La Nuit des vampires

Good story and characters, snappy dialogue, suspense. A few goofs that added nothing to the story, but on the whole, a solid good time for anyone who likes a good old-fashioned vampire movie. Recommended!

The greatest films ever made mostly hail from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and the silent era, with some outliers from more recent years. This is not one of those. Meanwhile, though there are plentiful exceptions, genre fare in the 50s is commonly known for subpar schlock more than earnest film-making and storytelling, and cinema only started to crawl out of that rut in the 60s. I'm certainly not saying that 'Der Fluch der grünen Augen,' also known as 'Cave of the living dead,' also known as 'Night of the vampires,' is as bad as 'Attack of the giant leeches,' but it falls well short of being an exemplar, too. For all the good horror and sci-fi to be claimed among mid-century fare, this flick roundly fails to make much of an impression at all. Could you do worse? Yes. Is there actually any need to watch this? No.

The filming locations are gorgeous. The production design and art direction range from commendable to fantastic, and likewise the costume design, hair, and makeup. Those stunts and effects that are employed, though not necessarily anything remarkable, are mostly quite good. Generally speaking this was beautifully shot, a credit to both filmmaker Ákos Ráthonyi and cinematographer Hrvoje Saric. The story is flush with ideas ripe for genre storytelling, fitting right in with more famous features that play in similar spaces. All this is well and good. Yet the writing is highly variable, at first feeling decidedly forthright, then gawky and scattered, then slothful. The plot does solidify and become more specifically engaging over time, but in a runtime of under ninety minutes, that irregularity is unfortunate, and the greater strength takes all too long to manifest - with the less favorable traits never going away., and continuing to rise and recede. For as nice as the visuals may be, Ráthonyi's direction is less sure-footed when it comes to bringing the screenplay to fruition, very much echoing the writing in its uneven thrust, with a curiously indistinct, flat tone further mucking up the proceedings. The acting sadly follows in kind, varying from "okay, sure" to "pretty good."

There are far worse ways to spend your time. However, that the most appreciable facets here have to do with the excellent craftsmanship, and not the storytelling, says all one needs to know about the movie. I'm glad for those who get more out of it than I do. I don't dislike this, and I don't regret spending my time here - but I won't spend one minute thinking about 'Cave of the living dead' hereafter.

Released and Presented by Richard Gordon (who had absolutely nothing to do with the production of this film) in the U.S. as "Cave of the Living Dead". The police cannot solve the mystery of the seven murders which have alarmed the local villagers. They call in Inspector Doren (Adrian Hoven) of Interpol,and the only clue the Chief Constable can give his young and famous (it says here) is the fact that, each time a murder was committed, the electric lights in the whole neighborhood went out.

The locals believe that the killings of the young girls are linked to the vague shadows in the caves under the local castle and to the mysterious Curse of the Green Eyes. They distrust the young-and-famous inspector and offer no assistance when still another murder takes place in the village inn---in the room next to that occupied by the young-and-famous inspector---and the body disappears.

There are may suspects: the chattering innkeeper; the servant John (John Kitzmiller); the deaf-and-dumb Tom (Emmerich Schrenk); and the inscrutable doctor, Profesor Adelsberg (Wolfgang Preiss) who has been issuing strange death certificates.

Doren moves to the castle where Professor Adelsberg is carrying out some scientific studies. There, he meets the Professor's pretty assistant, Karin (Karin Field.) She is marked as the next victim, and would have been if the young-and-famous Interpol Inspector hadn't managed to discover the secret of the caves of the living dead and unmask the culprit.

In practically every vampire movie that I've seen, and they're quite numerous, the plot attempts to add a strange characteristic or gimmick to the myth of vampires. Usually these are very common things that are closely connected with the traditional characteristics (garlic, crucifixes, sunlight, …) but some movies truly exaggerate and come up with the downright craziest things. In this West German/Yugoslavian goth-horror production "Cave of the Living Dead", for example, the vampire attacks are accompanied by the loss of electric power! That's actually how the police knows there has been another murder. How do you explain that? I really don't see the connection between sucking the blood of a virgin and causing the lights to blackout.

Apart from this curious little anecdote, "Cave of the Living Dead" is actually a rather decent and entertaining early 60's Gothic horror movie that can easily compete with the better Italian and Spanish efforts from that era. The story and execution are very straightforward, but there are more than a handful of memorably suspenseful highlights, a good cast of characters and a beautiful homage to the greatest German silent horror movie ever made; Nosferatu. The film stars Adrian Hoven, who might be better known amongst horror fanatics as the director/producer of films "Castle of the Creeping Flesh" and the notorious "Mark of the Devil" movies. Hoven is terrific as the slick Interpol inspector (and bona fide cool guy) Frank Dorin, assigned to solve a series of strange and horrifying murders in a remote German village. During the past six months, seven beautiful young girls aged between eighteen and twenty-two years old have been found dead, and the only explanation the local doctor can come up with is heart failure. The petrified and superstitious villagers believe in vampires, and they're right of course. You don't need to be a very intelligent inspector to figure out the first murders coincided with the arrival of the mysterious Professor Von Adelsberg. The professor is allegedly occupied with his experiments all day long and his castle is build on a giant cave full of bats and coffins. Hmm, I wonder who's the vampire in this town… "Cave of the Living Dead" is quite fun to watch, especially to spot all the clichés and stereotypes, like village witch and the hysterical black guy. The atmosphere is often unsettling and most of the filming locations, like the titular cave and the well, are outstanding. The film is fairly explicit for its time and there's even some enticing nudity I totally didn't expect to see.

Inspector Frank Dorin (Adrian Hoven) is called in to investigate a series of bizarre murders, involving six women who have been killed in a small village. Upon arriving at the village, Dorin soon realizes that he isn't up against an ordinary killer. Luckily, a local witch offers her assistance. What, if anything does the odd Professor von Adelsberg (Wolfgang Preiss) have to do with any of this?

CAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD (aka: NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRES) is an enjoyable vampire yarn with some interesting variations on the traditional lore. For one thing, whenever the creatures attack, the power goes out. However, the method used to do away with them remains the same.

Co-stars Karin Field as the Professor's assistant, Karin Schumann...