mlraymond Review of Blood of the Vampire

Blood of the Vampire (1958)

Mad doctor conducts fiendish experiments in remote prison

[6/10 · 3 November 2006]

This film used to be on television fairly often, but has not been shown in years. It has made its way to home video ,and is not hard to find. One thing that really stands out is the screenplay by Jimmy Sangster. I don't know which movie he wrote first, but in 1958, the British film company Hammer released The Revenge of Frankenstein, and the Berman-Baker team this one. Both screenplays involve a large number of similar incidents and characters, so that one movie almost seems a mirror reflection of the other. BOTV is far nastier than the Hammer film, which is essentially a witty black comedy. Both films apparently caused some controversy in late Fifties England, owing to what a movie critic deemed a deliberate depiction of concentration camp imagery. It's entirely possible that to a filmgoing public only a dozen or so years removed from the end of World War Two, the scenes in both Sangster screenplays involving mad doctors experimenting on helpless prisoners for their own bizarre schemes, were a little too reminiscent of the Nazi medical experiments at various death camps. Whether Sangster intended to evoke this image is debatable, but it's true that the mad scientist played by Donald Wolfit in BOTV could certainly be seen as a Nineteenth century Mengele. The prison sets are believable and the story is fairly convincing, with good performances by the leads. Barbara Shelley plays another of her early damsels in distress. Vincent Ball as the hero and his cell mate William Devlin are both good, with some fine supporting performances from actors playing guards and prison officials. A first time viewer is likely to feel cheated, though. SPOILERS AHEAD: The revelation that there is no supernatural vampire in this movie is a letdown. The villain is an otherwise routine mad doctor, experimenting on prisoners to find a kind of synthetic blood that will keep him alive, after his resurrection through scientific means. In fact, this part of the story strongly resembles the Warner Brothers 1939 movie The Return of Doctor X, with Humphrey Bogart as a quasi-vampire. Wolfit is convincing as the evil surgeon, Dr. Callistratus ( surely, the resemblance of the name to 'castration' isn't coincidental). He brings a certain grim realism to the fantastic storyline, and the movie remains pretty strong stuff even today, though some of the nastier events are implied ,rather than shown. Not a bad movie, a bit of a curiosity worth seeing at least once.It definitely succeeds as a horror movie, in the gruesome storyline and the barbaric prison setting.