Meet Ingrid Pitt – A “Vampire Lover”!
Day #2 of Shocktober 2019 features some of the best early 70’s horror films from England, thanks to the incredible cult movie Queen Ingrid Pitt!
Ingrid Pitt was a Polish-British actress who had some of the slowest scenes in Hammer’s horror catalogue – and she was a bestselling Author as well!
We’ll focus on several films that made her one of my favorite “Queens Of Horror!”
The Vampire Lovers!
As the ad screams:
“Caution: not for the mentally immature!”
Pitt got her start in horror in this classic tale of vampire lust from 1970 – check out the vintage trailer!
Pitt plays seductive vampire Carmilla Karnstein, who along with her family target the beautiful and the rich in a remote area of late eighteenth-century Germany.
According to IMDB:
While filming, Ingrid Pitt and the girls have a great deal of trouble getting through scenes without giggling. In the scene where Ingrid has to drink from Kate O’Mara, her vampire teeth kept falling out and into Kate’s cleavage. She eventually had to steal some gum from one of the stagehands to stick the fangs back in.
This was the beginning of the era of “erotic horror” – with empowered women who were the predators, and the films included a lot of nudity and sexual situations as well.
Pitt’s next film in 1971 cemented her status as a Queen of Horror!
Countess Dracula!
How about this for a plot:
In 17th-century Hungary, elderly widow Countess Elisabeth Nádasdy maintains her misleading youthful appearance by bathing in the blood of virgins!
Hammer’s foray into erotic horror was proving to be a huge box office win for the studio.
Here is the trailer:
While the film was a huge hit, IMDB says that Ingrid Pitt’s voice was dubbed. Supposedly, she was so furious at director Peter Sasdy that she vowed never to speak to him again!
That same year she was part of an ensemble cast in one of horror’s first – and best anthology films!
The House That Dripped Blood!
The film is a collection of four stories about strange happenings inside this house…here is the trailer:
Interestingly, Pitt wasn’t nude in the film, and after a small role in “The Wicker Man” she left the business for almost a decade.
In 1999, her autobiography, “Life’s a Scream” was published.
The autobiography detailed the harrowing experiences of her early life—in a Nazi concentration camp, her search through Europe in Red Cross refugee camps for her father, and her escape from East Berlin…a she said:
“I always had a big mouth and used to go on about the political schooling interrupting my quest for thespian glory. I used to think like that. Not good in a police state.”
Other writing projects include a bedside companion for fans of “The Vampire Lovers!”
Pitt died in 2010, but leaves behind a rich treasure trove of great horror films!
It’s going to be a great month of Shocktober – I started it off yesterday with a “Scream Queen” who just LOVES TO DANCE:
Yes, Linnea Quigley had a blast making her films, and click here is a look at some of the wildest ones!
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Bravo to Ingrid Pitt for all of the great movies she left us!
Categories: 70's Films, Books / Media, Classic Horror, Cult Classics, Exploitation Films, Horror films, JRsploitation, Nudity, sex kittens, Talent / Celebrites, Uncategorized
JR-Sploitation! 
Wonderful British classics, John. Always a pleasure to see Maddy Smith, even on a poster!
I met Sandor Eles a few times, during my stint as a taxi driver in the early 1970s. He was a nice friendly guy, with no ‘attitude’. He was also almost certainly gay, at a time when such things were not really openly discussed.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thanks for the memory Pete!
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