January 28, 2025

Frankenstein meets Elizabeth Bathory: I Vampiri

Poster - I Vampiri (1957)
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I Vampiri (aka The Vampires, aka Lust of the Vampire, 1957)


Pros: Great production design, cinematography and high Gothic atmosphere
Cons: Uneven pacing; Sets up a mystery that really isn’t a mystery; Timid producers nixed certain plot elements that could have made the film extraordinary

This post is part of the Journey to Italy Blogathon co-hosted by Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Kristina at Speakeasy. Have an interest in older movies or TV (1950-1990) featuring Italian connections? When you’re done here, journey over to Gill’s and Kristina’s blogs for more cinematic tours.

Well here we are, just shy of a month into the new year, and it’s already sizing up to be another unnerving one. It’s no use worrying about things you can’t control, but if you need a sense of purpose and a distraction from worrying headlines, there’s always New Year’s resolutions. Show of hands -- how many of you succumbed to the temptation to make one or two? Another show of hands -- how many have already given up on a hastily made resolution?

If you fall into the second category, don’t feel too bad -- you’re in good company. The tendency to bail out early on resolutions is so widespread, it’s become enshrined as a commemorative day, National Quitter’s Day, on the second Friday of January. The site National Today explains:

“New studies have found that about two-thirds of people abandon their New Year’s resolution within a month. One of the major problems with achieving new year resolutions is that those who set them are over-ambitious. People usually start with high levels of motivation, but as time progresses, the drive begins to wane. The key in achieving goals is to set short, medium, and long-term goals as opposed to one large unrealistic stretch goal.” [Nationaltoday.com]

While quitting is not commonly associated with the elite sectors of society (yeah, that’s what they want you to believe), even prominent go-getters can feel the urge to bail once in a while. Consider the case of Italian filmmaker Riccardo Freda (1909-1999).

By the mid-1950s, Freda was an experienced writer/director with a couple of dozen films and several film festival award nominations under his belt. And, he was set to direct I Vampiri, which would go down in history as the first Italian horror film of the sound era.

Image of director Riccardo Freda courtesy of Pakdooik at it.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Riccardo Freda (Wikimedia Commons)

Freda, who also co-wrote the I Vampiri screenplay along with collaborators Piero Ragnoli and Mario Bava (the cinematographer on the project), reportedly told his producers that he could “have a treatment ready in 24 hours and make the picture itself in a fortnight.” [Jonathon Rigby, Euro Gothic: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema, Signum Books, 2016, p. 71.]

Freda’s over-ambitiousness ultimately turned sour. Depending on which source you believe, Freda either walked off the set 10 days into filming when it became clear he wouldn’t meet his deadline [IMDb], or, he stormed off the set when his producers, worried about censorship, nixed several of the more horrific and lurid aspects of the film [Rigby, p. 71]. In any event, Bava took over the directing reins for the rest of the production.

This wouldn’t be the last time Freda walked off a production and Bava filled in for him. Some years later, it was deja vu all over again when, during the shooting of Calitiki, The Immortal Monster (a Blob knock-off released in 1959) Freda again feuded with the producers, and Bava stepped in to complete the project.

Poster - Caltiki, The Immortal Monster, directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava (1959)
Oh the horror, the HORROR!... of walking off yet another set.

Later, Freda claimed that he purposely abandoned Calitiki to give his multi-talented cinematographer another shot at directing. [IMDb] Whatever the motivation, it certainly worked, with Bava quickly going on to direct Black Sunday (La maschera del demonio, 1960), ultimately a far more seminal Italian horror film than I Vampiri, and the jump-start to a career that would see Bava hailed as one of the great masters of the genre.

Still, there is something to being involved in a cinematic first, even if later films in the genre eclipse yours in terms of style and critical and audience reception. Rather than being a radical leap into new film territory, I Vampiri is more of a bridge between Universal’s horrors of the ‘30s and ‘40s and the far more graphic, bloody fare that Bava and Hammer films would introduce to the world starting in the late '50s.

Set in contemporaneous Paris, I Vampiri opens with a body being hauled out of the Seine, accompanied by closeups of newspaper headlines blaring about a “vampire” killer terrorizing the city, having claimed the lives of four young women in a matter of months.

It seems that the victims were completely drained of blood, with needle marks on their arms (not to mention they all shared the same blood type). Quickly, the shadowy killer strikes again, brazenly abducting Nora, a showgirl (Ronny Holiday), from the theater where she works.

