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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Devils Of Darkness (1965)

Starring William Sylvester, Hubert Noel, Carole Gray, Tracy Reed, Diana Decker
Directed by Lance Comfort
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A group of British tourists lose their lives while visiting a French village under the control of a vampire, and the surviving member of their party tries to discover the truth behind their deaths.

This British vampire film does not present much the viewer hasn't seen before in other films of this type, but is a worthwhile enough time-passer with a few nice stylistic touches.  It opens with a very vibrant gypsy wedding in which the bride energetically dances for her new husband only to expire, cursed to become the vampire's mate for eternity.  In a later scene, after the death of her brother, a woman is unknowingly consoled by the vampire, not realizing who he is, until she looks down and sees her reflection but not his in a stream below.  And the vampire's arrival in a lab filled with animals in cages is preceded by the animals slowly growing more agitated and then a violent wind shaking the room into chaos.  Those scenes provide some decent chills, and quite frankly we could have used many more of them, instead of getting bogged down in subplots concerning the vampire's loss of a talisman and his casting aside of his mate for another woman.

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