GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE (1974)
Article #1523 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-16-2005
Posting Date: 10-13-2005
Directed by John Hayes
Featuring William Smith, Michael Pataki, Lyn Peters

A woman is raped by a vampire in an open grave in a cemetery. Many years later, the son born as a result of this vows to track down his vampire father and destroy him.

Because of the big-budget excesses of many recent films, I think there has been a reaction on the part of many moviegoers to equate big budgets with bad movies and small budgets with good movies. Though I think there’s more to admire in making a movie on a low budget, I don’t buy into this theory myself; if you’ve got a lousy script, it hardly matters what kind of budget you have, since you’ll end up with a lousy movie. However, if you’ve got a good script that doesn’t demand an elaborate budget, a small budget will do just fine. This is one of those small budget movies that benefits from a good script. The story itself is quite interesting, and it is peopled with interesting characters well played by a group of little known but capable actors. I found myself really caught up in this one, and what I find most surprising about it is that it is a vampire movie. Vampires are one of the most popular horror monsters of all time, but as a result of this, the stories surrounding them are often retreads of the same plot elements. This movie found some fresh blood in the concept, which is, of course, something that a vampire story really needs. My only real complaint is a silly ending title card that is almost as bad as the dumb pun that I used in the previous sentence.