Who would have thought that a Fifties movie named Blood of the Vampire would lack a vampire? Instead we have a prison movie with a little blood-stealing thrown in. Oh, and the Eyebrows O’ Doom™.
Tagline: “No woman alive is safe from the most frightening fiend in the history of horror!” [even though Callistratus hasn’t been experimenting on women]
WTF Factor: *** a “scientific” vampire?
Notable Dialogue:
- Pierre: “You murdered this man!”
- Callistratus: “And YOU ruined an important experiment, which is infinitely worse.”
Synopsis: Transylvania 1874. A title card tells us of the scourge of vampires and how the only cure is a stake through the heart. We see a group of men throw a body into a grave and then drive a stake through its heart. [So far it seems promising.] Roll credits. Someone sneaks up on the gravedigger and stabs him. We then cut to a lively and rather sleazy-looking roadhouse. Carl (Victor Maddern), who is ludicrously deformed and mute, comes in and the revelry stops. He summons a drunken doctor and shows him the corpse from the grave. There is a heart standing by in a little vat. The doctor transplants the heart into the body, but then demands more money and Carl stabs him.
It’s Carlstadt, six years later. Doctor John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is on trial for malpractice. He demands that they contact Doctor Meinster as a character witness. The judge reads a letter from Meinster saying he does not know any Doctor Pierre. Pierre is found guilty of “malpractice leading to murder” and sentenced to life in prison. He is taken to a jail cell, where his fiancée Madeleine (Barbara Shelley) visits him and gives him a locket with her picture .
Pierre is removed from the jail for some sort of special treatment. Carl drives the jail carriage to a prison for the criminally insane. Dogs are prowling the grounds and we see a tortured prisoner in the lobby, so not a nice place, then.
The guard Wetzler (Andrew Faulds) takes the locket from Pierre. Carl steals the locket and is drawn to Madeleine’s picture.
Pierre and his cellmate Kurt (William Devlin) are sent to dig a grave with a work detail. They see Doctor Callistratus (Donald Wolfit) arrive; he is the person in charge of the prison and the prisoners clearly fear him. Pierre is taken to see Callistratus in his luxurious chambers. We see that he is the “corpse” we saw at the beginning of the movie.
Callistratus says Pierre will work in his lab, as he too is investigating blood groups. It turns out that Pierre’s “malpractice” was performing a blood transfusion. Callistratus turns over his notes but then we see him clutching his chest.
In another lab, a prisoner is strapped to a surgical table and drained of blood, which is then transfused into Callistratus. The housekeeper wanders in and is taken prisoner. That’s the last we see of her.
Elsewhere, it turns out Meinster’s letter to the court was a forgery and the judge is looking into it. Madeleine is very pleased.
Pierre collects blood samples from prisoners. Kurt warns him about a room underneath the lab. He says that a corpse they buried last week was slit open and drained of blood. Carl prevents Pierre from going to the lower lab, which is forbidden.
Callistratus describes a rare blood condition that he and Pierre will be researching. In this condition the blood attacks all other groups of blood and itself or some sort of rigmarole. We know who he’s talking about.
Callistratus is visited by Auron (Bryan Coleman), the Inspector of Prisons, who warns Callistratus that the high numbers of deaths in his facility is starting to arouse suspicions. He also tells him that their Meinster forgery has been discovered and Pierre will soon be released. Callistratus is not concerned. He then tells Pierre that his appeal has failed and he will have to carry out his life sentence.
Callistratus summons Pierre to the lab to save an exsanguinated patient. Pierre is not pleased and the patient dies.
Pierre goes to see Kurt and wants to know about Kurt’s plan to escape with Pierre’s help. Kurt has the keys to the cell and gates stowed away. Pierre takes poison from the lab to use on the dogs. However, their escape attempt is discovered and Kurt is killed by the pack of dogs.
Madeleine is notified that Pierre died trying to escape. We next see Madeleine in Callistratus’ chambers, where she sees Pierre but pretends not to recognize him. She has applied to be Callistratus’s new housekeeper. Carl recognizes her from the locket but says nothing.
Pierre finds the potential key to a cure and Callistratus is very pleased. Pierre also discovers evidence that Kurt may still be alive. Pierre breaks out of his room and goes to visit Madeleine. He learns that his appeal worked and he was supposed to be released. Carl summons Madeleine to bring drinks to Callistratus and his visitor Auron. He realizes Pierre is there but says nothing.
