Fangs of Death (1968)

Cast:

Anita Ekberg is Malenka/Sylvia Morel
Gianni Medici is Dr. Pietro Lufuani
Diana Lorys is Bertha Zemis
Rosanna Yanni is Freya Zemis
César Benet is Max

What the box says:

Sylvia is about to be married when she inherits the family castle. She travels to Italy to see it and discovers the truth about her heritage: Her Grandmother, Malenka, was a sorceress and a vampire. Now her uncle wants to make her part of the family.

Plot:

Rome, Italy, Dr. Pietro gets a call from his fiancée, Sylvia.

Fabulous dahlinggggggggg She’s just learned she is a countess and owns a castle. She’s going to inspect the castle before they get married in a couple of weeks.

At a tavern, Sylvia mentions she’s the new Countess Wuldarisk which shocks the drunks.

You're the new countess at the deserted, haunted nearby castle... The giant servant drives her to the creepy castle. He explains she will see her uncle at 10 PM. Later, Sylvia meets her uncle who shows her a portrait of her grandmother, Malenka. Uncle takes Sylvia to the family mausoleum so she can see where her mother is interred.

The perfect moment for the 3 Stooges Eye poke or the Zombie Eye poke. Sylvia calls it a night and is paid a visit by the stacked brunette who claims that Uncle is over 100 years old, locked Sylvia’s mother up, and will have her do what her mother refused. Brunette hypnotizes Sylvia. However, Uncle comes in time to keep Brunette from withdrawing some of Sylvia’s platelets.

Sylvia sneaks after them and finds Uncle horse-whipping Brunette who shows her fangs. Sylvia is thoroughly freaked out. Uncle will explain to her what is going on.

Trying to escape, Uncle catches her. He explains that Malenka was a biochemist sorceress studying necro-biology. The revolting villagers burnt her lab and BBQed her ever since Uncle was cursed. He doesn’t want Sylvia to get married. Malenka was searching for a cure for immortality. The research created ancestors who were nosferatu, vampires. Uncle shows Sylvia his empty tomb.

In Rome, Pietro gets the letter from Sylvia dropping him like a hot potato. He and his buddy, Max, decide to go to the castle and find out about Sylvia.

At the tavern, Pietro checks on the brunette bar-maid who is sick. The blonde, her sister, has garlic strung up along the windows and gives Pietro a book on the old Countess Malenka.

Uncle drains a quart.

You've got a nice neck that needs to be tapped.

Pietro is reading the vampire book. He checks on the sick bar-maid. Her sister wants to drive a stake through her heart. The local doctor shows Pietro the barmaid’s neck bites.

Bertha, the bar-maid, is taken to the cemetery to be buried.

Back at the castle, Uncle slices his wrist and bleeds into a goblet and offers it to Sylvia whop refuses.

I won't drink New Coke, I won't!!!! She runs off the vampire brunette gives her directions to escape through the mausoleum. Sylvia runs into Bertha, and a cemetery chase ensues.

Pietro and Max are studying some maps when Sylvia runs into the tavern. The townsfolk have seen Bertha and must put her down.

At the cemetery, Max, Pietro, and the Doctor watch Bertha rise from her grave.

Uncle recaptures Sylvia. He reveals he’s over 150 years old and was married to Malenka. Pietro goes to the castle to check on Sylvia. She tries to subtly get him to leave. However, the servant knocks him out.

Max is trying to hit on the brunette vampire.

In the dungeon, Pietro is chained. Uncle has convinced Sylvia to drink Pietro’s blood. When suddenly, the brunette vampire battles Bertha the brunette bar-maid, Sylvia frees Pietro. Vampire-fighting camera angle ensues.

Pietro sets Uncle on fire whose face melts into oat-meal. Malenka’s portrait catches fire.

The next day, Sylvia and Pietro head back to Rome. Max gets stopped by the blonde bar-maid who wants to go to Rome with him. Let the cheesy joke, as Max chases her with his fingers for vampire fangs end the movie.

What I say:

Exculding Hammer Studios which was starting to wind down in the late 1960s, Euro-Horror was just Dracula and Frankenstein movies. Giallo movies hadn't quite came out yet and grabbed ahold of Italy which hadn't been bit by the George A. Romero zombie bug until the late 1970s. Other European countries were trying to do gothic-Hammer style horror movies like Die Die My Darling!! or with a bit more cheesecake actresses in Bloody Pit of Horror.

With a title like Fangs of the Living Dead, it almost soud s like an unofficial Night of the Living Dead sequel. The 1960s and 1970s started tacking many Euro-horror movies with the phrase "Living Dead" to lure people into thinking it's connected to a far superior movie when they came over to the US. However, by the time, Romero got to his sequel after legal battles kept him from using "Living Dead" in the NotLD sequels.

This is a pretty tough movie to endure. Fangs of the Living Dead sounds so generic the pharmacy would pay you for it. This movie is so derivative it should be in a Calculus book. There are several cuts of this movie floating around. The version I have is on one of the public domain horror DVD sets. Hopefully, the uncut version explains things better. The original story was that the Uncle tried to convince Sylvie they were vampires. However, later the producers decided they wanted a real vampire and tacked in the last minute disintegration scene to justify the story.

The idea of some Count, Baron, or some sort of nobility being a vampire has almost been completely beaten with a dead horse. The fact that every 5 square miles in Europe has some sort of run down castle is an even harder idea to grasp. The only thing more common than castles in Europe is that some nobility tampered in things best left untouched (aka the Frankenstein Factor).

A woman learns of her inheritence to a noble estate and goes to learn about it. While there, strange things happen. Her fiancee learns that she has broken their marriage and he goes to learn what's going on. He discovers that her family is cursed or reviled by the local villagers from centuries of strange happenings at the castle.

Characters need to have some qualities unlike just wanting them to be maulled by a bear and dropped into a woodchipper like the characters in Cabin Fever. Redeeming qualities would be nice, but a couple of characters that shouldn't be eaten by rapid wombatswould be more acceptable of most.

Can't say I've ever run across much of the director's work. Just checking out his IMDB page lists quite a few horror movie directing and writing credits. Amando de Ossorio is best known for Blind Dead series of zombie movies. To horror fans, he isn't as known as say Fulci or some of the other Italian directors. Between England and Italy, the rest of the European countries are typically not thought of much in the horror field. That is a shame that cuts off some of the talents from Spain. Amando was one of the bigger original horror directors from the 1970s.

Quotable Dialogue
"Your ignorance is not my fault."
"Sleeeppppppp....Sleeppppppppppp..."
"Her experiemtns terrified the ignorant."
"Garlic tickles my nose."
"I've just seen a huge black bat."
"She was trying to bite me with those horrible fangs."
"Aren't you cold in that flimsy dress?"
Morals of the Story
Microscopes need cigarette smoke to function.
One must wear a cocktail dress to escape a castle.
Villagers carry torches and pitchforks just in case of storming nearby castles.
All nobility in isolated spots in Europe have books written about how they're blood-sucking spawn of evil.
The town doctor must be trying to distill liquor in his stomach to improve the local ecological cycle.