Directed by Yilmaz Duru and Sergio Garrone, this was a 1974 horror that starred Klaus Kinski and it is a bit of a Gothic potboiler.
Kinski is Prof. Nijinski, the student of a famous doctor, Baron Ivan Rassimov, who was looking to perfect transplanting of human tissue. A fire took the doctor’s life and – according to Nijinski – destroyed his research. The fire also severely burned Tanja, the Baron’s daughter and Nijinski’s wife.
Nijinski is trying to restore her beauty by skin grafts from unwilling victims and it is here we start getting the tropes. Probably the most famous early example of medical vampirism, if I can call it that, was Good Lady Duncayne with a Doctor drawing blood from maids and, it is implied, transfusing them as a life giving treatment. Later examples would see stolen blood in I Vampiri that is treated to give restored youth, likewise harvesting a gland produced hormone in Atom Age Vampire, which repairs a destroyed face. In both these examples the unwilling donor dies and the recipient reverts and needs more.
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| Tanja disfigured |
In this film the donors die during the operation and the process involves a scientific procedure that prevents rejection of the tissue. The finale sees a full face transplant – which is so perfect it fools the husband of the donor (so he cannot tell any difference in her body or voice!). This is a bit more hardcore than a graft, of course, and brought the Bloodthirsty Roses, from the same year, to mind. In that film, the vampires steal faces to move through the years under new identities (though there is no medical aspect). A rejection of the face causes a fast decay – a little like a dying vampire.
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| Klaus Kinski as Nijinski |
Because of the disfigurement, Tanja remains hidden in cloak and veil, which was a very gothic look, and she fears to look in the mirror, which riffs on the mirror trope. She also only emerges from her rooms at night. Likewise, there are some lines in the dialogue that also cause this to feel like a play with vampire genre tropes. At one point she tells Nijinski, “I’ve been in this grave for years.” This likens her to the undead, of course, though it is her life and the mansion she hides in that are the grave. She follows this line with a plea for him to “make me live, like other women.” Again this can be read as her being the living dead who wants actual life and steals it from living women (ultimately stealing identity as well as the donor dying).
The 'science' is hokum, the plot ridiculous but this was fun in a 70s Gothic way and it does play with some of those tropes. The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon US
On DVD @ Amazon UK
2 comments:
Perhaps for this Use of Tropes series it might be worth considering whether or not The Manticore from the original Boogiepop and Others Light Novel is Vampire like enough. On the subject of Tropes one I think would be interesting anylsize there is the how in which Masami Saotome plays the Renfield role but in a rather unexpected way.
There are three versions of the story, the original Light Novel which is still the best, it does have at least one English Translation. The Live Action film made in 2000 which last I checked is still on YouTube. And then the first 3 episodes of the 2019 Anime which is on Crunchyroll and probably has a BLuRay release.
Hey Kuudere-Kun, thanks for popping by. I'd not heard of Boogiepop but I've stuck the live action in watch later and will keep an eye out for the original light novel.
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