Blood For The Vampire/Le Sang Du Vampir — Blood For The Vampire( Blu Ray/ DVD)

During the 1950s and 1960s, Hammer’s brand of gothic horror was pulling big crowds at movie houses around the world, and as with anything popular, there were plenty of rip-offs/ copies of the studios' output. 1958’s Blood For The Vampire was one such film, but don’t be fooled by its title, or its Dracula like poster artwork- what we have here is a campy and schlocky mad doctor camper, which is lined with all the classic Hammer gothic tropes- castles, graveyards, demented doctors, deformed henchmen, and splatters of Kensington Gore. Sure the films far, far from an original/ distinctive creation- but as an often hammy rip-off, it’s enjoyable. Here under its French title, Le sang du vampire- is a double format blu ray/ DVD media book release on the film on French cult film label Artus Films.

Released in October of 1958 Blood Of The Vampire was put out by Alliance Film Studios, a British film company who during the mid to late ’50s released a selection of B film fare which went from the horror/ Sci-fi of The Crawling Eye, onto the UK made but US-based noir of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, and war drama The Sea Shall Not Have Them. Blood Of The Vampire was directed by British writer/ director/ producer Henry Cass- who in all had twenty feature credits to his name- many of these were comedy-dramas or romantic comedies.  He seemingly only had one other horror film to his credit was 1960’s The Hand, though seemingly this was more of a brit crime thriller with a few nasty scenes. Blood Of The Vampire is a competently enough slice of gothic horror filmmaking- with all the tropes and hammy-ness in place.
 
The film opens in the year 1870, where on a stormy night in Transylvania a man is been buried and staked in a graveyard. As the villages disperse a hunched and deformed faced man is pulling the body out of the grave- then dragging it to an underground room, he calls a drunken doctor to help in & seemingly a heart transplant is carried out. Fast forward a few years and we find promising young doctor John Pierre(Vincent Ball) been sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit- he’s sent to a castle-like facility that’s largely for the criminally insane. In charge of the prison is Dr Callistratus(Donald Wolfit)- who was the body that had been given the hurt transplant early on, he’s joined/helped by his henchmen Kurt(William Devlin). Fairly soon John Pierre starts working for the not-so-good Dr Callistratus- who is seemingly fascinated by blood and is doing dubious things with prisoners bodies.
 
Wolfit is great as the hammy/ OTT mad doctor- he looks like a cross between Grandpa Munster and Frankie Howard.  Devlin is good as his lurching, hairy handed, and one false eye slipped down his face henchman. Ball is ok as the films good guy, though he does come across as a low rent Errol Flynn. The film’s main prison castle setting is neat enough- though like in some Hammer films it’s decidedly shaky. It also features a pack of dogs chained up outside, on site graveyard, and of course a hidden laboratory. There’s a fair bit of bright red gore along the way, lots of hammy mad doctors experiments, and all the stuff you want/ expect from a Hammer rip-off.

Moving onto this recent release- and it’s a duel Blu Ray and DVD presented in a hardback media book form, which in its middle features an eighty-page glossy booklet. On the discs we get a new 120/1080P high definition print of the film- we get both a French dubbed and an original English track- that has removable French subtitles. The print on the Blu Ray looks good, with nice bold colouring, and crisp definition. On the extras side of the disc, we get a thirty-two-minute featurette on the film from genre expert Nicolas Stanzick. Next, there’s Le vampire Callistratus- which is a thirty-seven-minute featurette- which finds genre writer/ expect Alain Petit- both of these are in French, with sadly no English subtitles- but they do both look like worthy extras. Next, we get French and English trailers. Lastly of course we have the 80-page booklet- this has a great selection of colour poster art, stills, and text- which is once again in French, and again there looks like a lot of ground covered in the texts- not only discussing the film to hand, it’s production, cast- but also wider gothic/ horror cinema. There are two different covers for this release too- so you can select which you want when you pick this up.
 
In conclusion, Artus Films have done another classy reissue on this release- and if you mad-doctor gothic-tinged horror you’ll be needing to pick this up. To buy direct head over to https://www.artusfilms.com/