As we've noted before in these (virtual) pages, the vampire in cinema has taken many forms and many guises.   Some have been pretty outré.  Case in point is the following otherwise standard Universal-International fright film of the Fifties, wherein the bloodsucker packs a six-gun and wears chaps instead of a tux.  In fact, the whole haunted proceedings take place not in Europe but, instead, in the Old West.  That's because...

By DON MANKOWSKI

One day in 1968, when we were still kids, my brother and I went to see this science fiction picture that had just hit the local theaters, and we knew that we were late for the showing. When we got there, it seemed as if somehow we hadn’t missed the start of the movie.

There was this travelogue or documentary playing. Looked like anthropology or zoology, something about a community of apes, probably a National Geographic or a Mutual of Omaha production. No dialogue and not much going on, so it had to be something educational. Certainly not the film we’d turned out to see, which was something about space exploration and the future.

Whatever this was, it certainly wasn’t--what’s the title of the movie exactly?--"Space Something 2000." We were expecting Jane Goodall or Marlin Perkins to walk into the scene and tell us what was going on with these silly apes. But then, something very odd appeared. Good grief, what the heck is that thing?

Okay, by now you’ve figured out that we had missed the opening of the indicated movie, which was 2001: A Space Odyssey. We hadn’t read the book and weren’t aware that the film began at a point several million years in the past. We didn’t know that the human actors in impeccable ape costumes would be so very convincing. I shut up and watched the film, and found it a memorable experience, although most early audiences for it left screenings scratching their heads.

Ever been so fooled by the opening scenes? It reminded me of an earlier time. When my parents took us to the local drive-in to see a bill of horror movies, the last of which was to be Curse Of The Undead. I must have been at the concession hut during the opening titles, or else I had blinked and missed them, because this was clearly a western unspooling on the huge screen in glorious black-and-white.

Now, westerns were, in my young viewpoint, a legitimate art form, though never my favorite, and certainly not when you were expecting a horror film. I groused softly for several minutes before I caught on to the fact that the film was something quite unexpected" a horror-western – and a most interesting chapter in the history of vampire cinema!

At dawn, Dr. John Carter and his daughter Dolores ride into a western town in a horse-drawn wagon. Nearly every home has at least one wreath hanging on a door or window. Death has been a frequent visitor to these parts.

Inside, a young woman, Cora, lies ill, attended by her family and Dan Young, the local minister. The doctor enters the room and examines the patient at once.

Doc Carter is baffled. So many deaths! He’d only just witnessed another. It’s unheard of, "an epidemic affecting only young girls. If I were superstitious, I’d say it was more like a curse." His medicine has been ineffective compared to Dan’s prayers. "I’m almost tempted to throw away my black bag," he confesses to the preacher, "and come over to your side."

"You’ve always been on my side," replies Dan, offering reassurance. Fortunately, Cora is resting comfortably, so the guardians can take a break.

A sudden, terrifying shriek from her room has the party hastening back. There, a shade flaps noisily before an open window. Cora lies sprawled across her bed...dead. As the doctor and Dolores sadly depart, Dan notes two small wounds on Cora’s throat.

When Doc Carter arrives home, his son Tim awaits, quite agitated. "Look what Buffer done to me! That dirty, stinkin’ son of a snake! I’m gonna kill ‘im, Paw."

Buffer is a bully who owns the neighboring ranch. It appears that he’s blocked up a stream upon which the Carter ranch depends. Tim went to break the dam so that they could get water. For his trouble, he was beaten up and fired at as he fled – he shows a bullet hole in his hat.

Tim believes that Buffer wants to "dry us up and buy our ranch." This assertion gets Dolores militant as well, so Doc Carter urges calm and says he’ll see the sheriff about the matter.

"A lot a man like Buffer cares about the law," pouts Tim.

"That’s not the point," answers Doc. "The law cares about us."

Bill, the sheriff, promises some action, but admits that there isn’t much that he can do absent a clear violation of the law. Even so, he’s undermanned. Unnoticed, a mysterious cowboy clad entirely in black is watching the proceedings.

The bald, stout, sawed-off Buffer is all bluster, cowardly when not backed up by his four hired hands. Confronted at the saloon, he ridicules the sheriff, but gently enough so as not to provoke him to action. Though Sheriff Bill puts up a tough front, he is basically begging for the avoidance of violence.

