Ingrid Pitt (1937-2010)

Ingrid Pitt was one of my first horror obsessions. She is best known for playing Mircalla Karnstein in Hammer Films' The Vampire Lovers. While notorious as a lesbian vampire titty movie, The Vampire Lovers is an excellent Hammer effort. It was based on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, and is the tale of a female vampire who falls in love with a young woman. Pitt died today at the age of 73.

Pitt was born in Poland and was a Nazi concentration camp survivor who later escaped the Iron Curtain to reach the USA, living in a Native American reservation in Colorado. She later moved to Spain, and was cast in Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton.

I am not one for eulogizing, but I thought Pitt was an impressive woman who ranks with luminaries like Diana Rigg. She was beautiful and had an awesome presence.