If it's one thing that the Italians and Mexican horror film makers do, is it certainly finding the best parts of an American horror film and throwing those attributes to the screen with loving care.  While many find their films to be of a cheap and almost gaudily overacted, there is something underneath them all that shows a kind of love expressed onto celluloid.  It's like an entertaining and stylish film version of Cliffs Notes.  Except for the fact that in some cases, they are more easily watchable than their counterparts.

Not to say their inspirations are dull, but in many cases one cannot simply slip into 1931's Dracula or the James Whale version of Frankenstein like you can with "Slaughter of the Vampires" or another Italian vampire epic "Atom Age Vampire."  Fortunately for us, today's experiment "Slaughter of the Vampires" seems to be a direct descendant of 1931's Dracula except for the fact that it speeds through the seduction of the young innocent woman (or in this case, bride) in the first ten minutes of the film.  Which I suppose is common (see "Atom Age Vampire" for a prime example of the Italian method of getting to the first plot point in record time) except that the prologue of the film definitely shows that this is NOT your standard Dracula flick.

"Slaughter" begins with a slaughter:  two vampires are being chased down by villagers wielding torches, sticks, pitchforks, the whole shebang they must have bought from their 'Banish-R-Us' earlier in the day.  After a few minutes of suspense and hiding, the scene ends with a point-of-view shot of the vampires getting horribly mangled by the villagers who turn the pitchforks on the vampires themselves.  No kidding!  Those of you who were expecting a calm little Mexican horror flick are now fully in the realm of the Italian horror black & white flick--the almost innocent way the Mexicans have with their flicks (barring "Night of the Bloody Apes") is now GONE, replaced by the nightmare fuel that is...."Slaughter of the Vampires."  Of course, it all makes a sort of sense:  why didn't anybody use a pitchfork on Frankenstein's Monster?  Sure, the fire works wonders but wouldn't a pitchfork be much more....well, effective?  Sure, the damn monster would lurch around with a pitchfork hanging out of his head or torso, but at least he wouldn't bumble around catching things on fire or destroying buildings or such.

Eek, sorry.  I was just reliving AMC's last showing of "Bride of Frankenstein."  Anyway...

The proper beginning of our experiment starts with a wedding reception in which a mysterious man enters unexpectedly.  If you were completely dumb, you may not recognize him as our Dracula:  a classy man with the pseudo-Lugosi act going on.  Almost prophetically, the actor chosen for the part doesn't resemble Lugosi in looks as much as he does a slightly chubby Christopher Lee or the forgotten twin of Robert "Count Yorga" Quarry.  After a bit of dancing, the bride acts strangely and ignores her new hubby and is finally seduced by the Dracula in her newlywed bed with him doing a bit of sucking on her neck.

At this point, one would expect to see the husband show up by kicking the door down and running our naughty nosferatu through with something of the oak variety.  Even spookier is the fact that while the Dracula man is sucking her blood, the bride is acting like she is getting a hickey.  This could be explained by two reasons:  either the woman is extremely kinky or the bite of a vampire is like getting a hickey.  Either way, I found it a nice touch that you don't see in many vampire films.  Sure, most vampire flicks can change vampiric powers at will (can they turn into a bat, turn to dust in sunlight, etc.) but none of them really explore the minutia of the Vampire itself.  Anyway, the husband starts knocking at the door thinking his bride is sick and the Dracula dude takes off.

Cut to the honeymoon cottage.  The bride is revealed  as having anemia and her husband cares for her.  Yet, at night, she wonders outside where she meets the Dracula man again and he informs her of the plot...er...her condition.  She doesn't cast a reflection in the mirror.  She is slowly growing into a vampire.  The next day, the doctor comes again and is baffled:  she doesn't seem to have any malady but she might be slowly dying for some reason.    The husband vows to go to Vienna (showing that this movie must be taking place somewhere in the Transylvania region..and in the 1800s due to horsedrawn carriage and the like) to fetch help while the bride says in the mansion, holding back her hunger for human flesh.

