Grazie alla No Shame Video finalmente possiamo guastarci questo classico dell'hrror. Il Sangue del Vampiro è un film prodotto by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman. The two filmmakers, who met during the war, had set up a production house that was for a long time with the Hammer and Amicus between capisoldi horror made in Britain, though later Baker & Berman show will also produce some of 'action played by Roger Moore (The Saint, The Persuaders!). The special film badged Baker & Berman, is that we must also mention Hell-Fire Club, The Curse of the Crimson Altar and The Hyenas, Edinburgh, was the total absence of fantasy elements. These films, in fact, focusing on the stories show "earthly" characterized by a strong and realistic sadism, so that the two producers had described these horror film, but "action thriller". The Blood of the Vampire is no exception to this rule.
The story revolves around the character of Dr. Callistratus (or Kallistratos in the Italian edition), a scientist who, because of his experiments with human blood, is believed to be a vampire and killed with a classic post. His assistant, however, the deformed back to life thanks to a heart transplant (!). Years later a doctor wrongly accused of a crime, is detained in a psychiatric prison where the director is just the revived Callistratus that he continued his experiments, using prisoners as guinea pigs.
The Blood of the Vampire strangely resembles much more than the contemporary productions Hammer (Dracula the Vampire, The Mystery of the Castle Dracula Prince of Darkness, etc ...) to the old works at Universal, to the point Callistratus entrust the role of an elderly actor, Donald Wolfit, who looks incredibly Bela Lugosi. A distinction, however, the film by Henry Cass from the classic Universal is precisely the high dose of blood and violence, so much so that some critics do not hesitate to call the film "a movie Sadeian. The script is signed by its then that it was the screenwriter Jimmy Sangster "trusted" the Hammer, but already found differences in style, corroborating the view that Terence Fisher rewrite all the scripts of films hammeriani, while refusing to be credited as author (perhaps an excess of humility). Despite some tricks
not really very successful (eg, the hunchback assistant makeup) The Blood of the Vampire contains sequences really shocked by that time, so that censorship in the English edition had a lot of scissors, removing pictures of guts, human heads, closed glass containers, and blood running from the unfortunate victims in guinea-large bulbs. Baker & Berman, however, the habit of making two versions of their films, a "moderate" for a national audience, the other more bloody and morbid abroad.
One last note on Cass Hanry director: being a semi-unknown name in circulation for years on urban legends have circulated about him the kind that after a mystical crisis would have destroyed all the films he directed. Cass was actually more of a rip-melodrammoni director of tears that have gone by now largely lost. Its artistic peak was undoubtedly The Blood of the Vampire, perhaps due to the contribution of Monty Berman, as well as by work, seems to be a sort of shadow director. The fact that this film was unavailable presochè ended up feeding the legend of the mad director.
