THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (1960)

In the pre-dawn hours in a European village, a young servant named Brigitte is attacked by a caped figure, but is saved by farm workers and taken to a nearby home. This is the third attack by an assailant who strikes during the full moon and leaves bite marks on the neck of his victim. Meanwhile, a group of scantily clad women are staying in the home; they are a ballet troupe, with the only males being the blondish Luca, the ballet master, and the beefy mustachioed Giorgio, the music director, and they are rehearsing at the home of Luca's uncle, a professor. There is, of course, talk of the vampire myth, the assumption being that the attacked women become anemic and beholden to the will of the vampire. Brigitte dies and later at her funeral, we see her face, looking alive and horrified, visible through a glass panel in the coffin. Two of the dancers, Francesca and Luisa, go for a walk in the woods and when a storm comes up, Luca goes looking for them. They wind up taking refuge in what looks like an abandoned castle, but they are greeted by the Countess Alda and her old and creepy servant Herman. When Luisa goes exploring, she is bitten by Herman, and we soon figure out the vampire setup: Herman goes trolling for women, he drinks their blood and turns young, then goes back to Alda who drinks his blood and he turns old again while Alda keeps her youthful (and buxom) looks. It's hinted that, despite Herman acting like a servant, he is actually the ruler of her in a sadomasochistic relationship. Luisa, who doesn't recall the attack, survives and back at the professor’s place, all the loose talk inspires Giorgio to create a vampire dance. But Alda, smitten with Luca, seems to want to replace Herman with him. The plot eventually goes a bit haywire; things seem to happen based on the conventions of the vampire movie, not because of plot considerations. The climax, on the roof of the castle at dawn, is nicely done.

I liked a later movie by the director, Renato Polselli, the similarly themed THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA, so I backtracked to find this one. Vampires and dancers are central to both, and like OPERA, this one has a few sexy dance sequences, the best being the improvised vampire dance done to Giorgio's music. The women playing the female leads are rather interchangeable and only adequate in acting talent. In fact, the only good acting comes from Maria Luisa Rolando as the countess. She's attractive and sensual and, though the part was apparently written for the great Barbara Steele, Rolando is fine. The male leads, Isarco Ravaioli as Luca and John Turner as Giorgio, are less interchangeable and moderately attractive but also a bit weak in the acting department. Some sapphic touches are presented here and there but not dwelled on. The music is interesting, and at one point, a crazy big band tune breaks out from nowhere. The make-up for the old Herman makes him look less like an old vampire and more like a sci-fi mutant freak. But the make-up for the final scene of the vampires in the sun is nicely gooey, inspired perhaps by Christopher Lee's demise in HORROR OF DRACULA (which I must get around to reviewing one of these days). My favorite line is Luca addressing Alda, "Lady, demon, countess or whatever you are!" I liked OPERA better but this has its moments of fun. Pictured at top left is Maria Luisa Rolando; at right are the two heroes, Isarco Ravaioli and John Turner (aka Gino Turini). [YouTube]

HOUSE OF THE DAMNED (1963)

Architect Scott Campbell, in need of work, is called by his friend Joe to do an architectural survey of an old mansion called the Rochester Castle. The owner, a former actress who is now institutionalized, had leased it to a carnival owner named Arbuckle for nine years but he has recently vanished and the real estate agent is looking to make changes to make it more appealing for the housing market. Scott and his wife Nancy head to the house to stay a few days to examine the property. Odd things happen from the start. First, their way to the house, up a winding road into hills overlooking the ocean, is blocked by dead end signs. Then a creeping shadow is seen on a wall. That night, we see what appears to be a legless man come into their room and take some keys off of a keyring containing thirteen keys, leaving only eleven, and they soon discover that one door in the house can't be unlocked. The next day, Joe's wife Loy shows up seeming a bit disgruntled, then Joe shows up and the two are at odds over his possible infidelities. Just as we're wondering if Joe and Loy know something that Scott doesn't, we see Loy scream in the night and the next morning, her decapitated body is seated in a chair. A visit to Mrs. Rochester shows that she is freaked out by the house. Will our trio discover the secret to the house of the damned?

