The next day I made sure that my teeth were secure. And everybody made sure that they did not make eye contact with anyone else. That way led to disaster.
Overall, though, it was a wonderful introduction to the world of the vampire and Gothic overkill.
As we were finishing The Vampire Lovers , I heard that Hammer was setting up another film, called Countess Dracula . It was going to be a big, lavish production and the lead character seemed to be right up my street: a sixteenth-century serial killer called Countess Erzsebet Bathory.
I had also heard that Diana Rigg was up for the part. I could not have that, so I cornered Jimmy Carreras and made him promise to give me a chance.
There were also a couple of other vampire films in the early stages of development at Hammer: Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil . I read the first draft scripts. The Carmilla character had another outing, but the part was a tag-on rather than the central role, and that made me even more determined to get the part of Erzsebet Bathory.
I do not know what happened, but one day Jimmy called me into his office and told me that I was to play Bathory.
Unfortunately, Countess Dracula was not quite the happiness factory that The Vampire Lovers had been. For one thing, the management had come to the conclusion that Hammer was in a battle for survival that it would be hard to win. To try and counter this, they had bought up the sets and many of the costumes from the historical film Anne of the Thousand Days . This was to give the production an unaccustomed gloss.
The director, Peter Sasdy, was not at all happy with the title. It was exploitative, and he was not making a vampire film. He wanted a title with more resonance. This caused big arguments on set with the producer, Alexander Paal.
However, there were still the odd moments of light relief. When Sandor Eles, my co-star, was building up to have his wicked way with me in the hay, I looked at his face and shouted, " Cut !" This did not go down well with the frazzle-nerved Sasdy, and he shouted at me that he was the one who said when to say "cut". I did not care, because I was having a fit of the giggles. I pointed to Sandor's face. Half of his false moustache was missing.
A thorough search was made, but it seems that it is as hard to find half a moustache in a haystack as a needle. I went off to my dressing-room and levered myself out of the heavy skirt I was wearing. Then in the mirror I noticed something obscene crawling out of my navel. I gave a high-pitched scream, whacked at it with my corset, and leaped on to the bunk.
My dresser came running. I explained that I had been invested with something Satanic and pointed hysterically to where I had seen the alien item disappear. She bent down and held the hairy object up to the light. It was the missing half of Sandor's moustache!
The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula have since become classics of the genre, and I am glad that I braved that cold December morning to meet with Jimmy Carreras.
I did one more outing as a vampire. This was in the Amicus film The House That Dripped Blood with Jon Pertwee. Originally it was going to be a straight horror film, but Jon just worked on director Peter Duffell until he rejigged the script (by horror writer Robert Bloch) and made it into a comedy. I think the film benefited from it.
Although "The Cloak" episode in which I appeared was a comedy, it was played out against a background that was surprisingly real. The coffin in the cellar, where my character Carla was supposed to pass the daylight hours, was the real McCoy. We were shooting a scene when a break for lunch was called. I was lying in the coffin, waiting for the scene where I reared up, fangs exposed, and frightened the life and juice out of a nasty police inspector. The crew thought it would be a splendid wheeze to leave me there.
After a while I cottoned on to the fact that I had been in the coffin a long time and there was no sound of movement getting through to me. I tried pushing the lid up. No go. I tried banging on the sides. Still no reaction.
It is amazing the thoughts that go through your mind at a time like that. The scenario I was looking at was some sort of catastrophe had overtaken the crew and they were all lying around the set in various dramatic attitudes of death. For a moment I panicked, scrabbled at the lid. Then reason cut in and I guessed what had happened. A typical film set prank.
But I was not having that. I settled down to wait. A couple of times the death scenario tried to kick in, but I still was not having any of it. When I at last heard some movement beyond the confining walls of my coffin, I pretended to be asleep. As the lid was lifted, I opened my eyes, gave an exaggerated yawn, and innocently asked what was happening! I think I pulled it off.
On a recent visit to the homeland of that old rogue Dracula, I had a disturbing experience. I thought that the inhabitants of Transylvania would be thrilled that their top export had been acknowledged as one of the most familiar icons of the cinema. Not only was I wrong, but some of the denizens of darkest Sighisoara (the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula — son of Dracul) were positively hostile to the notion that their heroic Vlad had anything to do with the incarnation of the fictional Dracula. Why they are so opposed to the idea that Bram Stoker's version of the vampire is something to be ashamed of is hard to nail down. In many ways, the nattily-dressed and becloaked film star has much to offer a country still tethered by their communist past to a lifestyle not so different from that described by Stoker.
The vampire, of course, was not a creature conjured up in the nineteenth century. Before it was spruced up and introduced into the British drawing-room it had ranged through history in a number of gruesome disguises, but always with its trademark calling card: the drinking of the victim's blood or essence. The vampires of Anne Rice hark back to the days of the pharaohs, and maybe beyond. They are sophisticated beings who have found themselves a steady food source and live out their tainted existence accordingly.
Until recently, I thought that vampires had been thought up to suit the predilections of the top-hatted, child-molesting, wife-beating, power-crazed males of the 1800s. I was surprised to discover that nearly every country and culture had a variation on the theme of the vampire.
As the vampire became a literary property, its creator was acknowledged as the mad-bad Lord Byron. He only wrote a fragment of a story, but his physician-cum-drug pusher, John Polidori, after an acrimonious bust-up with the fractious peer, left his employ taking the document with him. Polidori himself took up the Gothic theme and substantially rewrote his former employer's story into what was to become the first classic vampire tale: The Vampyre was issued in 1819 by London publisher Constable who originally — and incorrectly — attributed the story to Byron. But Byron's involvement with the genesis of Polidori's story ensured that the vampire stepped straight out of the tomb and into society.
Now I am delighted to find myself introducing this new collection of superior vampire stories, written by talented women from diverse cultures and backgrounds, and initially appearing from the same company who first issued Byron's fragment and who also published Stoker's seminal vampire novel.
However, fashions change, and the urbane vampire created by Byron and cemented in place by Stoker has had to move on. There are now New Age vampires aplenty, waiting in the shadows, just out of sight, ready to slither forth and seek new victims.
Are you, like me, ready for the new dusk ?
The Master of Rampling Gate
Anne Rice
Anne O'Brien Rice is horror's female equivalent to Stephen King. A publishing phenomenon in her own right, she began her acclaimed "Vampire Chronicles" series in 1976 with the novel Interview with the Vampire. Responsible for creating a huge resurgence in the popularity of the undead, the book introduced readers to her sexually powerful bloodsucker, Lestat de Lioncourt .