In 1971, Belgian filmmaker Harry Kümel brought the world the lesbian vampire cult classic DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS. With that film's fiftieth anniversary fast approaching, Kümel gearing up to go into production on a sequel to DAUGHTERS that will be titled MOTHERS OF DARKNESS.
It's not clear just how long Kümel has had the idea of making a sequel in his head, but when he presented several potential projects to producer Tomas Leyers of the production company Minds Meet, the first draft of the MOTHERS OF DARKNESS screenplay was part of the presentation. When Leyers read the script it "sparked the fire immediately to work on this project."
Kümel revamped and rewrote the script to get it screen ready, and the term "revamp" seems like a good, punny way to describe certain elements of the story. Leyers says that Kümel
has a very original twist on the original law of the vampire world. He has an original spin to completely re-think the whole origin of vampires."
Leyers wouldn't go into detail on the plot, but did say that it involves "gorgeous women and youngsters who are attractive."
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS told the following story:
A recently married young couple, Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet), are on their honeymoon. They check into a grand hotel on the Ostend seafront in Belgium, intending to catch the cross-channel ferry to England, though Stefan seems oddly unenthused at the prospect of introducing his new bride to his mother. It is off-season, so the couple are alone in the hotel. Alone, that is, until the sun sets and a mysterious Hungarian countess, Elizabeth Báthory (Delphine Seyrig) arrives in a vintage Bristol driven by her "secretary" Ilona (Andrea Rau). The middle-aged concierge at the hotel swears that he saw the Countess at the same hotel when he was a little boy. The pair may have a connection to three separate gruesome murders of young girls that occurred in Bruges the previous week. On a day trip, Stefan and Valerie witness the aftermath of a fourth. At the hotel, the countess quickly becomes obsessed with the newlyweds, and the resulting interaction of the four people leads to sadism and murder.
MOTHERS OF DARKNESS is expected to begin filming in the summer of 2018.