This short B-film scores high in visual creepiness (an old dark house full of shadows and half-glimpsed figures) but fairly low on actual horror, the headless body notwithstanding. It sets up some potentially interesting narrative paths but they all pretty much lead nowhere. In the early scenes, Scott and Nancy have an odd vibe together which is promising but again, nothing is really done with that. There is an explanation that is satisfying but not especially thrilling. Many online reviews give the ending away but I won't because if you know from the beginning what's going on, there’s not much impetus to stick with it. The actors range from bland to adequate: Merry Anders, probably the most recognizable actor here, having racked up nearly 100 credits in her career, mostly on TV, is Nancy; Ron Foster is Scott; Erika Peters is Loy. Best is Richard Crane (pictured), star of the 50s sci-fi TV series Rocky Jones, as Joe; though his is technically a supporting role, he's the only person we miss when he's not on screen. Richard Keil (Jaws from the James Bond movies) has a small role. The movie is an hour long; there's not quite an hour's worth of story here, but I wasn't ever exactly bored. Shot in widescreen black and white, the film at least looks good—I'm assuming the YouTube print I saw was taken from a DVD. [YouTube]

THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER (1973 TV-movie)

Alice Shaw is clearly in emotional distress at church though she rebuffs her priest when he tries to help. In her apartment, she is confronted by a crippled man walking on two canes (whose face we don't see) who has come to claim her 21-year-old daughter. Alice tries to shoot the crippled man, who claims to be the girl's father, but the bullets have no effect and she drops dead. At Alice's funeral, her daughter Diane is comforted by Lilith, an old friend of her mother's. Lilith is friendly but a bit aggressive and insists that Diane stay with her to let Diane sort out her life. Lilith introduces Diane to some eccentric neighbors and gives her a ring with a distinctive insignia, like a cross overlaid with an X, that she says belonged to Diane's mother. Diane notices a sinister looking painting in Lilith's living room of a creepy looking man in a cloak against a blood red background, and the ring insignia is present in the corner of the painting. We soon discover that Alice and Lilith were both in a cult of devil worshippers; apparently, the Devil himself (or perhaps a lesser demon), as pictured in the painting, fathered Diane, and Alice promised to give the girl up to the group when she turned 21. Now Lilith and the cult are trying to snare Diane into becoming their Princess of Darkness who will mate with the Demon of Endor. Diane's attempts to escape the influence of Lilith are ineffectual until she starts dating Steve, a handsome neighbor. Between Steve and the kindly judge who was the executor of Alice's will, Diane thinks she has escaped the clutches of the cult—but has she?

Between the title, the visuals, and the overdetermined narrative, it's obvious right from the get-go that this is basically a TV-movie version of Rosemary's Baby—the opening credits roll over an image stolen from the famous Rosemary's Baby poster. Almost every plot beat is predictable and, it being a 70s TV-movie, we also know that it's likely to have a downbeat ending (upbeat for the Satanists). Still, this was fun largely due to a good cast. Shelley Winters is fabulous as Lilith; she resists her scenery-chewing ways except for one scene in which she goes ballistic when Diane announces she's moving out, and it's a good scene. Belinda J. Montgomery (later Doogie Houser's mom) alternates between frightened and strong as Diane. Joseph Cotten has a glorified cameo as the judge. Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows) plays Lilith's mute butler; it's a small role but he plays the one cult member who actually is on Diane's side. Abe Vigoda, the year after The Godfather and the year before Barney Miller, looking a bit like Boris Karloff, is a cult elder. Robert Foxworth is handsome and serene as Steve. Martha Scott plays his mother and Diane Ladd is Diane's mother. Admittedly there are moments that verge on laughable, such as the chanting of "Diane, Princess of Darkness." But the ending, though predictable with the Demon of Endor showing up with glowing eyes (above right), is effective. Somehow I missed this one in my childhood but I'm glad to have caught up with it. Pictured at left are Winters and Frid. [Ok.ru]

TERROR-CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE (1965)

