dark side of the Italian economic miracle, which follows a clueless teacher (Alberto Sordi) whose wife (Claire Bloom) decides to become a factory worker and then opens one of her own.

In this third and final segment of Kat and Samm’s series on obscure but stunning giallo films, they look at five of their favorite titles—nearly all of which involve a protagonist’s descent into madness—beginning with Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974). Mimsy Farmer stars as a troubled scientist who begins to have flashbacks about her mother’s suicide and is alarmed to find her life quickly unraveling. In Umberto Lenzi’s Spasmo (1974), a man begins a relationship with a woman, saving her from attempted murder, only to realize that he may be in the middle of a deadly conspiracy meant to drive him mad. Mimsy Farmer returns for Armando Crispino’s Autopsy (1975), where she stars as a pathology student writing a thesis on suicides. This just happens to coincide with a wave of them across Rome, though she believes that some of these are actually murders. The same year’s wonderfully eerie Footprints on the Moon follows another female protagonist (the great Florinda Balkan), who misses several days of work, but can’t remember what she did during that time, and the clues lead her to an isolated resort town. But there the residents confuse her with another woman. The series concludes with what is surely one of the most terrifying giallo films ever made, Pupi Avati’s House with the Laughing Windows (1976), which follows an art historian to a small town, where he is charged with restoring a grisly fresco in a church. He comes to be haunted by memories of the mad painter responsible for it and suspects that the man might still be alive…

In episode fifteen, Kat and Samm continue their three-part exploration of the art giallo film, with an emphasis on some unconventional and unfairly neglected titles, beginning with Slaughter Hotel (1971). The only giallo film from Fernando di Leo, this follows a mysterious, medieval weapon-wielding killer at a country asylum for troubled women, where the doctors (including Klaus Kinski) are hoping to discover the identity of the murderer before any more of their patients are dispatched. Renato Polselli’s absolutely insane Delirium (1972) is focused on a psychiatric consultant to the local police, who moonlights as a particularly vicious serial killer. Like Delirium, Luigi Cozzi’s The Killer Must Kill Again (1975) revolves around a series of implausible but highly entertaining twists, as a man trying to get rid of his wife just happens to stumble across a killer for hire and blackmails the man into service. Two joyriding teens accidentally get in the way. The similarly titled The Killer is on the Phone (1972) follows a woman with amnesia who is being stalked by a murderer (played by the wonderful Telly Savalas), while Joe D’Amato’s Gothic-tinged Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) has a plot so insane that brevity just can’t do it justice.

In episode fourteen, Kat and Samm begin a three-part look at the art giallo film, the more unconventional cousin to everyone’s favorite Italian horror genre, popularized by directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento. This episode begins with a look at Tinto Brass’s Deadly Sweet (1967), with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin as two young lovers trying to outrun a killer in swinging London. Trintignant and Aulin return for what is probably the only chicken-themed giallo, the totally bonkers Death Laid an Egg (1968), about murder and backstabbing in a poultry factory. Also explored is Elio Petri’s gloomy, beautiful A Quiet Place in the Country (1968), starring the great Franco Nero as a painter who rents an abandoned villa that might be haunted by the ghost of a nymphomaniac countess who died during WWII. War themes also trickle into the completely insane In the Folds of the Flesh (1970), about a family living in a mansion on top of an Etruscan burial ground. They have a nasty habit of gruesomely dispatching anyone who tries to visit them. Finally, Kat and Samm also explore one of the only Soviet-set giallo films, Aldo Lado’s grim Short Night of the Glass Dolls (1971), about a man who wakes up paralyzed, on a slab at the morgue and must try to remember how he got there before it’s too late.

