Probably no other stock movie monster has been put through so many permutations as the vampire by Tinsletown...heck, as John-John knows, there's even a vampire motorcycle!  But one of the oddest such takes on the neck-biter was conjured up by a small film company in the Fifties, featuring a vampire who went kind of ape when the spell came over him...and this bloodsucker was a "bit" off the beaten track in another way.  That's because...

By DON MANKOWSKI

Are you bored with the typical vampire movie?

I know that I’ve been. Just one more run-through with the coffin and the bats and the crosses and the stake. Just one more version of Dracula, proclaiming it the true story at last. Just one more attempt to show another side of Dracula, as if he needed one, you know: "My Dracula is more faithful than any to date. He’s a tragic, romantic figure. He’s got a long lost love. Oh yeah, and a moustache." Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, the purpose of my current HORROR-WOOD series is to draw your attention to some obscure filmic nuggets of the vampire cinema with creativity in setting and ingenuity in execution, and just enough respect for tradition.

The film I’ll be discussing here is probably one of my earliest horror movie memories. I may have seen this one before my introduction to television’s Shock Theater, at a drive-in with my folks. In those days, you had a double feature at least, and nobody bothered to check the theater’s schedule. Rather, you budgeted three or four hours, and you got there when you got there. If it was in the middle of one of the features, well, no sweat.

You’d just watch the other picture, some cartoons and trailers, then stay long enough to see the part you’d missed, after which you’d leave abruptly once everything had fallen into place. I hate to think of all the movies that I first saw in this backward fashion, but somehow, it worked, most of the time. It was a challenge to reconstruct the plot on the fly, and then see if you’d gotten it right.

That was the case here. We arrived just in time to see the last five or ten minutes of this one. I had some idea of what a vampire was, probably from reading old comic books, so I eagerly awaited a film entitled simply The Vampire. This had to be the quintessential stuff, right?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and when the acceptably horrible fiend chased the pretty heroine out the door and through a sunlit field, I was astute enough to cry foul. That’s no vampire!

I’m not at all certain that I even saw the rest of the film that night: we may have driven home early, or I may have fallen asleep. (Was this, I wonder, the night I stretched my leg and kicked the parking brake out of gear, causing the family automobile to roll back a couple of yards down an incline? You know how at the drive-in you hitched a speaker to your car window, don’t you? Fortunately, our window didn’t break, but instead the speaker cord pulled the speaker post right out of the ground! They’re probably designed as breakaways for safety reasons. As I recall, my father assessed the situation, noted no significant damage to anything, and then drove the car to an intact speaker whereupon we resumed watching the movie.

Whatever, I caught up with the film years later, and can now appreciate it for what it was: a most entertaining variation on the vampire theme.

Films such as The Vampire Bat (1933), Return Of Doctor X (1935) and Devil Bat (1940) featured vampire-styled mysteries that turned out to be scientific in nature. In 1954, Richard Matheson published his excellent novel, I Am Legend, wherein all of the vampire trappings were explained as biological or psychological phenomena and the plague of vampirism itself as resulting from a bacterial contagion. In the 1950’s we got a couple of science-based werewolves, in The Werewolf (Columbia, 1956) and I Was A Teenage Werewolf (American-International, 1957).

Now, Paul Landres’ The Vampire (1957) attempted to bring the vampire into the society of the Space Age.

There’s an old, gabled house in what appears to be a small, quiet American town or suburb. No people are about, but the street is lined with 1950s style automobiles. Up the street rides a boy on a bike. Morning in America. It could almost be Leave it to Beaver or The Andy Griffith Show. Well, not really. The soundtrack is spewing music brooding and sinister.

"BOBS PET ZOO / IF IT’S ALIVE / WEVE GOT IT," explains the hand-lettered sign attached to the bike. The boy is delivering a cardboard box about a foot square, something requiring air holes. As he handles the box, something within nips or scratches him.

