strange_complex | 27. Kiss of the Vampire (1963), dir. Don Sharp

OK, 2018 film review catch-ups start here. I'm self-imposing a rule of one paragraph-long post per film to help myself get them done. Except for this mini-paragraph here, that is - this is meta.

This is a Hammer vampire film which isn't part of their Dracula sequence. I saw it once over twenty years ago, but hadn't remembered much about it other than the ending in which the vampires are defeated by a swarm of bats. This, I learned more recently, was originally intended to be the ending for Brides of Dracula (1960), and indeed is in the novelised version of that story which I read recently but was vetoed by Peter Cushing during production. Hammer were nothing if not frugal, so they just rolled it over into their next vampire film. The opening sequence consists of an as-yet-unidentified man thrusting a spade into a coffin to kill its vampire occupant, whom we learn later is his daughter. This must surely have been inspired by a very similar stake-through-a-coffin scene at the beginning of Blood of the Vampire (1958), itself a second-rate rip-off of Hammer's earliest technicolor Gothic films, and along with the recycled ending speaks of a film at the more cheap-and-cheerful end of Hammer's production spectrum. Nonetheless, it's worth watching, I think especially because of the way it explicitly frames vampirism as a religious cult - something hinted at (only very subtly) in Dracula (1958) and given a single line of dialogue in Brides, but developed more fully here. The Ravna family, who are actual vampires, have a whole coterie of apparently-human acoltyes dressed in white robes who process after them in cultic fashion, presumably reflecting contemporary fears about new-age cults, communes and the like. A couple of aspects of the story didn't entirely make sense to

lady_lugosi1313 and I when we watched it, though, including why we never saw who the female heroine (Marianne) had heard crying when she was locked in a room and found the older male vampire (Dr Ravna) lying as though dead, and why at the end of the film the vampires just seemed to sit there rather than chasing the human characters who were escaping from their house. Looking now at the Wikipedia entry, it's possible that the answer to those questions is 'because we were watching a cut version', but I don't think it was the alternate version described there either, as I don't remember any scenes with a family called the Stanghers. The version we saw was recorded off the Horror Channel, so I will look out for opportunities to see it in different contexts in future, and try to pay attention to the running time so I can figure out exactly what version I'm seeing when I do.

Crossposts: https://strange-complex.livejournal.com/629336.html

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From:

sovay

Nonetheless, it's worth watching, I think especially because of the way it explicitly frames vampirism as a religious cult - something hinted at (only very subtly) in Dracula (1958) and given a single line of dialogue in Brides, but developed more fully here.

"So the cult grows" is one of my favorite lines from The Brides of Dracula, and not infrequently finds its way into everyday speech. I'm glad this movie did something with it.

From:

strange_complex

I'm so glad to have DW friends who regularly quote from Hammer Dracula films in everyday life! :-)

I think I like the feel of what is hinted at in Brides a bit better than in this film, partly of course because it is only a hint so there's plenty of room for imagination, but also because Van Helsing describes it specifically as "a survival of one of the ancient pagan religions in its struggle against Christianity", which presses my Classical antiquity button and also picks up very nicely on similar hints in Stoker's novel which are what I talked about in Brașov recently.

In this film, by contrast, what we see is much more in the style of a typical new-age cult with a charismatic leader and brain-washed followers. But, in fairness, although we see the cult members a few times on screen, we don't really learn much about the actual character or activities of the cult either, so there is room for imagination here too. It could look modern but actually be very ancient in belief and practice.

From:

sovay

In this film, by contrast, what we see is much more in the style of a typical new-age cult with a charismatic leader and brain-washed followers.

That is disappointing—I would definitely prefer to know what a mystery religion looks like c. 1963.

But, in fairness, although we see the cult members a few times on screen, we don't really learn much about the actual character or activities of the cult either, so there is room for imagination here too. It could look modern but actually be very ancient in belief and practice.

Is there a novelization?

[edit] On the survival of ancient cults: you've read Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard (1974)?

Edited (afterthought) Date: Saturday, 12 January 2019 18:31 (UTC)

From:

strange_complex

No, I'm pretty certain there's no novelisation of this one. They were done only quite randomly and sporadically, and I've never seen any mention of it.

No, I haven't read The Perilous Gard either, but I've just checked out the Wikipedia page and it sounds great. Obviously Tam Lin-ish, but by the sounds of it quite Wicker Man-ish too. I take it you'd recommend it?

From:

sovay

Obviously Tam Lin-ish, but by the sounds of it quite Wicker Man-ish too. I take it you'd recommend it?

Hugely. It may be my favorite retelling of Tam Lin and I don't know why I don't see it more often included in discussions of folk horror, because it was published in 1974 and revolves around the fire sacrifice of a year-king to the old gods of the land. The first time I saw The Wicker Man, I thought of it at once. It's beautifully written, too, in one of those unostentatious ways.