I confess, I’m not the best person to review or analyze romantic horror films, or romantic anything. I tend to find the genre boring. But I can understand why it appeals to many readers, who want some sort of pleasant escape from the disappointments real life. In my observation, avid romance fans love the genre for providing a substitute for what they don’t have–a partner, or a partner who is sufficiently romantic and caring toward them. Be advised, I haven’t done any sort of formal study on this (I recommend you read this article by Janice Radway for an analysis of popular romance novels and their readers).

This isn’t to say that I’m negatively judging romance fans. Let’s face it, real-life romance is more often than not a dumpster-fire of drama. And Valentine’s Day season, with its emphasis on consumerism as a means of expressing heteronormative affection, is a hard time for many people. So why not embrace a fictional escape into a more perfect, more passionate relationship?

That said, I’m more interested in the worst-case-scenario, dumpster-fire depictions of romance than in idealized ones, and that cynicism is where the romance and horror genres can mesh well together.

A case in point is the so-called lesbian vampire film of the 1970s. They are amazingly formulaic. Inevitably, they reference the Sheridan Le Fanu story Carmilla, and/or the crimes of real-life murderer Countess Elizabeth Bathory. In many cases a predatory lesbian or bisexual female vampire fixates on a newlywed heterosexual couple, and destroys their relationship from within. Among the films following this pattern are The Blood Spattered Bride, The Velvet Vampire, and Daughters of Darkness.

It’s rather challenging to analyze these movies, because they seem to close the gap between feminism and misogyny. If one assumes that they were marketed primarily to heterosexual men, as many horror and exploitation movies of the 1970s were, one can assume that these films are primarily misogynistic in their outlook. After all, during his honeymoon, his wife is seduced and snatched away by a woman with superior sexual prowess. In The Velvet Vampire, the vampire Diane LeFanu even tells the young bride that men hate and fear women, because women experience sexual pleasure that men can never understand. In most instances, the female vampires are cruel and predatory, and the young women are either neurotic or complete air-heads.

And yet, these films make their male heroes so incredibly unsympathetic, and in some cases, they don’t even survive the entirety of the film. The husband in Blood Spattered Bride rapes his wife and drags her around by her hair. Similarly, the husband in Daughters of Darkness is a sexual sadist who savagely and non-consensually whips his bride with his leather belt. Women, especially virginal women are forced with the awful choice of merely choosing the lesser of two abusers.