Daughters of Darkness

The great Delphine Seyrig commands the screen with potent erotic flair in her iconic turn as Elizabeth Báthory, a bewitchingly imperious Hungarian countess whose fateful encounter with a young couple on their honeymoon catalyzes a blood-soaked maelstrom of desirous depravity. More than 50 years after Daughters of Darkness first seduced and beguiled audiences, the film’s reputation as a defining achievement in the lesbian vampire subgenre has only grown, and it remains the most celebrated title in the small but provocative corpus of Belgian director Harry Kümel. Critic Geoffrey O’Brien, in a monumental 1993 treatise articulating the contours of modern horror cinema, characterized Kümel’s film as “a deeply unpleasant evocation of a war of nerves… Jaded age preys cunningly on narcissistic youth, and seductiveness and cruelty become indistinguishable as Seyrig forces the innocents to become aware of their own capacity for monstrous behavior. If Fassbinder had made a vampire movie it might have looked something like this.”

Selected and featuring an exclusive pre-recorded introduction by The Boulet Brothers, hosts of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Titans, in honor of Shudder’s 10th anniversary and the series’ season two premiere debuting this Fall. 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Blue Underground, with the supervision of director Harry Kümel.