Virgin Vampires With Full Moons

The Devil’s Wedding Night (aka, The Devil’s Crypt, Full Moon of the Virgins, Il Plenilunio delle Vergini/Italy, 1973) isn’t nearly as lip-smacking as it sounds. In fact, the Devil doesn’t even show up to his own happiest day. (Who can blame him? His brides/victims won’t sign a pre-nup.) But you don’t need him when you have a clothes-hating, female vampire bathing in human blood squeezings, likely for its moisturizing properties.

Two handsome brothers are twin archaeologists. One likes to gamble and make smooch happen with chicks. One wants to find the invaluable Ring of the Nibelung (it has mind-moisturizing properties), said to be in Castle Dracula in Transylvania, high up in the Carpathian Ski Mountains. Since this in the early 1900s and there is no Uber or Lyft to get him there, he has to ride his horse. (He never tips the pony or gives it a good rating, the jerk.)

Once at the castle, handsome twin #2 knocks on the door and tells the emotionless gal he’s an architect and wants to study the castle’s feng shui. While wandering around like a snoopy guest opening up underwear drawers and medicine cabinets, he hears a shrieking sound and sees moving shadows. It’s here he meets Countess Dracula, who invites him to stay for dinner and dessert, if you get my drift. Turns out, he’s the main course, but not before a little rub-a-dub.

While this shameful action is going on, his brother is hot on the trail, rushing to bring him a protective amulet to ward away evil. Ironic, since the fabled jewelry is said to have been fashioned by Pazuzu, King of the Demons. (I would’ve thought P would be more into Gothic cabinetry than homemade jewelry.)

As it so happens, tonight is the full moon of the virgins, wherein five as yet undefiled young gals from the nearby village fall under the ring’s spell, and they all walk to the castle at midnight, where in Countess Dracula extracts their blood and slathers it all over herself, likely for its moisturizing properties.

There’s a lot of running around the castle holding lit candles since the psychedelic, rainless lightning storm raging outside must’ve knocked out the power. Handsome twin brother #1 eventually stumbles across his brother entombed in a stone coffin and beats down a bald male vampire with sick thick eyebrows to rescue him.

The virgins show up, the countess turns into a giant bat, the handsome brother chops off her hand, snags the ring, gives his brother an economic, in-ground burial after serving up a stake well done.

So even as “meh” as this all is, stick around for the double twist ending. It will make you believe in the power of jewelry.

Return of the Evil Dead

The second in four installments of the Spanish Blind Dead series, Return of the Evil Dead (aka, Return of the Blind Dead, Attack of the Blind Dead, El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos/1973) begins with villagers way angry that the Templar Knights (yeah, those guys again) have been sacrificing the locals and drinking their Bloodweiser™.

Rounded up to be burned alive, the head heretic vows revenge from the grave. (Wouldn’t you? I thought as much.) The villagers use their torches to burn out the knight’s eyes so they can’t find their way back to the village to revenge them in the future. Then they bury the bodies in cement crypts — in the local graveyard. Nice going, asshats; you’ve f’d your descendants in the b-hole.

Five hundred years later it’s the Roasting of the Heathens Centennial BBQ & Box Social, with the whole hamlet turning out to drink, dance and rhythmic hand clap as symbolic Templar dummies are ceremoniously torched. But wasn’t this the very same day the Knights were prophesied to return from the dead for retribution purposes? Somebody forgot to check their iCalendar™.

The celebration is a bust when the Knights show up to stab everyone in the eyes. Escape attempts are pitiful, which is suspect; The Knights move about as fast as Templar Slugs going uphill, and yet no one seems to outrun them. But wait, the church has a holy blow torch and a bottle of sacrament gasoline next to the storage room full of unused bibles. All praise makeshift weaponry.

A few bare boobies, some blood, a sliced head and arm. If anyone had read the Templar Knight instructions, all they had to do was wait until the sun came up, then those shrouded bad boys would go happily back to their graves for another 500 years. But people would rather swing torches around than use common sense when dealing with the vengeful undead.

