This is my current favourite from the Hammer Horror roster. It's worth pointing out that the acting isn't end of the pier atrocious (Yutte Stensgaard takes the lead), and the effects team didn't have the financial rope to string themselves up well and truly (at least not until the very end). But I don't think it will disappoint. It's based on the Sheridan le Fanu story "Carmilla," a classic foray into the fangs 'n stakes genre. True to Hammer form, the "sex" is not liable to give even the most prudish any palpitations, and the gore terrifies only those with a phobia of ketchup.

It's set in a sort of para-Switzerland which is merely an excuse to place the action in a girl's finishing school, itself an excuse for an inexhaustible supply of comely females to get it in the neck. We open to a buxom (but terminally dense) village wench being enticed into a (black) carriage by a man (in black) who is obviously Mr. Bad News. Having committed this primary blunder, she is carted back screaming to Mrs. Bad News at Bad News Mansions. Together, the Bad Newses transfer the vital fluids of their prey into a coffin containing some extremely unconvincing human remains. As happens so often in Hammer films, this prompts an instant transmogrification of the desiccated corpse (Christopher Lee must have had the treatment half a dozen times), and the revived Carmilla sits up in her coffin, blood dribbling down her chin and eyeliner miraculously restored. It's probably a dark, stormy night out there, too.

We cut to the academy for young ladies, who are shortly to discover the need for more iron in their diet. The school uniform is a diaphanous pastel nightdress and false eyelashes. Our hero, a dishy schoolmaster, has the misfortune to arrive almost simultaneously with Carmilla (a new pupil) and Mrs. Bad News. We meet the inmates of the academy and a not very dishy schoolmaster, none with any other function than fang fodder. Some die outright, some participate in a sort of vampiric chain reaction, there doesn't seem to be much logic about who gets what. Carmilla bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain long-dead Mircalla, countess Karnstein, but no one has done enough crosswords to catch on. Having summarily disposed of the undishy schoolmaster, Carmilla fluffs her vampiric training completely by falling for the dishier one who, to do him credit, begins to suspect his new girlfriend of being an undead. She sure does like to hang around graveyards a lot. Their brief courtship over Carmilla's former tomb is accompanied by a breathy song, "Strange Love," which has to be heard to be believed. Arghh.

Warning: the ending will now described, but it has to be seen to be truly appreciated anyway.

Eventually, the villagers get the wind up, thanks to a bloke whose daughter had fallen victim to Carmilla years ago (while she was a mummified corpse?) and trap her in a burning building with the Bad Newses, her parents/minders. Dishy schoolmaster plunges in after them and then stands there pondering whether he will die from exsanguination or third-degree burns. This impasse is resolved by a flaming stave which falls from the ceiling and fortuitously impales Carmilla, who promptly decomposes in a truly laughable manner, leaving her lover with a broken heart and presumably a slightly queasy stomach. The whole thing reeks of the sixties, although it came out in 1970. Love those beehives.

Thing that make you go "Huh?": How Carmilla managed to seduce the vengeful man's daughter, given her rather unattractive state at the start of the film.