Vampire (1979)
Directed by E.W. Swackhamer
Starring Jason Miller, Richard Lynch, E.G. Marshall, Michael Tucker, Joe Spinell, Barrie Youngfellow, Jonelle Allen, Jessica Walter
At a ground breaking ceremony for a new church, a huge cross towers behind the podium where a priest is blessing the site. The shadow of the cross falls across the land behind the small stage. Where the cross is casting a shadow, the earth has turned black, as if burnt, and is smoldering. Later that night, a hand breaks through the dirt, pulling its owner to the surface. Rising from his grave for the first time in 30 years, a creature of the night returns to stalk the city of San Francisco. And so starts the 1979 made-for-TV movie simply titled Vampire.
Back in the early 80’s, I went to a midnight screening of some horror movie called When the Screaming Stopped. I had never even heard of it before, but they were passing out barf bags, so how could this not be an awesome movie! Years later, I would discover that this was the re-titling of a Spanish horror movie from Amando de Ossorio, the very man who gave us the Blind Dead series. But the feature at hand was actually Las garras de Lorelei, or The Loreley’s Grasp. Looking back, this was might have been my first introduction to Spanish horror, and probably the first time my eyes laid upon the beauty was is Helga Liné. But more on that later. Since they were passing out barf bags, the movie had to be gory, right? And at that time in my life, gore was what I was looking for. The film did deliver, on many levels. It would be years later before I truly appreciated it for what it is. And that, is one hell of a fun time.
The first time I watched this film, it was from a bootleg VHS tape, several generations down from the original source, in Italian with no sub-titles. I was very familiar with the director, being a huge fan of his first three films, and was very excited to see his latest, even if it meant watching it under these particular circumstances. And it didn’t matter. Soavi’s use of the camera, the look and feel of the film, and giving us something like we hadn’t seen before, even though I might not have understood exactly what was going on, I still loved it. Soon, I would upgrade my copy to another crappy looking tape, but this time in English. Then a great looking one, but back to Italian. Then finally splurging the money and acquiring the actual Japanese laserdisc, which has one of the best covers to date, which you can see to the right.
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