It’s a puzzle, it is: What would be a better title for Curse Of The Undead (1959), which tells us absolutely nothing, doesn’t function as a post-coital insight, or even coy word play. But what of the tale, you ask?
This is a hybrid Western-Vampire flick. In the midst of a struggle over ranching land in the old West appears a gunfighter dressed in black, perhaps attracted by the poster advertising for a gunfighter to take revenge for the deaths of the town doctor and his son. His first fight goes well, shooting the gun out of the hand of a man, who later swears he hit the man in black. But he survives, which is more than can be said for others, who start dying with the tell-tale mark at their throat.
The woman who advertised for the killer is persuaded not to follow through, but hires the man in black as a ranch-hand. The gunfighter is, of all things, falling in love with his employer. But as he pursues his love, he runs into the woman’s fiancee, the town preacher. As Dan the Preacher searches for the doctor’s will, he runs across an old Bible dating back to Spanish times, a Bible containing a hand-written story from a Spanish don: how a man’s son killed his brother and, through this evil act, became a vampire, and how to destroy the vampire.
Skipping some plot twists, the preacher and the vampire have it out in a gunfight, but the preacher employs a nice trick to kill the previously immune vampire.
This is one weird collage of good and bad elements. On the good side? Most of the acting is quite good, as the actors take their roles seriously, and these are professionals. The story is organic, by which I mean, given the premises and motivations of the various characters, it follows logical steps. I can believe most of these characters might have existed and done what they did. This is critical for those of us who think the evolutionary theory of story-telling applies.
And that leads to a couple of fascinating scenes, such as the colloquy between the preacher and the vampire concerning the moral virtues of their respective positions. Pursued with vigor and enthusiasm by the characters, and culminating in a fight, I thought it was a highly appropriate and believable praxis of the issues involved – and how such issues, perhaps considered abstract, are actually quite concrete and impact people’s lives.
On the negative side, some of the acting was not up to par. The character of Tim, the son of the slain doctor, really chewed the scenery; we cheered his early termination. The aggressor in the land wars, Buffer, merely lived up to his stereotype, unfortunately; I suspect this was more a problem with the role as written than the acting. But it was a little frustrating every time he appeared in a scene. A dreary predictability.
But more importantly was issues of credibility. At least one death by vampire was credited to death by Colt .45. Really? The marks were clear, with just a little dribble of blood. A Colt .45 to the carotid artery should have left quite a horrific wound. But on this point half of the story pivots.
And the undead, by tradition, cannot stand the sun or hallowed ground, yet our vampire tramps about in the sun and sleeps in a mausoleum. While an artificial mythos can certainly be modified at will by story creators, one must take care not to stretch the meaning of a previously defined term, such as undead, too far, or otherwise the audience gives up in terms of trying to predict the progress of the story, and that is an integral part of experiencing a new story. If there are no rules to an entity’s actions, then you might as well call him God and be bored with him[1].
I cannot recommend this movie because of the issues I mention, but I do not regret the time spent watching it. It was intriguing at its best.
But a replacement for that title is a humdinger of a conundrum.
Postscript: We watched this via the Svengoolie show, our first experience with such. The entire Svengoolie experience can be dropped into the ocean, so far as my Arts Editor and I are concerned.
1I see the Wikipedia page claims this is the European tradition of the undead, not that of Dracula. Hmmmf.
