Film / The Velvet Vampire

The Velvet Vampire is a 1971 film directed by Stephanie Rathman.

Lee and Susan Witter, an attractive but rather dimwitted young married couple, go to an art gallery owned by Susan's friend Carl Stoker. At the gallery, they meet a cool, mysterious brunette, Diane LeFanu (Celeste Yarnall). Lee makes no effort to disguise his attraction to the gorgeous Diane, much to Susan's disgust—but Susan still allows Lee to accept Diane's invitation to spend the weekend at her ranch house deep in the Mojave desert.

Lee and Susan's car conks out in the desert, but happily, Diane just happens to zoom up in a dune buggy. Or does she "just happen" to show up? Because strange things happen at her ranch house. Lee and Susan both have the same erotic dream, in which they are making love, only for Diane to appear and lure Lee away. Diane gives the young couple a tour of an abandoned mine, and tells them about how the mine was shut down because the miners kept getting found dead, with slashed throats. Then Diane shows them the grave of her husband, and Lee notices that the inscription on the gravestone says her husband died in 1875...

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Tropes:

• Attempted Rape: The film opens with Diane walking through an open courtyard, when a man grabs her, drags her into an alcove, and starts to rape her. He doesn't get very far, as she picks up the knife that he put down and plunges it into his ribs.
• Bathtub Scene: Lee and Susan share a bubble bath, although, surprisingly, the nudity doesn't come until later.
• Catapult Nightmare: The first time that Susan has her Erotic Dream about Diane luring Lee away, she bolts up awake in bed, shouting in protest.
• Color Motif: Red, as befitting a vampire movie. Diane dresses in red a lot, like in the opening scene where she murders a would-be rapist, or the erotic dream that she's apparently beaming into Lee and Susan's heads. The hidden room from where she watches Lee and Susan have sex is draped in red curtains.
• Conversation Cut: Lee and Susan are arguing in the living room, and Susan says "What's bugging you?" Cut to the two of them in the guest room bed as Lee says "I don't believe a thing she says, that's what!" (They're arguing about whether or not to believe Diane's extremely flimsy story about Juan's corpse being in her husband's grave.)
• Dies Wide Open: How Lee and Susan find Juan, lying in the open grave where Diane's husband is buried.
• Dream Weaver: One of Diane's tools in the seductions of both Lee and Susan is an Erotic Dream that she implants in both of their heads.
• Erotic Dream: Both Lee and Susan have the same erotic dream, implanted in their minds by Diane, in which they are making love in a bed in the middle of the desert, only for Diane to show up and pull Lee out of the bed. After Lee and Diane have sex for real, the Erotic Dream changes, becoming a Hemo Erotic Dream in which Diane slices an X on Susan's chest and drinks her blood.
• Foreshadowing: Giving Susan's friend Carl the name "Carl Stoker" is a big hint. The ending reveals that Carl is a vampire too.
  • Same can be said about Diane before the discovery of her being a vampire, since her last name is "LeFanu".
• Ghost Town: Diane takes Lee and Susan on a tour of one. Diane and Lee leave Susan behind, and they're about to have sex when Susan gets bitten by a rattlesnake.
• Gilligan Cut: Susan didn't have the nerve to push back when a horny Lee was accepting a weekend invitation from Diane, but she nags Lee about it afterwards. Annoyed, Lee yells "We'll forget the whole thing, and we'll stay home!" Cut to Lee and Susan driving through the desert.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack:
  • To establish a spooky vampire mood the opening credits play over a Heartbeat Soundtrack, coupled with an extreme closeup of a "bloodstone".
  • This is heard again at the end, when Diane, trapped in the sunlight by a cross-wielding mob, dies.
• Hemo Erotic: When the Erotic Dream that Susan and Lee are both having about Diane changes focus from Lee to Susan, Diane, in the dream, carves an X on Susan's skin and sucks on her blood.
• Holy Burns Evil: At the climax, Diane is chasing Susan in downtown Los Angeles when Susan happens to stumble by a religious knickknack stand, and picks up a crucifix. She yells for help, and when a bunch of bystanders pick up crucifixes—the film does not bother to explain why complete strangers would join Susan in vampire hunting—the tables are turned and Diane is trapped. She dies when she's caught in the sunlight, surrounded by people wielding crucifixes.
• Immortality Bisexuality: Or Lesbian Vampire. Diane is indeed attracted to Susan, and she even gives Susan a speech about how women can give each other a pleasure that men can never know. Still, though, she does have sex with Lee, and she carries a torch for her husband who has been dead for nearly a century. (One scene shows a naked Diane curled up next to his embalmed corpse.)
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Cliff the mechanic refuses the sexual advances Diane makes on him, and backs away. So Diane sics her minion Juan on Cliff. Cliff, running way, falls backwards onto the tines of a pitchfork, which go straight through his chest and kill him.
• No Immortal Inertia: Diane is white-haired and old after she dies, caught out in the sunlight.
• Not His Blood: Diane doesn't do a thorough enough job of washing off the blood from the would-be rapist that she stabbed to death. When Lee spots blood on her hand she says that it isn't hers, and makes up a ridiculous story involving a Mercy Kill of terribly injured stray cat. Lee the moron buys it.
• The Renfield: Diane has Juan, a mortal who acts as her servant and apparently helps her to acquire victims. Eventually, she eats him.
• Right-Hand Cat: When Susan wakes up at Carl's house, he's stroking a cat in his lap. Immediately afterward, as the film ends, he's revealed to be a vampire.
• Suck Out the Poison: Of course this is what Diane does after Susan gets bitten on the thigh by a rattlesnake.
• Weakened by the Light: Diane actually can go out in the light, but only when she covers up with a large hat and concealing clothes. When Susan and a mob catch her outside in broad daylight, without her sun hat and with exposed skin, she dies.