Without doubt, the creature within was destined to join an array of critters, experimental subjects, that we see in the modest laboratory into which the boy steps. The package is for one Dr. Matt Campbell, who is found slumped over a desk in his laboratory. He’s quite ill, and it’s all he can do to ask the lad to "Get Doctor Beecher!"

The kid rides off to more grim music and the film’s titles. We follow every pedal-stroke of his progress until he arrives at another large house bearing the shingle "Paul Beecher, M.D." Cinematographer Jack MacKenzie, who has Val Lewton’s Isle of the Dead amongst his credits, gives us some tense, involving angles here.

Upon entering, the boy is greeted by Betsy, a young girl working on her gymnastics. He tells her "Matt Campbell’s sick, he sent me for your dad." Betsy walks just a few yards to a desk where sits nurse/receptionist Carol, and relays the call for help.

Dr. Paul Beecher is offering a little medication and a lot of gentle advice to Carrie, an elderly patient, when Carol intervenes. "Matt Campbell," snaps the old woman. "In that big house, doing the Lord only knows what …" The doctor grabs his medical bag and hurries off. That’s right, doctors used to call upon patients in those days.

At the Campbell home/laboratory, Paul finds the man alive but delirious. The scientist mutters about his experiment, and about how he now has the answer. Paul tends to him, but Campbell only has time to hand the physician a vial of pills before he dies.

I’ve said it before, but you really have to admire the storytelling approach taken by these unpretentious, older films. In just six minutes we’ve got the narrative rolling along. We know that Dr. Beecher is a family physician who works out of an office in his home. He’s wise and kind to his patients, and always ready to answer a call for help. He’s a single father to a bright and talented young girl. Now, an old friend has just died suddenly under mysterious circumstances while engaged in suspicious work, and naturally, he’s affected.

Called in to the police station, Paul explains to Sheriff "Buck" Donnelly and Police Sergeant Ryan that Campbell had a heart condition, and was engaged in psychological research on primitive behavior and the regression of brain function. Lord-only-knows-what indeed!

Paul returns to his office, and feeling somewhat weary, he shortens an appointment. The patient, Marion Wilkins, is a youngish woman, evidently hypochondriac, who seems quite distraught in light of Campbell’s death. The doctor apologizes and promises to see her tomorrow.

At home, Betsy, seen earlier practicing dance, is now playing the piano. A healthy father-daughter relationship is gently implied by actors John Beal and Lydia Reed. Betsy can’t decide whether she’ll be a concert pianist or a prima ballerina. "For now, be a cook," suggests Dad.

The doctor then asks the girl to fetch his migraine pills from his coat pocket. Uh-oh. It’s "the right hand coat pocket," but not your right hand, Betsy! Paul swallows the pills and stretches out for a nap, but sleeps through the night. Apparently.

Sheriff Buck Donnelly visits the doctor’s office in the morning, and gets flirtatious with the nurse: "Carol Butler – my, that’s a pretty name." Some line, and small wonder: Carol is played by Coleen Gray, a stunningly beautiful actress who would liven many a "B" picture. In The Leech Woman (1960), they artificially aged her a quarter century for some scenes, but simply couldn’t make her unattractive until they turned up the makeup another hundred years! Here she looks just great in the nurse’s uniform. Ken Tobey, one of the great monster fighters of the 1950s, (e.g., The Thing, 1951) plays the sheriff.

Buck is investigating a report of a prowler in the neighborhood, but again Paul has to hurry off on a house call: Marion Wilkins is very ill. For some reason, the very sight of Dr. Beecher fills her with terror. She dies. Paul notes two small marks on her throat, but it looks like another heart attack.

Once back at home, Paul quizzes Betsy about the pills she gave him. The daughter has to admit that she may have chosen the wrong vial. Paul comforts her, but is clearly concerned. He knows that he’s consumed Dr. Campbell’s experimental drug.

Professor Will Beaumont, an old friend of Paul’s, has arrived from the University, bringing along fellow scientist Henry Winston to continue Matt Campbell’s research.

