SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES (1962)
Article #266 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-7-2001
Posting date: 4-22-2002

A vampire seduces the wife of a nobleman, and he has to bring in a special doctor to help cure her of her condition.

Maybe I was in a bit of a cranky mood when I saw this, but I couldn’t help but feel that with all the skulking, cleavage, angry villagers, crosses, stakes, heaving bosoms, and old world castles, there wasn’t a whole lot here I haven’t seen in vampire flicks a thousand times before. The beginning scene is not too bad, and it does get a little bit more novel towards the end, when a child’s life is threatened, but for the most part, I saw little that was new to hold my attention. Perhaps I would have liked it more if I had been in a different state of mind, but so many vampire movies have been made over the years that unless they have something new or novel about them, or are particularly well done, I have little use for them.

SPOILERS

Furthermore, the movie didn’t really know when to end; after the vampire has been dispatched, we have several minutes of footage before the movie comes to its conclusion. No loose ends were tied up, there’s no final twist, nothing to make this footage either interesting or important. Unless I was missing something extremely subtle, this strikes me as a perfect example of unnecessary footage.