Sexy shockers were a mainstay of the classic Italian horror film, and some of those films offered more sex--or, more accurately put, sex appeal--than shocks.  This is quite in evidence in the film we are about to hold up to the rays of sunlight, a film that seems pretty much satisfied with showing pretty girls sort of menaced by a not-very-menacing vampire, a film that, in the final analysis, just doesn't deliver very much in terms of...

By DAVE DUGGINS

Annoying Personal Tidbit: Before we even get started on 1960’s The Vampire And The Ballerina (which was released originally as L'Amante del vampiro), I have to warn you that I have "Lost" on the brain. You’ll have to bear with me if I don’t manage to excise persistent references to it here. I’ve been watching the first season on DVD (missed it, don’t watch much TV, long story). A funny thing happens when you watch a whole bunch of episodes of the same show: it begins to supplant reality. You think of those people as real. Your friends. Or your enemies.

Kinda creepy.

Anyway, it’s a great show and if you’re any kind of spook show fan you owe it to yourself to check out. There’s more disorienting weirdness in one forty-three-minute episode than you’ll find in a hundred of the kind of movies I usually review here.

Thank goodness Renfield has supplied me with some re-orienting distraction in the form of another Italian schlocker that will never fool anyone into thinking it is anything other than a movie. A really bad movie.

When I started watching, a preview of the Luminous Wurks video catalog fooled me into thinking the movie had actually started, depicting a shambling zombie clearly robbed from the Night Of The Living Dead’s graveyard scene. "They’re coming to get you, Barbara!" Sadly, this is a scene from another film. There is nothing nearly so cool in what follows--unless you’ve got a thing for fishnet stockings.

The film starts with a montage of wonderful black and white paintings with titles supered over--a series of works resembling old pulp horror comic covers, bargain-basement cousins of Creepy and Eerie. I really miss those old comics, so as far as I’m concerned this is a good way to start.

Once into the action, the thing that really jumps out is the score. Whether this rousing motif is Aldo Piga’s original composition or stock music from the vaults, it’s much more evocative of Westerns than scary stuff. I expected to see a cheroot-chomping Clint Eastwood ride out of the darkness – maybe with a stake in his hand. Clint the fearless vampire killer. Why did nobody think of that in his Spaghetti Western days?

Then it’s time to start chomping on some plot points. We stumble through the girl-attacked-while-getting- water-in-the-woods shtick, stolen from any number of classic horror films. The farmers who find her know she’s been bitten by a vampire, so naturally they take her to the only guy in the village who doesn’t believe in vampires. That’s just what I’d do.

The sequence features some genuinely spooky waterfall exteriors and strong cinematography, employing stark contrast and playing light and shadow through the stakes of a wrought iron fence. The girl--a nice-looking Italian babe, of course--runs past the graveyard, her shadow leaping along. A larger, menacing shadow follows. It’s a nice moment that is thoroughly ruined when we actually see the vampire. He’s anything but scary--patchy hair, comic eyebrows--and no match for the towering, glowering figure of Christopher Lee. The makeup reminded me of that poor guy’s face after he became Teenage Frankenstein.

From the farmhouse, we go to Il Professore’s manor, where we receive the stock warning against vampires, duly ignored by the unsuperstitous professor. This particular vampire must be a little confused, as the farmers claim he attacks "every time there’s a full moon?" Isn’t it the furry guy with the fangs who does that?

Due to my recent "Lost" overdose, I found myself constantly looking for the next twist…and not finding it. The twist doesn’t emerge until the middle of Act II, so there’s no point even talking about it yet.

But let’s give credit where it’s due, shall we? Director Renato Polselli knew he didn’t need anything as mundane as plot to engage his audience. Instead, he went for a guaranteed winner: fishnet stockings. Lots of ‘em.

See, Il Professore’s manor apparently doubles as a halfway house for traveling fishnet-stockinged ballerinas. Hey, if ballerinas really wore fishnets, I’d probably go to the ballet.

The girls badger Il Professore into telling them the vampire story, so we can get that clunky bit of necessary exposition out of the way. Fortunately, none of the girls know the story, so we don’t have to sit through an all-too-familiar "as you know" speech. We get to see most of the story from his point of view, watching the girls, which makes very good sense. The camera loves these girls … and these girls love the camera.