A nervous man runs through the streets of a town at night. He arrives at a stable and saddles up a horse, but is kicked to death by it. Next, we see lawyer Albert Kovac arrive at the Villa Hauff to consult with Jeronimus Hauf about his will. But Hauf's wife Cleo and her stepdaughter Corinne are surprised because Jeronimus died a year ago. In fact, his body is about to be transferred from a grave to the family vault. Hauf dabbled in the occult and bought the mansion because it was built on the ruins of a 15th century plague hospital. Some patients were thought to have spread the plague on purpose, and their mummified severed hands are on display in the villa. There is a belief in the village that Hauf had made contact with some dead plague victims, and Hauf's death, after a fall from a narrow stone staircase, was a bit mysterious, with the five people who were present in the house at the time having signed the death certificate. Oddly, two of those people have died in the past year (one being the man from the first scene), and that day, another of the five, the town's mayor, is found dead with acid splashed on his face. That leaves a wheelchair-bound man named Stinnel and a fifth person whose signature is too smudged to read. There is another belief that sounds of ghostly carts that collected the plague dead can be heard around the villa, and sure enough, Stinnel hears it just before he kills himself in a particularly gory way. The final element in the plot is an old folk song from the plague days that says, "Pure water will save you" from the death carts. Everything is now in place for the playing out of the return of the dead plague spreaders as revenge against those responsible for Jeronimus’ death.

This has a terrible title that conjures up a trashy grade-Z horror movie, but actually it's is a well-produced and photographed Gothic thriller with supernatural elements—somewhat oddly, we don't actually see the grave creatures, even though they are real. The literal translation of the Italian title, 5 TOMBS FOR A MEDIUM, is much better if still a bit misleading—there is no traditional medium present. The big draw here for horror fans is the presence of Barbara Steele looking and acting every inch the way she always looks and acts, as Cleo. She is top-billed though Mirealla Maravidi, as Corinne, has a larger role. Walter Brandi (Albert) is the hero, though he doesn't get to act especially heroically and he's not quite as young and handsome as he should be opposite the two attractive female leads. The spooky Gothic atmosphere is kept up well, and the severed arms are a nice touch with a creepy payoff near the end. It never becomes clear why the opening scene is present; it's almost as if it was footage from a different movie that got spliced on to add five minutes to the running time. The director is assumed by fans to be Massimo Pupillo, but the onscreen credit goes to Ralph Zucker, also a co-producer. The story is that Pupillo directed it but didn't like the outcome so gave credit to Zucker. However, at least one cast member has said that Zucker did indeed direct at least some of it. Credit is given to Edgar Allan Poe for inspiration, but that's a weak claim; the plague background is a faint echo of Masque of the Red Death, and the character of the lawyer might remind one of the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher. The proceedings bog down a bit in the middle, but for atmosphere, this makes great October viewing. Pictured are Steele, Maravidi, and Brandi. [Blu-ray]

A BELL FROM HELL (1973)

Young John is sitting in a room in an asylum making a plaster cast of his own face. Next, John is being released from the asylum (it seems more like a college dorm) on a kind of probation during which he has to report to his doctor every eight days. He lives in his late mother’s old house and frequently visits his Aunt Marta and her three young daughters. We don’t know why John was institutionalized or for how long (he looks to be in his early to mid 20s). In fact, we learn very little else about John's situation except seeing home movies which show that John and his cousins were close in their childhood. His reunion with his family is fraught with tension; it is vaguely implied that his aunt may have had him put away in an attempt to take his inheritance, and it's even more vaguely implied that incestuous feelings may have (and may still) run rampant among the four cousins. John briefly takes a job in a slaughterhouse but leaves after one day, saying he's learned enough—the slaughterhouse footage here is real and explicit. We soon learn that John enjoys pulling pranks. Some are fairly harmless, like the one he pulls on a visitor to the aunt's house that is taken from the famous Saki story “The Open Window.” Some are more harmful, such as when he pretends to rip his eyes out in front of a neighbor's wife; she faints and he puts her body on her couch and leaves a note implying that he raped her. On the other hand, he acts as a rescuer to a young girl who is threatened with gang rape by four hunters. The next day, he pulls a vulgar prank on one of the men involving pissing in a urinal. John is hard to figure out, and when he begins to plan revenge against Marta and his cousins, his actions are even more bizarre. He assaults one of the cousins, though it seems to turn into consensual sex at some point. He sprays Aunt Marta's unconscious face with honey then sets a colony of bees on her. He outfits his basement like a slaughterhouse then ties his three cousins up as if planning to slaughter them. The bees don't kill Marta and he can't go through with the slaughter (or perhaps he never intended to, though that is not made clear) but Marta gets her revenge, with some help from old pal Don Pedro, when John is tied to a new church bell (the title bell, I assume, which we see off and on through the film), bricked in, and left to be hung when the bell is rung for the first time the next morning. But there’s a nifty little final scene which shows Don Pedro paying for his crime.

