Frankenstein meets Elizabeth Bathory: I Vampiri

Now Playing: 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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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!)

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.

The Duchess du Grand stealthily creeps her way into Italian horror history.

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

Postcards from Ulysses

Now Playing: Ulysses (1954)

Pros: Kirk Douglas’ energetic performance; Beautiful cinematography, costumes and production design
Cons: Stiff acting by most of the cast; Unnecessary changes to the original story

I may not be a scholar or a gentleman, but every once in a while I enjoy a good movie based on a classic book (actually reading the book, well, that’s another matter). So when I saw that Paul at Silver Screen Classics was hosting another Classic Literature on Film Blogathon, I jumped at the opportunity. When you’re done with the trials and travels of Ulysses here at Films From Beyond, wander on over to Paul’s blog to learn more about film adaptations of classic literature.

Homer’s Odyssey is about the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of setbacks and misfortunes designed by capricious gods to drive ordinary mortals mad (kind of like airline travel these days).

I won’t say that producers Dino De Laurentiis (grandfather of celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis) and Carlo Ponti (one time spouse of Sophia Loren) went through Odyssey-level trials to get their adaptation on the silver screen, but it was no walk in the park either.

The producers wanted to pull out all the stops to give the beloved epic the treatment it deserved, including signing big name American actors Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn (Ulysses and Antinoös respectively). At that point, Douglas had two Academy Award-nominated roles under his belt, for Champion (1949) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and was making another fantasy epic for Disney, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Quinn was also on a roll that year, having been recruited by Federico Fellini to star in what would become one of his great masterpieces, La Strada (The Road, 1954; also produced by Ponti and De Laurentiis).

Studio press releases for Ulysses (the Roman variant of Odysseus) bragged that much of the film was shot on location in and around the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean as described in the Odyssey. Filming was scheduled for Ulysses’/Odysseus’ home island of Ithaca, but the gods intervened with an earthquake that put an end to that idea.

The great German director G.W. Pabst was originally scheduled to helm the project, but he pulled out at the last minute when he found out the producers wanted to shoot it in 3D. Mario Camerini, who was primarily known for the light comedies he directed in the ‘30s (?!), was then brought on board (the film was shot in 3D, but only distributed theatrically in 2D).

When Camerini himself faltered during shooting, cinematographer Mario Bava was tapped to help finish the film, uncredited. Later in the decade, this would become almost routine for Bava. He took over directing duties on two separate occasions for Riccardo Freda, when Freda argued with his producers and abruptly left the sets of I Vampiri (aka Lust of the Vampire, 1957) and Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959). Bava was finally given the opportunity to direct upfront, on his own, and the result, Black Sunday (1960), became one of the most influential European horror films of all time.

As befitting an epic, it took a slew of writers, including bigshot American writers Ben Hecht and Irwin Shaw, to commit the cinematic Odyssey to paper. As per usual with film adaptations, story details were changed, compressed, switched around or omitted in order to come up with something that would entertain audiences in under two hours.

Over the years, Ulysses has developed a reputation for being an ambitious failure. In watching the Italian-dubbed, English-subtitled version on Amazon Prime, I found Douglas’ boyish energy and enthusiasm to be one of the best things about the film (even though the voice is not his -- it’s almost like watching a good silent film performance). In contrast, the rest of the cast mostly stand around with their arms at their sides like Greek statuary (but they look absolutely fabulous in the meticulously crafted costumes).

"Step right up gents! String Ulysses' bow and win the fair Penelope!
Who will be first? Don't be shy!"

Others have not been so impressed with the star of the show. Douglas’ portrayal reminded one contemporary reviewer of “a Villanova halfback on summer vacation in the Mediterranean.” [Wendy Wilson and Gerald Herman, World History on the Screen: Film and Video Resource, J. Weston Walch, 2003, p. 3]. A little more charitably, reviewer Tony Thomas thought that Douglas played “the Greek super-hero with brawn and vitality, but all too obviously [looked] like an American actor cast in an Italian picture.” [Tony Thomas, The Films of Kirk Douglas, Carol Publishing Group, 1991, p. 111]

In his book on war veterans in film, Emmett Early is perhaps overly harsh in his assessment of Ulysses, but does give voice to some common complaints about film adaptations of classic works:

“Italians should never be trusted to portray the Greeks’ own Odyssey. [Editor’s note: Ouch!] For one, most of the names are changed. Odysseus becomes Ulysses. Poseidon becomes Neptune, although for some reason Athena gets to keep her Greek name … In this Ulysses the actors are so stiff they seem like Monty Python cartoon figures with their mouths moving. Kirk Douglas plays the war veteran and Anthony Quinn plays Antinoös, the chief rival among the suitors. The script does violence to the story with horrible distortions and plot compressions. For example, when Ulysses is washed ashore at Phaeacia, he has no memory of his adventures or his own identity. As his memory returns, the story unfolds, such as it is. This dramatic ploy deprives Ulysses of his chief attribute, his metis, or ability to deceive. … Kirk Douglas, for his part, made a passable adventurer, but he would have been better off trading roles with Anthony Quinn. Quinn would have made a great Antinoös and Anthony Quinn has the sturdy build that Homer attributed to Odysseus.” [Emmett Early, The War Veteran in Film, McFarland, 2010, pp. 82-83]

Whatever else the movie’s faults, Harold Rosson’s cinematography is not one of them. (On Ulysses’s IMDb page, Mario Bava is only listed as an uncredited camera operator.) Even watching a muddy, standard definition print, you get a sense of how great the outdoor vistas and the moody shadows of Polyphemus's cave and Circe’s lair must have looked on a real movie screen back in the day.

At practically any point in the film, you can freeze it and have something worthy of framing, or maybe putting on a deluxe postcard. Come to think of it, what if Ulysses had taken the trouble during his long voyage to send a postcard or two?...

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