Synopsis: Set in the 1830s in some fictitious east European country, it begins with the evil Count and Countess Karnstein catching themselves a young virgin from the village whom they sacrifice to the Devil in order to resurrect the beautiful Countess Carmilla (Yutte Stensgaard). We then switch scene to young writer of horror stories, Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson) arriving in the local village to hear the usual stories about how the castle on the hill is a Place of Evil blah blah blah. So off he goes to investigate only to discover that, place of evil or not, it is now adjacent to a posh girl's finishing school brimful of stunning young women including a certain Mircalla who he is instantly smitten by, rather unhappily as her name being an anagram for `Carmilla' is no accident. Smitten as he is he quickly contrives to get taken on as an English teacher and is given lodgings to share with the decidedly strange history teacher Giles Barton played by Ralph Bates. Obviously it isn't long before nubile young ladies start cropping up dead with strange marks on their necks.

A fair amount of confusion seems to have reigned over the making of this. It's a sequel to the earlier 'Vampire Lovers' where Ingrid Pitt played the role of Carmilla. Here they couldn't get her so they used the relatively unkown Stensgaard. Terence Fisher was originally pencilled in to direct but Sangster had to take over when that fell through. And Peter Cushing was originally to have been cast as Barton but was replaced by Bates when that didn't work out either. Not that any of these replacements prove so very disastrous. Sangster does a decent enough job. Stensgaard is pretty good in the lead: it was probably the high point of her short career before she quit to work for a Christian radio station in the USA. And Bates isn't Cushing but is still serviceably creepy. The weak point of the film and the main reason this is one of Hammer's less successful vampire movies is Johnson as LeStrange who should be the dramatic and emotional centre of the movie but who fails to breath life into a serious disappointingly feeble and uninteresting character. Suzanna Leigh is equally lacklustre as Janet Playfair, the main goodie female character, the virtuous young teacher who takes a fancy to LeStrange (who is surely just not interesting enough to be very credibly such a big hit with the ladies, both dead and undead, as he is here). So by no means the greatest of the Hammer vampires but great fun nonetheless. If you like this sort of thing (and I have to say love it) all the ingredients are there: blood, sex, evil old counts with V-shaped haircuts, muttering villagers, peasant girls with heaving bosoms, black carriages with big black horses, noctural assignations, vampires turning to skeletons after getting `staked', bodies down wells, stalwart local policemen who don't really know what they're up against, creepy graveyards... Oh go on. You know you really want to.
~Amazon Reviewer

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