Grave of the Vampire (1972, aka Seed of Terror) is a study in twin morbid fascinations, but unfortunately for the movie makers, it’s not how they wanted it to be. The story of a vicious, ancient vampire who occasionally rapes his victims rather than drains them, his victims, and his inadvertent son who hates him, kills him, and tragically then inherits both his powers and his lusts.
The good part of the movie is, despite how the above sounds, the story. At each commercial break my Arts Editor and I would stare and each other and say, “I can’t imagine where they’re going with this!” From the detective who we thought would be the hero of the day, but ends up … well, metaphors fail me … to the student who, upon attending the vampire’s class in folk-tales, decides that he must be a vampire, and that she’d like to be his vampire wife as well, the movie has several twists that have you at least wondering which rabbit hole we’re going down next.
The bad part of the movie? The actors, whoever they were (not a single name I could recognize), who were, for the most part, so wooden you could have built a shed out of them. Little chemistry, leaden delivery, their delivery left us wondering how they ever completed this movie. The son of the vampire appears completely disinterested even when women are coming on to him, staring into space as if he’s wondering why he ever took this acting job. Worthy of a treatment by MST3K, they’re so bad.
So, if you have a certain curiosity about films that are just so bad, yet in some ways vaguely competent, this might be one to see.