This Spanish film was directed by Claudio Guerin who fell to his death from the bell tower set on the last day of shooting—despite rumors, it's unlikely to have been a suicide. Though Spanish, the film partakes of some elements of the Italian giallo genre, with interesting use of color, atmospheric cinematography, some potentially gory moments (though oddly, there is only one death shown in the movie and it's bloodless), some near-nudity, and a somewhat incoherent script. One online critic says it took him three viewings to figure everything out. I have no desire to sit through this again (unless I can find a cleaned-up DVD print; the YouTube prints are all smudgy and murky) and I think my plot summary is mostly accurate. French actor Renaud Verley (pictured) is handsome and effective as John. I'm not sure that Verley knew what was going on with his character any more than I did, but he strikes a nicely ambiguous persona and we are sometimes in uncomfortable sympathy with John. The busy and respected Vivica Lindfors gives the wheelchair-bound Marta some gravitas even as we're pretty sure she's a villain. We never really know how conniving and controlling she is; the only truly deplorable thing we see her do is to withhold John's passport so he can't leave the country and start a new life. (In one fairly big plothole, we are told that John never shows up to his probation visits, but he suffers no consequences for this.) The plot is confusing and disjointed, and the tone unpleasant, but if I got the chance to see a clear print, I might watch this again—though three times is out of the question. [YouTube]

TARGET EARTH (1954)

A woman in her scanties wakes up in bed, the noon light coming in through the window, surrounded by scattered sleeping pills. The groggy Nora, who has apparently tried to kill herself, discovers that her apartment building has no power or water, and when she heads outside, finds the streets are oddly empty. She sees a dead body, then runs into a man named Frank who spent the night unconscious after being mugged. The two assume the city was evacuated during the night and they both slept through it. Passing a bar, they find a man and woman doing some piano playing and daydrinking. Jim and Vicki got dead drunk last night, also missing the apparent evacuation. On the streets, they discover that all the cars have their distributor caps missing, a move that would indicate an attempt to stop an invading army (remember the nuns and the distributor caps at the end of The Sound of Music?). The group picks up another straggler, Otis, who finds a newspaper with headlines about an invasion by a mystery army. In the streets, Otis looks up and sees the shadow of what looks like a giant robot. From the rooftops, the robot shoots Otis with a fatal blast of energy, and the others retreat to an empty hotel. At about thirty minutes into this real-time drama, we cut to backstory scenes of the Army preparing to fight off an army of hundreds of aliens from Venus. The military manage to put a robot out of commission and a scientist examines it hoping to discover vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, a trigger-happy thug named Davis shows up at the hotel and the movie cuts between their tense situation and that of the military as they plan to attack the aliens in the city. What will happen when our small group gets caught between the Army and the aliens?

