As any vampire scholar, and most vampire fans, will tell you, the figure of the vampire is inherently queer. John Polidori based Lord Ruthven (“The Vampyre,” 1818) on the indiscriminately licentious Lord Byron; J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (“Carmilla,” 1872) still dominates the lesbian vampire genre; and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Dracula, 1897) tells his three brides that Jonathan Harker “is mine.” Their non-normative reproduction, the pleasure that they take in penetration and feasting, their seduction of victims into voluntary acquiescence, and their capes and ruffles and air of languid dissipation…vampires are queer. But so what?

This lecture will first establish cinematic vampires as almost universally queer-coded and explore the significance of this specific intersection of monstrosity and sexuality. The talk will then explore the alignment of vampire cinema with the queer liberation movement of the 1960s-70s, covering films such as Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy (The Vampire Lovers [1970], Lust for a Vampire [1971], and Twins of Evil [1971]) and its much gayer spiritual relatives including Daughters of Darkness (1971), The Blood Spattered Bride (1972), and Vampyres (1974), as well as recent titles like Bit (2019), Thirst (2020), and So Vam (2021).

Through the work of queer theorists including Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz the lecture will explore the ways that vampires can contribute to discourses around queer identity, modes of being, and futurity.