The Vampiress Episode: "Nightmare Classics"

"Carmilla"

Season 1

Episode 2

The Gist:  Sickness and death follow a family after they take in an orphan after her parents die in a carriage accident.

Clarification:  Carmilla is one of the oldest stories of vampirism in literature and quite controversial for it's time as the story revolves around a lesbian vampire which was pretty taboo when it was written in the late 1800's.  As it goes Carmilla is really Mircalla Karnstein who is the youngest member of a family of vampires and her con is for something to happen to her parents where she has to be left with a family to stay.  Once she's invited into their home she slowly drains them of blood until they die.  She ends up falling for the daughter of the family she ends up staying with and it's up to the young woman's family to save her from Carmilla's bite.

Selling Point: Girl on Girl makout sessions.

Female Vampire Factor:  Carmilla in this film is played by Meg Tilly.

This would be the Tilly without the helium voice (That would be her sister Jennifer).  So here's the kicker when it comes to this movie.  If you take the film The Vampire Lovers (which is also the same story) and take away all the "Hammer Horror" out of it meaning the blatant vampirism is now replaced with implied vampirism then you have this film.   Both films have Carmilla shape shifting into different creatures to do her blood drinking but at least when it comes to the Vampire Lovers once they're on to her she's all fangs.   In this she does bite in human form toward the end but it's fang free and you can't really tell it's biting until the fang marks are seen when she's done.

So this gets a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  "The Vampire Lovers" is still the be all end all of how to do the Carmilla story.