Clearly aiming to outdo Hammer at its own game, this one unleashes body parts and amputations, an attempted sexual assault, lots of bright red blood poured into vials, and other unpleasantness guaranteed to have the BFFC clutching its pearls. Eventually Madeleine is putting her own life on the line by going undercover, only to discover the full, horrific extent of Callistratus' sadistic handiwork. John's fiancée, Madeleine (Shelley), scrambles to find a way to save him as he ends up working for Callistratus on a string of highly unorthodox blood experiments with the inmates. John Pierre (Ball) is sent as punishment for performing a fatal blood transfusion. Callistratus (Wolfit) is working at an asylum where, through various underhanded machinations, young Dr. A local doctor is enlisted to quickly perform a heart transplant only to be murdered for his trouble, and six years later, the revived and rechristened Dr. Accused of vampirism in 1874 Transylvania, a sheet-wrapped man is killed with a stake only to have his body homicidally retrieved by his disfigured assistant, Carl (Maddern). Even worse, the BBFC took out the shears and omitted the most violent and salacious moments from the film which, apart from a scarce French VHS, were essentially out of reach until a restoration finally reared its head in 2022. Unlike those other films, this one was shot in vivid, splashy color a la Hammer and took full advantage of the format with a bold, almost surreal aesthetic that was largely obliterated via cruddy film prints and haggard video masters for decades. Baker and Monty Berman, who turned out films like The Flesh and the Fiends, The Crawling Eye, Jack the Ripper, and The Hellfire Club before shifting gears to TV with The Saint. The film was part of a string of Hammer-competing British horror films from Robert S. You do get a lot of blood draining courtesy of a mad scientist though and lots of other Gothic blood and thunder, so audiences didn't seem to really notice. The vampire elements here are a major stretch to put it mildly, even it does open with a bloodsucking accusation, a staking, and a quick appearance by a bat. Nucleus Films (Blu-ray) (UK RB HD), Scream Factory (Blu-ray) (US RA HD), Artus (Blu-ray & DVD) (France RB/R2 PAL) / WS (1.66:1) (16:9), Dark Sky (DVD) (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9), Simply Media (DVD) (UK R2 PAL)Īn adorable cinematic switcheroo, Blood of the Vampire was pushed into production on the heels of the success of Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein and nabbed the studio's hot new screenwriter, Jimmy Sangster, to pen this with an eye on riding into theaters quickly after Horror of Dracula (or just Dracula). Starring Donald Wolfit, Vincent Ball, Barbara Shelley, Victor Maddern, William Devlin, Andrew Faulds
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