SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Uriah43 This movie begins in 1874 at a graveyard in Transylvania with a stake being driven through the heart of a corpse. Not long afterward a seriously deformed man enters the local tavern and requests the presence of the local doctor. Upon being taken to a nearby laboratory the doctor inserts a freshly removed heart from a man recently killed into the chest of the corpse from the graveyard. Six years later the scene shifts to the city of Karlstadt where another doctor named "Dr. John Pierre" (Vincent Ball) is sentenced to life in prison for accidentally killing his patient by using a certain procedure not recognized at the time by the medical community. However, rather than being taken to his assigned prison, Dr. John Pierre is instead taken to a place for the criminally insane which just happens to be supervised by the same person who had his chest punctured in Transylvania six years earlier, "Dr. Callistratus" (Donald Wolfit). Now rather than reveal any more I will just say the title is somewhat misleading as there isn't an actual vampire featured in this movie at all. At least not in the usual concept. Because of that this film doesn't contain the usual action or horror one might expect either. As such I found this movie to be slightly disappointing in that regard. Even so it was an adequate film for the most part and having an attractive woman like Barbara Shelley (as "Madelaine Duval") certainly didn't hurt. In any case, I have rated the film accordingly. Average.

zardoz-13 The title of "Booby Trap" director Herbert Cass' horror movie "Blood of the Vampire" is misleading. Actually, no traditional vampires with fangs appear in this atmospheric chiller about a mad 18th century Transylvanian scientist performing illegal medical procedures. A man who embarks on bizarre medical experiments, Doctor Callistratus (Donald Wolfit of "Becket") pays the ultimate price for his perfidy with death. Not only do righteous, good people put him to death, but they also have a powerfully built chap who sinks an iron stake into Callistratus' body and then hammer it through his corpse. Meanwhile, the mad scientist's loyal right-hand man, a crippled, deformed hunchback with one drooping eye hanging out of his face, Carl (Victor Maddern of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"), takes Callistratus' body to another unethical doctor who performs open heart surgery and brings Callistratus back to life. Mind you, Callistratus had been accused of being a vampire because he conducted experiments on his doomed patients to learn more about their blood and why some blood rejects other blood. British horror writer Jimmy Sangster has conjured up an interesting Gothic melodrama, but the absence of a vampire undercuts the narrative. You keep waiting for the notorious supernatural figure to show up but it never does. Doctor Callistratus manages to obtain a post as a prison warden so he can experiment with a variety of bodies. His downfall comes about when another doctor, Dr. John Pierre (Vincent Ball of "Where Eagles Dare") is put on trial for the unorthodox medical procedure of transfusing blood and sentenced to life in prison. It turns out that one of Pierre's witnesses, who sent him testimony by mail, didn't write the letter that would have cleared Pierre. Instead, another man, Monsieur Auron (Bryan Coleman) intercepted the letter and rewrote it. Rather than being confined on Campbell Island, our wrongly charged protagonist—Dr. Pierre—winds up in another prison; Callistratus runs the prison where Pierre is incarcerated and he uses Pierre to help him in his diabolical experiments. Callistratus is searching for a way to avoid constant blood transfusions because the cells in his blood are at war with each other. Eventually, Auron warns Callistratus that the alarming number of deaths occurring at his prison is bothering the authorities. Just when things for Callistratus couldn't get worse, he hires a new cleaning lady, Madeleine Duval (Barbara Shelley of "Dracula: Prince of Darkness"), to work for him. What Callistratus doesn't know is that Duval is Pierre's wife. She got Pierre defense witness who wrote the damaging letter to come forth and report that his testimony had been tamper with and the court had changed its ruling and cleared Pierre of all foul play. Callistratus responded by reporting that Pierre had died during a prison break and he is taken for his word. Duval shows up incognito to save her husband, but she runs into Auron who wants to rape her. Carl attacks Auron and Callistratus intervenes. He winds up killing Auron because the man tells him that he will turn him into the authorities. At the same time, the evil Callistratus decides to use Duval in one of his unearthly experiments. Pierre manages to escape and thwart Callistratus.No, the make-up for the murderous hunchback lacks verisimilitude, but it adds a grotesque sense of cheesiness to "Blood of the Vampire." Everything else looks good, especially the sets. "Blood of the Vampires" relies on a formulaic, melodramatic plot. The performances are good, especially Wolfit as the fiendish Callistratus, but the far-fetched action and the absence of a vampire undercut the action.

