The Vampire *** (1957, John Beal, Kenneth Tobey, Dabbs Greer, Coleen Gray) – Classic Movie Review 3,158

John Beal stars in the 1957  American horror film The Vampire as Dr Paul Bleecher, who inadvertently ingests pills laced with the blood of vampire bats and takes on vampiric qualities. 

‘It Feeds on the Blood of Beautiful Women!’

John Beal stars in the 1957  American horror film The Vampire as San Francisco physician Dr Paul Bleecher, who accidentally swallows sinister white pills inadvertently handed on to him by his dying vampire-bat research scientist colleague Dr Matthew Campbell (Wood Romoff) and turns into a blood-guzzling ghoul – a scaly-looking human vampire.

Campbell was experimenting with vampire bat blood just before his death. Beecher finds a bottle of pills among Campbell’s stuff and takes them home. Beecher’s daughter Betsy (Lydia Reed) accidentally substitutes the vampire blood pills for his migraine tablets. and he starts having blackouts.

Director Paul Landres’s low-budget ($115,000) 1957 movie is an amusing 50s sci-fi horror that, even if it fails to frighten and sometimes raises unwanted laughs, still has many good scenes, well-written dialogue by Pat Fielder, a strong central performance from Beal, and jolly character acting from old reliables Kenneth Tobey (a cop, Sheriff Buck Donnelly), Dabbs Greer (a doctor, Dr Will Beaumont) and Coleen Gray (a nurse, Carol Butler).

Also in the cast are Raymond Greenleaf, Lydia Reed, Herb Vigran, Ann Staunton, James Griffith, Paul Brinegar and Natalie Masters.

The film was shot at the Hal Roach Studios in Los Angeles, from 10 to 16 December 1956,

It was released by United Artists on 14 June 1957 as the bottom half of a double feature with The Monster That Challenged the World. Both are made by producers Arthur Gardner and Jules V Levy and Arnold Laven at Gramercy Productions.

Runtime: 75 minutes.

It was later shoen on TV as Mark of the Vampire.

It was released on DVD in 2007 by MGM as a Midnite Movies Double Feature with Paul Landres’s 1958 film The Return of Dracula.

The cast

The cast are John Beal as Dr Paul Beecher, Coleen Gray as Carol Butler, Kenneth Tobey as Sheriff Buck Donnelly, Lydia Reed as Betsy Beecher, Dabbs Greer as Dr Will Beaumont, Herb Vigran as George Ryan, Paul Brinegar as Willy Warner, Ann Staunton as Marion Wilkins, James Griffith as Henry Winston, Arthur Gardner in bit part, Raymond Greenleaf, and Natalie Masters.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3158

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com