The low-budget science fiction film benefits from the eeriness of the empty city streets; the city is never identified by name but it was shot on Los Angeles locations. It becomes an interesting mix of a severely limited cast caught in melodramatic situations and larger scale scenes of the military. The robots themselves are effective enough considering the budget and the era. We never see an army of them because only one was actually constructed and used over and over, but that limitation is never too obvious. After the first ten minutes or so, the tension dissipates a bit but we remain invested in the characters, thanks partly to OK performances from the cast, primarily Kathleen Crowley (Nora), Richard Denning (Frank), Robert Roark (Davis) and Whit Bissell (the army scientist). I've never been a big fan of Denning, as I find his hero persona lacking, but he's serviceable here. Not bad for an early version of the genre of film in which a small group of strangers try to survive apocalyptic conditions—later came FIVE and THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED and PANIC IN YEAR ZERO among others. [YouTube]

ISLAND OF TERROR (1966)

On Petrie's Island, a small Irish island with no telephones and limited transportation to the mainland, Dr. Philips is doing secret work in a chemical lab to find a cure for cancer by creating living tissue that can fight and kill cancer cells, but as an experiment reaches a climax, there is an explosion. Farmer Ian Bellows hears odd noises coming from a cave and goes to investigate but doesn't return. His body is found by Constable Harris, but it's all soft tissue, with the bones completely sucked out—Harris tells Dr. Landers that Ian's face is "a horrible mush with the eyes just sitting on it" (though when we actually see the body, it's not quite as horrible looking as that description would have it). Landers goes to London and gets pathologist Brian Stanley and brilliant young scientist David West to come to the island to investigate. They assume a disease is to blame, but when they visit Philips' lab, they find Philips and his associate dead and similarly boneless. A farmer's cow is found dead in the same condition, and West deduces that the failed experiment created a new creatures which they call silicates that feed off of calcium phosphate, which is found in bones. After a couple of almost-reveals, we see these creatures: they are large turtle-like beings with a snake-like tentacle that grabs people and starts the process of deboning. They can also split in two, which they do at a rapid rate, possibly able to cover the island in just a few hours. The constable is killed by one, as is Dr. Landers when he tries to dispatch one with an axe (which is unable to penetrate its body). Campbell, the town's leader (maybe the mayor but that’s never made clear), and his assistant Argyle, put themselves at the disposal of West and Stanley, and soon it's figured out that radioactivity is the only thing that can kill the silicates. West and Stanley go back to Philips' lab to get some Strontium 90 (in an unnecessarily long scene showing the two suiting up in protective gear); the men have Campbell gather the islanders at the town hall while a bunch of cattle are injected with the radioactive element, the hope being that the silicates will eat the cattle and then die off. Unfortunately, if this doesn't work, it means the islanders are all potential food for the monsters.

Hammer director Terence Fisher made this film for Planet Film Productions, a short-lived outfit specializing in sci-fi horror. The movie starts off well; the feel of the island is authentic and most of the performances are appropriately low-key. Peter Cushing is his usual reliable self as Stanley and Edward Judd is quirkily handsome and commanding as West. His girlfriend Toni (Carole Gray) tags along though the narrative implies that Toni may have just been a one-night stand; it’s not really important but still a weird plotpoint. The supporting actors are surprisingly good at being innocent folks caught up in the quickly growing and potentially apocalyptic situation. They include Sam Kydd (the constable), Eddie Byrne (Landers), Niall MacGinnis (Campbell) and James Caffrey (Argyle). The creatures are a bit silly looking in the beginning, especially when they are indoors and move about like big Roombas. Outdoors they are fairly effective, and even more so when they drop out of trees or smash through windows, and the climatic scene at the town hall has a nice CRAWLING EYE feel. Overall, though, the whole thing has a bland look and a predictable by-the-numbers approach to narrative. The movie ends with the menacing creatures all wiped out. The usual "Don’t tamper in God’s domain" message is undercut a bit when West notes that "science has its risks but the risks aren't enough to hinder progress," but a last shot of a Japanese lab subverts that by providing a Gotcha! moment. BTW, a later Planet movie, NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT, is very similar to this in setting and plotpoints, with the same director and with Cushing as a star. In fact, when I started watching this, I thought it was BIG HEAT which I'd already seen so I almost stopped watching. Pictured are Judd, Gray, and Cushing. [Blu-ray]

GORGO (1961)

