Through the heavy fog she could barely make her way through the dense forest; the trees almost skeletal with their barren branches.

Holding an ornate candelabra, she finds her way past the graves through the overgrown grasses of the desecrated churchyard and meets her fate at the feral fangs of the hungered vampire whose bloodshot eyes have followed her through the night to this godforsaken place.

This is a fictional scene yet rings very familiar to almost anyone who grew up with a love for horror and finds it even remotely arousing. I myself was fascinated by the films of the House of Hammer as a child because they touched something deep within me, something more than simple fear of an evil monster. They also caused me to feel my first hints of sexual arousal yet at the time, I was too young to know it.

In the 1960’s the horror film was a rediscovered vehicle to draw in crowds hungry for lust and blood. In America, Roger Corman was pumping out classics like The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and Tomb of Ligeia (1964).

Europeans were also enjoying the rebirth of gothic horror and a new type of Italian horror called giallo, suspenseful and brutal who-dunnit mysteries with a penchant for gore.

I would like to focus on the European films because it is their unique approach that has influenced many directors to draw a fine line between what some may see as sexual exploitation and others as refined sensuality.

Perhaps the most in tune with this concept was Italian director Mario Bava who utilized lighting and sound as key elements in his storytelling while appealing to the aesthetic eye with impeccable costuming and set design. To watch one of his films is to experience many different emotions – for they tingle the senses.

In Blood and Black Lace (1964), you find a story of fashion models being brutally murdered one by one. They are dressed in the finest couture of the period and their hair and makeup stunning, leaving you breathless with desire for such beautiful women. In one scene, you sense the victim’s panic as she is stalked in the house of fashion by a nylon-faced killer; the ever-present black fedora and trenchcoat clear symbols of her impending fate. As she makes her way through the light-shrouded mannequins, your heart quickens as the music hits a climax as she meets her doom.

Though the deaths are bloody and cruel, Bava had a way of masking it as art with his cinematic style and as you see the sillouette of the killer dragging off a body through the yard by her ankles with his gloved hands; her mod-styled red coat and dress pulling up over her stocking tops and garters. You shudder to think why you are enjoying such a delightful vision as she is dragged across the grass with her cold, dead, heavily eyelashed gaze.

You see the fedora, trenchcoat and leather-gloved killer portrayed in a different story, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1969) with a very special twist. Focusing less on striking lighting and more on sculpture and creative camera angles, one is given a taste of yet another sensual dimension of the horror film as the audience is driven and guided through it. In this film by Dario Argento, the topic of lesbianism is touched upon and is the basis of the story. In the end, the viewers see a long mane of blonde hair underneath the fedora; the killer’s eyes wide as she cackles with delight. The idea of a female committing such mayhem is common within the world of Giallo though lesbianism is not.

Female to female erotica is even more commonplace in Hammer Films like Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1967) and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968) where scantily-clad buxom vampiresses prey upon both sexes. Viewers are led to imply that they share more with other than just the occasional meal. These women are portrayed as insatiable temptresses with the eagerness and power to drain their victims of more than just their will. Though they are subjugated by the dominant Dracula character portrayed by the incomparable Christopher Lee, they prove that a female can be just as fearsome a monster and twice as bewitching as any male.

The company would go on to create more overt bisexual overtones in future features throughout the 1970’s like The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Twins of Evil (1971) as would Spanish filmmaker Jesus Franco with two of the most infamous masterpieces of Eurocinema, Venus In Furs (1970) and Vampyros Lesbos (1970), but these particular films of the 1960’s set a good precedent for those releases and honed an interest in such material among the audiences worldwide.