Blood of the Vampire (1958)

Country of Origin: UK
Year of Production: 1958
Running Times: 87 mins
Format: Eastmancolor     35mm
Ratio:
Sound: mono

PRODUCTION
Production Company: Artistes Alliance Ltd
Producers: Robert S. Baker, Monty Berman
Production Supervisor: Ronald C. Liles
Production Manager: Charles Permane

SCRIPT
Script: Jimmy Sangster

DIRECTION
Director: Henry Cass
Assistant Director: Luciano Sacripanti

PHOTOGRAPHY
Directors of Photography: Monty Berman, Geoffrey Seahorne

EDITING AND POST-PRODUCTION
Editor: Douglas Myers

MUSIC
Music: Stanley Black
Conductor: Stanley Black

SOUND
Sound Recordist: Bill Bulkley
Sound System: RCA Sound System

COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP
Hair: Joyce James
Wardrobe Supervisor: Muriel Dickson

DESIGN AND SET CONSTRUCTION
Production Designer: John Elphick

CAST
Donald Wolfit (Callistratus)
Vincent Ball (Dr John Pierre)
Barbara Shelley (Madeleine Duval)
Victor Maddern (Carl)
William Devlin (Kurt Urach)
Andrew Faulds (Chief Guard Wetzler)
Bryan Coleman (Herr Auron)
George Murcell (1st guard)
Julian Strange (2nd guard)
John Le Mesurier (Chief Justice)
Colin Tapley (Commissioner of Prisons)
John Stuart (Uncle Phillippe)
Henry Vidon (Professor Bernhardt Meinster)
Cameron Hall (the drunken doctor)
Bernard Bresslaw (tall sneakthief)
Hal Osmond (short thief)
Max Brimmell (jail warder)
Barbara Burke (housekeeper)
Bruce Whiteman (3rd guard)
Otto Diamond (gravedigger)
Yvonne Buckingham (serving wench)
Muriel Allen (gypsy dancer)
Denis Shaw (blacksmith)
Milton Reid (executioner)
Richard Golding (town official)
Sylvia Casimir (laughing woman in tavern)
Theodore Wilhelm (emaciated prisoner)
Carlos Williams (stretcher bearer)

PLOT SUMMARY

Dr Callistratus runs an asylum from his creepy old castle. A young doctor, John Pierre, is wrongfully imprisoned there and discovers that Callistratus has already survived being staked by superstitious villagers thanks to his research into blood types. Now in need of regular blood transfusions, Callistratus is using his prisoners and the young local women as a living blood bank as, with Pierre's reluctant help, he obsessively searches for a lasting cure for his condition.

CAPSULE REVIEW

Blood of the Vampire (a misleading title) may look superficially like a cut-price Dracula knock-off with a dash of Tod Slaughter style Grand Guignol thrown in, but it's actually more interesting than that. It's a typically Sangsterian fantasy, full of Victorian grotesques and underpinned by the struggle between rational science and blind superstition, always a trademark of his best work. To this end, it probably has more in common with Revenge of Frankenstein (1959) than with the then recently released Dracula. Sangster makes no concessions to niceties as he ruthlessly exposes the violence and corruption of polite Victorian society, making this one of the most exhilaratingly brutal British films of its day. Director Cass was never a notable filmmaker - subsequent to Blood of the Vampire, he gave up his activities within the industry altogether to concentrate on his activities with the anti-permissive Moral Rearmament group, an organisation that bore many a resemblance to the later, even more insidious Festival of Light crowd. Quite what his newfound friends made of Blood of the Vampire is anyone's guess.

UK
Theatrical Distributor: Eros Film Distributors Ltd

USA
Theatrical Distributor: Universal International Pictures

Sweden
Rating: 15

West Germany
Rating: 16

1958
December
9: West Germany – theatrical release

1969
October
8: Sweden – theatrical release

He begins where Dracula left off!

asylums, blood, blood transfusions, castles, doctor

Last Updated: 15 October, 2008