TV Reviews : Credibility Is at Stake in Vampire Tale ‘Carmilla’

Quick, spread the garlic around the TV set--anything to ward off “Carmilla,” the feeble vampire tale that premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on Showtime as the second episode of the new “Nightmare Classics” series (with additional airings Sept. 14, 19, 25 and 30).

Fresh from his stake-driving in the two “Fright Nights,” Roddy McDowall is back as yet another breathless, fearless vampire killer, the kind of barely post-Hammer horror role he could play in his sleep. Wait a second, he is asleep! And so are most of the cast and crew behind the wheel of this creaky vehicle, which has Meg Tilly in the title role as a slinky vampiress preying upon a mansion in the post-Civil War Deep South.

Even more mysterious than this now-you-see-her, now-you-don’t foxy lady with the Mona Lisa smirk and overactive incisors is the fact that no one in the entire vicinity has an accent of any kind. Given the understandable trouble that a weary McDowall and his fellow sufferers have bringing any urgency to lines like “Carmilla is a beast with an insatiable thirst for blood!,” it may indeed be a blessing that they don’t make the slightest stab at being Suh-thuh-nuhs to boot.

Motherless and friendless (but most definitely not lipless), Ione Skye is the main target of visitor Tilly’s bloodlust; protective papa Roy Dotrice isn’t sure whether to shelter his daughter from the mysterioso house guest or stare at her very un-Draculean cleavage.

There is supposed to be some kind of erotic charge to Tilly’s seduction of Skye, no doubt, but mostly these two just look like late-20th-Century Valley girls out in the woods to sneak a smoke during the debutantes’ doll.

Director Gabrielle Beaumont’s and writer Jonathan Furst’s oh-so-tasteful approach to the almost campily outdated material is, well, a little long in the tooth.