Bezenby Notable actors: Walter Brandi! Crap director Luigi Batzella!While running away from an angry torch and pitchfork wielding mob, our vampire shows his true colours by ditching the vampire lady he was with an saving his own arse. The lady of course gets a couple of pitchforks stuck in her for her trouble, while the vampire takes a carriage to a nearby castle and gets the driver to help him hide his coffin in the basement.Back in the nineteenth century one of the greatest causes of marriage failure was vampire intrusion, and this jerk starts on this newlywed couple right away by diving out of his wine cellar coffin and crashing their wedding party. He then starts dancing with the blushing bride, putting the moves on her and generally acting like a twat before heading to her room later and giving her a rather extreme love bite. This happens almost right away and while I was impressed that he was much more efficient than the crap vampire in Vampire of the Opera, it leaves an awful lot of room in the film for people to jaw about what's happening. There's not really much scope beyond the 'guy whose girlfriend has been turned in a vampire' routine, so I kind of kept losing interest in this one. The girl gets sick, the guy goes looking for help, girl dies, comes back as a vampire, yadda yadda. Everything is carried out well enough, but sometimes that means that the film becomes mediocre due to the lack of craziness or random dance routines or stripteases. I suppose things picked up a little in the end what with the caretaker's family getting targeted by the vampires, but there's very little to make this one stand out. Next!

morpheusatloppers Okay, this is a second- (maybe third-) rate Italian black-and-white horror flick from the early Sixties which is WELL below the already shaky standards of other similar attempts of that time.And although the heroine is gorgeous, she's no Barbara Steele.But FORGET about the casting, plot, dubbing, acting, direction - and the fact that about eleven minutes of the film's then-typical sauciness is missing (by all accounts permanently - but maybe the footage'll show up some day).Forget all that - and listen to the SCORE. Aldo Piga is no Morricone, but his lavish music, with it's piano - and even Theremin - solos, is a TRIUMPH. (And forget the fact that the music doesn't PARTICULARLY enhance the "action").Between '59 and '68, Piga wrote 36 movie scores - all for Italian low-budgeters - and was just 34 when he wrote THIS one. But being English, this is the only one I've heard. Which is sad.Ennio Morricone, who is mostly only known for his spaghetti-western scores and later Hollywood work, has written some FOUR HUNDRED scores in HIS life-time. And like Piga, most have never been heard outside central Europe.But whilst Piga can only be heard in THIS half-baked hodge-podge, Morricone's early work IS available, thanks to fans of Edda Dell'Orso, the 3-octave session vocalist who appears on most of his work from '64 to '75, and whose following still BUYS it.If you want to hear some of Morricone's early work, go to You-Tube and punch in "ennio morricone edda dell' orso" and you can hear about 40 tracks of the greatest music of this type you will ever hear.But alas, of Aldo Piga, there is NOTHING. So check out THIS movie - and any others you can find featuring his 36 scores (they're listed in IMDb). They don't WRITE stuff like this any more.

wca720 DARK SKY FILMS has just released their version of SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES on DVD and I must tell you, it is far and away superior to that of the Retromedia version of the film. It is crisp, clear and sharp Black & White as I have ever seen in a film that is over 40 years old. They did a superb job of presenting this in DVD format. They include chapter index and when you go to a chapter, it doesn't put you right in the middle of a scene as Retromedia's version did. It is also presented in widescreen format too. Believe me, put your Retromedia copy on your Trade-in pile and go out and get DARK SKY FILMS version. The DSF version also includes a scene or two not presented in any other version that I remember although that storied missing 11 minutes that I have heard so much about does not seem to be there, it is still an excellent reproduction. Even though this film is from 1962, it still outshines a lot of vampire movies that I have seen. Graziella Granata is still gorgeous in this movie and her Titular jog through the castle to escape the stake is worth seeing in slow-mo. Whether or not you are a fan of a vampire movie this old, it still has a lot going for it. It shines in a dim way but it still shines. I call it the "GONE WITH THE WIND" of bad B-Vampire movies because it is the best of the worst.Wanna talk about it?.............leave a comment, I'll get back to you.Bill

LJ27 WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD: I have a weakness for European low-budget horror films from the 1960s so I watched this film wanting very much to find some good in it. Unfortunately, my attempt was in vain. Walter Brandi (spelled "Brandy" in the credits) plays the vampire (or one of them). He had been in a movie before this called THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA where he sported a cool make-up job. Well, he has no such cool make-up job in this film. In fact, there's not much of anything cool in this film. The music score is nothing special. The B&W photography isn't that great and neither are the sets. It's mostly a bunch of un- interesting people sitting around talking for the greater part of it's running time. WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD:At the end, the vampire is staked and disintegrates. Sound cool? Don't bet on it. If you want cool disintegration scenes, see FRIGHT NIGHT (1985) or HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) or THE EVIL DEAD (1982). If you want to see a disintegration scene handled poorly, watch as the filmmakers dissolve from Walter Brandi to a series of drawings of withered heads then a skull then nothing. Also, the drawings move about in relation to one another with each dissolve. I made a better disintegration scene as a kid with a Super 8 camera and some modelling clay. After seeing this, I understand why it isn't even mentioned in most books about horror films.