DEVILS OF DARKNESS (1965)
Article 2302 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-15-2007
Posting Date: 12-1-2007
Directed by Lance Comfort
Featuring William Sylvester, Hubert Noel, Diane Decker

An Englishman visits a foreign village and encounters some strange deaths. He returns to England in possession of a talisman he found, not knowing that it belongs to a vampire cult. The cult follows him to England and begin their unholy practices there.

William Sylvester is mostly known for playing Dr. Heywood Floyd in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY; I noticed his name in the cast because I had seen the same name only a couple of days ago. As it turns out, he was the lead in BEAST OF MOROCCO , a low-budget and rather dull vampire flick that was made a little more interesting by some interesting themes and an exotic location. This one is more of the same, minus the interesting themes and the exotic location; it’s an uninteresting combination of vampires and Satanists, and the only times the movie comes alive are during a dance scene in the pre-credits sequence and a lab scene in the middle of the movie where all the lab animals start going wild. At least one source of mine considers it one of the first vampire movies to take place in the present, but I’m willing to bet you can find some that predate this movie. At any rate, I find very little to recommend here.

NOTE: On double-checking the source, I noticed for the first time that it said that it was one of the first BRITISH vampire movies to take place in the present.