Atom Age Vampire (1960)

Originally Written

Friday, May 4, 2007

After sitting through two B-movie "horror classic" films I can easily point out the greatest fault... length. Even at only 80-90 minutes most of these films are too long. A run time of 60 minutes would honestly have made the viewing experience more enjoyable. This time around I watched Atom Age Vampire, while it held my attention longer than Carnival Of Souls it still took a simplistic plot and stretched it out too long, with too much babble and not enough monster which is ultimately what hurts these films.

Atom Age Vampire is the story of a lovely dancer named Jeanette Moreneau. Jeanette gets in a horrible car crash after having a fight with her boyfriend and as a result her face is horribly disfigured. The doctors all say the damage is permanent and there is no treatment available to restore her beautiful looks. In a fit of depression Jeanette contemplates committing suicide, but she's offered a second chance at life by Professor Alberto Levin. Levin has discovered a new formula which he believes will reanimate the cells in the human body and restore Jeanette's beauty to her.

The treatment is a success but seems to only last for a small amount of time. Levin begins to go insane by falling madly in love with Jeanette and must find a way to make the results of the formula permanent. He arrives at the conclusion that the only way to permanently restore Jeanette's beauty is to initiate a series of transplants, transplants he must obtain from the glands of unsuspecting women whom he must murder! It seems murder is not his only dark secret. Levin injects himself with another type of formula he has created which turns him into a horrible monster, a monster capable of doing horrible things!

Atom Age Vampire is a decent 60's horror film that has a few good moments to it. The special effects, mainly the transformation of the Professor into the vampire, were quite impressive for this period in time. The acting is pretty bad but some of that is do to the fact this is a Italian film and all the actors voices are dubbed. At times its sounds a little corny but surprisingly not too bad compared to the present day dubbing on Asian films, which seems to always be horrible. The film begins to stagger about half way through and we only see the monster very randomly and for only short periods of time. The last five minutes is definitely the high point of the film and contains the most action, but I was quite disappointed with the ending which is done so quickly and effortlessly that you have to rewind and watch again to see what happened and even then your quite puzzled. In the end, Atom Age Vampire is alright, nothing great and not even that bad to be funny, its just there.

5/10

View: Atom Age Vampire