SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES
(1962)
Dir - Roberto Mauri
Overall: MEH
One of the more unremarkable Gothic horror films to come out of Italy in any era, Roberto Mauri's tiny-budgeted Slaughter of the Vampires, (La strage dei vampiri, Curse of the Blood Ghouls), is utterly textbook stuff. The plot could have been written by a five year old who has seen any "dashing vampire slowly drains the life out of a pretty maiden in a castle" movie. German television actor Dieter Eppler's nameless lead vampire is a walking cliche in every detail and the husband who does not know what is going on, his wife who is turning into a helpless, bosomy vampiress herself night after night, the doctor who has all the answers that lives a days carriage ride away, and the peasant caretakers and maids all likewise hit every required, run-of-the-mill mark. None of this nor the music, scenery, or silly dubbing are any better or worse than any other countless movie of exactly the same kind before it. So this is basically the "problem", in that the film adds absolutely zero new to cinematic vampire lore and adheres to such things so strictly as to be utterly redundant. It seems like a competently, quickly, and cheaply made, double-feature, export, B-movie theater-filler and that is because that is absolutely what it is. For genre purists only.
(1965)
Dir - Mario Caiano
Overall: MEH
Barbara Steele back again, this time working with Mario Caiano, who tailor made the wonderfully titled Nightmare Castle, (Amanti d’Oltretomba), explicitly for her. Caiano, (a long time Gothic horror and Edgar Alan Poe fan), wrote the script with Fabio De Agostini and it is more or less a re-design of Mario Bava's Black Sunday or various other "evil doctor has a crazy wife in a haunted castle" type Italian genre movies. So. it looses some points for originality. That and the soundtrack is occasionally frustrating. There is a happy little ditty that one of Barbara Steele's dual-characters plays on the piano that gets thrown into random scenes here or there and it becomes increasingly jarring. This is made more obvious by the fact that the movie's most successful moments are the spooky ones that play to zero music. Heartbeat's and some creepy, ambient humming during ALL the "scary" scenes instead of just some of them would have excelled the whole film tenfold. Steele as usual is laughably dubbed but pitch-perfect otherwise as an alluring scream queen. As mentioned, she plays two roles here and they both cover opposite ends of the spectrum. It is definitely worth seeing for Steele fans, but just falls to the slightly below average level as a supernatural mad-scientist/ghost story
(1969)
Dir - Amando de Ossorio
Overall: WOOF
Before he went on to make the beloved yet wretchedly-paced Blind Dead series, Amando de Ossorio did something remarkably terrible with his first outing in the genre, the Spanish/Italian joint-effort Malekna, the Vampires Niece, (Fangs of the Living Dead). Hardly anything works here. If you are forced to come up with any highlights, it is that the Italian women are heavily chested and easy on the eyes, (Anita Ekberg is present in the lead after all), and some of the sets look rather spooky in a classical, cinematic horror sense. A combination of an awful script, almost unlistenable dubbing, some of the worst editing there is, and two completely different endings floating around, (neither of which make any sense), result in this film being one of the most absurd in all of European genre inema. Which is saying something. Multiple times it seems that large chunks of scenes are missing and the longer the movie goes on, the more it spirals into baffling terrain. There is comic relief that is absolutely head-scratching and Ekberg's title character may be the dumbest horror movie dame of all time, just as much as Julian Ugarte's Count Walbrooke is one of the dumbest vampires. No nudity or blood either for what it is worth. Moving on...
No comments:
Post a Comment