Lilith and Ly

Frank Landow, a scholar and ladies’ man, is at work on an invention – a television mirror. During a pleasure trip to India he discovers fragments of a parchment roll from which he learns the secret of creating life. Returning home, he brings to life a statue, the work of a school friend, with the help of a ruby. It is the creature Lilith, with whom Landow falls in love. He continues to work on his invention, and soon the mirror is ready to be set up. By now Landow, who never keeps the same woman for long, is in love with Ly. But Lilith changes into a vampire. In his mirror Frank becomes a passive witness of her murder of one of his friends. The vampire grows more and more powerful. As Landow lies ill in bed with glandular fever, Lilith appears to him in the form of Ly; and also threatens Ly herself. In utmost despair, Frank destroys the television mirror in which he was forced to witness the horrible spectacle, and smashes the statue from which Lilith was made. Yet only after he has thrown the ruby, the vampire stone, into the river, can he and Ly be saved from the horror of supernatural forces. —Fritz Lang (Filmkunst, No 4, 4a, 1965)