El vampiro de la autopista

The original Spanish title for this film was THE VAMPIRE OF THE HIGHWAY but it isn't any more appropriate than the ludicrous one it is saddled with here; now if it had been called "The Horrible, Stupid Film"...

Ostensibly a vampire flick, our villain here is also capable of invisibility(!) and only bites his victims after strangling them to death; besides, he keeps busting his descendant's balls to get him to do the right thing and drive a stake through his heart!! Now is that stupid or what? The latter is an albino-ish, handsome young man who, unfortunately, is prone to drinking himself senseless practically every night. All the girls in the film (of which there are, for no reason at all, about five or six) are there literally to undress, take a shower, put on the most inconsequential of nighties, make love with their hunk of a boyfriend and expire at the hands of the marauding Count Winninger(!) who naturally sports a Dracula-like cape and keeps his coffin in the basement of his castle. There is also the usual roster of disbelieving police detectives and officers who only serve as fodder for the blood-thirsty vampire.

My unconditional love for Horror movies will get me to watch almost anything in that vein, especially something of this vintage; it's a pity that this one here proved to be so anemic...

Count Oblensky (Waldemar Wohlfahrt), heir to the Winninger estate, moves into his ancestral castle despite a spate of unsolved murders in the vicinity; there, he discovers the long dead Baron Winninger, a vampire with the power of invisibility and a longing to be staked, who is cursed to rise from his tomb to kill. Also unperturbed by the rising number of corpses is Oblensky's tasty fiancé Susan, who pays her boyfriend a visit and finds herself stalked by the undead baron.

The plot for The Horrible Sexy Vampire is decidedly mediocre and leads to quite a few stretches of tedium wherein a police inspector investigates the murders and Oblensky explores his castle. Thankfully, the film's bloodsucking baron has a proclivity for sexy female victims, attacking only after they have removed some or all of their clothes, meaning that the dreary scenes of police procedure and Oblensky's investigation of his new home are regularly punctuated by far more entertaining moments in which naked hotties are offed by the kill-crazy count (who seems to forget that he's a vampire, throttling his victims rather than making use of his fangs).

Low budget Spanish terror packing suspense , tense, horrifying happenings , plot twists , nudism and lots of blood carried out by a mysterious vampire undertaking a criminal spree . A ruthless murderer is spreading terror in the German city of Stuttgart by carrring out a criminal spree seemingly unconnected string of people. As mysterious killings are happening , some kind of sadist, but not human, is murdering people. A forensic is convinced that the murders are the evil workings of a reclusive odd baron who died many years ago. Then a descendant (Wal Davis ) of the baron appears and he becomes the prime suspect . Meanwhile , a stubborn police inspector (Barta Barri) is investigating the bloody crimes . It is diabolical! It is daring! It is stalking, it cuts, it rips!

