Blu-Ray Review: Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

JULY 13, 2020

GENRE: HAMMER, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Troubling. When I got a press release about Kiss of the Vampire, I replied saying "I haven't seen this, I'd love to review!" and then I watched it when it arrived, formed my opinion, and got ready to write up my thoughts. Part of my prep for such a thing involves looking at the Wiki and IMDb pages for the film, and it was on the former that I saw a note about how it had been released in an eight-film Hammer Horror set. "I have that set and used it for HMAD!" I thought to myself, "Why did I skip it?" So I searched HMAD and, as you might have guessed by now, I *didn't* skip it - I watched and reviewed it in 2009. And at no point during this viewing in 2020 did I even get a slight sense of deja vu. Sigh.

The good news is, my opinion didn't change, so you can read that old review and spare me the trouble of writing it all out again. However, thanks to the new Scream Factory release, I have a little more context for some of its weaker points (if you're too lazy to click over, my overall feeling on the film is that it's "fine", basically), which warmed me to the film a bit. For example, it was originally designed to be a third Dracula film, following the Drac-less Brides of Dracula (which was also on that same set), but those elements were written out. When a movie starts off as one thing and is overhauled, it can never really get around the disconnect caused by the rewrite - it lost its reason to exist (i.e. make big sequel money) and thus is just kind of there, without any of that creative spark you'd normally find in an original.

I also had to laugh at my old note that the vampires don't really do all that much in the movie, because it's From Dusk Till Dawn-level violent in comparison to "Kiss of Evil", which was the television cut of the film. While removing the bloodshed isn't too surprising (though the movie was hardly gory to begin with, even by 1960's standards), the television version removed all violence and references to vampirism - even just shots of one of them baring fangs! - making the movie somewhat incoherent at times as we get people reacting to things that were completely excised. For example, one of the movie's cooler moments is when the hero is wounded in the climax, and he smears his own blood into a cross shape to ward off the vamps as he makes his escape. But the TV cut removed his quick thinking action, and all the vampires come off as human cult members or something, so the climax is now... the lot of them just simply letting him go for no apparent reason.

The censors removed so much of the footage that they had to shoot new scenes in order to get the film back up to a proper running time. But unlike the similar situation with Halloween (where the cast and crew were back together to shoot the sequel, so the new scenes, while still awkwardly placed, at least had some legitimacy), they didn't have the actors, sets, or (as far as anyone can tell) same people to create them, so they are not only clumsily shoehorned into the narrative, but ultimately serve no function. These scenes tell the story of a family living in town, whose of-age daughter is potentially falling under the spell of the film's villainous Ravna (the Dracula replacement), who the family is acquainted with because the mother is the one who makes the robes for all of his disciples*. To blend these scenes with the movie, they have one of the new actors look out their window and see, for example, the hero's carriage passing by, then comment on it while carrying out their own little stupid subplot, while never once interacting with any of the other characters.

Hilariously, these scenes manage to be even duller than the rest of the film, even in its violence-free form. The movie doesn't really start getting interesting until a (too-late) development where the vampires try to gaslight the hero into thinking that his wife (who they've inducted into their ranks) didn't exist and that he had arrived in town by himself, but none of this new footage involves that (if it were me I would have tied it in by saying that their home was where they hid all of the wife's belongings). So the new scenes just make you wait longer for the best part, before then cutting up the climax and making it incoherent. Oh well.

As usual, Scream Factory has put together some bonus features, including the ability to watch the new "Kiss of Evil" scenes on their own and a pair of brief tributes to the film's composer and production designer, respectively. And there are three commentaries, though they are confusingly split across the three different versions of the film that are available. The first is an old one with two of the actors (Edward De Souza and Jennifer Daniels), which is moderated by Peter Irving and is presumably from some laserdisc or DVD special edition, and it's fine - they're not as catty as some of their British peers so it's mostly complimentary about everyone, which gets a bit dull.

The other two tracks aren't listed in the "Extras" menu however, so you have to look for them. One is by Constantine Nasr and Steve Haberman, and it's only available on the 1.66:1 version of the film (which is 1.85:1 by default). Why, I don't know - there is no explanation for why the movie is presented in two aspect ratios, let alone why they couldn't just put the track on the default version. The 1.66 one also omits subtitles, which is annoying since sometimes they comment on a bit of dialogue that you can't hear OR read, though at this point I have given up hope SF will ever match most other companies and put subtitles on everything (hell, some of them even subtitle their commentaries! I don't ask for that much, but it's still nice). It's a good track though, especially the awkward parts where one will contradict the other (one guy will say "Polanski didn't mention this film specifically as an influence on Fearless Vampire Killers..." and the other will reply "Actually, in this one interview he did," heh. Fight!), plus they note the same thing that I did in my old review, which that the movie is curiously devoid of any of the big Hammer regulars. Nice to know I'm as observant as the licensed historians!

The other track is by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, and that one's only available if you opt to watch the complete "Kiss of Evil" version, which is basically presented as a curiosity (in fact, I only found it because I clicked it by accident - the track isn't even listed on the packaging) since you can watch the extra scenes on their own rather than sit through the film, now cropped to 1.33:1 and taken from an ugly standard def Sci-Fi Channel broadcast. It's a great track though; they explain the new footage for this and a few other Hammer films that had similar treatment, plus (as Nasr and Haberman did) go into the film's "Dracula 3" origins and some other trivia, as well as offer the usual biographical info. And, as I did in my old review, they also swoon about costar Jacquie Wallis, so I feel better about my 2009 thirst (when I was only a few years older than her!) when these much older dudes are panting about her in 2020. We don't do things like that anymore, gents!

All in all, if you're a fan of the film I think you can agree that it's a terrific package despite some bizarre decision making as to how it's all presented, where the best bonus features are buried in sub-menus in places you wouldn't think to look. I wouldn't say it's a top tier Hammer movie, even if just limited to their vampire films, but Don Sharp's direction is solid and the climax is worth most of the wait. When it hits 4K UHD in 2031 and I get a copy for review I'll do my best to remember I've seen it before.

What say you?

*Watch this version back to back with Us for a "We didn't care how they got their matching clothes!" double feature!

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