Screenshot - Shot of menacing shadow from I Vampiri (1957)
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

The police are stymied, but nosy newspaper reporter Pierre Lantin (Dario Michaelis) is on the case, much to the chagrin of perpetually grumpy police inspector Chantal (Carlo D’Angelo). With one clue -- a photo of Nora with a suspicious-looking character in a trenchcoat hovering in the background -- Lantin proceeds to interview the friends of one of the murdered women. Lantin takes an immediate shine to one of the friends, beautiful Laurette (Wandisa Guida).

When Lantin sees the trenchcoated stranger lurking around Lauette’s neighborhood, he follows him to a tenement apartment. Lantin rushes to bring the police back to the suspect’s lair, but when he returns with the inspector, he’s dumbfounded to find, instead of the sinister character, just an old pensioner who says he’s been living there for years. Chantal is peeved with the newspaperman for wasting his time.

I Vampiri tips its hand early on. Instead of keeping the menace to the shadows after Nora’s dance hall abduction, the script has Lantin flushing out a conspiracy in which Joseph, a wretched drug addict (Paul Muller), is employed by a mad scientist, Julien du Grand (Antoine Balpêtrè) to abduct young women for his unholy experiments.

Screenshot - Dario Michaelis as Pierre Lantin in I Vampiri (1957)
Pierre draws up plans to catch the vampire killer.

Joseph, panicked that the police are on to him, runs to du Grand, who in turn is worried about the attention that his dimwitted henchman has stirred up. The Professor decides now is the time to fake his own death with the help of his cousin, the wealthy and mysterious duchess Margherita du Grand.

The Duchess, wearing a thick black veil, leads the mourners -- the cream of the crop of Paris society -- at the fake funeral held at her crumbling estate outside of the city.

Also in attendance is Lantin, who is unaware that he is the cause of the ostentatious funeral. He explains to a colleague that he has issues with the Duchess, who in her youth was obsessed with his father, and almost ruined his parents’ marriage. Lantin cattily remarks that although the Duchess was once very beautiful, she now wears veils because she can’t deal with being old.

Coincidentally, the Duchess’ niece Giselle (Gianna Maria Canale), whom many regard as the most beautiful woman in Paris, seems similarly fascinated with Lantin, popping up in unexpected places as the newspaperman continues his hunt for the vampire killer. But, given their families’ histories, he gives her the cold shoulder.

Screenshot - Gianna Maria Canale and Dario Michaelis in I Vampiri (1957)
"Hey Pierre, my eyes are up here!"

Little does he know that his real love interest, the lovely Laurette, will soon get caught up in the sinister du Grands’ web, and will be tricked and then abducted to the Duchess’ castle, where a grisly fate awaits her. Will Lantin and the clueless police get wise in time to save her?

At first glance, I Vampiri looks less like a groundbreaking film and more like an eccentric project mired in past tropes. Euro Gothic author Jonathan Rigby points to the black gloves worn by sinister Joseph as prefiguring the fashion preferences of the killers in later Giallo films. But after the initial dance hall scene, the henchman is yanked out of the shadows (not to mention revealed as a garden variety drug addict), and the suspense of seeing a faceless figure wearing black gloves dissipates.

I Vampiri is definitely inspired by Hollywood’s mystery-thrillers of the 1930s. Lantin is the very embodiment of the perennial gutsy reporter who clashes with the blundering police and looks for clues in old dark houses. The only thing missing is the plucky girl reporter to act as a foil and generate non-stop hard-boiled patter.

Just as prominent is the nod to mad scientists of the past. Julien has a very impressive laboratory in the castle’s dungeons, with all sorts of newfangled doodads, beakers and tubes… and a scar-faced assistant dressed in medical scrubs to complete the set-up.

Screenshot - Professor du Grand's laboratory in I Vampiri (1957)
"Don't worry Joseph, you're completely covered for head replacement surgery!"

The only thing missing is showy Kenneth Strickfaden equipment sending electrical currents arcing through the gloomy lab. Du Grand sounds like he stepped right out of a Universal Frankenstein picture when he brags to his assistant,

“Some day, I’ll discover the very energy that generates life and make it flow forever through living beings. That will be my moment of triumph, because it will mean that all my work was not in vain!”

But instead of using electricity to revitalize dead tissue, I Vampiri’s mad doctor uses the blood of involuntary donors, plus some sort of enhancement process, to revitalize old tissue and smooth out those fine lines and wrinkles (sort of like Botox injections, but with dead bodies lying around after the treatment).