A suspenseful and so-so horror movie, though rewarding at times with disgusting killings , brief nudism and terrifying events . B-entertainment with a fairly suspenseful and frightening story in which a serial murderer on the loose undertaking a criminal spree by means of slitting, deguello ,slashing and other grisly executions. Intrigue , tension , suspense appear threatening and lurking at a creepy castle , in every room , and eerie interior and exteriors. The tale about an ominous killer begins well and grows more and more until the twisted final including the ordinary confrontation in which we figure out the guilty . Stars a peculiar actor , Waldemar Wohlfahrt nicknamed Wal Davis , he plays a blonde playboy and main suspect in a series of mysteripus murders who a ruthless killer is spreading here and there . Wal was a former German private detective and actor who in the 1970s was accused of committing the crimes of the serial killer The Vampire of the Highway, whose innocence was proven, and ended up starring in a low-budget Spanish horror film of the same name. , The Vampire of the Freeway, with the stage name of Wal Davis. The also known as Autobahnmörder had started his adventures on August 16, 1964, when his first victim appeared. In 1966, on June 13, he appeared in Germany, on the Upper Rhine, the third victim of a serial killer that the German press had dubbed The Highway Vampire. Waldemar Wohlfahrt resided in Benidorm, where he was well known among the Teutonic colony. Waldemar called himself Tex, he was a wealthy young man of 1'95 in height, blond almost albino, with blue eyes, and led a playboy life. Waldemar started a legal campaign against the German and Spanish newspapers that had defamed him , as the German Der Spiegel and Spanish ABC . They had accused him of being a murderer, an arms dealer, a bad investor , and a white woman dealer . He's detained due to possession a gun , but Wohlfahrt turned out to be a private detective, so he had one. Therefore, Tex, as he called himself in the German Levant colony in Benidorm where he lived , was released on August 3, after paying a fine for the possession of firearms of 25,000 pesetas . If that was not enough, to get rid of the staff Waldemar painted a black bat on his Mercedes sports car, and began using the nickname El Vampiro. In addition, with great swagger, he recorded an album with Waldermar's stage name "El Vampiro", with the songs "Benidorm" on the "A" side and "Tú parts mi corazón". His stage name was Wal Davis, and he was introduced to the world of cinema by the hand of director José Luis Madrid, starring in the 1970 film El Vampiro de la Autopista, aka The Horrible Sexy Vampire, in which he paradoxically played the hero who he was facing a vampire. From there his career soared, although we do not know if it was up or down, with a succession of titles straddling the B series as El pez de los ojos de oro (1974) by Pedro luis Ramirez and erotic cinema and even two films for Jesus Franco : Maciste contre la reine des Amazones y Les gloutones (las glotonas), as well as a Spag western Los locos del oro negro, and others as Las protegidas, El socarrón, Vacaciones sangrientas y La hiena. Wal Davis is accompanied by a cast who was usual in the Seventies acting in thrillers , horror , Euro-spy and other sub-genres as Barta Barri , Ada Tauler , Luis Induni ,Antonio Jiménez Escribano , Patricia Loran and José Marco .

The motion picture was regularly directed by José Luis Madrid. He was a craftsman who directed all kinds of genres. As he made Españoladas such as : ¨Lucecita¨ or ¨Strip-tease a la Inglesa¨ ; Spaghetti/Paella Westerns such as ¨The Ballad of Johnny Ringo¨ , ¨Seven Jackals¨, ¨The revenge of Clark Harrison¨ , ¨A Tomb for an outlaw¨; Eurospy movies such as : ¨Chineses and minishorts¨, ¨Ok Yetvtushenko¨ ; Crime movie such as ¨The Hyena¨ , and for the famous Spanish Werewolf , Paul Naschy , directed 2 movies : ¨Jack Ripper of London¨ and ¨Crimes of Petiot¨ and political/historical films such as : ¨Memorias del General Escobar¨ and ¨Command Txiquia¨ concerning the assassination of President Carrero Blanco .

As cheesy as it can get. Really, this is terrible but is a must have for so many horror buffs. The only way to see this Spanish horror is on VHS. It never had a proper release and is only available by DVD-R sellers or on 'Excellent' VHS, a Dutch label. And even then it goes sometimes over 100 dollars. I have found it in excellent (no pun intended) state on a flea market for almost nothing.

The acting is terrible and even the script sucks (again no pun intended). The vampire catches his victims not by his fangs but he strangle them. But it's a must see for the effects. The vampire do attack invisible. So you can guess how the victims move without seeing the vampire, really cheesy. There's also no blood to see just only when the stake is put into the hart of the vampire and even that is done by editing.

But why it's watchable is the fact that all girls strip nude before they are killed. A boring flick with gratuitous nudity.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 0/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

"El vampiro de la autopista" (called "The Horrible Sexy Vampire" in English) is mostly what we would expect from any Euro-horror flick from the early '70s, namely the women who exist only to strip, shower and get killed. What I can't understand is why the vampire strangles people instead of directly drinking their blood (or why he tells his descendant to stop him). As long as we just accept that this movie has basically no purpose accept to teach hot women not to remove their clothes - which itself presupposes that horny men are watching so as to see their big breasts - then it's a pretty fun flick. But not much else (maybe it would have been a little neater had it starred Paul Naschy). I actually got to watch a version dubbed in English with Dutch subtitles. Go figure!