Yet, just now and then it’s Buffer who tries to make the peace and the sheriff who provokes – but only for an instant. "You block my duties," says the lawman, "I got two choices, arrest you or shoot you. Either one would suit me fine. Draw your gun or shut your mouth." Buffer claims that he’s been misunderstood and wronged, and besides, they can’t prove anything, and it all ends in a whiney, wimpy standoff.

"Bill, I like you," cackles Buffer. "Let’s drink to the Law."

"Never mind drinkin’ to it, just respect it" is the response.

There’s a maddening air of futility about this film! Everywhere there are ambiguities that refuse resolution. Now, the screenplay is about as subtle as a mule kick: the characters don’t show shades of gray so much as messy splotches of dark within the light and vice-versa. We’ll be noting more of this. It could be blamed upon inconsistent characterization, but based upon other off-kilter aspects of the film, I’ll give the benefit of doubt and suggest that it’s deliberate, an attempt to create a nightmarish, illogical version of the Old West.

The man in black rides through the night in apparent slow motion. Dan is trying to reason with Tim when Doc Carter’s wagon rolls up to his home. However, no one is driving; Carter drops from the perch. Dan inspects him. He’s a preacher, not a doctor, but knows that the patriarch is dead.

Tim cries out, drops to his knees and weeps. Once he is able to speak, it’s clear whom he holds to blame. "Buffer!" He shrieks. "I’ll kill him!" Dan notes the same peculiar neck wounds, then warns the boy against hasty action and promises justice as "Timmy" weeps on his sister’s shoulder.

Doc Carter is laid to rest in the family mausoleum, with Dan offering depressingly generic prayers. The man in black (whose name we will learn eventually as Drake Robey) watches the services, and enters the vault when the others have left. The mystery man slowly opens the coffin, looks into it and presumably climbs into it.

Our next look at the troubled family finds Dan, Dolores, and Tim relaxing at home by the fireplace, as if striving for normalcy. That is, until Tim is summoned by a ranch hand. A fence has been pulled down and cattle have disappeared. Tim at once suspects Buffer of sabotage and encroachment. He chooses to slip away without letting his sister or Dan know, heading for the saloon on a grim mission.

Tim sits at the bar, consuming one shot of whiskey after another. When the bartender suggests that the lad is in danger of passing out, or possibly drowning, Tim smashes some glassware, brandishes his gun and demands more liquor. The sheriff enters and tries to calm him with a bit of ribald frontier wisdom. "A bartender is like a free gal. She’s bait for whoever’s got a free buck, right?" Bill urges Tim not to do any harm to himself or his father’s good name.

"Paw’s dead," pouts Tim. "That’s his good name: dead. Somebody’s gonna pay for it."

I’ve gone out of my way to quote some of the extremely plummy dialogue in this screenplay, because I feel that it has to be "heard" to appreciate this very odd film. The script is dense with outrageous clichés and even more bizarre new turns-on-a-phrase. These must have sounded good to the screenwriter for a fleeting moment, but in execution, they never quite fit. It comes close to being a parody of a western script, though it’s played completely straight. There’s not the slightest attempt at humor in the film as produced.

Buffer arrives, and we all know that he’s going to goad the kid into a gunfight. Well, not entirely: he gives Tim a path out many times, both at the sheriff’s prompting and some common sense of his own. "Don’t you move," Tim orders the sheriff at gunpoint. "This gun don’t care who it shoots...why don’t you two stop this manure-spreadin’? For all I know you’re workin’ for him too."

Have I yet mentioned that the film features genteel vulgarities that tend to take one right out of the Old West, even the Hollywood version thereof? Heck, it might even cause you to miss the next darn cliché.

"I’m gonna give you a better chance than you gave my Paw," bellows Tim, awkwardly waving his pistol about.

Buffer, directed by the sheriff, really does turn and try to walk out with just his grimace. Naturally, Tim won’t let him go quietly. "Go on, walk out you yellow-belly," he calls.

Bill warns. Buffer walks. Tim shouts.

"You’re so scared you stink out loud." An extremely mixed metaphor perhaps, but the boy is drunk.

Again, Bill warns. Buffer walks. Tim shouts.

"That’s right you gutless hunk o’ coward."

And again.

"You no-good son of a saloon gal!"

Uh-oh! That last is just too much. Must’ve hit home and stung deeply. Buffer wheels about. Tim fires first, but badly, and is fatally hit by the villain’s return shot.