Henry wears dark glasses. "Paul, you’re going to have to excuse Henry," explains Will. "Light bothers his eyes. He suffered a trauma in early childhood, his mother was burned to death when a gas heater exploded and, well, he just hasn’t adjusted to society."

Paul shrugs. "Always a psychiatrist, aren’t you Will?"

Campbell’s lab rabbits died last night for reasons unknown, though his bats survived, are in fact flapping happily in their cage. (A very stiff prop rodent handled by Will usually gets a laugh from the audience. Surely, rigor mortis is implied, but it still looks silly. And Professor Beaumont shouldn’t be touching that thing without gloves!)

Whereas Will Beaumont is eccentric in his unflappable persistence, assistant Henry as played by James Griffith, is even stranger. He’s solemn, curt, inscrutable, but capable of sporadic bursts of grim humor.

"That’s Henry for you, phlegmatic but seething inside," continues Will. "Brilliant … brilliant, he’s just the person to carry on."

In his small role, superb character actor Dabbs Greer makes a genuine character of the psychologist Beaumont. "I didn’t know him very well," he says, speaking of the late Dr. Campbell. "I just appropriated the funds for him."

He does know that that Campbell was working on a drug that would drain blood from the brain and induce regression, causing the animal mind to revert to a primitive state.

It’s a fair question why a reputable scientist would be doing something like this. Grim reality is that psychologists have always made great progress in the treatment of mental illness by studying abnormalities, whether unfortunate natural abnormalities in humans, or induced abnormalities in experimental animals. The film’s premise is plausible.

The goal of the Campbell research, explains Will Beaumont, was to eventually reverse the regression process and to some day advance the human mind. However, Campbell’s experimental animals found the drug habit-forming; they died when dosage was withheld for 24 hours – except for the bats, that is.

Naturally, Will’s matter-of-fact recitation has a harrowing effect on poor Dr. Beecher, who stays at the house to observe some of the research. He squirms, sweats and frets as his addiction becomes evident. It’s a very human reaction. He chooses to fight it out and hope for the best rather than admitting that he took the drug and asking for help.

Dr. Paul Beecher is a most empathetic character due to fine acting by John Beal (1909-1997). A versatile and underrated performer throughout the 1950s, his best role was possibly Charles Francis Adams, the third generation of the famous family. In The Adams Chronicles, an acclaimed 1975 mini-series, Adams is the U.S. minister to Britain who helps save the Union by keeping England and France from recognizing the Confederacy.

Henry declares rather abruptly that Matt Campbell succumbed to "capillary disintegration" via some viral infection. The strange scientist transfers dead animals to a handy crematorium: barehanded of course, and with evident pleasure. We hope he knows what he’s doing.

Capillary disintegration! Capillaries are the smallest blood vessels. Some branch off from the arteries to bring oxygenated blood to all the living tissues of the body, providing the energy required to maintain functionality. Other capillaries join up to return blood back to the venous system for recycling through the heart and lungs. The capillaries within the lungs exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen through their thin walls as individual red cells squeeze through almost in single file.

So, "capillary disintegration" sounds pretty awful, but plausible nonetheless. The tiny pipes are a dynamic system, dying off and getting reborn, sealing themselves off when cut, growing where required to rejuvenate wounded tissue. Bruises, clots and scabs … all part of a plan for life.

Hell, if your capillaries were to abruptly disintegrate, I suspect that your major organs would get by for a time, as their blood supply is more direct. However, your skin would probably die and become rough and hideous. Your bloodstream would be starved for oxygen as your lungs became less efficient. An organism so suffering might well be driven to seek fresh blood. Drinking it wouldn’t be the most efficient way to get it into your system, but what’re you gonna do? Okay, it’s reasonable enough for a movie plot. Please note that the film has its roots in science, specifically psychology and medicine. There is no curse, no magic, no reanimated corpse.

