A concierge who has worked the same seaside hotel for decades recognizes a countess the moment she steps through the door. She has not aged a day since he last saw her as a child.

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971), originally Les Lèvres rouges, stars Delphine Seyrig as Countess Elizabeth Báthory, drawing on the legend of the Hungarian noblewoman said to have bathed in the blood of young women. She fixes her attention on a pair of newlyweds, Stefan and Valerie Chilton, played by John Karlen and Danielle Ouimet, already settled at the same deserted hotel in Ostend before she arrives and asks for the suite they occupy.

Andrea Rau plays Ilona, the countess's companion, caught in the triangle that forms as the marriage frays and old hungers surface. Director Harry Kümel, working from a script he wrote with Jean Ferry and Pierre Drouot, frames the seduction in reds and whites against the hotel's faded Belle Epoque interiors, shot by cinematographer Eduard van der Enden.

The film belongs to European arthouse horror of its era, more interested in erotic tension and dread than shocks. Seyrig brings an icy glamour to the role that has made the film endure as one of vampire cinema's strangest, most elegant entries.