"You cheap –!" are the boy’s last words. I’m rather sorry he didn’t last one word longer, but it probably would’ve been "polecat" or something equally inspired. Whatever, Tim Carter’s is probably the worst attempt at revenge ever to disgrace a western flick.

Mourning her little sister, er, brother, Dolores sets about tacking up posters. "GUN WANTED: $100 for the death of a murderer." Just as fast as Dolores nails one, Sheriff Bill tears it down, promising to go on doing so if she does it again. She actually does, and he actually does a couple of times. Really.

The man in black watches the exchanges in the distance. Buffer looks over a poster, and takes the opportunity to needle, feigning ignorance of her target.

"Some day when you hear a big noise," weeps the doubly bereaved woman, "and you feel something hot rippin’ through your belly, then you’ll know exactly who that poster’s for!"

The mysterious cowboy picks up one of the controversial posters and carries it into the saloon. Over a whiskey and a cigar, he studies it carefully.

Buffer approaches him, nervously trying to laugh the matter off. "This poster’s me. Thought I was worth more than a hundred."

The stranger is undeterred. He calmly states that if he takes the job, he’ll finish it - nothing personal. Buffer’s clearly in a panic and one of his sycophants tries to take action. The henchman fires at the interloper.

Drake whirls and shoots the gun out of his attacker’s hand.

"You’re lucky I was shooting for nothing," he tells the man. "If money was on my gun I’d have drilled a deep, bloody hole right between your eyes."

Drake’s response was so slow that you practically had time to refill your popcorn without missing anything. "For a man who was late with his draw you sure came out on top," stammers Buffer.

"That’s the idea," offers Drake, brandishing his gun backhanded, (saying in effect "kiss my butt"). Supremely confident, the man in black fires off a parting cliche ("Only time will tell which one of us speaks the truth,") and departs.

Drake Robey is an impressive figure in his spiffy black duds with Spanish-style hat. He wears a cocky expression between long sideburns, rather like a homicidal Elvis. He’d scare away Yul Brynner’s similar Westworld gunslinger, I’ll bet.

"He was so close a blind man couldn’t miss," moans the shooter after Buffer orders him to collect his pay and get lost.

"Then you’re blind, ‘cause a dead man ain’t never walked outta this saloon!" rages Buffer. Wrong again.

Dan and Dolores clearly have some tender feelings towards one another, very proper ones that they rarely act upon. Again, this fits in nicely with the film’s ambivalent structure. The recent events will strain the relationship. Dan suggests that the hiring of a killer amounts to a deal with the Devil. "You’re a big man with words, but talking’s not going to bring Tim and Pa back," she complains. "If the Devil can stop some of this pain in me then I’ll pray to him."

Knock-knock. Speak of the Devil: Drake Robey has arrived in response to Dolores’ advertising campaign. She introduces the stranger to Reverend Young. Drake reluctantly shakes the man’s hand.

A bit of jewelry on the minister’s lapel buttonhole casts a harsh gleam into the gunslinger’s eyes. "That’s an unusual button you wear, Preacher. Never seen one like it."

"It was given to me when I was ordained," explains Dan, of the tiny bit of religious wood sculpture set in silver metal. "I’m told the cross was carved from a thorn found at the site of the crucifixion."

Dan expresses his revulsion at the idea of a hired killer. Drake suggests that he get his nose out of the Good Book and see life as it is. Dolores has been seriously wronged. "If governments were involved we’d call it war. Why don’t you think of me as a professional soldier come to help Miz Carter?" Dan finds this comparison odious. Robey states that before he takes on a job, he investigates thoroughly. "Money’s not enough. I must carry my client’s anger in me. It helps me to justify my actions."

Dolores hires Drake, even lets him stay at the villa over Dan’s strenuous objections. The bewildered clergyman is left pondering his cruciform lapel button and its effect on the stranger. It’s an impressive scene, in a cockeyed way. Despite a wicked smirk throughout, Drake Robey seems a lot more persuasive than the righteous Dan.

Drake steps from his new quarters out into the night, and inexplicably materializes in Dolores’ bedroom! He bends over the sleeping woman in the classic Dracula pose, and after some caressing, applies the bite. Drake Robey, the black-clad gunfighter is a vampire. It is he who has drained the lives of the young women of the neighboring town.

Now the target of an assassin, Buffer appeals to the sheriff and the minister for help. The preacher, has little sympathy, lets Buffer have it with both verbal barrels. "As much as it’s against my calling, I hate you." This startles the thug, but Dan continues. "I hate you because you and your kind turn everything good into everything evil."

