AlexanderAnubis Seddok, l'erede di Satana (1960) aka Atom Age Vampire CONTAINS SPOILERSAs another IMDb reviewer has written, this film is only "recommended for horror fans." The basic story is very familiar: hubris and the use of questionable, experimental methods to return an injured woman's (Susanne Loret) unblemished beauty leads to murder, mayhem, madness and moral decay. Done better - in places - than the 'Atom Age Vampire' title implies, which is probably more descriptive of the US (1963 drive-ins?) marketing than the film's plot. The actual facial injury is not horrific, or even particularly ugly but still causes great distress - Gloria Grahame would have understood perfectly - and it provides Ms. Loret a couple of opportunities to do Veronica Lake and mask it quite attractively with a fall of hair. It also provides more than a couple of moments of unintentional humor.It is also refreshing to see some small restraint on the gratuitous destruction of the protagonists; the negative side effects, (and funnier makeup), of tampering in inappropriate domains ultimately falls on the tamperer, (where they belong), and not the innocent accident victim. Since Loret's character is a dancer/stripper/etc that could have been used as a pretext, (certainly if this had been a 1960 US production), to turn her into a cardboard cutout labeled Harlot &/or Sin of Vanity and treat her like Dorian Gray or Victor Frankenstein along with the arrogant scientist (Alberto Lupo). Instead, in the end she is apparently cured and free to live happily ever after.Browsing IMDb I learned there exists, (or existed), an original, uncut, un-dubbed 105 minute version, which I will probably never see, but doubt that the omission will be one of my deathbed regrets. However, there is an entry for this movie at Wikipedia which states: "Although no 105 minute print has ever been found, it is believed by some that the 105 minute running time was because the deleted VHS release on Acme Video stated a run time of ±105 Mins. (when it meant 1 Hour and 5 minutes)." The article is supported by the reasonably solid sounding reference: Science Fiction Film Source Book, David Wingrove, Longman Group Ltd., 1985. At any rate the question has apparently been under scrutiny for 30+ years.Just in case this isn't tiresome enough, the US video release was snipped to 72 minutes, and when it made it to DVD was further reduced to 69 minutes....but 1 hr + 5 m = 65 m =/= 69 m, so perhaps the argument above that the 105 minute version never existed is flawed. There are depths to be plumbed here by a courageous investigator.The film is out of copyright, (maybe nobody wanted to bother renewing it), and is available from the Internet Archive – their copy is probably ripped from VHS or other tape media but the quality is quite good, (well, watchable), and it is the full 5220 seconds.XYZ

piratecannon Atom Age Vampire is an Italian movie that is not, in fact, about a vampire. Tricky, huh?It deals with people who have been disfigured due to cliff-side car accidents, the detonation of nuclear warheads, and other such everyday occurrences. Our antagonist is a mad scientist—I'll bet you didn't see that one coming—sends one of his aids to a local hospital to persuade the survivor of aforementioned car wreck to visit his estate so that he can test his cell-regenerating serum on her. The woman's face resembles ground beef, and it seems that this "doctor" is well aware of the fact that this is completely unacceptable. Actually, she'd rather commit suicide than survive as an outcast.I mean, sure, society puts a lot of pressure on people to "fit in" and "look normal"; but the degree to which this theme is overblown in Atom Age Vampire is…well…almost comical. I say "almost" because it's so heavy-handed that even the actors don't seem to buy it as a viable subtext. Because of this, they neither take it seriously or approach it as hamminess. Quite simply, there's a whole lot of "dull" going on.Did you notice the word I used in the previous paragraph? "Actors." Hmpf. They're mostly cardboard cutouts who sputter lines like "Oh, no! We should go to the police!" or "Let me go! I said 'let me go!' Let me go! I said 'let me go!'" I suppose that the intended tone for the dialogue could have been lost in translation—the dubbing here is atrocious to say the least—but there's no getting around the fact that the story is so moronic that had it been portrayed by any venerable stage performer of the past century it would have been regarded as the most high class display of deceptively simple gobbledygook ever created.It really is that scatter-shot and downright confusing. Here are some highlights: the doctor who's developed the serum in question appears to also have been disfigured, though he inexplicably transitions between being a hamburger face to a scowling physician whenever the mood should strike him (maybe they were trying to rip-off Jekyll & Hyde?); he falls in love with his patient (and, it seems, a myriad of other women) and goes about terrorizing them in the middle of the night; he's assisted by a man-servant named Sasha who does little more than mime his thoughts and occasionally appear frantic; at one point the woman being treated is infuriated and closes (notice I said "closes"—she doesn't really "slam" it) a window shut only to have every square inch of the glass in the pane shatter; etc., etc., etc.One could probably say that some sort of clever commentary is just begging to be identified; you know, something to do with the horrors of war; how "ugly" we all really are—that kind of thing.But, in case I haven't spelled it out in enough detail, here's what I think: Atom Age Vampire just plain sucks.

JoeKarlosi Many of us grew up seeing this Italian horror flick on TV under its alternate American title, ATOM AGE VAMPIRE. The most readily available copies are truncated and badly dubbed into English, and ran anywhere from 60 to 80-ish minutes, despite it originally being something like 105 minutes. My review is based on rediscovering the movie through a recently released Italian DVD in its original running time and true title - SEDDOK, L'ETEREDE SATANA. The results are definitely better, as there is a new striptease scene added in addition to more dialogue (all of it in Italian) and extra scenes with the monster featured in the film ... but this is still only a so-so time killer for dedicated horror hounds only.A gorgeous blonde stripper (Susanne Loret) has half her face scarred up after a bad car wreck, and so an older doctor (Alberto Lupo) who's been experimenting with glandular treatments manages to restore her beauty. But he ends up falling in love with her, and when the cure proves only to be temporary, the doctor must go out and kill other women in order to keep the restoration process going. Since he can't bring himself to murder, he willingly transforms into a horrible monster to give him the guts to carry out his diabolical intent.If the bulk of that synopsis does not sound familiar, well it should ... this is not by any means a fresh idea, and most recently had been dabbled with in a superior French film, LES YEUX SANS VISAGE (1959). The film in its original length does seem somewhat overlong and padded, though in all fairness the Italian DVD is only partly in English, as the new scenes were never dubbed. And since it's not English subtitled either, we are still away from the "perfect" release to evaluate the movie in the U.S. **1/2 out of ****

whpratt1 I doubt very much if this film will scare you to death watching it, because it is a combination of a mad scientist, a man who turns into a beast and even the title has something to do with Atoms and Dracula.The film starts off with a beautiful blonde stripper having a fight with her boyfriend who is a sailor, he leaves her and she makes a dash to her car and has a very bad accident where her face is scared for life. This blonde girl gives up on life until she meets up with a doctor who claims he can make her face just like it was and remove all old scar tissue. This doctor begins to fall in love with his patient and is willing to go to all extremes to keep her looking young and beautiful. You have probably seen different versions of this film before, and in the year 1960 they tried to scare us to death.