The girls’ manager, Giorgio, is quick to treat us to a little rehearsal in Il Professore’s sitting room. The midriff-bearing peasant blouses are a nice touch – and the ballet music lasts about ten seconds before we get to the real point, which is watching these ladies do some slinky barroom burlesque. It’s classic stuff, the music fusing from traditional ballet to hot jazz to stripper swing every few seconds. I’ve been a drummer for thirty-two years, and the tempo and musical changes were enough to confuse the hell out of me. The girls must all be savants. And who really cares if they’re not? As they said in the way old days, they got nice gams.

Il Professore--the uncle of a young, good-looking guy named Luca, who exists purely for the benefit of all the girlfriends at the drive-in--looks on, peering inscrutably through a haze of pipe smoke while the entire troupe tries its damndest to give the old guy a reason to try Viagra. He stone-faces them all, but that’s okay. I enjoyed it.

The first victim is visited by the vampire again, and bled enough to be deemed dead. The burial sequence features an unnerving coffin’s eye view of the mausoleum entrance passing overhead, and demonstrates a pretty cool vampire power that’s a new one on me--the ability to see through a solid wood coffin as though it were made of glass.

Louisa and Francesca take a nice, long walk in barren, isolated, vampire-infested forest. Just the thing to soothe and comfort following a tragedy, right? But no. A storm is coming. "Maybe we should hurry." At this point, imagine me glowering at the screen, wiggling my fingers in fine Svengali fashion. On the contrary! You want to stay out in the rain. You want to get wet. You want to get wet…and then you want to make out!

The tension is diffused by the eventual entrance of Luca. The nerve of that guy, spoiling my fun. Given another couple of minutes, they might have even gotten naked! A disappointing moment for the Uncle Perv in all of us.

After the fake scare, our intrepid non-believers find themselves taking shelter from the storm in a—gasp--deserted mansion. Never saw that coming. The mansion is the home of Count Dracula the aforementioned vampire of note. This rubric follows almost exactly the events in the first act of both Horror of Dracula and its sequel, Dracula, Prince of Darkness.

When it comes right down to it, the basic plot of all vampire movies is pretty much the same: 1) Unwitting Travelers enter vampire’s lair; 2) Unwitting Travelers are warned to leave vampires lair by Superstitious Locals; 3) Unwitting Travelers (also Unbelievers) ignore said advice; 4) Vampire picks them off one by one until remaining Unwitting Travelers have no choice but to believe and become Fearless Vampire Killers, doing appropriate research (sometimes in the vampire’s own convenient library) to determine how to dispatch the creature in a variety of interesting (or uninteresting) ways, depending on the scriptwriter’s interpretation of Bram Stoker’s seminal novel.

The "twist" (ah, finally we get to it!) is that the girl, now turned, is a countess, and therefore rules the vampire in his human form. She becomes the servant when they are vampires. This little role-reversal gimmick is pretty neat, except that it really doesn’t work as a twist, no matter how you choose to interpret that word. Whether you think of a twist as bartenders do--something added to a drink to give it a surprising burst of unexpected flavor--or as writers do--something added to the story that turns the plot in an unexpected direction--it fails. Miserably. That clunking sound you hear is the other shoe dropping. Next!

One moment that does work features the classic hand-on-the-shoulder-from-behind bit. That gives me a little warm fuzzy, even in bad movies. It’s just such an archetypal image. Even in a bad movie, it resonates.

The vampire attack itself is very flat and undramatic. He just fastens himself on and starts drinking. There’s no attempt at seduction, no sexual underpinning, no sense of that compelling, inescapable evil.

The next shoe to drop is either a twist or just bad writing. The vampire turns the girl – and then stakes her himself! Apparently, he wants to be the only game in town. Got a little news for you, Vampy: world domination happens very slowly when you’re operating without minions. Talk about a glory hog.

Louisa seems to think the whole vampire shtick is pretty hot. The vampire pays her one visit, but apparently doesn’t change her. Later, she strips off her shirt (that always works) and touches herself a lot before putting on a nightgown, waiting for the vampire to return. Regrettably, this vampire really isn’t worth waiting for. The vampire myth is so enduring in part because of the potent sexual allegory. These guys don’t get it, actually downplaying that angle (Coppola practically turned it into softcore porn, but that’s another article). There is a lot of flesh on display, but no real sexual viewpoint. Good vampire flicks choose a side and live there. This one’s a fence-sitter. Not good.