In episode thirteen, Kat and Samm return to discuss Miklós Jancsó’s neglected 1976 film, Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù aka Private Vices, Public Virtues, which has recently been restored and will soon be released on Blu-ray by Mondo Macabro. Based on the Mayerling Affair from 1889, when the Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, committed suicide with his mistress, Jancsó’s film ponders what could have transpired if Rudolf did not kill himself, but was murdered. Here, Rudolf (the beautiful Lajos Balazsovits) is a rebel and is determined to fill his days with sex, partying, scandal, and blackmail in an attempt to embarrass his father and eventually overthrow the government. The episode explores how this explicit, visually sumptuous film — which includes everything from orgies and incest to anal sex and bestiality, among other surprises — has been unfairly neglected for too long. But a discussion of Private Vices, Public Virtues is just the tip of the iceberg, and Kat and Samm also offer a retrospective of Jancsó’s catalogue in general, particularly his earlier Hungarian films and his time in Italy, and explore the themes that recurred throughout his career: sadism, nudity, horses, political repression, folk singing, candles, and men in uniform, among others. Also discussed are other sexually explicit films from 1976 — like Walerian Borowczyk’s La marge and Serge Gainsbourg’s Je t’aime moi non plus — and films with similarly transgressive content, like Tinto Brass’s Salon Kitty and Caligula.

Kat and Samm return for episode 12 of Daughters of Darkness, where they discuss mad science in general and transplant-themed horror in particular. They begin with an analysis of the origins of mad science fiction in Gothic literature — partly a reaction to the European Enlightenment — through the fiction and nonfiction work of writers like Coleridge and Goethe, culminating in Mary Shelley’s seminal Frankenstein. The episode moves on to explore adaptations of Maurice Renard’s novel, Les Mains d’Orlac (1920), in which a pianist’s hands are damaged in an accident and replaced in an experimental procedure; but he’s convinced that his new hands belonged to a murderer and are possessing him to commit horrible acts. Beginning with Robert Wiene’s forerunner German expressionist film Orlacs Hände (1924), with Conrad Veidt, Renard’s loose plot thread moves through Maurice Tourneur’s similarly-themed, neglected La main du diable (1943) — a surreal, blackly comic work made during the Nazi occupation of France — to Karl Freund’s Mad Love (1935). Starring Peter Lorre as a crazed surgeon, the focus of this film is not on Orlac, the piano player, but on the demented Dr. Gogol, who is obsessed with Orlac’s wife, an actress in the Grand Guignol. Also discussed is Georges Franju’s groundbreaking Les yeux sans visage (1960), about a surgeon attempting to replace his daughter’s ruined face through nefarious means, and offshoots like Jess Franco’s Gritos en la noche aka The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962), as well as one of Michael Pataki’s few directorial efforts, Mansion of the Doomed (1976). The majestic Richard Basehart stars as a well-meaning but misguided doctor trying desperately to replace his daughter’s eyes.

On the eleventh episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm dive into another American Gothic-themed double feature, this time examining neglected ‘80s films Superstition (1982) and Eyes of Fire (1983). They begin with an in depth discussion of Calvinist Gothic literature from eighteenth century England to pre-Revolutionary America, including works like Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, particularly The Scarlet Letter. This is also connected to a discussion of witchcraft, social hysteria, and the persecution of women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These themes can be found in the eerie, little seen Eyes of Fire, Avery Crounse’s film about a small religious enclave exiled from their community in colonial America. They find their way to a strange valley that the local Shawnee tribes avoid and decide to make the place their home, but they are soon under siege, perhaps by the forest itself… Seemingly an obvious influence on The Witch (2015), this unsettling film is worlds away from the campy but incredibly fun Superstition, from director James W. Roberson, where a family moves into a strange house in New England that turns out to be possessed by a witch with a craving for Satanic vengeance. Essentially following the slasher format, it has everything from a priest killed by a circular saw, an attempted exorcism, an eighteenth century witch trial, some bitchy teenagers, and more.

