The Vampire's Ghost

Republic Pictures cranked out a ton of "B" pictures in virtually every genre during the 1940s, many of which were (at best) barely watchable. There were, however, any number of mystery and horror titles which rose above the typical meager standards and achieved a special kind of wonderfulness all their own. One such example is THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST, a low budget horror film written by the legendary science fiction and horror scribe Leigh Brackett. The tale benefits from the exotic locale of an African plantation with the peculiarly mannered John Abbott starring as Webb Fallon, a centuries old vampire now living in Africa running a seedy saloon. The incidents in the film are quite unusual, most notably an exotic dance performed by Adele Mara in Fallon's saloon. A strange and atmospheric little gem that should appeal to fans of esoteric "B" films. Disregard all of the wrong-headed and annoyingly condescending critical evaluations in the conventional film guides (Leonard Maltin, John Stanley, etc); this film is definitely worth your time and attention.

Vampire's Ghost is one of those gems that pops up now and again among the old B's. The vampire is multi-dimensional rather than unmitigated evil. There are some metaphysics mixed into the story. If you find this one on late night cable give it a watch.

John Abbott plays Webb Fallon, a centuries-old vampire currently earning a living as a dive owner in an African locale called Bakunda. Coinciding with his arrival is, of course, the expected outbreak of curious murders. The heroes don't put two and two together right away, but they DO figure him out, and head into the heart of the jungle, while he attempts to obtain a female companion for his further journeys through the years.

"The Vampire's Ghost" is more intelligently handled than some films of its type, no doubt the result of the craftsmanship of the celebrated Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote the script based on her own original story. Still, it can't help but spend some time going over some of the standard rules involving vampires, with which so many people are familiar by now.

Although a low budget production (you never do believe that the sets and actors are actually in Africa), the filmmakers, led by director Lesley Selander, make up for this with a presentation that is dependent on mood and characterization. Like many an old-school horror film, it relies on suggestion and subtlety. All we need to see are the frightened reactions of various victims. Abbott, whose buggy eyes are hard not to fixate upon, gives people such a cold stare that they meekly submit to his presence. This, even though he's not a particularly intimidating specimen physically.

The cast is good overall - Charles Gordon as the young hero, the pretty Peggy Stewart (who's still alive and still working) as the leading lady, Grant Withers as a helpful priest, Emmett Vogan as Stewarts' father, the stunning Adele Mara (whose exotic dance is a highlight), and Roy Barcroft as an unlucky gambler / skipper. But Abbott tends to command most of the attention, giving a performance that is world-weary and somewhat sympathetic. Webb doesn't particularly care for his continued, haunted existence.

This viewer didn't think the pacing was that tedious; the film maintained his interest for a modestly enjoyable experience running only an hour long.

Seven out of 10.

There are some benefits to growing older, and one of them is when I read the kind of reviews which more or less permeate the entries for this particular film, THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST, since many of those reviews refer over and over again to the 'minor' cast in the film, one even going so far as to call it a film starring nobody you ever heard of, and in a film that nobody ever heard of. This just isn't so. All the time I was growing up and going to double features (say, 1946 to 1956), THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST was in almost constant revival at our neighborhood theaters, an unusual thing where non-John Wayne Republic films were concerned (Universal, and even RKO with their Lewton films, were dedicated to keeping most of their horror backlog out there, but Republic was issuing Westerns by the gross back then and had no real need to fall back on earlier product), so one must assume that this particular film kept making money for Republic. In any case, it was actually the first vampire film many kids of my age ever saw (vampires were out of fashion until Abbott and Costello ran into Bela Lugosi in 1948), and John Abbott, with those absolutely bulging eyes, did a good job of scaring us (actually, a lot more so than did Bela Lugosi when they finally revived the 1930 Dracula around 1951), so much so that Mr. Abbott is not just a character actor I know, but one who seems to have traveled the long road of life with me ever since 1946, a never-to-be-discarded-from-the-caravan kind of actor. But as for actors nobody ever heard of, the reviewer is betraying his age. Abbott was not a star actor, but certainly a well-known one, and the year after THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST, gave one of the best character performances of that year as the cellist who cannot be corrupted in a major A film of 1946, DECEPTION, where he was acting against the very considerable likes of Bette Davis, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains, and more than holding his own (as he had as an on-the-lam spy in Bob Hope's THEY GOT ME COVERED a few years earlier, playing deadly serious against Hope's constant barrage of one-liners). Our female lead, Peggy Stewart, was THE leading 'cowgirl' actress of the period circa 1943 to 1952 (although Dale Evans, by virtue of being Mrs. Roy Rogers and appearing - and singing - in a number of his excellent Republic Westerns, became known as "The Queen of the West"; yeah, right), and was still in an occasional film as recently as in 2012! The missionary priest was Grant Withers, who was both a well-known leading man (early on) and character actor in film from the very late silent days up to his death (via suicide) in 1959, and had at one time been married to Loretta Young. (He was particularly noted for playing the police lieutenant in all the Boris Karloff "Mr. Wong" films, and for appearing in any number of John Wayne movies over the years.) Roy Barcroft was the quintessential Western villain or lead henchman in every second Saturday afternoon Western I ever saw as a kid, and was as well known to the audiences as were Allan Lane, Bill Elliott, etc., etc. Emmett Vogan, playing Miss Stewart's father, amassed almost 500 feature film credits, perhaps not being known to the masses so much by name, but certainly by face, to anyone who entered a movie theater for the quarter-century commencing around 1933. Adele Mara, who does that wild and crazy dance (noted elsewhere)in this film, played both featured and starring roles in about 50 movies during the 1940s and 1950s (the one I recall best being in the 1950 ROCK ISLAND TRAIL, which managed to inflame my still-immature loins at the time), and also did a lot of TV work in the first two decades of that new medium. The leading man in this one was, I admit, a cipher, and appeared in only a few films, but anyone who calls the rest of the cast 'nobody you ever heard of' really needs to see more films of that period. As for the movie itself, having seen it again periodically over the years, I find that despite its low budget, it continues to hold a strange fascination, thanks to John Abbott's demonstration of how to be totally evil while being truly sympathetic at the same time (and the bulging eyes don't hurt!). And as for the lack of 'action', I dare any reader to name another vampire film that has a full barroom brawl in it (especially one in which the vampire actually takes part and can more than hold his own with all those great Republic stunt men; when Lugosi throws a knife in THE BLACK CAT, he looks like he spent his youth pitching for the Budapest Little League Girls' Team! Oy!). Anyway, yes, a very minor classic, indeed, but certainly worth seeing, if only to realize that 70 years down the line your grandkids may be watching films with actors "nobody ever heard of" - you know, like Kevin Spacey, Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty, Robert Duvall, etc.!

I've wanted to see this movie for many years, ever since I read that Leigh Brackett had written the script for it. And, now that I have, I'm pleased to find out that it was worth the wait. Produced cheaply, by a second (or even third) rate studio, it replaces budget with story and characterization. John Abbott's Web Fallon (possibly the first sympathetic and world-weary vampire portrayal in the movies), harks back to John Polidori's Lord Ruthven (and Rymer's Sir Francis Varney) as his antecedents, and not the classic Stoker/Lugosi Dracula--one of the very few times the big screen has acknowledged there were literary vampires before Stroker.

It's too bad this one has basically slipped between the cracks and has become almost impossible to find.