When Paul at last goes home, he is rather brusque with his daughter. Hiding in his room and craving the drug, he tries to fight off the urge. Late that night, Betsy awakens from worry and goes to her father’s room to apologize. She thinks he’s avoiding her, but we can see that the room is empty (with some pills scattered on the desk blotter) and the window open to the rainy night.

Henry toils in Campbell’s lab, putting a bit of dry ice into a test tube so that it can fume, something that movie scientists do a lot. Muttering "can’t think!" he pauses to relocate the cage of noisy bats. In response to a phone call, Henry tells Beaumont that he’s begun chemical analysis of Campbell’s pills. He believes that Campbell was using elements from the bats, the only animals immune to the drug.

When the storm knocks out the electricity, Henry lights a Bunsen burner for illumination and forges on – until he’s attacked by a grim figure in the flickering shadows, dragged to the lab floor and killed.

The next morning, Sheriff Donnelly and Professor Beaumont regard the corpse. Buck suspects homicide. If the detective thinks he’ll gain any useful information from Will, he’s mistaken.

"Not possible," declares the psychologist. "I don’t see how that could be."

"Why not?"

"Well, you’d have to know Henry. It’s possible that Henry might have killed somebody, but vice-versa?" He scoffs at the very notion.

"Didn’t Henry have any enemies?"

"No, and he didn’t have any friends either. Believe me, nobody cared whether Henry lived or died. Nobody’d have bothered to kill him. Unless, of course, it was a maniac."

There’s not much of a clue in there, but I thought you’d enjoy that bizarre conversation. It does serve to emphasize how the cop and the shrink operate in different worlds.

Paul arrives to examine the body. He explains that the man was well when he left, and that the corpse bears the same "insect bites" that Marion Wilkins exhibited. Oh, yes: the bats are gone. (Did the killer steal them? Release them? Eat them?) Will explains to Paul that vampire bats are implicated in the mysterious Campbell drug.

Concerned and confused, Paul wanders to the police station like a zombie, but stops short of entering. Sheriff Buck isn’t there: he’s watching an autopsy surgeon examine Henry’s body. The expert thinks that homicide is unlikely. "You don’t kill someone," he says, "by giving them a blood disease." It’s capillary disintegration.

Buck decides to exhume Marion, over Paul’s disputation. At this point the film’s focus assumes a tense oscillation between Sheriff Buck and Doctor Paul, as the mystery is solved and the crisis resolved.

Apprehensive over his recent state of mind, Paul implores Nurse Carol for help in resisting the drug, via companionship. Carol has custody of the pills when the two go out to dinner. Visibly relaxed, Paul is about to confide in her when suddenly summoned for emergency surgery. As he departs, he steals the pills from Carol’s handbag under pretext of borrowing her cigarette lighter. (You younger folks may not realize that smoking was once so universal a habit that cigarettes, matches and lighters were requested, offered and donated without a second thought or a lasting impression.) Beecher clearly doesn’t want to go, but answers the call to duty as we knew he would. It’s a good scene, and we do get to see Coleen Gray in evening clothes.

Just as the sheriff leads a grim expedition through the cemetery for the exhumation, Dr. Beecher operates. Plainly suffering in withdrawal, Paul finishes the surgery capably and then hurries away. Unable to reach Carol, in whom he somehow sees his salvation, Paul evidently succumbs and takes the drug.

At the cemetery, the coffin is uncovered and opened. We only get a brief close-up of the exhumed corpse, but accompanied by a nasty stab of the musical score, it manages to be quite horrific. It’s a skull with staring eyeballs, framed in long hair. I suppose that the utter illogic of it – the eyes outlasting the skin, and the hair remaining attached when the scalp is gone – contribute to the unease. Rotting corpses are always good for a cheap shock.

An old grave unearthed by mistake? No, it is Marion Wilkins, as the nameplate confirms. Thus do we learn of the postmortem effects of the capillary disintegration.

As Carol walks home on a dark street, she finds herself pursued by a slouching figure seen only in shadow. She gets home and locks her door just in time. The thug attacks instead the old woman, Carrie, who is out walking her dog. (No watchdog she, "Priscilla" runs off and hides during the assault.)

