KISS OF THE VAMPIRE: REVIEW AND GALLERY : HAMMER FILMS

PRODUCTION:

Director – Don Sharp, Screenplay – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Anthony Hinds, Photography – Alan Hume, Music – James Bernard, Special Effects – Les Bowie, Makeup – Roy Ashton, Production Design – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer films. UK 1962

CAST:

Edward de Souza (Gerald Harcourt), Jennifer Daniel (Marianne Harcourt), Clifford Evans (Professor Zimmer), Noel Willman (Dr Ravna), Barry Warren (Carl Ravna), Jacqui Wallis (Sabena), Isobel Black (Tania), Peter Maddern (Bruno), Noel Howlett (Father Xavier)

SYNOPSIS:

The early part of the century. Gerald Harcourt and his newlywed wife Marianne are passing through Bavaria on their honeymoon when their car breaks down. They seek refuge in the local village where the locals seem very superstitious and fearful. They are befriended by the wealthy and charming Dr Ravna who invites them to a masque at the Chateau Ravna. Gerald passes out drunk and when he wakes in the morning he finds that Marianne is missing. Both Ravna and the entire village deny any trace of her existence. The only person who will help him is the embittered Professor Zimmer and so Gerald bands together with him to rescue Marianne from being claimed by Ravna’s vampire coven.

COMMENTARY:
Kiss of the Vampire is one of the more interesting vampire films to come out of Hammer Films during the 1960s. It was made in the period after Hammer had had their huge initial international success with Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958). For several years after that, Christopher Lee refused to return to the part of Dracula, determining to establish himself as a serious actor first. The period saw The Brides of Dracula (1960), which tried to be a Dracula film without having Christopher Lee or any Dracula present.

Kiss of the Vampire interestingly enough had begun life as another tentative Christopher Lee-less Dracula film. Hammer then decided to make it an original film that would not be dependent on such a notable absence at its center and such connections were written out.

Kiss of the Vampire is an interesting effort. It has been aptly called a vampire version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938) – a film that Hammer later directly remade in 1979. Producer Anthony Hinds sets up a fair and reasonable script, better than most of the later Dracula sequels. The focus is not so much the hardly interesting married couple but the two opposing figures of good and evil fighting on either side of the film – Noel Willman who plays the vampire with glacial stolidity but alas lacks any real charismatic presence, and Clifford Evans who plays the vampire hunter with a brooding harshness. Kiss of the Vampire also comes filled with several other intriguing performances packed around the sides, most notably from Barry Warren as Ravna’s very weird son and Barbara Steele-lookalike Isobel Black as the innkeeper’s vampirised daughter who one wishes had been given more screen time.

Don Sharp’s handling sometimes falters but he is aided considerably by the sumptuous production values of all early Hammer films, which buoy the film up, most notably during the beautifully staged masque sequence. [The masque scenes were later wittily parodied in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers/Dance of the Vampires (1967)]. There is an unusual climax featuring hordes of attacking vampire bats (a sequence that had originally been intended as the climax of The Brides of Dracula), which falters slightly through merely adequate effects.

Kiss of the Vampire was the genre debut of Australian-born Don Sharp who later became a regular director within the British horror industry making the likes of Witchcraft (1964), Curse of the Fly (1965), the first two of the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu series The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), Hammer’s Rasputin The Mad Monk (1966), the period sf comedy Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon/Those Fantastic Flying Fools/Blast Off (1967), the psycho-thriller Dark Places (1972), the undead biker film Psychomania (1973) and the lost world film Secrets of the Phantom Caverns/What Waits Below (1984).

Kiss of the Vampire exists in two different versions, the original cinematic and video release. Kiss of Evil is a cut version for tv, which adds additional scenes taken from Hammer’s The Evil of Frankenstein (1964).

REVIEW:Richard Scheib  Here

HAMMER FILMS: THE DEVIL SHIP PIRATES : HANGINGS FLOGGINGS AND SWORDPLAY

16^th century England: a pirate ship fighting with the Spanish Armada is damaged and needs to dock for repairs.  The devious Captain Robeles convinces the gullible villagers that the English have been defeated and that they must acquiesce to their new leaders …

The clever script by Jimmy Sangster offers a reversal of a similar plot device found in Hammer’s earlier war film, The Camp of Blood Island.  Whereas the earlier film dealt with a group of POWs trying to prevent their Japanese captors from discovering that the Allies have won the war in order to prevent being wiped out in retaliation, here the pirates trade on the villagers being cut off from society by telling them that they have won the battle and are therefore now in charge.  As usual for Sangster, there isn’t a tremendous amount of depth to the characters, but they serve their function effectively enough as archetypes.  Robles is a properly dastardly villain, while village lad Harry fulfills the role of hero with a rebellious streak.

The film benefits from solid production values and expert direction from Don Sharp.  Sharp was well known for his ability to stage action scenes and this is certainly evident here.  He also makes excellent use of the widescreen frame and the lighting by the gifted Michael Reed helps to sell the illusion of this being a bigger film than it really was.  Bernard Robinson’s sets and the art direction by Don Mingaye is up to their normal standards of excellence, too, though Gary Hughes score feels a bit limp and generic.

Like so many Hammer films, the film succeeds in large part due to the quality of its acting.  Christopher Lee is every bit as impressive here as he was in The Pirates of Blood River.  Robeles is comparatively suave and fiery, befitting both the actor and the character’s Latin disposition.  Lee effortlessly dominates the film, throwing away sinister bon mots of dialogue without resorting to melodramatic overstatement.  He also gets plenty of opportunities to show off his facility with sword fighting.  The supporting cast includes good roles for such reliable character actors as Andrew Keir, Philip Latham, Duncan Lamont and Michael Ripper.

Ripper may not be the most ideal casting for a Spanish pirate imaginable, but he and Lee have great chemistry and he makes for an endearingly impish presence.  Keir’s role isn’t nearly as memorable as his character in Blood River, but he brings considerable presence to it, just the same, while Latham proves to be as effective in aympathetic role as he would be in a more sinister context as Lee’s faithful servant, Klove, in Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965).

The hero is played by John Cairney, but he can’t hope to compete with Lee in terms of presence and charisma.  More interesting is Barry Warren, fresh off of playing a memorably arch vampire in Sharp’s The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), who brings a dash of sympathy to his role as the Spanish nobleman who crosses swords (literally and figuratively) with the despotic Robeles.

The female side is represented by Suzan Farmer, as the village girl that Robeles sets his lecherous sights on, and a young Natasha Pyne, who is memorable as Harry’s spunky sister, Jane.  Farmer, of course, would be reunited with Lee on Dracula Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966), while Pyne would go on to co-star with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry in the Amicus/AIP hodgepodge Madhouse (1972).

The Devil-Ship Pirates did solid business but Hammer would move away from films of this sort, perhaps because they required a little more production value than their usual stage bound Gothic horrors.  Part of the decision may have stemmed from the fact that Hammer constructed a mock up ship for the film which proved to be problematic, to say the least.  The money spent is all on screen, however, ensuring that the film holds up as a fun slice of Saturday matinee entertainment. 

Written by Troy Howarth

Images and Design: Marcus Brooks