"You’re worse than Drake Robey--at least he’ll kill you fast. If you can’t buy what you want you torture slow so you can get the full pleasure of your victim’s suffering." Having thus vented, Dan sighs. "No matter how we feel about you, if we didn’t try to help we’d be as bad as you."

Dan devises a plan wherein Buffer must not only lay low, but also put up five thousand dollars as security against any further mischief to the Carter ranch. "Since gold is your religion. That’s where we’re going to hit you," concludes the minister, hoping that this arrangement will satisfy Dolores and that she will send Drake on his bloody way.

That night, Dolores experiences troubled sleep, a bloody throat wound in evidence. In the Carter mausoleum, Drake rests in his coffin, immobile. (Photographed to resemble a bloated leech, he’s here reminiscent of Max Schreck in his Nosferatu box.)

The next morning, Dolores receives Dan. Though she seems to him to be in a better mood, her maid explains that she won’t eat, the fire is turned up, and she wants her shawl. It’s all very reminiscent of Mina Harker’s behavior in Dracula.

Dan reports that Buffer has promised to behave. "We squeezed him until he hollered like a stuck pig." Dolores calmly agrees to release Robey. Dan is glad to hear this, but puzzled by her change in attitude. "I expected to have a real go-at-it with you. Here you sit like all the life is out of you." She refuses his offers to take her to another town to see a doctor. When Robey reports for work, Dan calmly discharges him with the lady’s concurrence. The vigilante goes quietly. It would appear that something’s going on.

That night, Dan and Dolores examine a box of legal papers in search of Doc Carter’s will. The papers tell Dan that the Carter ranch was part of a Spanish land grant, sold out by the Family Robles after some tragedy befell them. Dan leaves, taking along the papers for further study.

Taking advantage of the preacher’s absence, Drake approaches Dolores. He exerts a subtle hypnotic influence over her. Referring to her as the only person who’s treated him decently, he asks her to rehire him. His story is that his daylight vision is failing him, not a good thing for a gunfighter. He offers to ride the range at night to keep Buffer and his cronies in line, and Dolores agrees. Drake has no problem with moving into a caretaker cottage by the cemetery. "The dead don’t bother me, it’s the living who give me trouble."

"Don’t you worry about Dan," Dolores reassures him, "once I explain things he’ll go along." That statement stings especially, because we know it’s true.

The deed box has a false bottom, discovered when the preacher clumsily knocks it on the floor of his study. Within he finds an old diary, dated 1860. In it, Don Miguel Robles relates his family’s tragic history, in the form of a plaintive prayer to the Blessed Virgin.

What we all feared was a plague taking our loved ones (writes Don Miguel) was in reality an evil created by the Devil. My eldest son, Drago Robles, was the instrument of the Devil.

It transpires that Don Miguel sent Drago to Madrid on business, but refused to allow the son’s wife, Isabella, to accompany him. The lonely wife turned to Drago’s brother, Roberto for companionship and love, (and probably some more serious stuff off-screen). Drago returned, caught the two of them in an embrace, and at once killed his brother with a dagger.

Thus, illicit romance and incest drove the young man to what Don Miguel terms "the unforgivable sin of fratricide." Conscience-stricken, Drago prayed at his brother’s burial vault for forgiveness, night and day. When left alone, Drago took his own life with the same knife. In the flashback that accompanies the narration, Don Miguel’s son, Drago Robles is the very image of Drake Robey.

The equally-unforgivable sin of suicide was followed by the mysterious deaths of the youngest daughters of many families across the countryside. Don Miguel ignored the warnings of the priest for too long, and one day a fiend dressed in black attacked his widowed daughter-in-law as she slept. The father responded to the attack, but the truth was more shocking than he could have imagined.

And then I saw his face: it was Drago, who six months before had died by his own hand. Isabella dead, blood drained. (Drago Robles actually wears a black cape in this incarnation.)

Don Miguel went to the mausoleum and used the dagger (quite a workout for that particular knife) to "pin the heart of the accursed one to his coffin." But it was in vain: he was following an old wives’ tale (literally), and his priest later informed him that only a wooden stake could destroy the undead son. Indeed, his next examination of the coffin reveals only the dagger.

Looking quite familiar is the face in an 1850 portrait of Drago Robles found by Dan in the lining of the old book. (Apparently, Drago has returned after the passage of a generation or two, and the current events take place circa 1885, though it could be as late as 1910 or thereabout.)

