If I had a nickel for every piece of queer media about 17th century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory released this year, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. After her strange appearance in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, she also appears in the vampire horror comedy The Blood Countess directed and co-written by lesbian filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger. In the film, Báthory (played by Isabelle Huppert) wakes from a long slumber and finds herself in modern-day Vienna, searching for a book that could cure her vampirism.

I find two things interesting about the fact that the countess has appeared in two queer adaptations this year. The first is that Lizzie Borden actually never really portrayed her as a lesbian, even though she was set up parallel to Lizzie and lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos and was played by the same actress who played Lizzie’s lover. Before the much-later rumors that Elizabeth Báthory bathed in the blood of virgin girls, the crimes she was accused of were more along the lines of torture and cannibalism. So it’s interesting that was then interpreted as lesbianism. Then again, she was luring young women to her castle with three of her closest gal pals, so, who knows I guess. It is just fascinating to me that despite the fact that she has been in folklore for centuries, no new media has come out about her in years, and now these two instances pop up in the same year. Three, if you count the experimental film Báthory by Carlos Atanes. Something seems to be in the (bloody) water.

Unfortunately, it seems like perhaps The Blood Countess isn’t quite as gay as it could be. Then again, apparently Ottinger wrote the screenplay in 1998, almost 30 years ago, so that could potentially account for that. But still, I won’t say no to a lesbian vampire film so I’ll probably still check it out when it makes its North American theatrical release in spring 2027.

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