Kiss of the Vampire (also known as Kiss of Evil on American television) is a 1963 British vampire film directed by Don Sharp and starring Edward de Souza and Jennifer Daniel. It was written by producer Anthony Hinds (as John Elder) and made by Hammer Film Productions.
It was Sharp's first movie for Hammer. He went on to make several more films for the company.
Plot
Gerald and Marianne Harcourt are a couple honeymooning in early 20th-century Bavaria when their car runs out of petrol. They stop in a small village and opt to stay at the local inn until a cart arrives with more petrol. They accept a dinner invitation from Dr. Ravna, who introduces them to his children Carl and Sabena.
At a costume ball at Ravna's chateau, Gerald and Marianne are separated from each other. Donning a mask identical to Gerald's in order to impersonate him, Carl silently leads Marianne to an upstairs bedroom, where Dr. Ravna, a vampire, bites her. Gerald becomes concerned about Marianne's whereabouts, but Sabena gives him a drugged drink which renders him unconscious. Ravna is the leader of a vampire cult which intends to induct Marianne as a member.
When Gerald awakes, Carl insists that he was travelling alone and that Marianne was never in the chateau. The innkeeper, Bruno, supports Carl's story, and the police say that Dr. Ravna's standing in the community is too respected to investigate his chateau. Only the hard-drinking savant Professor Zimmer, who lost his daughter to the cult, acknowledges Marianne's existence and agrees to help. He advises Gerald that the cult will not be able to complete Marianne's transformation into a vampire until the following night, and prepares an arcane ritual using the Seal of Solomon that he can use to destroy the vampires once Marianne is freed.
Gerald knocks at the chateau's front door and knocks out the guard when he answers. He breaks into Sabena's bedroom and enlists her help in finding Marianne, but she betrays him to Ravna. Ravna has Gerald tied up and demonstrates to him that they have already brainwashed Marianne into embracing the cult and renouncing her love for Gerald. As Sabena scratches Gerald's chest as foreplay to a vampiric bite, he surreptitiously slips his bonds, then uses blood from the scratch to draw a cross on his chest. The vampires reel from the cross, giving Gerald the opportunity to subdue Marianne and escape. The cult searches the grounds for them, but Zimmer provides a distraction which allows Gerald to topple a pillar on the guard.
Back at the inn, Zimmer says he knows Bruno only denied Marianne's existence for fear that the cult would harm his daughter, and compels him to bring the local priest to cure Marianne. As Zimmer works on the ritual, Gerald checks on Marianne and finds she has left, having been mystically summoned by the cult. The cult realizes that Zimmer will not destroy them so long as Marianne is with them. Gerald and the priest catch up to Marianne and tackle her to the ground. Zimmer's arcane ritual is completed, releasing a swarm of vampire bats which swarm over the vampires, draining them of their blood. As the vampires die, Marianne is freed of their spell.
Cast
- Clifford Evans as Professor Zimmer
- Noel Willman as Dr. Ravna
- Edward de Souza as Gerald Harcourt
- Jennifer Daniel as Marianne Harcourt
- Barry Warren as Carl Ravna
- Brian Oulton as 1st disciple
- Noel Howlett as Father Xavier
- Jacquie Wallis as Sabena Ravna
- Peter Madden as Bruno
- Isobel Black as Tania
- Vera Cook as Anna
- John Harvey as Police sergeant
- Carl Esmond as Anton Stangher (TV movie only)
- Virginia Gregg as Rosa Stangher (TV movie only)
- Sheilah Wells as Theresa Stangher (TV movie only)
Production
Development
The film was originally intended to be the third movie in Hammer's Dracula series, which began with 1958's Dracula with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and was followed by 1960's The Brides of Dracula with Cushing alone. Following the success of Brides of Dracula, Universal agreed to co finance and the film was put on Hammer's schedule in January 1961. Additional finance was to come from Italian producer Roberto Dandi.
"What intrigued me about them was after about 20 minutes I was totally hooked despite a totally absurd situation," Sharp said later. "I thought it was wonderful - here was a genre with its own ground rules and self contained world and you could be theatrical but treat it realistically to grab the audience and make them believe something absurd."
Sharp said "I've always believed there needs to be a separation between suspense and shock. You lead on a mood but if you introduce the shock moment too quickly then it's expected. If you hang on keeping the same mood and tempo as the rest of the sequence, and then shatter the mood with a sudden violent moment, that's when it really works."
Sharp enjoyed making the film and later said Tony Hinds was the best producer he ever worked with.
The film's climax, involving black magic and swarms of bats, was intended to be the ending of The Brides of Dracula, but the star of that film, Peter Cushing, objected that Van Helsing would never resort to black sorcery. However, the paperback novelization of Brides does use this ending.
The finale involving the bat attack was shot using plastic bats. "It was a chaotic day shooting that scene, but everyone seemed to believe that we were on to something and people started taking chances and put their all into it," said Sharp. "I'm very proud of it."
Critical reception
Howard Thompson of The New York Times wrote,"Until the picture floridly hops off the track toward the end, this horror exercise is a quietly stylish, ice-cold treat, beautifully tinted, well-directed (Don Sharp) and persuasively acted (Edward de Souza and Jennifer Daniel have the leads)."
Variety wrote "Horror fans will dig this latest effort from the Hammer Film shop in Britain. It is a slickly-produced color story of evil doings in Bavaria, circa 1910, replete with suspense, demonism and mystery tightly wrapped in a skillful package of effective performance and well-paced direction."
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote "No new developments seem to have emerged in the vampire world, and this film is a straightforward and rather tame rehash of the standard formula...The direction is competent enough, though Don Sharp reveals no flair for this kind of thing, and there is a signal lack of atmosphere."
Leslie Halliwell said: "This unsubtle variation on Dracula is handled in lively fashion, with a splendid climax in which assorted white-robed vampires are destroyed by bats."
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Newlyweds honeymooning in Bavaria find themselves up to their necks in vampires in this lesser-known Hammer horror from director Don Sharp. Studio stalwarts Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are absent here, so it's Clifford Evans (The Curse of the Werewolf) who takes on the mantle of the vampire killer determined to put an end to the evil reign of chief bloodsucker Noel Willman. It's pretty formulaic stuff, but the camerawork (by veteran British cinematographer Alan Hume) at least makes the tale a vivid experience."
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of , with an average score of , based on reviews.
Home video release
In North America, the film was released on 6 September 2005 along with seven other Hammer horror films (The Brides of Dracula, Nightmare, The Evil of Frankenstein, The Curse of the Werewolf, Paranoiac, Night Creatures, The Phantom of the Opera) on the four-DVD set The Hammer Horror Series (ASIN: B0009X770O), which is part of MCA-Universal's Franchise Collection. This set was re-released on Blu-ray on 13 September 2016. In July 2020, Scream Factory released the film with a collector's edition Blu-ray that included both 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 aspect ratios as well as the TV version Kiss of Evil in standard definition.