Some literature and film scholars have drawn comparisons between "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" and Irish novelist Sheridan Le Fanu's novel "Carmilla" (1871), which tells the story of a vampiress. Scholar Nancy West cites the film as one of several examples of horror films of the 1970s that directly lift the premise of the novel and place it in other historical or cultural contexts: "This languid movie reimagines Le Fanu's Laura as Jessica...like Carmilla, Emily is a horror of a houseguest, and after both men have been bitten by her, it becomes apparent that Emily is none other than the one-hundred-year-old vampire who in the course of time has attacked all the men in the nearby town...Is Emily an imaginative projection of Jessica's murderous feelings toward her husband? Of Jessica's frustration with a mental condition that has rendered her sadly dependent on men? The film never makes clear."