1963 found both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing
unavailable for filming, so Hammer forged ahead on the next Dracula
project. Sans the Count and Van Helsing, the script went through several
rewrites, incorporating elements previously considered for Brides of Dracula. The result, Kiss
of the Vampire, is once again a unique story line that may not have seen the
light of day if it weren’t for the studio’s rebellious stars.
The proceedings kick off in high gear with the usual funeral
procession into a desolate cemetery. Before the parson can shovel dirt onto the
casket, a grim faced fellow comes along and drives a shovel straight through
the coffin lid and the screen bursts with a font of Technicolor blood.
The story then follows the trail of a pair of newlyweds,
Marianne and Gerald Harcourt, who run out of petrol while honeymooning by
motorcar in Europe . After seeking shelter from
a sudden summer storm at a village inn, they are invited for dinner to the home
of Dr. Ravna whose castle overlooks the village below. Our newlyweds are just
as naïve as Marianne in Brides of Dracula,
flies unwittingly drawn into the spider’s web.
Ravna has a lush daughter, Sabane, and son, Charles who
knows how to hypnotize the ladies with his seductive piano playing. Along the
way we learn that Ravna and his offspring are, of course, vampires who lured
the innkeeper’s daughter into their cult, and would have the young girl buried
in the opening scene as well if not that her father, Professor Zimmer had
driven his shovel through her heart to keep her from rising from the grave.
Zimmer is a worthy stand-on for Van Helsing, a man tormented
by drink and the loss of his daughter, but well versed in folklore and the ways
of the occult. Wait till you get a load of the inside of his cottage.
Invited to a lavish masquerade ball at Castle Ravna,
Marianne is soon waylaid to be inducted into the cult of the undead while poor
Gerald wakes up with a hangover and a vast conspiracy to make him believe that
his bride never existed. The ball is a stunning set piece, one of the most
remarkable scenes of any Hammer horror film whose casts are notoriously sparse.
Like its predecessor, Brides of Dracula,
Kiss of the Vampire bursts from the
screen in dazzling colors, turning the Hammer version of Transylvania
into a kind of vampire storybook setting.
But the true piece de resistance of the film is the
destruction of the vampire cult when Professor Zimmer unleashes a horde of
bats, evil against evil. Some of the effects are cheesy, but the animation is
outstanding and the scene will remind many viewers of the attacks in
Hitchcock’s The Birds, released the
same year.
Kiss of the Vampire
comes with The Midnight Room Vampire Season Seal of Approval.
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