Bat pills (you heard right) transform John Beal into the atom-age bloodsucker of THE VAMPIRE.
bloodsuckers of the traditional sort. Like a number of American horror films of the Atomic Fifties (BLOOD OF DRACULA, MON- STER ON THE CAMPUS and the similarly sparsely-titled THE WEREWOLF), its storyline derives from the Jekyll & Hyde archetype of good-and-evil personas, for- saking any supernatural goings- on in favor of a more trendy scientific catalyst—in this case, a drug extracted from vampire bats by a scientist experimenting on psychological regression. When small-town doctor Paul Beecher (John Beal) accidentally swallows one of these experimen- tal pills in lieu of his regular mi- graine medicine, he transforms into a drooling, idiotic maniac by night—a monstrous elaboration on that ineradicable junkie of anti-drug propaganda, who threatened the “wholesome” con- sciousness of 1950s America. Like the bottle from THE LOST WEEKEND, the pill con- tainer beckons to Beecher, standing out luminously in the
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shadow-drenched mise-en- scène. Not only does he be- come an instant addict, but a murderer of men and defiler of women, with the memories of his nightly sprees repressed as intangible dreams. In an effec- tive sequence, the haggard doc- tor attends the bed-side of one of his patients, a woman he unwittingly attacked the night before. Recognizing him, she suffers a heart attack right then and dies. What’s refreshing is that actress Ann Staunton does not throw up her hands and let loose one of those clichéd, high-pitched screams, but has a more honest reaction wherein her widened, terrified eyes tell us everything.
Landres offers serviceable direction, but what really sets the film apart is Fielder’s sensi- tivity toward her characters. Broken families are a common thread in her work, most po- tently expressed in THE MON- STER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, where a number of
women are forced to raise a child without the help of a traditional male breadwinner (sentiments held over from World War II, per- haps). For THE VAMPIRE, Fielder flips the sexes and presents us with a single father (Beecher) try- ing to raise his only daughter, a precocious 13-year-old who des- perately seeks his attention and adoration. Adding to the tragedy, it’s the daughter who unwittingly hands Beecher the pills that ini- tially transform him into a mon- ster. As the narrative progresses, a rift grows between the two as Beecher becomes completely preoccupied with his addiction. At one point, he suggests send- ing the girl off to live elsewhere, to which young actress Lydia Reed is heartrendingly convinc- ing in her tearful objection. If the climax is dramatically weakened by the daughter’s sudden, inex- plicable absence, it’s at least un- derstandable why: to see such a young girl terrorized by her own father-turned-dribbling-ghoul (and what a grotesque makeup
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