The Vampire Film Review

Aka - El Vampiro

A year before Hammer and Christopher Lee took the stake out of Dracula's heart and rejuvenated the Universal horror character, this Mexican film ploughs much of the same territory. With little more than a fog machine, a crumbling hacienda and wind, it manages to turn this into a very good spooky atmospheric black and white film. Mexico was making some fine horror films in the 1950s that had nothing to do with wrestlers or superheroes - just classic plots influenced by the old Universal films. Well-shot and directed with some terrific imagery.

A small town in Mexico has been finding bodies with no blood and they think that a vampire has returned. One-hundred years ago this same thing happened before they killed the vampire and shut the body into a vault. A train arrives carrying two items of interest. A coffin filled with dirt from Hungary - not at all suspicious - and the beautiful Marta (Ariadne Welter) has returned to her old home after her uncle told her that her aunt is dying. At the train station, she is told that no one will take her at night, but the fellow who comes for the dirt takes her to her old home way out in the country. But the aunt has died and been buried into the wall and the hacienda is falling apart. A man at the station also came with her saying he was a salesman - but Enrique (Abel Salazar) is more than that.

Things are a bit creepy in the house especially since her other aunt (Carmen Montejo) walks around in a black cape - and hasn't aged in decades. A good plastic surgeon? No. Better. Then Count Duval in his carriage shows up at night - very pale, a cape, nicely dressed, perfect manners and looking as if he just woke up - from a coffin. He can turn into a bat which comes in handy when he wants to visit ladies on the second floor. But he is an equal-opportunity non-gender specific blood sucker as he takes down a boy and slurps him up. Oh, your niece is staying here - and is she pretty? Oh, yes. A nice twist or two that I didn't see coming. Directed by Fernando Méndez, who helmed a few other horror films as well - or I expect they are from their titles - The Body Snatcher, The Living Coffin, The Black Pit of Dr. M and the sequel to this film, The Vampire's Coffin.