After their car runs out of gas, newlyweds Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne (Jennifer Daniel) are invited to be guests of the mysterious Doctor Ravna (Noel Willman) and his family.
The good doctor and his brood are vampires who would like to add Marianne to the family.
When Marianne disappears during a masked ball hosted by the Doctor, they try to convince her terrified husband she never existed.
Joining forces with the local vampire hunter, Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans), Gerald is in a race against time to find his wife before it is too late…
While it is not technically part of Hammer’s Dracula franchise, Kiss of the Vampire intended as another sequel, before it was reconceived as its own entity. Despite those tangential connections, it has enough similarities, particularly thematically, that make it worth discussing alongside the series.
It is also just a fantastic movie on its own terms - I would personally rank it higher than Brides of Dracula.
I haven’t watched this movie in years, but I never forgot the opening scene - the funeral of a young woman is interrupted by a man in black, who plunges the shovel into the coffin.
A high-pitched scream emits from the coffin, accompanied by a geyser of blood. The camera dives toward the coffin, followed by a dissolve to the interior, into a close-up of the dead vampire’s blood-stained lips. CREDITS.
Kiss of the Vampire was largely the work of a different crew, and it gives the film a unique energy.
Director Don Sharp admitted he was not particularly interested in the horror genre, and the film plays more like a thriller - there are almost no supernatural elements, with most of the vampire's actions feel more like a long con:
Marianne’s kidnapping is based around a game of swapping masks, while her husband is rendered unconscious with an endless supply of drinks.
And when the vampires go through the charade of deceiving her husband, it plays like a scene out of The Lady Vanishes.
Alan Hume, later known for his contributions to the James Bond series and Star Wars, gives the photography an autumnal chilliness.
The one familiar face is James Bernard, who delivers a score with more emphasis around the piano. More haunting than his imposing score for Dracula, but equally effective, and totally in the film’s voice.
The whole film feels like a twist on the Hammer template, from the reveal that the film takes place in the early 20th Century - a long establishing shot of lush countryside is disturbed by the sound of a motor car’s engine.
Most of the film’s early scenes take place in overcast daylight.
Dr Ravna and his children are presented as more contemporary than their surroundings, in contrast to the local villagers, who would not look out of place in Brides of Dracula.
The only time they dip into familiar fashions is the masked ball sequence, which features the vampire cult cosplaying the 19th Century, with characters wearing grotesque masks (for once, their monstrosity is externalised).
Clifford Evans’s Dr Zimmer is a distinctly different figure from Van Helsing - less analytical, more informed by passion (his daughter is one of Ravna’s cultists). He is an alcoholic, traumatised by his past experiences.
He also has fewer scruples about how to destroy the menace: he uses black magic to wipe out the vampire cult.
My overriding impression of Kiss of the Vampire is how understated it is. There is a stillness to the film that is arresting - some of the most unsettling scenes are based around the vampires just watching our unsuspecting heroes, with nary a fang in sight.
The leads are bland, although de Souza brings some fire late in the piece as the increasingly frenzied husband. Daniel is stuck as the object of (everyone’s) affection.
By contrast, Willman is effective as the charming cult leader, and Evans is terrific.
Filled with inventive touches (Gerald protects himself by drafting a cross over his heart in blood from a wound in his shoulder), Kiss of the Vampire is a worthy outlier from the Hammer template.
Related
Dracula (1931 Spanish version)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
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