Thanks to a dissolve, the husband arrives in Vienna (complete with weeping willow trees??) just in time to meet the receptionist whose name is Dubbing Problem Number One, who speaks her lines so quickly it seems to be suffering from a disorder herself.  Sadly, this is just a dubbing issue and she is soon dispatched while the Vienna Doctor shows up.  At first, I thought he looked like Vincent Price from his time doing Poe Flicks for American-International until I realized it:  he is this movie's Von Helsing, the intelligent but mighty doctor who has been fighting the vampiric evil for eons.   This is confirmed on the horseride back to the cottage.  Why?  Well, so when they get back to the cottage they can kick some bloodsucker ass, that's why!  I tell you, Italian movies don't mess around.

When the mighty vampire hunter and the husband arrive, the servants tell them the bride has died by the window, 'her eyes looking at the moon.'  As the husband grieves, the doctor insists that he steels his nerves and prepares for the worst.  So, the doctor opens the door to their bedroom and finds....

NOTHING!   Well, except an open window.

The doctor tells the husband that they should split up to cover the grounds outside in the search for the bride and her vampiric sweetheart.  Finally, in another house we show the bride getting another bite from the Dracula man that truly makes her a vampire for some reason.   And while the husband is out, she sneaks up behind him and using his grief she gives him a quick nibble before the doctor interrupts them.  She darts off.  Fortunately, the doctor is able to save the husband's life with a blood transfusion but disallows him from going out at night:  due to the bite, the husband might still be under his now-vampiric wife's control and through her, Dracula man's.    This reminds me of the old Dark Shadows show where they needed a good cliffhanger but not the plot development:  sure, it's great to have Barnabas Collins sink his fangs into a cute chick, but the last thing anybody needed was another vampire on the loose.  So, the writers decided to make it so while the bite did happen, it didn't make the victim a vampire but rather 'under the vampire's control.'  This is one fact of the vampire mythology that never satisfied me:  how would a vampire do that?  By sucking a little blood by piercing the freaking jugular??  Can they only suck a little blood?  Try slicing your throat (no, don't, just a metaphor!) sometime and see if you can only get a little blood.  It's just goofy and I think that was why the hypnosis factor was introduced.  When you bite, you bite, and you can't choose your bite.  Like saying you only got a little pregnant or such.

Back to the story:  the doctor and the husband find out where the vampires sleep during the day and hunt them down.  During this time, the Dracula dude puts the bite on the housekeeper (who eerily looks like the bride...of course, with the condition the print is in, that might not be the case in reality).   And it goes downhill from there:  a series of odd organ music and a lot of atmosphere rise to quite a neat climax.  Hell, why am I telling you?  Go see it for yourself!

Wait, you can't, it's quite rare.  Well, okay, I'll ruin it for you:  the Dracula guy gets staked by a portion of iron fencing.  Once again showing that when you need to stake a vampire, the Italians are the most creative men you can get.  Why or when this has to do with the beginning is beyond me.

Despite the simplicity of the script, the movie gets moving once you pass the first five minutes of the wedding reception and when the Drac Man moves into the scene.  While the movie doesn't make much linear sense it also doesn't bog down the viewer in a bunch of vampire mythology which makes up half of the running time of all 'vampire' flicks nowadays.  It comes, it does, and it leaves you feeling like you saw something important.  Not important in the fact that one day, somebody will release this on DVD's successor with various extras or have Ebert clones writing entire books to the minutest details of the movie's production and effect on mankind....but maybe they should.  Despite being slightly cheesy the movie moves and never bores.   A definite must-see-for-Halloween flick.

RATINGS:  Grab it if you can find it.  Just a shame a lot of B&W Italian flicks in this vein can't be remastered and released in America.  Three and a half stars out of Four.  And be wary of villagers boasting pitchforks!