O Vampiro Negro

Here is an Argentine noir film (English subtitles) that is a take-off of Fritz Lang's masterpiece "M" with Peter Lorre, though not a scene-by-scene remake like the US version with David Wayne. Well worth viewing when you have an hour and a half to kill.

Excellent, expressive cinematography, good acting and the pacing of the film is perfect.

Highly recommend.

"El Vampiro Negro" ("The Black Vampire") is a film with a very unfortunate title. The film is NOT a monster movie and has no vampires! Instead, it's an Argentinian reworking of the German film, "M"....and 'vampire' is a word they use to describe a child molester who murders children. Unlike "M", the film focuses less on the murderer and more on the people around him, such as parents, suspects, the prosecutor and his wife as well as the police.

Both "M" and "El Vampiro Negro" are at their best when it comes to cinematography. In many ways, the lighting and camera angles look like film noir. And, the opening scene of the steps is a work of art...framed and lit so perfectly.

There also are some wonderfully powerful scenes in the film, such as when the blind man recognizes that the killer is near due to the tune he's whistling. How that is handled is pretty amazing. Additionally, occasionally the movie is brutal...surprisingly brutal for its time. I think this makes for a much more powerful and emotional picture.

Overall, a very good film. The only quibble is the same one I have about "M", as the films want you to take pity on the killer....as if he's not responsible for his actions. As a trained therapist who has worked quite a bit with such individuals, I would beg to differ about feeling any sort of pity for these perpetrators. Fortunately, the ending of this South American movie IS tougher and offers a tough final scene in which the killer IS held accountable...something not provided in "M".

By the way, in this film there is no reference to the killer molesting the kids. It wouldn't make any sense if he didn't...but I assume Argentine sensibilities at the time wouldn't allow them to talk about the sexual aspects of the killings.

A remake- though not exact - of 'M' has a Peter Lorre-like actor as a pedophile murderer (none of that on-screen fortunately). The cinematography is good - especially the ending scenes in the sewers, 'borrowed' from the Third Man.

A madman is loose in Buenos Aries, kidnapping and murdering young children and in general baffling the police. There is a sub-plot, the prosecutor has an unhealthy interest in the only witness to a childs abduction.

All this may have been cutting edge in the Argentine post-Peron era, but unlike the first few reviewers I see nothing remarkable here. The acting is less than average Hollywood of the same time, the story was told better before and after this. And you have to suffer through sub-titles also😁

Setting aside the inevitable comparisons to Fritz Lang's classic M from 1931, this is an excellent noir, full of dark shadows, a creepy serial killer preying on children, and plenty of atmosphere. Nathán Pinzón, even looking a bit like Peter Lorre, is fantastic in his own right. It had me from the start in that seedy cabaret, with the montage of closeups and the sultry performance from Olga Zubarry. When she glimpses a man tossing the body of a child in the sewer through a window later, she screams, and one of the women upstairs on the dance floor says to her partner "I like it rough too, but I don't scream."

The film lost a little momentum during the police investigation which follows, though there is tension during a couple of other murders along the way (mercifully, nothing shown). The prosecutor investigating the crimes seems so upright, saying procedures must be followed and caring for his paralyzed wife - but we eventually see this unravel, as he first gets on his high horse and chastises the cabaret performer for working where she does, and then out of sexual frustration tries to force himself on her. It was a fine moment when she rebuffed him, and justified the inclusion of the wife subplot which otherwise seemed a little weak.

Along the way there is action down in the dank sewers, a shoot out in the cabaret, and carnival rides, all suitably dramatic. The whistling of Edvard Grieg's The Hall of the Mountain King by the killer added an eerie touch. Made just a couple of years before the coup that would oust Juan Perón and put Argentina under a military dictatorship for several years, the ending seems to reflect an unambiguous desire to be "tough on crime," despite the desperate speech at the end ("I don't want to but I can't help myself!"), which was cathartic. It's a film that was well done, and still has power.

When I first saw this film on Turner Classic Movies' schedule for October 29, two days before Hallowe'en, I wondered, "Why are they showing one of those cheap, terrible Mexican horror movies in Eddie Muller's time slot?" I was wrong on all countsL the film turned out to be more noir than horror, a clever reworking of Fritz Lang's "M," and a film or real quality and power in its own right. Also it's from Argentina, not Mexico. Eddie Muller stressed the feminist aspects of the tale, particularly the appearance of strong women characters (ironically, Lang's "M" contains virtually no women even though a woman, Thea von Harbou, wrote it). Writer-director Román Vinoly Barreto manages to work in references not only to "M" but other classic films like "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "The Third Man," and even "Casablanca" (early on, when they're just starting the search for the child-killer, the police say, "Round up all the usual suspects"), but Barreto ably fuses those movies into his plot so he seems like a director with a true love of his predecessors instead of some kid saying, "Look at how many movies I've seen!" A truly great film, blessedly rediscovered (thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press Association - the much-maligned group that hosted the Golden Globes - for funding its restoration) and ready to take its place as one of the classics of the film noir era.