Joe (Bill Travers) and Sam (William Sylvester), partners in a sea salvage business, are bringing up a lost treasure off the coast of Ireland when the sea starts bubbling. An undersea volcano erupts, damaging the ship and sending them to the shore of Nara Island for repairs. They get a frosty welcome from McCartin, the harbormaster, who has been illegally hoarding treasure and artifacts found nearby, but they hit it off with Sean, the orphan boy who helps McCartin. When a local diver is found dead, it's assumed that a shark got him, but as men hunt the shark, a 65-foot tall bellowing reptilian creature comes out of the sea and attacks. Joe and Sam lead the men in capturing the beast, which Sean calls Ogra after a sea creature artifact of McCartin's. The University of Dublin wants the beast so they can study it, but Joe makes a deal with the Dorkin Circus in London and they transport it there to be put on public display, naming it Gorgo, for Gorgon, the mythic entity that turned men to stone. What could go wrong? Well, the Dublin scientists somehow figure out that Gorgo is just an infant, and soon a mom twice as big as him follows his scent and comes looking for her baby. Watch out, Piccadilly Circus! Look out, Big Ben! What Godzilla did to Tokyo, mom does to London.

People tend to either love this B-monster movie or think of it as a big joke. My own history with this film: it was the first monster movie I saw in a theater, probably in 1963 when I was 7 and already a big Chiller Theater fan, and I was quite impressed with it. The folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed it on their show, and the print they used was panned and scanned and in bad shape so it seemed to deserve its mocking. But seen in widescreen and in clear and bright color, it's a different experience. Rather than use stop motion animation, the producers went the full Godzilla route and had a man dressed up in a rubber suit in the middle of a bunch of miniature sets, and for the era, it comes off pretty well. Motion speed is adjusted to make the monster's movements seem appropriately scaled. (The title monster, BTW, does not go on a rampage, it's the mom, but she is never given a name.) Matte and blue screen work is fairly good, if awfully obvious at times. The writing is rather weak—it rushes through some things, like the capture of Gorgo, and drags out other things, like the unnecessary amount of military stock footage in the last half which causes the narrative to lose some momentum. But generally, the movie does fairly well what "kiddie" monster movies were expected to do back then. I assume the character of Sean was present so kids would have someone to identify with, and to ultimately make Gorgo sorta cute.

Bill Travers and William Sylvester handle their lead roles seriously, with Sylvester coming off as the nice guy and Travers a bit of a hard ass—though in the end, it's Travers who saves Sean from possible trampling. There isn't even a hint of romance here; as far as I remember, there are no females in speaking parts. So of course, I want to read Travers and Sylvester as a couple, despite the absence of sexual tension, and a few shots near the end of the two with Sean does make them look like a gay-dad family. Certainly they have become his de facto caretakers, and the next step is adoption. Vincent Winter as Sean is good—not too cutesy and not too wooden. The way Sean acts when he first sees Gorgo seems to imply that Sean has seen or at least been aware of the beast's existence, though this does not become a plot thread. I suspect that Sean's relationship with Gorgo inspired Toho to put forth a similar plot point in the later Gamera movies. Busy character actor Martin Benson has a couple of nice moments as the slightly slimy Dorkin, though ultimately I don't think he deserves to be labeled as a bad guy. If your only experience with this movie is through MST3K, you owe it to yourself to see this on home video or streaming. Pictured at top right is Gorgo destroying Big Ben; at left are Winter, Travers, and Sylvester. [Blu-ray]

CAT GIRL (1957)

