The Soulful Eyes of Soledad Miranda
Soledad Miranda was a Spanish actress and singer who died at the age of 27. Internationally, she is best known for her work with Jesús Franco in the films, 'Vampyros Lesbos', 'Count Dracula' and 'She Killed in Ecstasy'. The thing is, and this may be a personal thing, there is something in her glance into the camera that has always haunted me. Her beauty is obvious but there was something else; an indefinable quality that makes you feel you know her.
I was a child when she died and I didn't know anything about her until I saw pictures of her in a book about vampire films; Barrie Pattison's Seal of Dracula. It was many many years before I saw any of her performances. And in those Franco films she doesn't say a lot but her eyes say everything.
As Lucy in 'Count Dracula' and as the wife out to avenge her husband in 'She Killed in Ecstasy' her roles might not have seemed much but her presence in these, and other films, is mesmerising.
Knowing of her premature death left me, even as a child seeing her pictures, a sense of something incomplete, a half written song. It seemed that she should be still there in the world somehow... Still watching...
The short moments in this video are taken from 'She Killed in Ecstasy' and 'Count Dracula'. The main body of the video was filmed at Sudely Castle in Gloucestershire; once home to Catherine Parr, the 6th wife of Henry 8th.
