Kiss of the Vampire

Love love these movies! Have a pretty good collection myself. Have a few on VHS, but when you find these awesome Hammer films on DVD best to grab them. This movie has all the great actors and storyline that Hammer Films are known for. If you enjoy any of the Hammer Films, you'll enjoy this movie immensely. The vampire is nothing like the great Christopher Lee, but he provides a well convinced vampire. The costume party scenes are nicely done and the music is quite lovely.
Nezzy!

I am reviewing this film because I wanted to let Hammer fans know this is available on DVD. The DVD set called Hammer Horror series features 8 Hammer films including this one. I had never seen this film before and I would have to say I was not missing much. This movie has some unintentional laughs and Christopher Lee is sorely missed as the Prince Of Darkness. The over all production isn't bad but,the story is slow moving and there is not much action. Not one of Hammer's finer moments. The DVD transfer is very good.

Kiss of the Vampire is a reasonable Hammer film from 1963, that is hardly ever shown on TV these days (which you could say about many Hammer films), and its that fact that made me want to get the film on DVD.

A honeymoon couple are travelling through Europe in an early horseless carriage that runs out of petrol. Finding there way to a local village it turns out that the Ravna family whilst initially very friendly have exceptionally large teeth!

There are some really good moments during the lavish ball where the couple get separated. After the ball the Husband awakes back at the local Inn to find everybody denying he ever had a wife, which creates a great sense of paranoia. Quite why he wasn't just killed I'm not sure.... Whilst the sets are basically cheap, they do manage to maintain a sense of grandness. You could see what Hammer were trying to do but they just didn't have the budget.

On the acting front Clifford Evans is good as Professor Zimmer. He is reminisent of Andrew Keir (Dracula Price of Darkness, Quatermass and the Pit) in many ways, and his use of black magic is quite a radical shift away from the standard vampire hunter. Sadly Noel Willman as Dr Ravna (effectively Dracula) is not up to the same standard. Hammer have done their best to make him look like Christopher Lee but it doesn't work. He doesn't have the phsyical presence of Lee (who was 6' 5" in the 60's) and frankly looks a bit impotent by comparision.

The ending of the film hints at more explicit things to come from Hammer, which would reach its peak in the early 70's with the Karnstein films. This is also available as part of an 8 film region 1 boxed set, which is much more worthy of purchase than this film is on its own.

When people think of Hammer Horror's vampires, they think of Christopher Lee being dispatched by Peter Cushing. Too bad that those wonderful actors weren't in "Kiss of the Vampire," because they might have salvaged a tepid vampire flick that descends into silliness by the third act.

Honeymooners Gerald and Marianne (Edward de Souza and Jennifer Daniel) run out of gas near a rural inn. They end up staying for the week, and are invited to the chateau of Doctor Ravna (Noel Willman) for a masked ball. But when a drugged Gerald wakes up, he finds that everyone -- even the innkeepers -- deny that Marianne ever existed.

Desperate, he ends up going to the peculiar Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans), who agrees to help him, since he has a personal vendetta against Ravna. But to get Marianne back, the two humans will have to tackle a whole castle full of evil vampires -- and somehow break Ravna's hypnotic hold on her.

The travellers-get-attacked-by-undead plot is pretty much a cliche by now, and it feels stale even in "Kiss of the Vampire," with its paint-by-numbers plot and bland acting. It has most of the Hammer staples -- rich settings and evil vamp cults -- but the plot is both ridiculous and very, very slow.

At first it's easy to be swept away by the vague menace of the vampires, and the sumptuous castle they live in. Unfortunately by the third act, it's deteriorated into dozens of panicking vampires running around in nightgowns. It's as silly as it sounds. The climax goes even further with lots of thunder'n'lightning black magic, and about six hundred rubber bats.

And the cast cannot salvage the glacial plot,. Daniel and de Souza do what they can, but their characters are such blithering idiots that it's hard to care; Evans does a good job, but his character is too thin. Willman tries hard to be Christopher Lee's Dracula, but he can't manage the same feral, sultry quality. He just looks embarrassed.

"Kiss of the Vampire" follows the formula of Lee-Cushing movies with none of the quality, eroticism or intelligence. One of Hammer's lesser vampire movies.

Like The "Dracula Prince of Darkness" DVD I Think Since Because The Hammer Horror Series Boxset has Come out I Think This Has went oop Too Bad Thank God I've Got This Edtion even though this movie is in the boxset i've just mentioned