The tenth episode of Daughters of Darkness is the first in a series of special double feature discussions to tie in with Diabolique’s American Gothic-themed summer season. In this one, Kat and Samm explore Roger Corman’s delightful Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, most of which starred horror icon Vincent Price — and sometimes his fellow genre luminaries Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. They give an overview of this eight film series, as well as a few titles American International Pictures attempted to include, but they specifically examine the horror-comedy The Raven (1963) and the morbidly colorful The Masque of the Red Death (1964). In The Raven, Price plays a good-hearted magician who agrees to help Peter Lorre’s character get revenge on the sinister Scarabus (Karloff), who has a number of surprises at his eerie castle by the seaside. Laser beams, wizardly hijinks, too-big hats, and a number of other shenanigans ensue, aided and abetted by a young Jack Nicholson. The Masque of the Red Death, on the other hand, is a serious horror tale set in the medieval fortress of avowed Satanist Prince Prospero, who holes up with scores of guests to throw an elaborate masked ball while a deadly plague rages outside his doors. The episode also includes a discussion of Poe’s work, his impact on European readers, and his legacy as a major figure of American Gothic — as well as nineteenth century fears, like being buried alive, and how they factor into the Corman-Price-Poe series.

In the ninth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm return for the second of a two-part series inspired by Stephen Thrower’s Nightmare USA. They kick things off with a discussion of Bob Clark’s devastating classic, Deathdream (1974), a Canadian production that reimagined the zombie film while simultaneously offering up a fresh adaptation of W.W. Jacobs’ story “The Monkey’s Paw” and confronting the effects of the Vietnam War. Frederick R. Friedel’s Kidnapped Coed (1976), on the other hand, is an odd mashup of genres that follows the strange romance that develops between a kidnapped young woman and her captor as they travel through the American countryside. The episode also explores one of the most delirious and delightful of all ‘70s cult films, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977), George Barry’s singular vision of a demonically possessed bed that consumes its inhabitants. It really must be seen to be believed. They conclude the episode with a look at Don’t Go in the House (1979), about a sympathetic serial killer who burns women to death in his own basement, and The Children (1980), a hilarious “killer kids” movie about radioactive zombie children set loose on a rural town.

Kat and Samm are back for the eighth episode of Daughters of Darkness, which is the first of a two-part series inspired by Stephen Thrower’s Nightmare USA. This 500+ plus masterpiece is an in-depth examination of low budget American horror from the ‘70s and ‘80s, the type overlooked or even unheard of compared to mainstream fare like The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the words of publisher FAB Press: “Nightmare USA explores the development of America’s subterranean horror film industry, spotlighting some of the wildest films imaginable from an era unchecked by censorship or ‘good taste.’ Ranging from cult favourites like I Drink Your Blood to stylish mind-benders like Messiah of Evil and ultra-violent shockers like Don’t Go in the House, Nightmare USA goes where no other in-depth study has gone before, revealing the fascinating true stories behind classics and obscurities alike.” Kat and Samm discuss some of their favorite films from Thrower’s book, beginning with the exceptional Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), an eerie reimagining of both the vampire myth and gas lighting plot, which explores a woman’s descent into madness in an old house in the New England countryside. Next up is Grave of the Vampire (1972), starring Michael Fucking Pataki, which is probably the only film in history to begin with a vampire serial rapist defiling a woman whose boyfriend just proposed to her by an open coffin. The still terrifying and strangely ageless Messiah of Evil (1973) reworks the Lovecraftian mythos while also following a young woman’s lonely search for her artist father in a small town by the seaside. For a complete change of pace, Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) is the world’s most insane monster movie that’s not really a monster movie at all, about a mutant sheep and corruption in desert town. Kat and Samm close out the episode with a look at the rapturous The Centrefold Girls (1974), a proto-slasher about a moralist murdering the models of a nude magazine.

In the seventh episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm conclude their four-part exploration of the career of director Andrzej Zuławski, beginning with a discussion of La note bleue (1991). This unconventional biographical drama explores the fading relationship between Chopin and French writer George Sand, which is complicated by the intrusion of her teenage daughter, Solange (played by Zuławski’s then partner and longtime muse Sophie Marceau), who is also in love with Chopin. Next they look at Zuławski’s first Polish-made film in nearly two decades, the strange and sublime Szamanka (1996), about an uncontrollable young woman whose sexual relationship with an anthropologist begins to consume his life. Finally, they explore La fidélité (2000), his final film with Marceau, which follows a headstrong artist and her difficult, but passionate marriage to a book publisher that is thrown into chaos when an attractive young photographer enters her life. They wrap up the episode with a discussion of Zuławski’s recent, final film, Cosmos (2015), an absolutely beautiful adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s absurdist novel of the same name, about two young men who discover an existential mystery at a boarding house in the countryside.

