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THE VAMPIRE
Rating: 
USA. 1957.
Director – Paul Landres, Screenplay – Pat Fielder, Producers – Arthur Gardner & Jules V. Levy, Photography (b&w) – Jack MacKenzie, Music – Gerald Fried, Makeup – Dan Roberson, Art Direction – James Vance. Production Company – Gramercy Pictures.
Cast:
John Beal (Dr Paul Beecher), Coleen Gray (Carol Butler), Kenneth Tobey (Sheriff Buck Donnelly), Lydia Reed (Betsy Beecher), Dabbs Greer (Dr Will Beaumont), James Griffith (Henry)
Plot: Smalltown doctor Paul Beecher investigates the death of research scientist Matt Campbell and a patient who have both been peculiarly bitten in the neck. Common to these is a series of experimental pills created by Campbell. Beecher starts taking these but soon after finds that he is transforming into a vampire monster and being driven to go out and kill.
The Vampire is an oddity. It was the first film to deal with vampirism in the scientific/medical sense. This gives it a peculiarity as a vampire film. It is a vampire film without crucifixes, garlic, coffins or anything classically associated with vampires – the vampire even walks around in daylight. In fact, this vampire is not even associated with blood drinking – there are bites at victims’ necks but it is never explained how they initially came to be there. This makes it seem more of a parable about drug addiction than a story about vampirism, it is closer to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde than it is to Dracula. The script is very vague about how the doctor comes to start using the pill in the first place. Visually and directorially, the film is dull.
Director Paul Landres and screenwriter Pat Fielder went onto make a subsequent vampire film with The Return of Dracula (1958), as well as the sf film The Flame Barrier (1958).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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