Down in the courtyard, Pierre digs up Kurt’s grave. There is no one in the coffin. Wetzler discovers that Pierre is out in the courtyard and they fight, but the guard is accidentally impaled on his own bayonet. Pierre manages to get back to his room before he is discovered.
Auron recognizes Madeleine although it takes him a few minutes to remember where he saw her. He comes to Madeleine’s room and attempts to assault her, but Carl breaks in and saves the day.
Callistratus orders Auron to leave the prison, but sends Carl after him. Callistratus summons Madeleine to the lower lab and shows off his experiments. One man is frozen in a block of ice [obviously made of plastic]. Another patient has had his heart removed and is being kept alive artificially. He shows her that Auron was tortured and he has told Callistratus her identity.
Meanwhile a key has been slipped under Pierre’s door, wrapped in Madeleine’s handkerchief. Pierre sneaks to the lower lab and finds Madeleine chained to the wall. Callistratus and Carl arrive before he can release her and Pierre is also chained up beside Madeline. Carl refuses to strap Madeleine to the table or to leave the lab, so Callistratus shoots him.
Callistratus expositions that he used to be a doctor but he was labeled a vampire because of his blood experiments. The “culture” he discovered kept him alive until his heart transplant but also caused his disease. Mortally injured Kurt has been infected with the same disease as Callistratus, and Callistratus will transfuse Madeleine’s blood into Kurt in order to cure him and test Pierre’s theory. At Pierre’s urging, Kurt grabs Callistratus, who then drags the table over to Pierre so he can clobber Callistratus. Kurt then dies.
Pierre releases himself with the key that came under his door and wakes up Madeleine. Callistratus escorts Pierre and Madeleine out of the prison at knifepoint. Meanwhile Carl has revived and while Pierre and Madeleine escape, Carl releases the dogs on Callistratus.
The guards pointedly don’t intervene. Pierre and Madeleine run away. The End.
Thoughts: This movie is a bit of a slog, with more of an emphasis on the prison aspects of the story than on the horror elements. The director, Henry Cass, uses a lot of one-on-one dialog scenes, waiting until half the movie is over to introduce any real action scenes, which are rather perfunctory. The colors are so muted this might as well have been made in black and white. Jimmy Sangster wrote this, which is a major disappointment after his excellent scripts for Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and (The Horror of) Dracula (1958). It is difficult, if not impossible, to decipher the explanation(s) for Callistratus’ disease, which seems more ghoulish than vampiric.
The movie was a product of the short-lived Artistes Alliance Ltd. Company. The company only produced four movies, including The Strange World of Planet X (1958) and The Giant Behemoth (1959). They were apparently impressed with the success of The Curse of Frankenstein; filming for Blood of the Vampire started before the release of (The Horror of) Dracula. The line producers for Blood of the Vampire, Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman, also produced The Crawling Eye (1958).
The main attraction here is the performance by Donald Wolfit as Callistratus. It has long been rumored that Wolfit was Vincent Price’s model for Edward Lionheart in Theater of Blood (1973; Wolfit passed away in 1968). Wolfit was indeed known as a ‘vigorous’ actor, mainly on stage. He ran his own traveling Shakespeare company for many years, and was sometimes accused of hiring inferior actors for supporting roles so he would be the only star. He was well-respected for his performances of King Lear and other roles, but also notoriously enraged by negative criticism. Judging from other photographs of the actor, the Eyebrows O’ Doom™ were all (or at least mostly) his, with a little (okay, a lot of) black shoe polish.
Despite the one good quote about the value of scientific experiments, this movie is for completists only.
Quick bits:
- I don’t know what the sound of a stake through the heart is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the juicy ‘squish’ sound heard on the soundtrack.
- The prison scenes should be taking place in 1880-1881, but Kurt’s tombstone says 1892.
- Carl’s arms work intermittently, and his facial prosthetic appears in imminent danger of peeling off in a few scenes.
Suggested double feature: If you want to stick with the theme of non-supernatural vampires and a search for a cure, try Daybreakers (2009).
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “From the Most Popular Mystery Romance since “Rebecca”!” [from questionable horror roots, a classic is born]
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