Atom Age Vampire (1960)

Movie Info

She will be mine…oh yes, she will be mine!

Jeanette Moreneau (Susanne Loret) is in love with Pierre Mornet (Sergio Fantoni), but Pierre demands she change her life.  When an accident mars Jeanette’s face, Professor Alberto Levin (Alberto Lupo) and his assistant Monique Riviere (Franca Parisi) realize Jeanette could be the perfect test subject for the professor’s experimental radiation process.  When the professor is forced to experiment on himself to try to work out a means to cure Moreneau, horror is unleashed.

Directed by Anton Giulio Majano, Atom Age Vampire (Seddok, l’erede di Satana aka Seddok, the Heir of Satan) is an Italian sci-fi horror B-movie.  A longer Italian version of the film was edited from 105 minutes to 72 minutes.  The film is in public domain and frequently available.

I always go out menacing in my best hoodie!

Atom Age Vampire came to me via one of those 50-Movie Packs that were popular when DVDs started becoming cheap.  The transfers were awful and I didn’t watch many of the movies off the DVDs.  The ease of streaming allowed better versions of the films to be found streaming.

The movie is famously mistitled.  There aren’t vampires and the movie is kind of a Frankenstein, Eyes Without a Face, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  You have the scientist hopelessly in love with his patients and his assistant hopelessly in love with him.  The scarred woman and the attempts to heal her and the monster it creates from the scientist when he tries to heal her.  It is a lot going on in the short time of the film, and it might have been better in a longer form…instead, it is a mess.

The actors never have much of a role and the “lead” feels like it keeps changing.  The movie starts out about Susanne Loret’s character then it shifts to the doctor Alberto Lupo and you think Franca Parisi is going to play a bigger role…but she dies a lot earlier than expected.  The movie occasionally inserts the police and the bad boyfriend Sergio Fantoni…who I’m not sure if you’re supposed to like or dislike.

Don’t hate me because I’m a monster…

The movie does have a monster and that is a plus.  Instead of a true vampire, the killer steals glands from the victims’ neck so it is kind of like there is a vampire but also not.  There is a transformation scene for the monster, but you also would think this movie is twenty years older than it is…it doesn’t look like a 1960s movie.

Atom Age Vampire is a bad movie…I don’t think that the extended version of the film would make it a great film, but it might make it a slightly better film.  It isn’t the type of B-movie that is a fun B-movie and fun in that sense…instead, it is a rather dull sci-fi horror thriller that manages to plod along in its short runtime.