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Grave of the Vampire (1972)


This week, the "What Movie Wednesday" was a close competition between the three choices.  If it hadn't been for one vote near the end, it would've been a TRIPLE feature night.  Luckily, I was able to get some sleep because that one vote made "Grave of the Vampire" the winner.

James is hunting down a centuries old vampire who has risen from his slumber to hunt again.  The vampire is also his own father...

The basic premise is interesting and could provide for quite a good story, too bad this movie fails to come anywhere close to fulfilling that potential.  The story starts out interesting enough.  A vampire rises from the grave, rapes and impregnates a woman after killing her boyfriend.  The detective assigned to the case suspects that a vampire is involved, and begins to hunt it.  At that point, the story goes downhill as the detective gets killed, and we jump ahead several years to when the woman's baby is a full grown man hunting down his father (with a voice over thrown in for good measure).  There are so many plot holes, and illogical events that through most of the movie, I wore this sort of expression on my face:


Seriously.  A prime example is at the seance.  James' love interest is possessed by the spirit of her dead room mate, and identifies the vampire.  She faints, and James takes her upstairs- leaving the vampire alone in a room full of living appetizers.  Not only that, but while the vampire prepares to do some nomming, James prepares to have a tender moment with the girl.

There's only ONE interesting character in the whole movie- the detective who gets killed near the start of the movie.  I couldn't stand the James, and I felt indifferent to Anne and her room mate Anita.  The vampire left me feeling blah, and James' mother was just messed in the head.  If the movie had been about the detective hunting down the vampire, I probably would've enjoyed it more.

The acting was pretty horrid.  The detective's partner was cheesy, and Michael Pataki as the vampire tried to be like Christopher Lee's Dracula- but failed miserably.  Just not enjoyable watching them.

The camera work didn't help.  Plain, dull, and not very exciting or suspenseful.  To make it worse, you don't even get to SEE the actual kills or ANY serious blood.  A bit of blood around the mouth and on a victim's neck and that's it.  Seriously lacking in the grue department, let me tell you.

I couldn't even get through my usual two bags of microwave popcorn, because of how idiotic this movie was... and I love my popcorn.

This movie should've stayed in its grave.  I'm buring "Grave of the Vampire" in The Ugly.

Special Shout Out:

I want to thank everyone that took part in "What Movie Wednesday"- especially the following who voted for "Grave of the Vampire":

Ron Morgan
Jason Wiggins
Zoey Emily Onyx
Jenny Deol

The next "What Movie Wednesday" will be 14 November 2012!
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Comments

  1. TrevorDecember 30, 2012 at 11:32 PM

    Only good scene was the opening. A vampire rises from the casket, spiders and all, and rapes a woman in an open grave? Good stuff! The rest was unwatchable 70's trash : (

    ReplyDelete

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