La invasión de los vampiros

I enjoy some of the supernatural thrillers from south of the border. My favorite Mexican movie may be "The Braniac" with Abel Salazar. In any case, this could be my second favorite.

This supernatural thriller has a lot of atmosphere and suspense as a doctor arrives to investigate a series of terror attacks from vampires. The resolution in which a chemical substance is isolated which eliminates the fiends is quite original.

The background music adds to the overall eeriness of the film. Indeed, it is really quite haunting and combined with the special effects, can really scare the viewers.

8/10 Dan Basinger

Like most of the Mexican horror films imported to the U.S. by K. Gordon Murray, much of this film is rendered unintentionally funny by some really awkward dubbed dialog. However, the film is worth checking out because of one splendid sequence which survived the dubbing process with its eeriness intact: When head vampire Count Frankenhausen is fatally speared during a brawl with the film's hero, Frankenhausen's numerous victims (despite each having already been staked through the heart) rise from their coffins in a quite unsettling scene, and march on the town. The reason this sequence still works so well is that it's mostly silent, with no mood-shattering dubbed dialog. Even in its Americanized version, this film still creates a powerful atmosphere of hovering evil, and the black & white photography is excellent.

THE INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES has a wonderfully dark opening with no dialogue. We watch as a man is led to his doom by a mysterious woman. The macabre atmosphere is set up right away, with howling wind, massive cobwebs, and creaking doors. All within the first few minutes.

Dr. Albarran (Rafael del Rio) has been sent to the small village to study their vampire problem. It seems to be connected to a certain Count Frankenhausen (Carlos Agosti). Unfortunately, things get a bit sluggish, and further bog down when romance blooms. You might find yourself longing for the promised "invasion" to start!

When the onslaught finally begins, we notice that the vampires are all sporting those plastic Halloween teeth that can be purchased at any discount outlet! Of course, The Count is wearing them as well.

Director Miguel Morayta has created an effectively gothic, yet slow tale, with very few actual thrills or chills. Mr. Agosti is perfect as the bug-eyed Count. It's too bad that he gets so little screen time. Most of the deviltry is left for his servant, Frau Hildegarda (Bertha Moss) to carry out.

Extra Points: For the bat, that looks an awful lot like a flying monkey with big ears! The scenes of it flopping around outside the window, and in the laboratory, are particularly rib-tickling!

This movie also contains one of the most anticlimactic climaxes in horror history!...

1962's "The Invasion of the Vampires" was the direct sequel to "The Bloody Vampire," a low budget epic storyline filmed in two parts by writer/director Miguel Morayta, with many of the same cast members, among them Carlos Agosti as the vampire Count Frankenhausen, Erna Martha Bauman as Countess Eugenia Frankenhausen in the first, daughter Brunhilda in the sequel, Bertha Moss as Frau Hildegard, and Enrique Lucero as manservant Lazaro. At the conclusion of the previous entry the Count had put the bite on his beautiful Countess then disappeared, leaving his daughter Brunhilda at the Haunted Hacienda owned by her grandfather, Marques de la Serna (Tito Junko). The old man has never informed the young girl of her undead parentage, and the arrival of Dr. Ulises Albarran (Rafael del Rio), skilled in the teachings of Count Cagliostro, means that Brunhilda has another protector to watch over her during nights of the full moon. Count Frankenhausen remains at large, using his lovely daughter as a lure for young men to meet their doom at his fangs as she wanders out to Dead Man's Lake in a hypnotic trance, but the doctor needs help in gathering the proper roots to put a stop to the growing cult of vampirism. Just as much bogged down with dialogue as its predecessor but definitely an improvement for a climax worth waiting for, once the Count perishes in hilarious bat form and all his previous victims (including his Countess) subsequently rise from their coffins to walk again, an army of the undead preying upon anyone venturing out in the darkness. Only by restoring the bat corpse to its previous human state via the scientific method prescribed by Cagliostro in the first film will the evil be stopped once and for all. This time a mostly silent Count Frankenhausen appears only sporadically, and in one chase sequence foreshadows Robert Quarry's better known Count Yorga in two AIP classics from the early 70s, while both the Marques and Brunhilda were mentioned yet never seen in the initial chapter. Had the convoluted storyline been pared down to a tighter single feature it would have been hailed an atmospheric masterpiece of Mexican horror cinema, but as it is there are many who champion both pictures despite their faults.

After "El vampiro sangriento" (Cf.), this tired entry ends Miguel Morayta's vampire diptych in the same hurried fashion as its predecessor, but unfortunately this time there are no surprises: the same bat with donkey ears hanging from nylon threads, more quarrels of Frau Hildegarda with everybody in sight, long sections of dialogs, and not enough action. Rafael del Río plays a fragile-looking and very indecisive disciple of Dr. Cagliostro (absent this time from the story) who arrives in the same region of the previous film, where nobility and charros live in terror because of count Frankenhausen's evil deeds. The young man's mission is to fight the count with a serum made from the flowers of black mandragola. It takes him 89 minutes of 92 to do so, while the attacks persist, the fangs grow bigger, and the number of dead men increases. Credit must be given to Bertha Moss, whose Frau Hildegarda is fun.