Event

EL VAMPIRO (The Vampire)

Dir. Fernando Méndez, 1957
Mexico, 83 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

It is the silent, hypnotic stare that begins El Vampiro, a film that comes a year before Hammer's first take on the vampire tale with Horror Of Dracula, two films definitely worth comparison: German Robles is every bit up to par with Christopher Lee in icy cold command. We're no more than a minute and change into this film before our vampire Duval sinks his fangs into a victim through a cloud of trilling strings: we're definitely in high gothic style, and director Fernando Mendez (THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M, THE LIVING COFFIN) brings elements of noir, heavy melodrama and a beautifully decrepit mansion...to tell any more would be to tell too much. Some of you may have seen the K. Gordon Murray versions of this film, but we're showing it uncut, in Spanish with English subs, and for those of you who have never seen it and long to spend these thick summer months walking moonlit corridors and desecrating graves, you're in for a treat.