There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you got to work with what you got…
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
Distributed by: Universal-International
Directed by: Don Sharp
Things don’t always go to plan.
That’s not exactly news; the poem “For Want of a Nail” was first written down in 1629, and likely existed in some form or another well before then. There are numerous instances in all of our lives that don’t play out as we expected, sometimes for the best. And what may not happen as we wished, we might end up with something fairly satisfying.
This applies to film projects as often as it does to any film’s audience. Case in point:
Note that there will be a few spoilers in this piece, so plan accordingly…
We open cold in a graveyard where a funeral is in process, which certainly doesn’t go as expected for everyone there:
The shovel is hurled by Professor Zimmer (Christopher Evans), who we discover is the one person not afraid of vampires in this community. Everyone else seems to live in a state of denial about what’s been happening to them.
Into the area motors a couple, the Harcourts, on their honeymoon. Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne (Jennifer Daniel) are two young kids who are very much in love, very adventurous, and very, very lost, as their car runs out of gas in the middle of this cursed area.
Zimmer pops up briefly to warn Marianne to stay with the car, right before Gerald comes back with a horse to draw the horseless carriage to the nearest inn, the Grand Hotel, which doesn’t quite liv up to its name. There are dustcloths covering all the tables and chairs, and almost all the rooms are devoid, excluding Room 13, which is where Zimmer resides.
The proprietors, Bruno (Peter Madden) and Anna (Vera Cook) are of two minds regarding their guests. Bruno wants to give them as fine a visit in his inn as he can, while Anna would rather continue stewing in her grief over her lost daughter.
As the newlyweds settle in at the Grand Hotel, they get an invitation to the chateau that lords over the area. Its owner, Doctor Ravna (Noel William) asks the Harcourts to come to dinner with him and his son Carl (Barry Warren) and daughter Sabena (Jacquie Wallis). The evening includes Carl on the piano, giving a masterful presentation that entrances Marianne.
As the Harcourts wait for Dr. Ravna to bring them petrol for their car (said gas being 30 klicks over the mountains), they settle into their rooms. We discover why Anna is depressed, as she had a daughter that disappeared into the castle never to be seen again. In fact, we get to watch her daughter, Tania (Isobel Black), trying to roust her friend, who had been Zimmer’s daughter.
As it happens, she’s not available, as it was in her coffin her father planted the shovel at the beginning of the film. This, of course, leads to some bad blood between them…
Ultimately, the Harcourts are invited to a fancy masked ball over at the chateau. The party is swinging, with lots of food, dancing (maybe a few too many minutes of dancing as it drags the picture), and drinking. There’s lots of drinking, in fact, as Gerald has way too much champaign, while Marianne is drunk.
By Dr. Ravna, in fact, who hypnotizes her and makes a meal out of her…
When Gerald wakes up, he’s told by Carl that he was an abominable guest, who showed up stag and was a boor before he passed out. When he asks for Marianne, Carl tells him there is no Marianne, which is backed up by Bruno. He tells Gerald that showed up at the hotel alone, which can be confirmed by the fact that none of Marianne’s things are in the room.
It’s this moment in the film that reaches out to us soundly and grabs us by the fears of our age. Marianne’s experience of being abducted will strike a chord with everyone familiar with missing women being underreported. The reason she’s erased also plays with our awareness of human trafficking, where victims are removed and pressed into commodification. The fact that Ravna’s family and Bruno the innkeeper deny that she was ever there speaks to a mindset that provides some of the reasons why sexual assault is underreported. And the reticence of the police sergeant (John Harvey) to want to challenge Dr. Ravna because of his position in the community adds another aspect that feels like breaking news demanding wall-to-wall coverage.
When Marianne is “non-personed” in a way that combines all of these in one instance, there’s a palpable shock as recognition of these comes at the viewer. It’s highly unlikely that scriptwriter Anthony Hinds (writing under the nom de pen “John Elder”) had planned to come up with a character’s fate that sixty years later would hit as hard as it does now, but this accident of history keeps the film from being forgettable.
In terms of planning with this film, not much of this movie was intended to come out this way. Originally, this would have paired Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in a third Hammer Dracula movie, yet the film could not come together to meet its initial announced production period in 1961. Hinds (who also produced the film) offered the directing chair to Sharp, who had never worked in horror before this offer. The film’s finale was originally meant for The Brides of Dracula, but had to be cut when Cushing refused to show Van Helsing using “black magic” to save the day, leading to Zimmer using an ancient spell to summon a wave of vampire bats to bleed dry the vampires in the castle…
…I did plan to provide a few spoilers; yes, I did warn everyone…
The ending of the film (which among other things gave vampire bats a rap they didn’t deserve) proved problematic for Universal, who had just released The Birds and didn’t want to have two films showing in theaters with the same terror elements, featuring danger on the wing. Even though the similarity was accidental, the film was held back in the US until September of 1963, with the British release coming in 1964.
The final pic is uneven. Sharp’s pacing and Hinds’ script doesn’t have a consistent rhythm, making some spots feel short-changed and others rushed. (Doing more with Marianne’s disappearance would have addressed much of this.) Evans and William are no Cushing and Lee, and of the two, Evans’ Zimmer does most of the work, which the cast overall is particularly well suited to the material. James Bernard’s score is one of the better ones he’d done for Hammer, and gives the film enough dynamism to paper over any faults that might be noticeable.
Speaking of “papering over…”, when the film was readied for American TV distribution, MCA Television’s reticence to put out a film with excessive blood forced them to make drastic cuts to the movie. Renamed Kiss of Evil, so much was cut that they had to shoot new, only semi-related scenes to pad out the run time and allow the film to still make sense.
They had to, for in this instance things hadn’t gone to plan…
