THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (1960) Blu-ray
Director: Renato Polselli
Scream Factory/Shout! Factory

One of the first of the Italian gothics to mix horror with sexuality, THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (“L'amante del vampiro”) is instrumental for ushering in the popular era of European vampire cinema in the 1960s (in its native Italy, it was released months before Mario Bava’s groundbreaking THE MASK OF SATAN aka BLACK SUNDAY). As The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film aptly described of the “great cheap thrills” within, the film’s dancers are “built more like strippers than ballerinas” and that pretty much says it all! Never before available on home video in the U.S., THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA now makes its long-awaited Blu-ray debut courtesy of Shout! Factory’s Scream Factory arm.

Somewhere in a secluded mountain region, a troupe of female dancers are practicing and staying at a mansion owned by an elderly professor (Pier Ugo Gragnani). Superstitions about vampirism are the talk of the town, and a village girl has been attacked by a bloodsucker and then buried alive (or as the living dead). The girls continue to perform their “ballet” which soon turns into an impromptu sexy jazz cabaret act by a string of leotard-wearing sirens. One afternoon, two of the girls – Luisa (top-billed Hélène Rémy, THE LAST OF THE VIKINGS) and equally blonde Francesca (Tina Gloriani, THE LOVES OF HERCULES) – along with Francesca’s fiancé Luca (Isarco Ravaioli, THE HANGING WOMAN) make their way to a castle searching for shelter from a rainstorm. Believing that the place is uninhabited, they are greeted by the buxom, raven-haired Countess Alda (María Luisa Roland, AMAZONS OF ROME) and her manservent Herman (Walter Brandi, TERROR-CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE), both dressed as though they were in a production of “Shakespeare in the Park” and offering their guests some tea. Luisa wanders off and is temporarily carried away by a leathery faced caped vampire (who is actually Herman, shifting between human and monster in appearance) and though all three visitors leave the castle safely, Luisa is not the same, and soon called upon at her window by her fanged admirer. In the meantime, the Countess lures playboy Luca back to the castle at midnight (not being able to resist her incredible thighs) but their rendezvous is interrupted by a jealous Herman; Lucas is asked to leave and the Countess then puts the bite on Herman, bringing him back to his hideous form as she rejects his love and deems him a hideous monster. Later, the two girls are abducted and brought back to the castle, and it's up to vampire hunter Luca and his macho mustached cohort Georgio (Gino Turini, BLOODY PIT OF HORROR) to battle it out with undead, conveniently enough, just as the sun rises.

Following a new trend in Italian genre filmmaking starting with Riccardo Freda’s I VAMPIRI in 1957, THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA admittedly capitalized on the then-recent worldwide success of Hammer’s DRACULA (aka HORROR OF DRACULA) at a time when just about every country was producing their own gothic vampire movie. The special effects depicting the climactic disintegration of the vampires when hit by sunlight looks very much like it could be the work of Hammer’s own Les Bowie, so much so that if you didn’t know any better, you’d think he flew over from Great Britain to Italy to execute them (ironically, it highly resembles his work in the much later THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES). Interiors were shot mostly in the scenic Palazzo Borghese in Artena, Rome in late 1959, with the film being released in Italy in 1960 (U.S. audiences didn’t get to see it until late 1962 when United Artists distributed through the Lopert Pictures subsidiary). The film is considered to be part of a quartet of early 1960s black & white Italian vampire movies including THE VAMPIRE OF THE OPERA also by director Polselli, Piero Regnoli’s PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE and Roberto Mauri’s SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES. All but OPERA were dubbed into English and distributed in the U.S. (though that film did receive decent coverage in the pages of Famous Monster of Filmland) and that’s the only that didn’t feature Walter Brandi in a lead role.

THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA beautifully blends the romantic, gothic and horror trappings (without it having to be a formal period piece) with a sense of acceptable camp. Impressively shot by Angelo Baistrocchi with ample shadowy lighting, there’s plenty of fanged creatures getting out of skull-covered crypts, mysterious nightly stagecoach visits, pretty heroines holding candelabras, victims being chained up or neck-bitten while fending the monster off with a holy cross, as well as our ensemble of vixens parading around in low-cut nighties or sheer hosiery while doing their exotic dance routines. The film is purposely slow-moving, with characters endlessly wandering through the woods and the castle’s interior, but this only serves to soak up the atmosphere in the grand scheme of things; a film which is extremely entertaining if you appreciate classic vampire cinema. When the film is not imitating Terence Fisher’s innovative example, it boasts a number of striking bits, including the village girl’s funeral where she’s leering out of her coffin lid’s glass panel, only to be destroyed (via a wooden stake) by monstrous centuries-old Herman after she's dug up and rises out of her burial box. Although THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA may be written off as cheap exploitation by some critics of Italian horror cinema (not surprisingly as its director would later go on to do direct the likes of DELIRIUM and THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL) its unpretentiously fun and stylish, and certainly deserving of rediscovery by a new audience.

After its U.S. theatrical release, THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA didn’t show up much on television (as so many other United Artists horror pictures of the 1950s and 1960s did), that is until the TNT Network and its “MonsterVision” era of the 1990s. Airings of the film from TNT were the source of many a bootleg, and it never saw the light of VHS, laserdisc or DVD. Scream Factory deserves praise for saving the film from random obscurity and issuing it straight to Blu-ray, with a transfer that’s a 2K scan of the last surviving fine grain film print, and a considerable amount of time was spent restoring it. The results are quite spectacular, with the film being presented in 1080p HD in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The black and white source material is indeed largely clean, with clarity and contrast consistently sharp. The natural grain structure maintains a pleasing filmic appearance, with the gray scale boasting plenty of detail. Blacks are appropriately deep and whites are also well defined (the titles on the source print are in the original Italian). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono English track offers clean and clear sound and is devoid of any significant imperfections, so the mix is just fine for a low budget film of this vintage, and the original Italian track (also DTS-HD MA 2.0) is also on hand, sounding just as good. Optional English subtitles are included.

A great extra here is the 8mm home movie version of THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (9:55). Back in the 1970s, the Fort Lee, New Jersey-based company Ken Films released a number of truncated versions of movies (including quite a few from the United Artists film library) mostly in 200-foot versions like this one — which was available in both Super 8 and Standard 8 — that run under 10 minutes (there was also a 50-foot version which ran under three minutes!). There was no sound version for this particular title, so it was only available silent with superimposed subtitles, as you’ll see here. The creative minds behind Ken Films rewrote some of the dialogue to contain such lines as “Oh, my luscious one” and “You cheap wench” and the start of this 8mm short contains some of the American release credits. The soft, dirt-ridden replication of what one of these home movies looked like (this would cost about $10 back in the 1970s) should give whiny modern Blu-ray reviewers of a certain age an indication of how good they actually have it in terms of media technology today compared to what he had to endure (and pay for) decades ago! A nice still gallery is also included, not only containing stills and poster art but also vintage drive-in ads (it played with Roger Corman’s TOWER OF LONDON a lot) and the box cover of the Ken Films 8mm home movie edition. (George R. Reis)

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