Meanwhile, Drake Robey visits the sleeping Dolores. He kisses her and speaks of his love for her, but departs without having fed upon her blood. This suggests a true emotional attachment unusual for a movie vampire of the time, further fuel for the film’s ambivalent fire.

It’s as if Drake needs for Dolores to come to him instead of the other way around, so he withdraws to the courtyard and summons her there in a sleepwalk. However, the sheriff interrupts the tryst. He escorts Dolores back home, but insists that she discharge Robey.

As the sheriff rides a lonely vigil, he is attacked in the harsh chiaroscuro moonlight by Drake, who drains him of his life. In this world, the victims of the vampire do not rise again. Vampirism is acquired only by evil behavior in life.

Once again, Preacher Dan must plead for calm after Bill’s body is discovered, but that act is wearing thin. Dan unwisely takes a stroll in the night air as he broods, and he is forced to run from an unseen but tangibly felt presence. It’s Drake. The pursuer however is halted when the moonlit shadow of the church’s cross chances to fall upon him, giving Dan time to retreat within.

The vampire, however, boldly enters the study. Of the portrait, he remarks, "Remarkable likeness, isn’t it: too bad you found it." Drake is determined that Dolores should not see Dan’s evidence. He tells Dan how the sheriff intervened, and why he died.

"Most religious fanatics aren’t [afraid of dying]," states Drake, "but how they struggle when that last moment arrives."

"Now that I know what I’m up against, I’m no longer afraid. Having faith strengthens the weaknesses of man," offers Dan.

"What I am is not my own choice," rages the vampire. "You should pity me, not judge me in my torment." This peculiar plea for compassionate understanding is probably unique for a screen vampire. "All I ever wanted of life was to live and love."

"How can you speak of love when all you do is kill?"

"I kill to survive!"

"Why don’t you call that force by its right name: your force is the Devil!"

Drake paints himself as a victim of cruel fate. Dan pronounces him beyond God’s mercy, but does offer to pray for him. It’s an inept, but vigorous philosophical clash of ideas about life and death, mortality and morality. You judge who gets the better lines. Alas, it ends in a physical scuffle over the chest and its treasures. Drake chokes the minister, but runs off when the housekeepers burst into the room. Dan retains the diary, though the map and the portrait are gone with Robey.

Although shown the diary the next morning, Dolores refuses to believe Dan’s bizarre story without the other evidence. Dan takes her to the old mausoleum, removes the coffin of Drago Robles from its niche and opens it. Only the silver dagger is within, exactly as described by Don Miguel Robles in the diary.

Dan knows that Drago/Drake is resting somewhere within, but when he eyes the coffins of Dolores’ father and brother, the woman snaps, ordering him out. He departs, promising to return with a court order permitting him to open those other coffins. Dolores faints from the stress, and indeed, the vampire rises from one of the contested coffins. Talk about being proven wrong!

After his usual caresses, Drake feeds upon Dolores’ blood, and then carries her home. Does Drake plan to keep Dolores alive forever, or to drain her and move on eventually? Can she join indeed him in un-death? Can he become human again? These questions will remain.

Later, Drake calls upon Dolores. She remembers only going to the mausoleum and waking up back in her bed. Drake shows her the old map of the original boundary lines. The disputed stream is in fact, hers. Drake plays helpful to win her over, asks for money to build new fences once he’s given Buffer the bum’s rush.

At the saloon, Drake breaks up Buffer’s poker game, shows him the map, and declares that the man has been sitting on five hundred acres of Miz Dolores’ land all along, including the damned stream – sorry, the dammed stream.

Naturally, Buffer bellows. He feels that the gunman and the preacher are conspiring to take his land. "I never thought I’d live to see the day when a preacher and a hired gun would get married!"

"Never fails," taunts Robey, "the bigger the crook the louder he hollers for the law to protect him."

Dan advises Buffer not to tangle with Drake. Again, the man behaves reasonably, but is ultimately forced into a duel. Drake demands that Buffer call the turn, then begins his walk. Buffer calls, shoots first but is killed. Dying, he swears he hit the man first. We believe him.

Again with Dolores, Drake explains that he actually turned his back on the fight and meant to walk off, and only prevailed because Buffer’s shot struck the cigar case in his pocket. Wringing sympathy, he does manage to sound like a man in love. However, when the woman mentions Dan’s determination to open the Carter family caskets, Drake shows concern. Drake promises not to kill Dan, only to scare him off.

