CURSE OF THE UNDEAD

d. Edward Dein (1959)

An uneven horror western, Curse Of The Undead isn't completely successful but it does come up with the brilliant idea of a vampire working as a hired gun, a black clad killer who isn't particularly quick on the draw because he doesn't have to be: you can shoot him all you like with ordinary bullets, it doesn't make a scrap of difference.

The vampire himself (played by Australian character actor Michael Pate) is almost sympathetic and, in his attacks on the necks of the local girls, regretful and tender. It seems that, some twenty years previously, he found out that his new wife had been sleeping with his brother, so he stabbed the brother to death before killing himself. Via a route that is not particularly well signposted, he then came back as a vampire and few soft necks have been safe since. To his credit, he hates what he has become, shouting 'do you think I wanted this?' as he kills. It's not all nibbling virgins and long lie ins, you know.   

Somehow the vampire ends up in a love triangle with a beautiful local land owner called Dolores and her pompous and overbearing preacher boyfriend (Eric Fleming*) and, as this is cowboy times, it can only end in a shoot out. Although you're rooting for the vampire, the preacher prevails, killing his undead rival with a holy bullet, a slug capped with a sliver of thorn from the site of the crucifixion. As the vampire's body fades away into nothingness, Dolores looks on in horror, knowing that this means she will now have to marry the boring, bossy Vicar and spend the rest of her life hearing about how he saved her life . Oh well, Dolores does mean 'sorrows', after all...

* I don't like Fleming's character in this film, but I always feel a bit sorry for the actor himself. In 1966, he was making a film in the Amazon when his boat overturned and he was eaten by piranhas. 

THE RETURN OF DRACULA

d. Paul Landres (1958)

Count Dracula is a colossal failure when you think about it. He’s wealthy, charming, attractive; he can transform himself into a bat, a wolf, a rat, a fog and has the capacity to live forever. But he’s incompetent and arrogant, a fatal combination that means he is vulnerable to mortal men who have none of his advantages, but are simply sharper, smarter and more organised.

The Return of Dracula illustrates this perfectly. In an attempt to reboot the Dracula franchise for the drive in generation, Dracula comes to atom age California under the assumed identity of a man he murdered back in Transylvania. America was built on immigration, of course, and, under normal circumstances, would have provided Dracula with everything he needed to continue his career as a supernatural serial killer: lots of people, bags of space and plenty of opportunity. With a bit of planning he could spend eternity flitting from state to state, free from suspicion, safe from harm. Instead, he moves in with a suburban family, smashes all the mirrors and starts acting really suspiciously. Within a few hours he has bitten the family cat to death and, a couple of days later, he kills a woman who lives a few doors down. It’s just bad management. Why couldn’t he charm the community he is living in, establish a really good alibi and then fly over to another town to slake his inhuman thirst?

In a small town, of course, the arrival of a dark, surly foreigner followed by a sudden, unexplained death leads to some immediate dot joining so, within a few days he’s being pursued by the crucifix and stake wielding forces of good. Even then, he eschews the chance to put on his cape and move on, instead carrying on as indiscreetly as before. This hubris quickly turns him into a mouldering skeleton with a piece of sharp wood in his chest - again. 

He never learns, does he?

THIRST

d. Rod Hardy (1979)

The 1970s was an interesting time for Australian cinema, producing perhaps half a dozen indelibly brilliant and original films. Thirst isn’t one of them, but it is rather good, and provides an interesting and cliché avoiding half turn on the standard horror mythos, depicting vampires as a powerful, hidden class of people who have money, resources, influence and their own way of doing things, a sort of undead Illuminati. 

These vampires are bound together by blood in every way, not just through their appetites but through their family connections and hundreds of years of heritage / inbreeding (so often the same thing). The most nagging detail is that the vampires have created an industrial process to ensure they have all the blood that they need, running large dairies where listless but good looking young people have their blood drained from them on a  daily basis until they are desiccated husks. The blood is then bottled or put into cartons for consumption at breakfast. I don’t suppose it’s too much different to the Gold Top I used to drink in the 1970s, which, delicious or not, most closely resembled mucous in a glass. 

My only real concern was a technical query: if vampires are born into vampirism, and are immortal, when do they stop ageing? I mean, If David Hemmings (featured here as one of the few sympathetic characters) is going to live forever, why doesn’t he do so in his young and pretty 1960s form from, say, Eye of the Devil, rather than as he appears here: grey, a bit baggy, slightly tipsy and tired, tired, tired? 

Quiet, forceful, strange, compelling, Thirst is intriguing and interesting for most of its running time, only letting itself down with some poorly fitting fang dentures and a rather silly red eye optical effect that kicks in just before the bloodsuckers bite.