Leonora has been summoned by her uncle Edmund, whom she has always disliked, to his country estate to discuss her inheritance. She was asked to come alone but brings her husband Richard and two friends, Allan and Cathy. Leonora also reunites with Brian, a psychiatrist whom Leonora knew in the past. Edmond and his housekeeper Anna are not happy to see the others, and more tensions develop: Allan is a drunkard and Richard is fooling around with Cathy. Edmund tells Leonora that she is "inheriting" a family curse: upon her uncle’s death, she will become possessed by a leopard which wanders about the grounds. The specifics of the curse are unclear; there is a leopard which Edmund keeps caged up, and she apparently doesn't so much become a leopard as much as control it, or maybe even inhabit it now and again. The distraught Leonora runs off into the woods as Edmund releases the leopard so it can kill him so Leonora can become the "cat girl" of the title. If you’ve seen the Val Lewton 1942 classic, CAT PEOPLE, you have some idea of the (fairly mild) mayhem that will be unleashed. As in the earlier film, suspense is built up by keeping the matter of the curse ambiguous: is she really a cat girl or is it all in her head? Brian, the psychiatrist, winds up playing an important role, but the writing is weak and things remain mostly muddled by the end, though the conclusion is superficially satisfying, I guess. Barbara Shelley (pictured) is fine in the lead; she became something of a British scream queen in the 60s, not to be confused with the sexier Barbara Steele. The rest of the cast is low energy with no real standouts. The atmosphere is nicely bleak, and there are a couple of visual callbacks to the earlier Lewton movie. Like that film, the studio stepped in here to hype the supernatural explanation a bit over the strictly psychological. Ultimately, fairly ho-hum but watchable. [YouTube]

THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA (1964)

It's October; the first movie in my Chiller Theater month begins with a woman in a nightgown being chased up and down stone stairs through an old theater by a vampire who attacks her with a pitchfork. Then she wakes up from this nightmare. She is Giulia, a member of a dance troupe. The director, Sandro, has moved the troupe into their new home, an abandoned theater, dilapidated and cobwebby. Sandro is warned by Achille, the cantankerous caretaker, that the theater is cursed by the presence of an ancient vampire who was behind the disappearance of actresses in the theater over the years. Suddenly, a group of glow-in-the-dark skeletons pop up out in the audience, but surprise, they're actually the male members of the troupe dressed up to spook Sandro and the girls. No one is terribly concerned with the caretaker's warnings and soon they're rehearsing Sandro's dance version of Cyrano de Bergerac and cleaning up the theater at the same time. Though the building is locked up, a mysterious man shows up, claiming to be a devotee of the theater, but we soon learn that he is actually Stefano, the vampire, and that Achille is his servant. He is attracted to Giulia because she looks like, or perhaps actually is, the reincarnation of the Countess Laura with whom Stefano was carrying on an affair many years ago. Eventually she ordered her servant to bury Stefano alive; he prayed to Satan and somehow cane out of this situation as a vampire. The servant, of course, was Achille who has also become immortal and must serve his master even against his will. As the plot unfolds, not only is Giulia threatened but the entire troupe is. No one can leave the theater because of invisible force fields, and we discover there is a door to another dimension which contains several of Stefano's skimpily clad past vampire brides, chained to a wall. Achille warns the troupe that in order to fend off possible attacks from Stefano, they must keep moving or dancing, which they proceed to do like dervishes. But Giulia, like a character from Dark Shadows, winds up trapped in the torture chamber dimension and may never escape.

Most critics who write about this Italian film directed by Renato Polselli reference his earlier movie The Vampire and the Ballerina which I tracked down after I saw this and which I'll review soon. This film has one setting, the theater, and plays out more or less in real time. Its Gothic feel and theatrical setting do conjure up The Phantom of the Opera, though the occasional humor, the occasional queer touches (a lesbian and at least one fey gay boy), and the modern dancing bring Phantom up to date. The choreography is actually good and quite sexy. Marco Mariani (above left) is very good as Sandro, an enthusiastic Bob Fosse type who leaps around like a dancer even when he's not rehearsing, and he gets as much if not more screen time as Barbara Hawards, playing Giulia. There is a big cast of supporting players, most not developed as characters, and all are good at being enthusiastic and light-hearted for much of the running time. A moment that looks like it will turn into a lesbian love scene becomes a giggly three way kiss. The scene with the men in skeleton leotards is great fun. The plot doesn't need to be attended to too closely, as the primary attractions here are the atmosphere, the vigorous camera work, and the goofy troupe of actors. Stefano's fangs are excellent. A nice discovery, and available in a very good print. A skeleton boy and troupe girl are pictured at right. [Blu-ray]