The Kiss of the Vampire – 1963 | 88 mins | Horror | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Kiss of the Vampire was a welcome return to full-blooded gothic for Hammer. A hastily re-written script came from producer Anthony Hinds that used elements previously intended for or featured in The Brides of Dracula but omitted any mention of Dracula by name. Tasmanian-born Don Sharp was signed to direct due to his experience in low-budget filmmaking and the studios miserly finances and Carry On cinematographer Alan Hume replaced the leisurely Jack Asher as Hammer sought a speedy production. With the established partnership of Lee or Cushing refusing to reprise their roles, Clifford Evans was recruited as a Van Helsing-like professor and produces an excellent performance.

Set in 1910 Bavaria, a British honeymooning couple, Gerald and Marianne Harcourt (Edward de Souza and Jennifer Daniel), find themselves out of petrol while travelling through the Alps in their motorcar. Warned to get out of the area by the mysterious Professor Zimmer (Evans), the couple find their way to the local hotel where they are invited to dinner with the Ravna family. Dr Ravna (Noel Willman) is the leader of a vampire sect and possesses a son, Carl (Barry Warren), and daughter, Sabena (Jacquie Wallis), and it is only with some difficulty that Gerald breaks the spell of Carl’s hypnotic piano playing and returns to the hotel.

At the hotel Gerald becomes curious why none of the locals patronise the bar at night, but the landlord, Bruno (Peter Madden) and his wife Anna (Vera Cook) sullenly respond that nobody visits their premises anymore. They also encounter the cranky old Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans), who warns the couple to stay away from the Ravna family. But when the charming Carl and Sabena invite the couple to a lavish masked ball at their chateau, the newlyweds graciously accept. The Ravna’s have ghoulish plans for the honeymooning couple, and whilst the attractive Sabena distracts Gerald, Carl delivers Marianne into the vampiric arms of his decadent father.

When Gerald awakes from his drunken stupor, Carl Ravna denies any knowledge of Marianne and has her husband forcibly ejected. Gerald encounters a conspiracy of silence as both the landlord and police deny his wife’s existence. The only person who’ll listen is the vengeful Professor Zimmer, a man who lost his daughter to Ravna’s vampire, and it’s he that stages a ceremony known named Corpus Diabalo Levitum to invoke a horde of bats from the depths of hell to deal with the vampire sect.