We finally get a good look at dark, lumpy, bushy- browed and distorted face of the "vampire." With hulking shoulders and messed-up hair, he’s a primitive, trollish demon, a Quasimodo-like monster in a business suit, far removed from a suave Count Dracula.

In the morning, Paul awakens after fitful slumber in his rumpled suit. In a phone conversation, Carol informs him of Carrie’s death and her own brush with disaster. (Not only does this scene advance the plot economically, but we get to see Coleen Gray with her hair down.)

Paul is hit hard by the disclosures. He confronts Betsy and suggests that she’d be better off moving in with her Aunt Sally.

"You can’t live here without me," she declares. "Who’d feed you and take care of you and everything?"

Awkwardly describing a happy new life for the girl, Paul makes it clear that he wants to protect her. "I just want you to have a good home; and you can’t have that here with me."

Betsy resists and Paul relents. The two carry on, with Betsy acting as receptionist in Carol’s absence. Paul is still kind to his patients (we see him giving one extra time in paying her bill), but things are unraveling rapidly. Making a fateful decision, he takes tearful leave of the daughter.

Paul seeks out Will at the Campbell lab, and tells him "A patient of mine, Carrie Dietz, a wonderful old lady, was killed last night … I killed her … I don’t know how! I don’t even remember doing it, but I’m sure that I killed her!" He also thinks he killed Henry and Marion Wilkins, and now admits that he’d taken the pills and states that he’s ready to turn himself in.

Will, of course, offers a psychological alternative explanation. Yes, the pills might cause a reaction, but nothing so extreme. Paul, says the psychologist, is feeling an emotional state "brought on by or at least abetted by these confounded pills." Yes, vampire bats may be involved, but "that doesn’t make you another Dracula." Will suggests that Paul needs a complete rest. "I don’t want to see you destroy a useful life over a hallucination."

It’s an engaging one-on-one scene with Paul all but moaning in despair while Will holds his ground for cool logic.

"I’m having the bodies, what’s left of them, sent to the University lab," the autopsy specialist tells the sheriff. "I’ve never seen such total cellular destruction." He now believes there was murder. The aggressor’s bite transfers a virus to the victim, although he himself remains immune for some unknown reason.

Back at the lab, Will locks the pills in a desk drawer and bravely pockets the key. He’s determined to help Paul break the habit and learn the truth (as he sees it). Eleven o’clock will be a crucial time. When the hour arrives, Paul resists, but ultimately succumbs to the craving. Will is about to inject him with a sedative, but it’s too late: Paul transforms before Will’s incredulous eyes. (So much for theory! I honestly think that this may have hurt the psychologist more than what follows!)

The Paul-monster slays Will in a dramatic scene played out in shadow, after which he drags the body to the crematorium and roughly shoves it into the raging fire. There’ll be no autopsy this time.

Now, the University phones Sheriff Buck. They’ve connected Campbell’s research with the fatal blood disease. The thought occurs that Professor Beaumont might be experimenting upon humans.

It’s off to the lab for the sheriff and the police sergeant, and there they discover the blazing oven, its ghastly fuel source, and the late professor’s dictating machine, still running after the last use. Played back, Will’s droning experimental notes have almost put them to sleep when the sounds of the struggle play out. Now impressed with the menace inherent in Dr. Beecher, the lawmen hurry after him.

Carol has just gone to the doctor’s office and there finds the tragic man. Though she wants desperately to help, he orders her away for her own safety, much as he did to Betsy. Carol notes that Paul holds a syringe of something lethal, and clearly is prepared to take his own life. She struggles with the man (Ms. Gray absorbs some truly rough treatment here), and the delay is just enough for the transformation to effect itself. The bestial Paul chases Carol about the house, and out into the nearby wooded area. Only then do the lawmen arrive at the scene.

Buck’s intervention spares Carol, and the sheriff grapples with the rabid monster in a shallow riverbed. Only a makeshift club saves the man from the fatal bite, but the determined vampire persists.

