Conjuring THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST (1945)

For a brief period in the mid-1940s, Republic Pictures--then a Poverty Row studio that became best known for its top-shelf cliffhanger serials--began dipping its toe into the horror genre. It proved to be a brief dalliance but it produced some noteworthy--but little noted--genre entries, one of which was THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST from 1945.

The film turns most of the established conventions of vampire movies--and of horror movies in general--on on their head and goes to such lengths to do it that this seems to be one of its primary missions. It's set in and around the sunny African village of Bakunda instead of dark, gloomy Europe. The vampire, Webb Fallon (John Abbott), is no Byronic charmer but a brawling saloon owner who, conversely, looks like a willowy dweeb.

Fallon can walk around in daylight, bullets pass through him without a trace as if he were but a spirit and his immortality is presented as a curse--even as he's draining locals and hypnotically (and sadistically) enslaves the film's hero figure (Charles Gordon), the film offers a degree of sympathy for his plight, something that wouldn't become common in screen vampire tales for decades. There are no ghosts in the movie. It's perhaps overthinking a '40s b-picture to suggest the title is a metaphorical reference to what's left of Fallon after the centuries have diminished him but unless someone just randomly slapped that name on it because they thought it sounded cool, it's certainly not an inappropriate read.

Republic was able to shoot THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST on their existing Western and jungle film sets, making it an economical production (and one suspects such considerations of economy helped give birth to the project in the first place). For the most part, its a well-played, entertaining, innovative take on vampires and, at less than an hour long, it never outlives its welcome.

Hey, how many vampire tales feature pitched gun-battles in the jungle?

Some other images from the film:

Adele Mara, as Lisa the tavern dancer.

Martin Wilkins as Simon Peter knows how to deal with vampires.

Peggy Stewart's Julie, under the vampire's influence.

The film was directed by Lesley Selander, a very prolific maker of Westerns, and written by hardboiled pulp writer John K. Butler--one of the Black Mask Boys and a Republic regular--and Leigh Brackett, who went on to work on, among other things, RIO BRAVO (1959), THE BIG SLEEP (1946), Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE (1973) and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980).

There doesn't seem to be a lot of information available on the movie. It was basically just dismissed as a forgettable non-event by The Usual Sources. Michael Weldon's "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film," calls it "slow horror." Phil Hardy's "Encyclopedia of Horror Movies" says the film is "quite unable to make anything out of a potentially intriguing story." In "Poverty Row Horrors." Tom Weaver devotes more than 6 pages to it and it's all just basic what-happens-in-the-movie material interspersed with rubbishing it. He momentarily says its "mix of vampire, voodoo and jungle film elements is offbeat enough to be almost appealing," then goes right back to hacking on it.

I first got wind that THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST was better than this from podcaster Jim Moon, who, as a sort of supplement to his excellent history of Universal horror last year, did a pair of eps on Republic's horror picture shows, movies made to try to get a piece of the audience Universal was drawing at the time. "It's smart, sophisticated, atmospheric and really, it deserves to be far better known than it is," Jim concluded,[*] calling it

"a particularly fine little movie... It's refreshingly different, even today, it stands out from many of the vampire films that came after it and it's one of those movies I'm quite baffled why it's took me so long to find it, because it is a great little flick."

I wouldn't want to oversell it to the point of creating unrealistic expectations but I largely agree with Jim. The movie is nothing of the caliber of, say, THE WOLF MAN or Val Lewton's '40s horror productions but it's light-years ahead of what Poverty Row was usually producing at the time, it's the best of Republic's often-good ventures into the genre and it doesn't merit either its obscurity or the offhand dismissals often directed its way. If that particular milieu is of interest to you or if you're a horror fan looking for something fresh and/or interesting and have a little time on your hands--and a little time is all it takes--check out THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST.

(And by the way, the movie is available for free on Youtube).

--j.

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[*] Jim's work, by the way, is excellent, and I've been meaning to write up some fulsome praise of it for a while now. For here, I'll throw in this link to Hypnogoria, his home base, and a hearty recommendation. If you find you like his content--and given that you're my audience, you probably will--maybe send a few spare simoleons his way.

