The body beneath

I own two copies of Hammer's THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1963) but it's far from being one of my favorite horror movies. I guess I appreciate it's historical value, being Hammer Studio's attempt to extend their vampire franchise beyond the purview of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The movie has its moments, probably the best of which occurs in the pre-credit sequence, when mourning father Clifford Evans stands at his daughter's grave and, instead of dropping the first clod of earth onto her casket, drives the shovel straight through the wooden lid, resulting in a sickening surge of bright red blood. It's an astonishingly brutal moment in and of itself and for having made it past the censors. Would that the rest of the film were as good.

THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE recycles bits from THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960), notably a coaxing-the-vampire-out-of-her-grave scene (thwarted here) and a setpiece in which one of the heroes, infected with a vampire's bite, purges the wound with fire; the film even ends with a bat attack that had first been penciled in for the climax of THE BRIDES OF DRACULA until nixed by star Peter Cushing. The rest is a retread of THE LADY VANISHES, capably but unexceptionally played, and I've always found the Satanic vampire cult headed by Noel Willman to be boring. Satanic cults are usually kind of goofy in movies (and in real life, too), with a bunch of extras padding about in matching robes, and this one is no exception.

Even though I have a fairly low regard for the movie, I end up rewatching THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE every couple of years. Each time I queue it up I'm always impressed by the title sequence, which follows the shovel staking... straight down into the sundered casket... to focus on a pair of closed eyes (with lovely long lashes) and preternaturally red lips set against skin the color of parchment. The girl's mouth is full and luscious and offset by a pair of vampire fangs just peeking out from the vermilion.

As a kid, this scene creeped me out because it showed, I thought, something that shouldn't have been seen - someone's repose in their final resting place. That the corpse in question is a vampire didn't seem to be a mitigating factor in what seemed to me then, and still does now, a violation of privacy on par with the camera in the coffin in Pupi Avati's ZEDER (1980). I remember thinking, "I shouldn't be seeing this," and yet I couldn't take my eyes off of the image. I still think it's one hell of an opener.

To the best of my knowledge, the actress used for this credit sequence has never been named. Watching the movie again and again, I've picked up certain details, principally the scar on her left cheek, but ultimately I'm less interested in the trivia of who she might have been than the lasting impression of having witnessed something truly profane. This is all we see of the character, vampirized before the events of the film and depicted only as a stillborn revenant, doomed in the process of transition like a hard-boiled egg that will never hatch.

For the record, I've presented these screen caps in reverse order, as the clearer view of this alluring monster mouth comes first, only to slowly grow out of focus in deference to the main titles as the camera pushes towards that mouth. I remember fearing, even though the image was growing softer and softer, that the mouth would do something before it faded from view... open, perhaps, or gasp or smile... something. Although the bulk of THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE is too stately and classy for its own good, these few seconds of celluloid filled me with (to quote Joseph Conrad) a positive horror, a dangerous admixture of conflicting emotions the likes of which I feel all too infrequently in this genre.