So, no supernatural vampires here, just metaphorical ones that use their wealth and mad science to relieve the peasants of their blood supply in the pursuit of a few fleeting moments of restored youth. Dr. Frankenstein, meet Elizabeth Bathory.

Screenshot - Wandisa Guida in a blood-curdling scene from I Vampiri (1957)
Laurette suddenly realizes this is not the relaxing spa experience she signed up for.

Also, there's no real mystery as to who is benefitting from Julien’s mad schemes; hint: there are two characters, supposedly related to one another and living on the same estate, but who are never seen together. What the audience is left with is the anticipation of a dramatic (if obvious) reveal and the villains getting their just deserts.

The real stars of the show are the sets and Bava’s beautiful black and white Cinemascope photography, itself a sort of bridge between eras: black and white to accentuate the high Gothic atmosphere, and Cinemascope for that mid-century immersive experience.

It’s hard not to feel at least a slight shiver as Bava’s camera roams through darkened castle interiors full of menacing shadows, cobwebs, skulls and monstrous statuary. Or when it surveys Julien and his sketchy assistant hovering over a body on a gurney, framed by evil-looking medical equipment. Prosaic scenes of Lantin clashing with his boss or the police, or chatting up the school girls, serve as a stark contrast between the modern, daylit 20th century world and the dark, decaying one of the Du Grands.

Apparently, Freda’s original vision for the film would have far exceeded the exercise in Gothic atmosphere that it ended up being. But I Vampiri’s producers were reluctant to get too far out over their skis:

“Wary of censorship, Freda’s producers dropped all of his nastier conceits, several of which he claimed to have actually filmed. A drug addict called Joseph Signoret … is the robotic pawn who supplies the Duchesse du Grand and her scientist cousin with the victims they need; scenes in which he was guillotined, put back together by the mad Professor, and literally lost his transplanted head while under police supervision were all deleted. … These changes, plus the general drift towards making I Vampiri into a standard police procedural, presumably explain why Freda -- always a tempestuous kind of director -- stormed off the set towards the end of the production.” [Rigby, p. 71]

(Yikes! I would love to see that director’s cut!)

Screenshot - Joseph's interrogation scene in I Vampiri (1957)
A visible scar on Joseph's neck hints at scenes that were excised from the final cut (click on the image to enlarge).

Alas, it would fall to others -- namely Hammer Studios -- to break horror’s nasty barrier, riling up audiences and critics alike with the colorful, never-before-seen gruesomeness of The Curse of Frankenstein, which was released not quite a month after I Vampiri.

While Curse was racking up box office records, Freda was chagrined that I Vampiri had difficulty scaring up decent attendance, even in Italy:

“At that time I’d sometimes go into the auditorium to study the audience's reaction. I don’t know why, but the theatre was almost empty. Anyway, plenty of people were attracted by the posters, which were extremely beautiful. The people would read I Vampiri…I Vampiri… And that appeared to tempt them. Then at the very last moment they’d notice the name Freda. The reaction was kind of automatic. ‘Freda? But it’s Italian -- it must be terrible, Italians can’t make this kind of movie.’” [Rigby, p. 73]

Not long after I Vampiri's disappointing reception, Freda, perhaps thinking, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” took on Caltiki, a sci-fi knock-off (although, he couldn't help giving it the dark, atmospheric, Freda-esque treatment). A year after that, his trusty collaborator Mario Bava would direct Black Sunday, solidifying the worldwide comeback of Gothic horror and proving that yeah, Italians can make that kind of movie.

Whether he realized it at the time or not, Riccardo Freda and I Vampiri helped set it all in motion.

Screenshot - Atmospheric shot of a black clad figure walking through a gloomy castle in I Vampiri (1957)
The Duchess du Grand stealthily creeps her way into Italian horror history.

Where to find it: DVD/Blu-ray | Streaming

26 comments:

  1. Thanks for adding this title and this well researched piece, it does sound an interesting little movie too. That The Blob rip off seems another one to check out too... Added you to my Day 1 post and sent a link onto Kristina.

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    1. Thanks Gill! Looking forward to reading the other entries!

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  2. Haven’t seen this one somehow inexplicably, since I love Bava and all these kinds of movies. But I ‘m totally sold if only by the comparison to Hammer and the 30s mystery-thrillers and mad science which all appeal very much. I recently saw They Have Changed Their Face which was vampires in a corporate setting, seems like it might make a nice double with this. Thanks for joining us, loved reading.

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    1. Thanks for co-hosting Kristina! Now that you mention it, I too recently saw They Have Changed Their Face for the first time after discovering a decent copy on YouTube. A very quirky take on Dracula with a capitalist-critique chaser. Very much of its time, yet also timeless in a way.

