live as one forever.” While, in the novella, Carmilla then immediately goes on to claim that “girls are caterpillars while they live in the world” and await transformation, Moctezuma deletes this line of dialogue, choosing instead to immediately show the true nature of the transformation creatures such as Carmilla and Alucarda offer. The two girls return to the convent, where the priest Father Lazaro (David Silva), sheathed in red like the dryad in the crypt, is delivering a frightening homily on possession and eternal damnation to an increasingly hysterical audience of nuns and female orphans. As the homily reaches fever pitch, Justine faints, and is taken back to her room. When both Sister Angelica and Alucarda offer to look after her, Justine, sig- nificantly, chooses Alucarda. In the thrall of de- monic possession, Alucarda knocks Justine unconscious, and demands that they conclude their blood oath. The hunchback, no longer the good-natured charlatan of Le Fanu’s novella, suddenly materializes, making the young girls drink each other’s blood while swearing alle- giance to the Devil. He then leads them to an orgiastic witches’ sabbat at the gypsy camp, pre- sided over by a female fortune teller and designed


to invoke the lord of “leaf and flower and fruit.” Meanwhile at the convent, Sister Angelica, sens- ing that Justine’s soul is imperiled, begins to pray for her protection with an ecstatic fervor that leads the nun to literally sweat and weep blood. In this deftly executed scene, Moctezuma alter- nates between the sabbat ceremony and Sister Angelica’s frantic prayers, demonstrating that both rituals involve almost identical movements, emo- tions, and palpable sexual energy. Just as Father Lazaro and the demonic hunchback hold their fe- male audiences in thrall with rituals designed to elicit hysteria, both Sister Angelica and the fortune teller writhe in ecstasy while bathed in blue light. As Justine’s and Alucarda’s virginity is taken in the witches’ orgy, Sister Angelica’s blood flows more freely, until a spiritual climax is achieved and the fortune teller’s throat is torn open by a flash of light. Sister Angelica, coated with blood, is now revealed to be perched birdlike on the rail of her bed, as if levitating—behavior that will later be de- scribed by Father Lazaro as an indication of de- monic possession. Thus, it is clear that both groups are channeling exactly the same force through almost identical rituals, though the reason for Sister Angelica’s victory is not yet clear.


Susana Kamini enacts the most horrific image from Le Fanu’s CARMILLA onscreen for the first time.


30


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84