Sex, Blood and Love Bites
Last year, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’ (1970) fiftieth anniversary immortalized the sexual desires that guide youth into adulthood, and it hasn’t aged one bit. The film plays with the dynamic of blood and sex, craved by vampires, and the menstruation and increasing sexual desires present during a female’s teenage years. These vampires are obsessed with adolescents, the blood of whom allows them to defy time and regain their youth, invigorating their sexual desires and youthful antics. Blood and sex offer a thrilling surprise during those ripe teenage years between childhood and adulthood, when the body experiences hormonal changes and first sexual urges. It is this interplay between horror and bodily intimacy that Valerie and Her Week of Wonders explores.
The film opens with the tender-faced Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) in a white dress, holding a white dove and delicately playing in nature, signifying her innocence and purity until she experiences her first period. Visually and biologically, Valerie is a tempting target for the vampires whose desire to sink their teeth into her is fueled by a desperation to regain power over the passage of time.
The vampires’ bloodlust revolves around youth and immortality. They are obsessed with the youthful generation because their blood will guarantee them vital energy, beauty, and longevity. The fanged creatures specifically hunt those entering the passage between childhood and adulthood. It doesn’t matter if they kill or convert, their only concern is in defeating their worst enemy: aging.
Polecat (Jirí Prymek) is the vampire that knows there is no fountain of youth except for the blood of teenage girls, like Valerie. Valerie awakes to see the pale-skinned, dark-cloaked creature and his assistant Eaglet (Petr Kopriva). Obeying her curiosity, she follows them, noticing blood dripping on daisies as she walks, discovering the blood coming from between her legs. Here, she has crossed the bridge from childhood fantasy to teenage urges. And there is something magical about her that lingers beyond her biology: her powerful bell flower earrings (signifying adolescent bloom).
The magical sensibility of such blooming beauty and youth brings other fantasy novels quickly and easily to mind. In his review for The New York Times, J. Hoberman described Valerie in comparison with the titular Alice in Wonderland, and as a “nubile teenager” whose “sexual curiosity notwithstanding… exists mainly as a foil to the adult monsters… who threaten her.” Age, and the sensible sensibility that comes with adulthood, is the defining threat here, and Polecat is not the only pale creature thirsty for young blood. Valerie’s grandmother Elsa (Helena Anyzová) has powder-white skin and hair, and fangs that appear when she seduces her male victims shortly before drinking their blood. Once she has feasted on the opposite sex, her skin is brightened and dewy, her chalky strands have turned auburn, and she is desperate to satiate her sexual cravings for a lost lover.
It is Eaglet who warns Valerie of her grandmother’s intentions, and she saves him from torture and drowning. Their shared experiences, much like the lessons learnt by any protagonists of the coming-of-age genre, becomes the foundation for their mutual love. At first, Valerie rejected his romantic advances, but, towards the end of the film, she is affectionate with and even kisses him
But Valerie’s sexual awakening is not so simple. The film focuses on the link between menstruation and awakened sexual desires; as Valerie gets her period, she is more vulnerable to sexuality. She sees other girls playing and kissing in a lake, and later witnesses a couple involved in intercourse during broad daylight. When one of the girls in town is arranged to marry an old man, the Count and Elsa await their wedding night to suck her (presumably virgin) blood. The bride becomes a vampire, but the spell is broken with kisses and sensual interaction with Valerie.
The link between blood and sex defines liberation and a sexual awakening that highlights a person’s desires, and their curiosity to experiment with both men and women. Since Valerie gets her menstruation at the beginning of the film, she has become more susceptible to sexual encounters. The vampires’ cravings for blood and sex mirror those of hormonal teenagers. The intimacy of luring a beautiful being, kissing their neck and sucking on it to create a “love bite” or hickey, is lust that most of us would relegate to youth. With vampires it is the same: there is sexual tension when a fanged monster sees innocence. They are aroused and their animalistic behavior dominates, resulting in a bite rather than a kiss – penetration to satisfy an often and originally gendered male thirst (owing to the character’s novel beginnings). The bite revitalizes a raging power and danger, and alights sexuality. It is a penetrative power play. Though not all vampires are male – from countess Luna in Mark of the Vampire (1935) to Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and here with Elsa, Valerie’s grandmother, who intends to bite her own granddaughter and steal the magical earrings to regain her beauty and youth.
Vampires are obsessed with blood and sex because it gives them pleasure and dominance. They want revenge on time, the days and years that have made them age and made them ugly and undesirable. In preying on youth, they can resurrect as young and immortal beings. In Valerie and Her Week of Wonders these monstrous desires go hand-in-hand with the menstruation and sexual urges that define female adolescence. It is these hormonal changes that give Valerie her titular wonders, and transports us through a world of fantasy, curiosity, sex, and horror that still has bite, even after fifty years.
Leticia Lopez is an entertainment writer based in California. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism, and a minor in history and film from CSU Sacramento. Her published work covers album reviews, movie analyzes, history essays, and local culture articles. You can find Leticia on Twitter and Instagram.
We've been going independently for years now, and so far have self-financed every single project. In order to do more work, and continue supporting amazing filmmakers in the genre space, we've launched a Patreon.
If you are able to support us and the work we do on Patreon, we'd truly and deeply appreciate it.