The late 30s, in some US small town. A marriage proposal made at a graveyard – it’s apparently the first place the couple became…close – is rudely interrupted by a vampire (Michael Pataki) who has just dug his way out after a couple of years of coffin time.
He brutally murders the man and then drags the woman off into the open grave to rape her, leaving her alive afterwards. There’s also a subplot about a cop becoming convinced that the killer/rapist is indeed a vampire, but that not only leads nowhere but the death of the cop and includes some of the film’s worst acting, so let’s ignore this. Of course, the poor woman is now pregnant. Her baby, it turns out, doesn’t do milk but instead needs to be fed with blood.
Thirty years later, the baby has grown up and sideways into one James Eastman (William Smith), secret eater of raw meat, but like, totally sensitive. James has been hunting his vampire father for years now, but never seems to be able to quite catch up to him. Until now, that is, for bloodsucking Caleb Croft has acquired a new name and is now working as a folklore professor on the night school circuit, where he gives absurdly dramatic speeches while all his female students swoon. And James is part of his new course.
Of course, because nothing’s ever easy, our hero takes his dear time to actually making sure the professor is the vampire he is looking for, or indeed a vampire, and subplots about an aspirational vampire bride (Diane Holden) and a student who just happens to look exactly like Croft’s dead beloved (Lyn Peters) can ensue. Also, son and rapist father share the same taste in women.
John Hayes’s early 70s vampire movie, based on a script by David Chase (yes, it’s the The Sopranos creator’s second writing credit) is a bit of a frustrating experience. There are some excellent ideas here, like the portrayal of the vampire as a true monster that uses a semi-civilized veneer to hide how little he thinks of any individual human beyond of what use they could be in fulfilling his desires; and he’s all desires. It’s also the – in the early 70s not terribly common – version of a master vampire who scrupulously avoids creating other vampires and prefers to brutally slaughter his victims and then suck their corpses dry, really turning him into the ultimate egotistic monster.
While it is not exactly tasteful, turning the rapist subtext that also swirls around vampires into actual text is not a bad idea either, and certainly fits the unromantic idea of vampirism the film prefers. I’m not too sure that Pataki’s a great choice to embody most of these aspects, though. He’s not physically imposing enough to sell the physical threat – especially when his equal number is a pretty mountainous William Smith - and his shouty scenery-chewing is very amusing to watch but makes him feel like even less of the unliving horror he is supposed to be; and Pataki’s not a clever enough actor to make this seeming lack of power be the actual point of what he’s doing.
Of course, William Smith is not a great choice for his role either. He’s certainly trying to give a haunted and Byronic impression, but he’s simply not the kind of actor you buy as a guy hunting his father-monster while fighting his own dark impulses.
Hayes’s direction tends to the bland and the slow, but from time to time, he manages a worthwhile scene or two. Particularly the sequence of James’s mom feeding her baby with blood while sitting in a rocking chair, singing “All the Pretty Little Horseys” is creepy, clever and resonant, but Hayes is also good with some of Croft’s more ruthless murders. The more subtle interpersonal stuff, though, doesn’t work at all; whenever people are supposed to relate like proper human beings, actors, script and direction simply drag their feet and look embarrassed. Which is a bit of a problem when you realize how important this human drama should be for basically everything that’s going on here.
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