In the sixth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm continue on to the third part of their four-episode discussion of the work of director Andrzej Zuławski. They start out looking at Zuławski’s two loose Dostoyevsky adaptations, La femme publique (1984) and L’amour braque (1985). La femme publique, inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons, follows a young, inexperienced actress who is cast in a film adaptation of Demons and begins a relationship with the controlling director, while political violence and conspiracy erupts around them. L’amour braque, Zuławski’s first film with his long-time partner Sophie Marceau, is an adaptation of The Idiot and focuses on a strange young man named Léon, who gets caught up with a criminal gang and falls in love with the leader’s girlfriend. Finally, they explore two of Zuławski’s most neglected films, Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours (1989) and Boris Godounov (1989). Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours again stars Sophie Marceau as a troubled young performer in a traveling psychic act. She begins a complicated relationship with a computer programmer suffering from a disease that affects the language center of his brain. Boris Godounov is a unique musical production in Zuławski’s catalogue and is a particularly frenzied adaptation of Mussorgsky’s classic Russian opera about the disastrous reign of a man believed to have murdered the child of the former tsar.

In the fifth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm continue on to the second part of their four-episode discussion of director Andrzej Zuławski. This time they discuss his work in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when he was forced to leave Poland over the controversy surrounding his film The Devil (1972), which was banned by the communist government. His first French film, L’important c’est d’aimer (1975), which really launched his career in Europe, featured an international cast including Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, and Klaus Kinski. Set in the worlds of soft and hardcore pornography, as well as avant garde theatre, it explores the tragic love triangle between a struggling actress and a photographer. This is followed by a lengthy discussion of On the Silver Globe (1988) — a surreal sci-fi epic based on a novel written by his own uncle — a film he returned to Poland to make after the success of L’important c’est d’aimer. But after a costly and intensive shoot that was nearly complete, the Polish government canceled this production and Zuławski wasn’t able to complete it for another decade. It remains unfinished, though it was recently restored. The episode concludes with a look at Zuławski’s most famous film, Possession (1981), an unsettling work about the dissolution of a marriage in divided Berlin starring Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani.

In the fourth episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm begin a four-part discussion of the career of Polish director Andrzej Zuławski. Meant to be a celebration of his life and incredible work, the episode begins with a brief discussion of his early years, particularly his training as an assistant director under Andrzej Wajda. This is followed by a discussion of his two short films for Polish television, The Story of Triumphant Love (1969) and Pavoncello (1969), two lesser seen and perhaps more conventional works, where he established a number of the themes he would use throughout his career: love triangles, troubled romance, hysterical women, literary source material, and dizzying staircase sequences. This is followed by a lengthy exploration of his first feature-length film, The Third Part of the Night (1971), which was co-written by Zuławski’s father, Mirosław, and is loosely based on the elder Zuławski’s experiences working in a typhus lab during the Nazi occupation. The episode wraps up with a look at The Devil (1972), Zuławski’s unhinged second feature, a film that was promptly banned by the communist government and resulted in Zuławski’s departure from Poland and relocation to France. Set during the period of German occupation in Poland in the late eighteenth century, the film follows the homeward odyssey of a troubled young man who is released from prison by a mysterious stranger.

In the third episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm wrap up their three-part discussion of lesbian vampire films, this time with a focus on low budget American and Spanish films from the 1970s. They begin their discussion with the unusual film The Velvet Vampire (1971), the only entry in the series to be directed by a woman. The film’s star, Celeste Yarnall, is currently in ill health, so please contribute to her Go Fund Me campaign. Then they explore Spanish-language films like The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman (1971), where Paul Naschy’s werewolf faces off against a vampire queen, and the eerie, poetic The Blood-Spattered Bride (1972). They also take a look at Joe Sarno’s inane sexploitation film, The Devil’s Plaything (1973), about a castle full of lesbian vampires attempting to reincarnate their perverse leader with the help of a buxom, virginal sacrificial victim. Luigi Batzella’s absolutely insane The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973) gets a special mention, before moving onto cult classics like José Ramón Larraz Vampyres (1974) and Juan Lopez Moctezuma’s Alucarda (1977), as well as his Mary, Mary Bloody Mary (1975). Two obscure films about innocent young girls who are pursued by aggressive female vampires are also explored: Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) and low budget American film Lemora, a Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1975). The episode concludes with a somber discussion of two more mainstream, relatively recent lesbian vampire films. First off is The Hunger (1983), Tony Scott’s melancholy meditation on aging and death starring David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. Finally, Nadja (1994) is a David Lynch-produced film that reimagines one of the first movies discussed in episode one, Dracula’s Daughter, with a ‘90s independent cinema feel.