The Carter’s housekeeper Dora, having overheard the last exchanges, goes to Dan to warn him that the stranger has his name on a bullet, or worse. Dan makes a fateful decision, after gazing at the cross atop the church that saved him upon one occasion, and at the smaller version in his stickpin. He ventures out to meet the marauder.

In the street, Drake publicly suggests to Dan that he forgo his court order regarding the coffins. The preacher, wearing an incongruent gun belt, refuses.

"Preacher, you give me no choice."

"I don’t intend to," replies Dan, with just enough quaver to be believable,

"You mean you want to shoot it out with me?" asks the vampire, unable to suppress his smirk, "You know that you haven’t got a chance?"

Taking a big chance on some awkward last words, Dan replies, "My Boss’ll decide that."

"Very well. Since I have the edge with the gun, I’ll give you the advantage - you call the turn." The supremely confident Drake turns and walks.

Only then does the preacher load his chamber. It’s a dramatic walk and a long one as the tension builds. Reverend Dan outwits him, shoots him in the back. Nahhh, that’s what he should have done, but instead, the duel plays out.

The guns report. Dolores, just riding in, screams, "Dan!" (It’s somehow comforting to know that her first thought was of him.)

Naturally, Dan gets off the first shot. Of course, Drake fires back ¼ but wildly. He’s wounded. Drake agonizes and drops. His writhing body shimmers, fades and disappears.

We recall the old diary’s statement that wood was required to vanquish the vampire as Dan retrieves his small wooden cross from the deflated black clothes. He took it out of the buttonhole and used it in the gun, thus fashioning his own projectile "stake." Certainly, the carved cross and any blessing applied to the artifact must have increased its potency against the evil one. (Please note that the artifact was not claimed to be an actual piece of Christ’s cross, as some reviewers explain it. But again, ambiguity: a thorn found at the site of the crucifixion could be commonplace unless it dropped from a famous, makeshift crown.)

Arm in arm, Dan and Dolores walk slowly towards the church. Happily ever after? The sinister music never yields to something more conventional.

The cast is serviceable, but indifferent. None of them can be said to rise above the material. Just as well: a single good performance here could have rendered the others ludicrous in comparison!

Michael Pate (Drake Robey) played character roles, usually as a villain. He does have some stage experience, and has a very nice turn at the very beginning of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ Julius Caesar (1953) as Flavius the ill-fated tribune who is first to speak out against the ascendant dictator. He’s here a memorable anti-hero, suggestive of Paladin. Right up until the end, you’re not quite sure that he won’t vanquish the real bad guys and ride off until he’s needed again. It could almost work.

Eric Fleming (Preacher Dan) had just begun a stint on the television series Rawhide. He died young at 41, drowning on a film set. Kathleen Crowley (Dolores) also specialized in westerns.

John Hoyt (Doc Carter) has an impressive film and television résumé. Often cast as a kindly doctor, he served time as medical officer aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise before DeForest Kelly got that job on a permanent basis: you can see him in the Star Trek pilot film with Jeffrey Hunter. He was also in the 1953 Julius Caesar.

Bruce Gordon (Buffer) is forever remembered as Frank Nitti, recurring gangster on The Untouchables television series. He plays it pretty much the same here: You ain’t got nothing on me, coppers! Gordon appeared with Michael Pate in Roger Corman’s Tower Of London (1962).

Edwin Parker, who plays one of Buffer’s henchmen was to become posthumously famous when research revealed that he had often doubled for Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, and other Universal monster stars in scenes involving exertion or dangerous stunts in the classics of the 1940s. Most notably, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Parker stood in frequently for Bela Lugosi as the Frankenstein Monster, and actually logged more screen time than did Bela.

The film features an obtrusively eerie score by Irving Gertz, heavy with strings and "Theremin." Producer Joseph Gershenson was a film musician and probably contributed.

As I said, the film thrives on ambiguity. There are undeniable homoerotic themes throughout. Tim, Dolores’ high voiced, baby faced brother often emotes like a woman, and, not surprisingly, is treated as one.

Tim’s first extended speech goes: "Paw, he had his men hold me down and give me a body-beatin’. And then after they had their fun..."

Buffer to the sheriff: "Doc Carter’s boy moves into my land, starts breakin’ things up. What am I supposed to do, hold him in my arms and kiss ‘im? He threatened me that’s what he did. I got a right to muss ‘im up a bit."