P.S. This use of the extended noun phrase “the evil dead” predated The Evil Dead (1981) by EIGHT WHOLE YEARS! And you didn’t think you were gonna learn anything new this day.

Vomit Zombies

Most kids would think that having their mom be a mortician as a modern woman career choice would be pretty dang cool. But why did she have to move her teen son and nine-year-old daughter into a decrepit mortuary in a small, blue collar stink town to explore job opportunities? Having the business by the local interstate where car crashes seem to happen on a daily basis was a prudent choice, though. Location is everything.

But the town legend has it the deformed kid with crooked lips who lived in the house years ago IS STILL THERE. That, of course, is like handing an engraved invitation to the local booze-sneaking teens who break into the cemetery located in the front yard (!) to make graveyard babies among the deceptively romantic crypts.

But while mom’s in the basement learning how to embalm, leaking fluids are absorbed by the evilness in the house and makes black gunk grow on the walls. It also gets into the party teens, turning them into vomit zombies. You do not want zombie vomit on your face as it will turn YOU into a vomit zombie. That, and the stains are really hard to get out of your shirt.

More zombies, more vomit, more fun. When mom turns into one of the spewing undead and her non-living associates converge on the house, a warm fuzzy feeling comes over you as there’s no way out for the uninfected teens. As if out of the blue, the deformed kid with crooked lips, now an adult, kidnaps the teen brother’s little sister and takes her away into his under-the-cemetery lair. The zombies follow because hey, zombie rules, man.

Like trapped mall rats, the teens are flanked by the walking dead, the deformed kid who’s now holding the little girl over a big hole in the ground, and a demonic tooth worm that lives in the hole, waiting to be fed. What to do? Personally, I’d crap my pants then and there.

Mortuary (2005) is brimming with horrific ingredients bookended by some pretty funny turns. Not too bad for a low-budget horror flick, but the total hack ending certainly won’t make your lips go all crooked.

Soap Opera Vampire

House of Dark Shadows (1970) is the movie spin-off of the syndicated horror soap opera Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966 to 1971. The TV series featured a resurrected family vampire, a ghost and a werewolf. It also featured a scheming grounds keeper named Willy. I think it’s a rule that all groundskeepers are named Willy.

I tried watching Dark Shadows as a kid, but could only get a few episodes in because the storyline moved way too slow for my Kool-Aid™ amped brain. I wanted vampires, ghosts and werewolves, but only got a bunch of dramatic yapping. Odd I should watch the movie version, which doesn’t have a ghost of werewolf, and STILL has a lot of yapping.

House of Dark Shadows revolves around Barnabas Collins, who was “executed” by his dad in 1797 for being a vampire, and stuffed in a coffin wrapped in chains for all eternity. (Pretty harsh – most kids just get sent to their rooms.) But thanks to the scheming Willy, Barnabas was released from his family crypt where he could rise and suck the aristocratic blood from the necks of his Goth mansion ancestors. That, and to take a bride and feel up her neck with his primary incisors.

A lot of the story lines relate back to the TV series, but still with way too many characters to keep track of. I just wanted to see Barnabas do his neck-puncturing routine, which he does on several hot young gals. He leaves ragged holes in their necks, so high collars/scarves are the order of the day to keep suspicions at bay.

Doesn’t work. Several people are on to Barnabas, one of which is a female doctor who promises an injectable cure for his sucking in exchange for him not sucking on her. When she finds out he’s to marry some young thang, she gets all jealous and betrays him halfway through the cure and he turns into an undead prune face. (This was part of the TV storyline.)

More biting, more screaming and some of the reddest blood you’ll ever see on film. This was a pleasant surprise as the some of the first TV shows were in spookified black and white. Black and white blood looks more like chocolate syrup. (Note: If necks bled chocolate syrup, I’d sign up to be a vampire right the heck now.)