Notícias

CineSavant reaches back one year to pick up a notable low-key horror from the team of Levy-Gardner-Laven and good old United Artists. They have a respected actor, a workable concept and a horror screenplay from an unusual source for the 1950s . . . a (gasp) woman. More civilized monster movies just aren’t out there, although this one could have used a more creative title.

The Vampire

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1957 / B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 75 min. / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 27.99

Starring: John Beal, Coleen Gray, Kenneth Tobey, Lydia Reed, Dabbs Greer, Herb Vigran, Paul Brinegar, Ann Staunton, James Griffith.

Cinematography: Jack MacKenzie

Film Editor: John Faure

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written and story by Pat Fielder

Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy

Directed by Paul Landres

I long ago gave up keeping track of all the aberrant vampire movies that were produced after horror became a direct-to-video staple and finally a streaming staple.

Producer-director behind a raft of 20th-century TV classics

It is no exaggeration to declare that the name of the film and television producer-director Arnold Laven, who has died aged 87, has been seen by millions of people all over the world, even if it might not have registered. Think of all those viewers of the TV series The Rifleman (1959-63) and The Big Valley (1965-69), made by Laven's company, Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions, many episodes of which he directed.

Laven was also credited as director on scores of episodes of such archetypal 1970s series as Marcus Welby MD, Gunsmoke, Mannix, Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files and Fantasy Island. In the 1980s he directed, among others, several episodes of Hill Street Blues and The A-Team. In addition, Laven directed 11 feature films from 1952 to 1969, some for companies other than his own.

In the late 1930s, the Chicago-born Laven moved with his family to Los Angeles,...