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  3. Brian I loved your cheeky take on this film! I think you're spot on. I would love to see the directors cut as well! Great review- I thoroughly enjoyed it! Joey

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    1. Thanks Joey! I don't think those excised scenes will ever see the light of day, but maybe with all the remake-itis going on, someone will restore Freda's original vision in a new version. We could also use another Gothic horror revival!

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  4. Great reivew Brian :) I agree with you on all of the pros and cons :) I think what makes this film so interesting (albeit flawed) to me comes from Mario Bava's involvement here.

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    1. Thanks John! It is indeed a gorgeous looking film in black and white cinemascope.

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  5. It's kind of a shame that the producers backed away from the decapitation subplot, as that would really have ramped up the horror. I wonder if Freda had been thinking of the 1935 film Mad Love, which has a subplot revolving around a guillotined man supposedly brought back to life, and which gave us some gleefully nasty scenes with Peter Lorre pretending to have reattached his head while cackling maniacally...What a might-have-been for I vampiri!

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    1. I hadn't thought of that Mad Love scene, but you're absolutely right that it's a taste of what could have been. I pictured the police getting a little rough with Joseph during the interrogation and his head falling off! 😅

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  6. Great review, even if the movie was less than great! It's too bad we never received the sequences that were planned. Much like another movie that I recently reviewed, it's not always best to be one of the first, but it walked so Italian horror could run.

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    1. Thanks Barry! I hadn't seen I vampiri in decades, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, given all the "meh" assessments of it that I'd read. But man, those deleted scenes would have made for a wild movie!

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  7. This film isn't my thing, but I love the photos you posted of the castle sets. That laboratory is the gold standard! Plus, I loved reading your review. You have such a fresh way of writing about film.

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    1. Thanks so much Ruth! That lab is really something -- when you're doing head transplants AND revitalizing your patron using the blood of innocent victims, you need the best equipment money can buy! 😱

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  8. Until I read your excellent review, I never thought of this movie in connection with a Frankenstein theme, but now I can never see it any other way! This is a film that gets better for me with each viewing, although it's far from being a classic. It's nice seeing Paul Muller in a supporting role. Muller would later make his mark in Italian Gothic Horror by daring to get on the wrong side of Barbara Steele in NIGHTMARE CASTLE and coming to a very bad end!!

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    1. Hi Mike! I vampiri has so many neat echos to past horror films and mystery-thrillers that it's hard to dislike it even acknowledging its flaws. You're right -- Nightmare Castle was a highlight in Muller's exceedingly prolific career!

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  9. I haven’t experienced this film, but I’m with you, Brian…I want to see that Director’s cut!

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    1. Okay, which boutique Blu-ray label is going to step up to the plate? 🤔

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  10. That was a fun and very informative read, Brian! This film definitely sounds special and intriguing. I liked all the background information you gave us about the shooting. Also the fact that it's called The Vampires and that there aren't any vampires really, sort of reminds me of Louis Feuillade's film series The Vampires from 1915. I wonder if that could have been an element of inspiration...

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    1. I was not aware of the French serial The Vampires so I looked it up. You're right, all the elements of I vampiri are there -- the Paris setting, a series of murders, the investigative reporter and his colleague, a criminal conspiracy... I'd be surprised if that wasn't a very big influence! Thanks for this Virginie!

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  11. Great review of a neglected, seminal Italian film! Fortunately Freda's filmmaking fickleness gave Mario Bava the opportunity to start directing horror.
    While I VAMPIRI seems rather tentative about its horror, it is still graced with Bava's great lighting and some terrific atmosphere. Mad science variations on supernatural menaces usually buzz me the right way.

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    1. You and me both! "Scientific" vampirism was quite popular in the late 50s and early 60s, even as supernatural vampires were experiencing a revival. There's John Beal's The Vampire (1957), Blood of Dracula (1957), Blood of the Vampire (1958), and Atom Age Vampire (1960), to name a handful.

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  12. That comment from Anonymous above was actually me. A new computer makes me no wiser. Gotta relearn how to pedal this bike again...

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    1. If it's any consolation, I encounter glitches all the time in trying to comment on various sites, and I don't think it's me (okay, maybe it's me...) My laptop is living on borrowed time -- I'm running Windows 10, which will stop being supported this year, and I can't upgrade the current machine to 11. But I'm hanging on as long as I can!

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  13. I love horror. I mean LOVE. After reading your review I need to find this most asap! Thank you Brian! xox

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