Giorgio decides the vampire thing is a great backdrop for a musical number. Sitting down at the piano, he "improvises" a little tune (with a whole orchestra perhaps concealed behind the fireplace) and the girls "improvise" a dance number to go with it. If they’re this good at improv, they definitely have a future in show business.

This scene once again demonstrates the mileage you can get out of fishnets. I don’t know who invented ‘em, but I’d like to thank him. And then I’d like to thank every girl who’s ever worn them. Personally.

After all the activity, the girls discover that Louisa has fainted. Blood loss, I guess. By this time Polselli isn’t even bothering with bite-mark makeup effects, likely figuring that the audience will be so distracted by all the leg on display they won’t even notice. I noticed, but I watched it twice. I would not recommend this course of action to any of you. Hey, I’m a pro. This stunt is dangerous, kids. Don’t try it at home.

Francesca spends twelve minutes or so chasing Louisa through the woods while upbeat, bouncy jazz plays in the background. Clash! Twelve minutes to get her into the vampire’s lair, and then another four before she’s actually bitten. Pad! This is the whole movie in shorthand. Clash-and-pad. The lack of economy is amazing. Doesn’t that film stock cost money?

Francesca is the next happy victim. She happens to be wearing a cross, so the vampire loses interest pretty quickly. Then we get another night exterior chase backed by a brief motif played on the Theremin, which is absolutely the coolest instrument ever invented. Louisa leads Francesca into a trap, but our Dracula clone doesn’t seem to be able to catch up with her, even with a stagecoach. Wonder how fast Francesca runs the hundred.

After all that, it’s Louisa who ends up chained to the dungeon wall, which I don’t get at all, even after watching twice. Did I get up and go to the bathroom during the same scene? Maybe Renato Polselli got up and went to the bathroom. If the last act is any indicator, maybe he never came back.

Georgio and Luca come after Louisa, because that’s what guys in vampire movies do. They fall straight into the first trap the count sets for them, managing (by luck, I think) to escape just in time for a dramatic "chase up the belfry stairs." The belfry stairs sequence is so inept it should be shown in film schools to teach students how not to end their movies.

At the top of the stairs, the Countess Ogda and the Count emerge into the coming dawn – trapped by sunrise. A good setup, but of course execution is everything, and in this case it’s the director who should be executed. The sun burns their faces clean off the bone, a complete Hammer homage/rip-off. The end. Thank God.

Given time to reflect, I’d recommend you should check out The Vampire And The Ballerina if you’re in the mood for some Mystery Science Theater-caliber schlock. In the midst of the laughable editing, ridiculous dubbing and pitiful performances, take note of the occasional moment of impressive cinematography, the infrequent standout musical cue. Then just throw popcorn at the rest of it and have fun. The Count himself obviously has fun. Like an annoying frat house drunk, he laughs uproariously at his own jokes, which nobody else finds funny.

I always say you should never make a genre film if you don’t think you can better the benchmark. When it comes to vampires, nobody has yet topped the final moments of Horror of Dracula--Peter Cushing’s mad rush across the tabletop to fling himself at the drapes and bring raw, flaying sunlight pouring in on Christopher Lee. Talk about an archetypal image. It burned in when I was twelve years old, and has never left me.

That, as they say, is entertainment. There’s Homeric epic, and then there’s the latest Nora Roberts novel. There’s The Exorcist, and then there’s…well, virtually every horror film that is not The Exorcist.

There’s mythpool and then there’s sewage runoff. The pool is deeper, clear and pure, better for swimming… but, sometimes, rolling around in the mud is a lot of fun. too.

Thanks, Dave.  True, it's unlikely that The Vampire And The Ballerina will top (or even make) anyone's list of artful or even scary neck-biter flicks.  It's just too hackneyed, with almost perfunctory scares (even for 1960) and a lack of any real feeling of tension or menace.   The main "thrust" of this flick, of course, is the eye candy provided by the sexy "ballerinas," all of whom are obviously more comfortable in stiletto heels than ballet slippers.  Still, it is cheesy fun in spots and it does stand as an early entry in the classic Italian horror film cycle.

Article copyright © Dave Duggins

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