Sergeant Ryan is forced to shoot carefully, and succeeds in wounding the fiend. The vampire turns on him, brandishing its terrible fangs. Quite understandably, the policeman fires again and again until the beast-man drops into the creek and lies still.

Buck leads away the distraught Carol. A last backward glance shows the vampire’s face dissolving back into that of Paul Beecher, who is at last released from his living nightmare.

Recently in these electronic pages, I praised a later effort of director Landres, writer Fielder and composer Fried, The Return Of Dracula (1958). The Vampire lacks some of the mythic power that the other film draws from its Dracula connection, but compensates with a stronger cast and a more inventive plot.

Pat Fielder’s screenplay is straightforward and economical. She uses the time saved to provide many emotional moments for the players. Beal’s poignant scenes with daughter Reed are almost excruciating.

The story suggests Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, almost with Van Helsing and Dracula at war within one body. However, Beecher isn’t even a "mad scientist," just a man who cares too much and is overtaken by cruel fate. Life isn’t always fair. There’s no message here about not tampering with things that man was meant to leave alone. Rather, it suggests sacrifices necessary to achieve worthy goals.

The inexpensive sets are entirely adequate. The doctor’s office and the research lab in the old houses is a nice touch, emphasizing the humanity of the characters as Paul’s life swings back and forth between them. The crematorium within the latter allows the demonic vampire figure a little piece of Hell on earth. The professor’s dictating machine might be taken as a conscious reference to Dr. Seward’s oral diary in Dracula. The exhumation scene is gratuitous, but scary.

Time and again we see Paul return to his medical office, striving for a return to normalcy, but the steadily deteriorating condition of his health and his life are obvious. Note how Paul in his despair breaks a mirror upon seeing his wretched self in it. A vampire shouldn’t have a reflection.

Gerald Fried’s intense "Dies Irae" musical score is similar to the one he’d compose for the Dracula film, and it suggests powerful threatening forces sweeping through a superficially peaceful world.

In addition to Beal, Gray, Reed, Greer, and Toby, the supporting players are effective in their brief appearances: homely Paul Brinegar as a folksy morgue attendant and pallid Ann Staunton as the doomed Marion.

The trick-or-treat makeup job on Beal is barely adequate: a scaly, darkened face and distorted lip; and his stunt double is a bit too obvious. However, the script keeps the vampire off-screen for much of the story, and our early glimpses are fleeting.

It’s also rather incredible that the vampire’s attack can be so subtle as to resemble nothing more than insect bites plus a heart attack. Aren’t these victims missing most of their blood? Still, the film’s admirable execution and crisp pacing are such that its few deficiencies are easily overlooked.

The film’s proposed title was It’s Always Darkest Before The Dawn. That has a perplexing poetry to it, but it must have been deemed too odd (if not too long) for a double feature marquee. Of course, the simple title The Vampire is an uninspired alternative, suggesting the archetypal tale of the undead rather than an inventive variation.

Another 1957 film, the Mexican El Vampiro starring German Robles had a U.S. release under a title that literally translated to the same thing. Thus, early television broadcasts changed the name of the Landres film to Mark Of The Vampire, which duplicated the handle of the classic Tod Browning– Bela Lugosi vehicle of 1935!

It’s Always Darkest Before The Dawn wouldn’t have been a fitting title. In this tale of pure tragedy, there would be no dawn for Paul Beecher.

(Don Mankowski is happy to dedicate this article to John, his Dad.)

Thanks, Don.  The Vampire certainly features a strange neck biter in the lead...a kindly town doctor who becomes more of a Fifties version of Neanderthal Man when he turns vampish... and no fangs in sight, either.  But the film scores points with its insistence on having fantastic events play out in an ordinary small- town environment and by making the monster a truly sympathetic character.  In the manner of the best fright films, it's a tragedy as well as a terror tale and it merits attention from classic horror movie fans.

Article copyright © Don Mankowski

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