The vampire Count Sergio Subotai rises up from his coffin and walks slowly past an altar, where the demon god Astaroth is worshipped, to play at an organ made of human bones. On a nearby road, the Count materializes in front of a car, stopping it in its path. A swarm of bats descends, turning into freaky humanoid beings, and the man and woman in the car are taken to Sergio's castle where the servant vampires feed on the man while Sergio bites the woman which seems to give her the power to see Sergio's past (his family was wiped out a hundred years ago by a man named Colman) and to see the remaining Colman relatives, a father and his two nieces, who live nearby and are currently in the middle of a cocktail party. The count visits and meets the Colmans and their important guest Rudolfo Sabre, a pianist and folk music expert who winds up playing music that can supposedly raise the dead, and other music that can defeat the undead. Sergio reacts negatively to the music. One niece, Martha, can see that Sergio has no reflection in a mirror, but she says nothing. The Count decides to seduce Leonor, the other niece, turns her into a vampire (sort of; the vampire rules here are a bit ambiguous) and plans to make her the high priestess of his demonic cult. He also captures her uncle and keeps him tied up in the altar room. Leonor puts the bite on Rudolfo who doesn't become a vampire but instead gets an excessively hairy hand, the first stage perhaps of some kind of horrible transformation, maybe to become a werewolf, though this is never really explained. Ultimately, Rudolfo saves Colman and Martha by playing his anti-undead music at the bone organ, driving Sergio to leap to his death into a pit full of sharp spikes. Lenor is too far gone and leaps with Sergio to her death on the spikes.
This Mexican vampire film (El Mundo de los Vampiros) was first released in Spanish in 1961, then adapted and dubbed into English and bought by American International in 1964 for syndicated television broadcast. It's a cheapie with unimpressive makeup and effects—Sergio's fangs, when they show up, are laughably large, and the bats look like small party favors. There are limited sets, but the atmosphere is kept nicely creepy. Performances are adequate, no more, with Guillermo Murray (Sergio, pictured) and Mauricio Garces (Rudolfo) the standouts. As I noted, the vampire conventions are not made clear, especially in the case of Rudolfo's hairy hand, but what sort of makes this worth seeing is the musicology aspect. The idea that music can control the vampires is interesting and works well at the climax. There doesn't seem to have been any reason to include the couple from the car in the film at all—I'm not even sure what happens to them. It's also not clear why there is a pit of spikes in the altar room but it does make for a nice visual at the end. A plot strand about the vampires taking over the world, hence the title, is presented but nothing is done with it. Fine for those who know what they're in for when they settle in to watch a 1960s Mexican horror movie. [YouTube]
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