Resurrecting HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN 1997

In 1997, NBC aired a mini-series remake of Universal's 1944 HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It's little-remembered today, never seems to get much of a mention, so I thought I'd offer a few words about and images from it here (I apologize in advance for the quality of the images; they were capped from an old VHS rip, as this has never had a proper digital-era release).

Helmed by prolific tv director Peter Werner, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN '97 was the network's Halloween project that year. It ended up--for whatever reason--airing over 2 nights in early November.

TV Guide promo.

Adrian Pasdar stars as homicide detective Vernon Coyle, who, working a series of bizarre murders, is led into a world of monsters operating in contemporary Los Angeles.

The always-excellent C.C.H. Pounder is Dr. Shauna Kendall, a professor up on the monster lore who becomes Coyle's Van Helsing. In horror movies, this kind of very well-worn ambulatory exposition encyclopedia can be a really thankless part but Pounder tackles it with sincerity.

And then, there are the monsters. Crispian Grimes (Greg Wise) is a modern-day Dracula, a wealthy vampire who owns a club called "House of Frankenstein," has his own wolf-man henchman (Carsten Norgaard) for carrying out dirty work and finances an ultimately-successful Arctic expedition to find the long-lost Frankenstein's monster (Peter Crombie), which he intends to keep on ice and use as, no kidding, an attraction at his club (yeah, it's that kind of movie).

The Frankenstein monster on ice...

...and thawed.

Vampire Grimes in more-or-less human form...

...and in full monster form.

Grace Dawkins (the breathtaking Teri Polo) survives a werewolf attack, becomes involved with Coyle (who is investigating that attack) and becomes a werewolf herself. Grimes is soon infatuated with her as well--who can blame him?--and proves a particularly pernicious suitor.

Grace Dawkins (Teri Polo), flashing werewolf eyes.

The werewolves of HoF97 can be seen as a bit of a cheat. Screen werewolves are typically presented as some sort of human/wolf hybrid, a make-up job or something the production's other creature creators cobble together, but here, the humans just shed a lot of mass and, through the "magic" of crude CG morphing, change into regular wolves. In a bit of ham-handed symbolism, Dawkins becomes a white wolf. On the evening of her first transformation, Grimes, in his bat-man form (which proves the creators had seen BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA),[*] carries off her monster-form wolf.

The Frankenstein monster doesn't much care for the modern world. When Grimes tries to enslave him, he likes that even less. The mini spends a lot of time setting up these conflicts, then throws the characters against one another. Images:

Rubber-suited Grimes confronts an enchained Frankenstein monster.

A POV "vampire-vision" shot of Grimes as he flies around L.A.

One of Grimes' undead henchmen.

Grimes at the throat of Dawkins.

Coyle's police captain (J.A. Preston), reacting to the film's plot.

The 1990s were a great era for cinema but generally a poor one for horror movies and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN '97 sort of conforms to that stereotype. It puts together a lot of talent and manages some noteworthy moments, but it's definitely not a special movie. It's played entirely straight and while irony, in such a terminally self-amused age, really can begin to feel like the shackles of youth, this could have benefited from a lot more of it. It takes a modicum-or-more of creative spark to mold something memorable out of this kind of rubbed-to-nubbins material and there just isn't much of that here. Character motives are weak or non-existent, the characters themselves are rote and uninteresting, visual flare is fleeting. A lot of what the mini gives us is stuff we've already gotten from other movies. And gotten. And gotten. And gotten. The original 1944 picture of the same name was the 2nd of Universal's "monster mash" flicks, a point when the studio had already skied over the Selachimorpha when it came to its once-formidable horror movies and, its glory days of Gothic gloom mythogenesis fading, it was cutting budgets and creative corners while trying to maintain box-office receipts by matching against one another their still-profitable monsters--letting the gimmick itself be the grunt-work. Oddly enough, the remake fits comfortably in that milieu. One could argue it merits its obscurity but if, like this writer, one keeps warm a special, dark, cobweb-bedecked cavern in one's heart for this kind of monster mythology, mileage may vary.

For the curious, there are multiple versions of both parts of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN '97 on Youtube. Here's an NBC promo for the first night of the mini.

--j.

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[*] Make-up effects artist Greg Cannom, who died only last month, worked on both this and, a few years earlier, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.