As the saloon dialogue by these tough critters is tidied up to an insipid degree, these mild statements speak volumes!

When we first see Robey enter a coffin in the Carter family burial vault, the suggestion is planted that it’s the very same casket in which Doc Carter has just been laid to rest. It would have been pretty tight in there. Well, maybe Robey took over an identical, empty box, but the director certainly took no pains to avoid this suggestion of homonecrophilia.

Was Robey’s curse visited upon him for the sins of fratricide and suicide, or something truly "unspeakable"? Actually, we’re told that he confines his attention to women, and only slays men when required for his own safety.

Note, however, that Doc Carter refers to "young girls." Not just girls, not young women, but young girls. The diary speaks of "the youngest daughters." (Remember, in the Old West a woman had to start her family by the time she was sixteen, because she’d be an old hag of thirty before she knew it. In this context, young girl would imply very young indeed.) Now, Dolores Carter seems to be (shall we say) old enough to vote (were such allowed for women in those days), and Cora, the first victim of whom we’re aware seems post-adolescent, but the screenplay does plant that disturbing hint that the vampire’s preferred prey might be children.

The character names could be taken as biblical and mythological references. Drago is the dragon. His casket bears the dates 1826-1859, indicating he died at 33, the same age as did Preacher Dan’s Redeemer. Dolores suggests "she who sorrows." Daniel, of course, is the naïve fellow in a den of lions.

Robey is introduced as the man in black, a mysterious elemental force--but the writers didn’t take the easy way out and keep him thus. The vampire gunslinger proves to be a most engaging rogue, dealing out justice to the dastardly bad guys of the piece. We can see why the leading lady has conflicted feelings, what with the sheriff is powerless and the preacher is ineffective much of the time. A most lethal gunfighter, he lets you draw first. You see, it doesn’t matter if you shoot him before he shoots you; hot lead doesn’t harm him, and he can afford to be slow.

Though cliché dialog abounds, the script has some amusingly effective new lines. "You'd be surprised how little influence you have when you're not around," says the vampire to the minister at one point.

Can you say that Robey is a Dracula knock-off, when the story’s setting probably pre-dates Dracula's invasion of Britain? I wonder if Professor Van Helsing’s own notebooks referenced the strange case of vampirism years ago in the American territories.

In the film, the time of day is rarely clear. There are always long shadows, whether of dawn, dusk or the moon. Like the vampire characters in The Vampire's Ghost and The Vampire, whom I covered earlier, Robey can move about in the daytime, although he does admit that his eyes trouble him in the sun, and hence he prefers to work at night.

The telegraphed twist ending with is very much in the E.C. comics tradition. Tension is prolonged when the draw goes on longer than expected. I was afraid that both participants would be out of even rifle range before Preacher Dan made the call. 

It’s quite a stretch to call this a good film, but it certainly deserves credit for trying something different and above all, something unsettling. Maybe it wasn’t the first such cinematic hybrid, not would it be the last, but I’d maintain that it’s still the best horror-Western. The best way to see this film is as I first did, on the tail end of a drive-in all-nighter. Dawn was breaking just as the vampire was vanquished.

The three films I’ve discussed in this series--The Vampire’s Ghost (1941), The Vampire (1957) and Curse Of The Undead (1959)--all feature vampires divorced from their standard setting: respectively, they’re contemporary adventure, speculative science fiction and old western. Their vampires break the rules in being ambient in the daylight hours, although all shun the sun for one reason or another. Each had a woman’s hand in its story (respectively Leigh Brackett, Pat Fielder and Mildred Dein). Each of them rewards an occasional viewing.

(In addition to HORROR-WOOD, Don Mankowski has published articles in Cult Movies and Van Helsing’s Journal. Check his Webpage for details.)

Thanks, Don.  Agreed, Curse Of The Undead is not great flick and it abounds with about the most hackneyed B-western dialogue and  characterizations imaginable, and its plot has holes large enough to drive a six-horse hearse through.  But it's certainly a different approach indeed to the filmic vampire formula, one that is strangely sincere (in hard contrast to tripe like Billy The Kid Vs. Dracula).  And it does have a dark and bleak   mood to it that gives the production a kind of gothic validity.  Definitely, it's worth viewing.

Article copyright © Don Mankowski.   Screen captures courtesy of the exclusive DVD version of this film, available from Creepy Classics Video.

Return To Archives