tedg We each have the experiences that brought us to the way we dream, and the forms we use in wrangling the world. My cinematic maturity is pretty traceable because the films and the watching were so self-ware.Going back before well-formed notions of self, this was one film experience that changed me. Or rather I should say that the first two minutes changed me. It was my first movie alone, and my first non-cartoon movie. Sent on a mission to get bread, this ten year old sneaked into a matinée with the 15 cents left over. Sitting virtually alone I knew that what I was doing would be costly, and that I would be crossing a boundary with my life never fully retrieved. This movie starts with some text that tells us about the curse of the vampire being the greatest evil ever visited on the earth and that we are entering Transylvania during what I assumed was its riskiest, spookiest time. The only way to kill a vampire, we are told, is by a stake through the heart. We are in an unkempt graveyard, Leni Riefenstahl's mountains in the background. If a church bell tolls it doesn't matter because I heard it. Tones are muted, the distance is far. We know it is the deepest part of night.Townsfolk carry a wrapped corpse on a stretcher, careful about their delicate business in managing the evil undead. They tip the corpse into the shallow grave, the only real space, and the covering comes off the body's face. We see not the artificial snarling teeth that we expect, but a regular bank president sort of guy.The camera now looks up from the grave at two hired executioners. One has a stake five feet long, the other a wooden mallet with a head as big as his, something I suppose actually existed. But it is huge and the wide lens makes it very much larger as we hear the crunch of the stake through flesh and see and hear the pounding just as if it were our heart. The camera then shows the stake, the palette effectively shifting from black and white to color.A quick title and then we see a hunchback skulking behind a rock. His right eye (the wrong color) drooping two inches too low. Even a ten year old cinematic virgin could see at once that the action we have witnessed we have seen through his eye and that of the corpse. I was out of that air conditioned theater like my life depended on it. The bread did not survive.Now, after more than 50 years I can sit through the entire film. The first sequence is still masterful I think. But the rest of the thing must have been created by another team. Boring. It has dogs, which together with the opening must have been all Sangster had in mind when he started.Funny how you build a life.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

dbborroughs The one enduring image from this film that has haunted me across the years is the weird hunchback assistant to the villain. Its an image that was splashed across horror magazines of my childhood. There was something about the twisted fellow with an eye that drooped to his cheek that made you want to see the movie. I never saw the film as a kid and it wasn't until tonight, well into my adulthood, that I managed to see the film. I can't say I was disappointed.The plot concerns Dr John Pierre who is wrongly thrown in jail. He is redirected to the asylum/prison run by Dr Callistratus so that John Pierre can help Callistratus with his experiments concerning blood. As those outside the prison attempt to free him through legal means Pierre is forced to deal with the strange goings on in the prison, including fending off the sadistic Carl, the hunchbacked assistant of Callistratus.Gothic, and grandly over the top in the way that most of the Hammer films weren't this is a cheesy but fun attempt at copying the Hammer Studios formula. It looks and feels very much like Hammer in it styling and plotting (Then again Jimmy Sangster of Hammer wrote the script) .Shot in color, the print I saw was well worn and a bit faded. I wonder how this would have looked at the time of its original release. It must have looked great. I loved the sets which were done in such a way as to give the illusion of space, unfortunately it turned every location into spaces the size of football stadiums (though in several sequences things were much too cramped).The whole thing reminded me of the sort of thing you used to run across at 2am on late night TV with too many commercials. Actually as much as I liked the film I do think it is a bit plodding and probably could have used either trimming or a commercial break or two.Strangely this film is very difficult to see. I'm at a loss as to why this film has fallen through the cracks over the last 40 odd years. Its not a bad movie, though it is a tad creaky and of a style they haven't done since Hammer stopped making movies. Perhaps its simply a matter of falling between the cracks in finding a distributor (it was not done by a "major producer"), or more likely the fact that there is no vampire with wings and fangs as promised in the title. What ever the real reason its a shame because this film is worth a look.If you like Hammer style horror or good but rarely seen films, search this one out and give it a try. Its certainly worth a bag of popcorn on a Saturday night watch movies.