Ingrid Pitt

Born in a concentration camp, forced as a teen into smutty theater in East Berlin, her father abducted by the Stasi, Polish-born Ingoushka Petrov escaped the Volkspolizei to the US with the help of Bertolt Brecht's widow and an American GI to whom she was briefly married. Living with an Indian tribe in Colorado she learned to communicate with spirits, once contacting her vanished father. Back in Europe in the mid-60s she was drawn to budget horror productions and became a cult icon as a vamp and villainess, never a scream queen.

We're nearing the end of HBC's series of Hammer Horror films and have finally introduced Hammer's most legendary actress. I remember her slightly from Where Eagles Dare and The Wicker Man and not at all from Dr Zhivago. But after The Vampire Lovers (1970) I won't be forgetting her. One of Hammer's finest outings, VL sits at the cusp of the studio's descent into exploitation, showcasing both the sumptuously overdecorated sets and agreeably stodgy cinematography that Terence Fisher trademarked (a Hammer castle or a rustic Hammer barn are movie locales as distinctive as Monument Valley) as well as the relaxed mores and bodices that finally set loose the boobage we'd been teased with all those years.

And Ingrid, she has got the kavorka. There has been plenty of memorable Hammer cheesecake, but she alone shows up on screen with the weight of a personal history in her bearing; wise and sad, powerful and fragile. And the best beauty mark of all time (sorry Marilyn, Liz).

The MGM DVD is packaged with Countess Dracula (1971), which is like a case study in how to take the same story and the same star and totally ruin it. Why is Ingrid in old hag makeup (impressive FX, granted) more often than not? Why isn't she a lesbian? Why do the supporting cast and extras look like the Mos Eisley Cantina? Did the set designer indeed revive those twisty columns we remember so well from every Terence Fisher movie 1957-1962? If so, nice.