The Countess

No offense meant to scream queens—heck, at least one of my favor­ite people ever falls into that cat­egory, and I whole­heartedly admire many oth­er per­formers who do—but one really could not, can not, use that term with respect to Ingrid Pitt, the Polish-born act­ress best known for her work in a rel­at­ive hand­ful of largely Hammer-produced hor­ror films in the early 1970s. For one thing, she did­n’t do much scream­ing. There was some­thing rather genu­inely regal (if there is such a qual­ity) in the aloof­ness she brought to the por­tray­als of her largely amor­al char­ac­ters, as in the tit­u­lar vir­gin killer of 1971’s Countess Dracula, whence the screen cap above is derived. Said appear­ance of aloof­ness, com­bined with her more…fleshly, erm, attrib­utes, gave young fel­lows such as myself a very par­tic­u­lar and some­what intim­id­at­ing impres­sion of, if not Platonic ideal for, European womanhood. 

She died today, aged 73, after hav­ing led what reads like a brave, adven­tur­ous life. Her screen pres­ence left a mark on the con­scious­ness of all those who were exposed to it, and I believe I speak for each and every one of those souls in say­ing we’re glad of it.