In the second episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm continue their three-part discussion of lesbian vampire films, this time with a focus on European cult directors like Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, and Walerian Borowczyk. They begin their discussion with the career of the prolific Jess Franco, who produced a number of films with lesbian vampire themes, namely Vampyros Lesbos (1971). This starred his first muse, Soledad Miranda, as the mysterious Countess Carody, who sunbathes by day but thirsts for blood at night. Franco also adapted Bram Stoker’s novel with the relatively traditional Count Dracula (1970), but continued to explore his own perverse variations on vampire mythology in Dracula’s Daughter (1972) and the explicit Female Vampire (1975), with his longtime partner Lina Romay. Also explored is the work of French director Jean Rollin, known for his dreamlike, often surreal vampire films such as The Rape of the Vampire (1968), The Nude Vampire (1970), The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), and Requiem for a Vampire (1973). While these films infrequently use overt depictions of lesbianism, they are generally concerned with pairs or groups of female vampires banded together against the world. In films like Fascination (1979), about blood-drinking socialites, and The Living Dead Girl (1982), the tragic tale of a love that survives beyond death, Rollin expanded on his early themes. The episode concludes with a discussion of a few films that touch upon the legend of historical murderer and alleged blood-drinker Elizabeth Bathory. Most importantly is Belgian film Daughters of Darkness (1971), the podcast’s namesake, which follows a newly married couple who encounter an elegant and possibly ageless woman at a seaside hotel.

In the inaugural episode of Daughters of Darkness, Kat and Samm explore the history of lesbian vampire films. This first episode of three begins by examining the lesbian vampire from her origins in eighteenth century Gothic literature, particularly Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s unfinished poem “Christabel” (1797) and Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s story “Carmilla” (1871), both of which explore themes of monstrosity, repressed sexuality, and female identity. “Carmilla” — the source material for the majority of lesbian vampire films — follows a lonely young woman named Laura, who makes a strange, seductive new friend, Carmilla, whose designs on Laura are decidedly sanguinary. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s surreal horror film Vampyr (1932) was the first to adapt “Carmilla,” however loosely, but was followed soon after by the more straightforward Universal horror film, Dracula’s Daughter (1936). The latter — with its depiction of an elegant, sympathetic female vampire reluctantly driven to act out her bloodlust out on female as well as male victims — was among the first to portray vampirism as a blend of madness, female hysteria, sexual dysfunction, and addiction. Dracula’s Daughter would influence subsequent adaptations of “Carmilla,” like Roger Vadim’s lush arthouse effort Blood and Roses (1960) and obscure Italian Gothic horror film Crypt of the Vampire (1964). The film co-starred Hammer star Christopher Lee, who spends much of the running time in an outrageous smoking jacket. Speaking of Hammer studios, the episode wraps up with a discussion of their Karnstein trilogy, a watershed moment for lesbian vampire cinema. Films like The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971), and Twins of Evil (1971) — as well as some of the studio’s outlier efforts like The Brides of Dracula (1960) or Countess Dracula (1971) — left a bloody mark on vampire films. With minimal violence and plenty of nudity from buxom starlets like Ingrid Pitt, these films generally depict aristocratic vampires preying on innocent young ladies in pastoral settings. A film like The Vampire Lovers was famous for its use of lesbianism and casual nudity, but is quite restrained compared to the films discussed in episode two by European directors like Jess Franco and Jean Rollin.