Shout Factory has finally brought this film out to Blu-ray and totally uncut, and it looks beautiful.
Despite the title there is no vampire in sight, but there is plenty of fun. In 1874 an evil doctor named Callistratus (Donald Wolfit) is staked thru the heart and buried.
However his disfigured henchman named Carl (Victor Maddern) arranges for a heart transplant to save the doctor.
Flash ahead to 6 years later and a young doctor is on trial for the death of a patient. John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is sentenced to life in prison. Before he is sent to jail he is taken from the prison and sent to an asylum instead.
There he finds he has been enlisted by the man running the place to help him with some experiments. It turns out that Dr. Callistratus is alive and well and running the asylum for his own purposes.
John's fiancee Madeleine (Barbara Shelley) discovers that he was sent there and that some kind of cover-up is taking place. She gets a job as the housekeeper for the deranged doctor and does her own investigation.
For years and years I have seen this film, and always knew something was missing. When I saw this as a wee child it had, at that time, a few disturbing scenes for someone so young, but that version long disappeared.
This version has those scenes including body parts and internal organs laying all over the doctor's tables in his lab and more scenes of Carl having fun with three chained up women in the dungeon.
The Blu-ray is simply beautiful and this was offered as a Shout Factory site only order. It's not on Amazon in this version. Universla released this film in 1958 and it is always confused by some as being a Hammer film, because it looks so much like one.
It was written by Jimmy Sangster, who did a ton of Hammer films and it might be that director Henry Cass wanted to make it seem like a Hammer film. Barbara Shelley is gorgeous as always and is a main attraction in this movie.
I'm glad this film can finally be seen uncut as it should be. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED horror.
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