Bébé vampire

This film, which I believe was distributed as a double-bill with 'Garden of the Dead,' has several disturbing elements which shoved it over the line of a traditional vampire movie; vampire rape, for one. Vampire offspring for another. Take two parts "Count Yorga: Vampire" and one part "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" and you have this flick. But it is an excellent B-movie in the horror genre with a definite 70s flair.

A couple are making out in a graveyard. For some reason a vampire awakens. He kills the man and rapes the woman (in an open grave no less). She gets pregnant, has the baby--but the baby will only drink blood! She provides her own and eventually dies. The boy grows up and vows to find his father and kill him for what he did to his mother. They do meet and things go out of control.

OK--you have to ignore logic with this one. At one point a policeman knows it's a vampire who raped the woman and who he is--but how? And a vampire is teaching night school (!!!). And WHY would a vampire rape a woman to begin with? Technically--he's already dead! Push those aside and you can actually enjoy this.

The film has a very downbeat, somber tone--as it should. No jokes or winking at the camera. Michael Pataki is very good (and scary) as the vampire father. William Smith has a few good moments as his son. The rest of the acting is just terrible. Still this movie works. It's well-directed, has an eerie music score by Jaime Mendoza-Nava and some really creepy sequences (the one near the beginning where a woman discovers a vampire in her basement made me jump). A pretty unknown little horror film that's worth seeking out. I give it a 7.

I can't really claim that I was expecting much from the 1972 movie "Grave of the Vampire" when I sat down to watch it for the first time in 2020. Why? Well, it was a vampire movie that didn't have Bella Lugosi, Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in it, so for an older vampire movie, it just lacked that selling ingredient. But still, I sat down to watch it, with it being a vampire movie and all.

And I will say that "Grave of the Vampire" wasn't a bad vampire movie, however nor was it an outstanding one either. Writers David Chase and John Hayes managed to come up with a storyline that was watchable, but you shouldn't expect it to be a vampiric masterpiece.

And the movie does show that it is from 1972, so this will of course not be a spectacle of grand special effects and such, yet "Grave of the Vampire" actually managed to do worse than the old Hammer Horror movies, oddly enough, in terms of special effects and the whole vampire atmosphere.

The acting in the movie was adequate, and that was most certainly something that helped to keep the movie as being watchable.

For a vampire movie "Grave of the Vampire" just didn't strike me as being all that and a batch of garlic - pardon the pun. However, there are far worse vampire movies out there.

My rating of director John Hayes's 1972 movie lands on a five out of ten stars. It was watchable, for sure, but this was not a memorable movie. Nor do I believe that I actually will ever sit down to watch it a second time.

In the 1930's, notorious rapist and murder Caleb Croft (Michael Pataki) assaults a woman, resulting in her giving birth to a baby named James. 30 years later, James (William Smith) wants to avenge his mother. Oh, and Caleb is also a vampire.

"Grave of the Vampire" is James ("Dream No Evil", "Garden of the Dead") Bryan's best movie. A low budget affair (well of course), "Grave" is a mostly Grim affair, with an interesting spin on the vampire mythos. Here, we see Vampirism as a curse, which is nothing new, yet except for "Blade", this is the only movies I've seen take advantage of the idea of a child with a human mother and Vampire mother. Also, this is Pre-Anne Rice, so no boring angst. While the dialog isn't Oscar caliber, lines like "Wow, Professor, you make a groovy medium!" should bring a smile to your face.

That's not to say that there aren't any flaws. For one thing, the acting is for the large part pretty wooden and uninteresting, with only Pataki making any real impression. Also, the ending is a rather lame "The End...Or Is It?" style conclusion, which makes you glad there was no "Grave of the Vampire 2."

Still, it's an enjoyable, original little Drive In/Grindhouse horror movie that, while flawed, is worth a look nonetheless.

I wish I could be ALL praising about this odd, unknown horror gem and, for a good 30 minutes, it did look like "Grave of the Vampire" would become a totally unexpected pleasant surprise. Although terribly cheap looking, the opening sequences are very atmospheric and frightening. The substance, too, seems to be original and a totally new take on the classic theme of vampirism. The films opens at a spooky and very ancient cemetery, where an undead dude crawls out of his tomb and assaults a young couple that are making out in their car. The girl is raped, but she survives, and nine months later she gives birth to a baby that drinks blood instead of breast milk (illustrated by one of the coolest horror-sequences in horror history!). The boy grows up an outcast and wreaks revenge on his vampire-father that still walks around in disguise. This downright sublime and eventful introduction blew me away and it really looked like I had come across a true hidden horror-gem of the 70's. The setting is scary, the idea innovating, murders are gruesome…I couldn't wait to see what happened next. Unfortunately however, this is where the ingeniousness stopped, and the remaining hour turned out another dull and ordinary vampire flick. The half-man / half-vampire being discovers that his "father" is now a history teacher (!) and plots to kill him for good. There are still a couple of bizarre plot twists, but they're overly stupid and far from believable. Also, because the originality has vanished, you begin to focus more on the dreadful aspects, like the lousy acting, the monotonous camera-work and the cheap set pieces. Near the end, it's hard to believe that this movie started out so promising and you regret not having pressed the stop-button while it was still good.