Vampire is a profound, campy experience. A Vampire Prince dressed in white with a black cape in the Disco era seems perfectly at home. This is a discerning Vampire having collected various art treasures over the years and added to his wealth in doing so. The building of a new church releases Price Anton from his resting place.
E. G. Marshall also stars as the pipe smoking, street wise former cop Harry Kilcoyne, who finds the Crucifix given to a friend of his 30 odd years early who appears to have been Anton’s first victim of the movie. He’s just a bag of bones, well, a skull now so chances are we wont find out too much there.
Prince Anton himself seems to have a degree of bisexuality about him. There’s a scene in with Jason Miller which could be seen as a little homoerotic and Jason’s character himself admits that part of him ‘wanted’ it to happen, although Anton seems to favour women for his lust at least it shows him as a Vampire for whom humans are just prey and sexuality is of little importance. The death of the cop while visiting the urinal at the club is another interesting choice of storyline. I mean, why would you feel worried about to have a slash in a club when a guy walks in dressed in white with a cape and flashes you a look as in the above screen shot? Chances are that’s not a stake in your hand!
It’s an interesting choice in this movie not to show fangs. The well known Dracula of the same year with Frank Langella also chooses not to show fangs, as I believe did earlier Universal releases with Lugosi. I’ve heard it mentioned that fangs were first used in Hammer Horror although I think you could make a case for them in Nosferatu (1922) with the Rat faced Count Orlok.
The movie ends quite suddenly and without a great deal of closure. Did they run out of money or film? Was there a planned Vampire 2 that didn’t surface? Difficult to imagine but it wont affect your enjoyment of the campy, well written made for TV horror.
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