Grave of the Vampire (1972)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

not horrible nor great

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I give it extra points for the extended fight scene at the end. Those guys really beat the crap out of each other!

Lovers smooching in a graveyard – you take me to the nicest places, darling – when their canoodling is interrupted by an intruder who opens his coffin, rips off the car door, murders the teenager in love, and rapes his sweetheart. Fortunately the rape is implied rather than explicit, but this is a strange beginning even for a vampire flick.One person is wise to what has happened, a detective who has obviously seen one too many Bela Lugosi film; we are told as much. Unfortunately, America's answer to Sherlock Holmes is murdered around half hour into the film. By whom? You guessed. So what happens to our rape victim? She becomes pregnant, convinces herself the baby belongs to her dead boyfriend – which does rather make one wonder what her mother told her about the birds and the bees – and keeps the baby. Baby is born and we fast-forward twenty or so years, when baby's mission in life is revealed – to kill his father. Murder is a bit of a strong word, come to think of it, so is kill. So who is Daddy? Would you believe a college lecturer? Teaching evening classes of course. Well, sure beats lying in that coffin all night. We are spared little details such as what he put on his CV and how he obtained his fake identity, but clearly he must be stopped, because he's been a busy lad since he impregnated that wench in the cemetery, indeed he murders another innocent girl a few minutes before his son succeeds in tracking him down.Do you really want to hear anymore?

Bad quality of the reel, intact. Bad score editing, yes it hurt my ears. A lot of hiss, yesssssssssssssssss. Hue problems, OMG! No blood or nudity, not a drip or a tit. Cheap score, indeed very simple but effective. Carnival make-up, o did it contain make-up? Simple effects, just some dental issues. Scary vampire, hmmmm, he walks in the sun so no. Wooden acting, yes and at the end over-the-top acting. And what a funny ending just before the credits. But somehow the script was okay and what the vampire had to tell was okay, surely a good example of drive-in trash, not perfect for todays standards but surely for the grindhouse/drive-in freaks.

Average Hammer pastiche shot long ago by the Americans, conventionally atmospheric and scary, Grave of the Vampire has a disjointed and _resumative script, it takes almost half the movie to prepare the actual plot—a guy's hunt for his vampire father, whose nemesis the youngster became.Lyn Peters looks hot, though, and so does Margaret Fairchild (the sexy librarian). The cast in interesting; Carmen Argenziano plays one of the ghoul's guests at the séance. (And this reunion scene, the reunion at Croft's, is even worse than the rest of the flick. It happened I have seen Grave of the Vampire the same day I saw THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, which is simply a very good adventure movie, a very well made exotic shocker.) The _ilogicallity naturally holds little interest; Dracula is interesting because he's explained, at least partly, while Michael Pataki's New England ghoul is simply assigned limitless magical powers, which makes him boring. A vampire holds the interest if he's a form of life—or of sickness within life; he's disposable if he's merely a superhero.