El vampiro sangriento

I'm glad to see on Imdb that others have enjoyed this one too. The bizarre music alone is reason enough to see this movie. This is a dyed-in-the-wool spook movie, with its creepy atmosphere and great sets. The hoakiness only adds to the charm and puts it above what are called "bad movies." I love the big hairy (obviously fake) laughing bat that The Count turns into! I also greatly enjoy the dialogue about coffee drinking. I'd also recommend World of Vampires and Curse of the Doll People, which are both highly entertaining mexi-horror spookshows.

For my 100th commentary I picked this little film.Another south of the border flick snapped up for a few pesos by K Gordon Murray.According to some film books this film was hacked down from its original running time but not the dvd I watched.It could have used 15 minutes trimmed.I'll get to that in a moment.

This film starts out great.A coach driven by a skeleton races noiselessly through the woods. Rather spooky.In it is the dreaded vampire Count Frankenhausen.When the Count gets to his home we're treated to more fog and spookiness.

Then the yakking begins.One of the Count's idiot neighbors is his sworn enemy Count Cagliostro.They've lived nearby for some time and didn't even know it!Anyway Count Cagliostro babbles endlessly about a new method to kill vampires.It isn't even used in this film but is in the sequel, Invasion Of The Vampires.Then the Count Cagliostro goes to the capitol probably to filibuster and we don't thankfully see him until the end of the film.

His daughter and doctor fiance discover that the evil Count lives nearby.So Anna goes undercover as a servant to the Countess there.For some reason the Count hasn't fanged his wife but fangs servant girls brought to him by the sadistic Frau Hildegard.Well Anna turns on Frankenhausen and off we go.

But in the middle of the film the vampire and the doctor have a seemingly endless conversation about COFFEE!!ARRGGH!Cut this right out of the movie please!

There is some real brutality here with the whipping of servants and one has his tongue cut out of his mouth.The last twenty minutes pick up the pace and we're treated to a nice chase and some spooky shots of the vampire.When the vampire changes into a bat however he looks like a vampiric Bugs Bunny.Rabbit ears are on that bad boy!

In the end there is a climactic showdown in the cave of the vampires.

All in all some of the spooky scenes save this movie.The soundtrack switches from choral music to jarring electronic weirdness which is creepy.Stay tuned for info on the sequel, Invasion Of The Vampires.

This film begins on a dark, foggy night with two men and a woman in search of a body that has been hung on a tree and left to die alongside a rural road. Although the sight is horrifying to them, what they are most interested in is the mandrake plant that has grown underneath the body hovering above it. However, just before they can dig it up, they see a carriage coming through the fog and they immediately take cover behind a tree. To their astonishment, neither the carriage or the horse pulling it makes any noise and the driver looks like Death himself. And then, just as quickly as it came, it disappears in the fog further on down the road. Obviously shaken by this experience, they hurriedly dig up the mandrake and head back to a large house where "Count Valsamo de Cagliostro" (Antonio Raxel) has been patiently waiting for them. We then learn that Count Cagliostro has dedicated his life to hunting vampires and assisting him is his daughter "Ines Cagliostro" (Begoña Palacios), her fiancé "Dr. Riccardo Peisser" (Raul Farell) and the Count's loyal butler "Justus" (Pancho Cordova). Likewise, it is also revealed that their quest for the mandrake root was necessary for his research on identifying vampires-living or dead. What Count Cagliostro doesn't realize, however, is that the one vampire he has been diligently trying to locate by the name of "Count Siegfried von Frankenhausen" (Carlos Agosti) has recently purchased a house not far away and just happened to be the passenger in the deathly quiet carriage that very night. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I had previously seen several Mexican horror films and after reading a generally positive review on those pertaining to vampires, I decided to satisfy my curiosity and see for myself. To that effect, I was generally pleased for the most part as the plot flowed rather smoothly and the acting was quite solid as well. There was, however, one particular flaw in that the object used to simulate a flying bat looked more like a flying bunny rabbit instead-and this completely ruined the overall effect. I was also somewhat surprised by the ending but after a bit of research I discovered that there is a sequel titled "Invasion of the Vampires" which apparently takes up where this film ends. Be that as it may, in spite of the particular flaw just mentioned, I don't consider this to be a bad film by any means and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Of interest to absolutely no one this is my 100th posted review and I thought I would choose a movie that is one of my wife's favourites. We both love Mexican movies but Count Frankenhausen is her absolute favourite villain. This movie, directed by Miguel Morayta, opens promisingly enough. A black coach rumbles silently through the night, its driver is a skeleton; its passenger is Count Seigfried von Frankenhausen and he musty reach his home, the forebodingly named Haunted Hacienda, before daylight. Bellowing "Whip the horses, for Satan's sake!" they proceed through the night. This movie creates its own lore about vampires and it all works very well. A Dr. Ulysses Albaran, student of Count Cagliostro, learns that a vampire can survive having a stake driven through its heart. the only way to really kill them is by injecting Clammic Acid into their veins. What is Clammic Acid, you ask? It can be distilled only from the black Mandragora flower that grows only on spots over which a man was hanged. Sounds like killing vampires is a tougher job then we thought! Count Frankenhausen is nothing if not an over-achiever. He wants to turn everyone in the world into vampires with himself as their supreme leader! But if everyone in the world is a vampire where will they get the blood they need to survive? I don't think the Count has thought this plan through very well. He might not get to try it out anyway, Dr. Albaran and the daughter of Count Cagliostro have determined to get into the Haunted Hacienda and put an end to the Count. They have a surprise ally in the Count's still human wife who hates her blood drinking husband and keeps a wooden stake by her bed at all times. Out of this surprisingly eclectic assortment of characters watch especially for Bertha Moss as Frau Hildegard. This is a cold hearted a witch as ever graced a terror film. She protects the Count jealously against everyone. She stomps about the castle barking orders and dolling out hideous punishments to servants who transgress, like cutting the tongue out of the footman because he talked too much, and letting the Count appease his thirst on badness knows how many chambermaids. So can this vampire be stopped? Not in this movie! A sequel, INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES, came soon after. The effects are cheap but good editing makes them look more effective than they should. The impressive castle set was also used in THE BRAINIAC. The studio, Churubusco-Azteca, guards the copyrights to its movies very well so expect to search hard for this one on VHS or DVD. This film and its sequel though are well worth the hunt. They are entertaining and scary too.

This review is of the English-dubbed, K. Gordon Murray presentation of the film as THE BLOODY VAMPIRE. From the first frames--with a slowed-down horse-drawn carriage almost floating through the fog-shrouded trail, the soundtrack containing an eerie wind punctuated by a slow churchbell and wolf howling--you know you are in the hands of filmmakers who know how to capture a disturbing setting of gothic horror. While this film does have some slow talky moments, I would rate it among the finest vampire films of the 60s, equal to the best ones coming from Italy and the Philippines. Director Miguel Mortaya is a master.

The SWV video (which may no longer be available, for legal reasons) is from a fine print, and contains the outlandish and LONG K. Gordon Murray spoken prologue with a swirling, headache-inducing spiral on the screen.

If you were to buy only one of the K. Gordon Murray mexican horror imports, this may well be the one to buy. The film is so visually stunning that even those who dislike dubbing may be able to get past it here and let the film's shadowy images wash over them.