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A little village is plagued by a series of murders, and the
superstitious townfolks soon suspect a giant vampire bat to do the
killings. Interestingly, professor Kristan (Ralph Morgan), the local
scientist whom everybody asks for advice, agrees with them. Only young
David (Russell Gleason) seems to be of a sounder mind, and he insists it
must have been something human that has done all these killings - not that
everyone would listen to him, though, and while he wants to post guards to
capture the killer who only strikes in the dark, everybody else follows
the professor's advice to light up as many candles as possible to keep the
monster away. The conflict between the professor and David goes deeper
than just being a conflict of opinions though, because the professor is to
marry Marguerite (Maxine Doyle), the woman David has been in love with
since childhood, and even though she tries to persuade herself otherwise,
she loves him back. Enter Doctor Bizet (Pedro de Cordoba), the
professor's mentor and best friend - who interestingly sides with David
both in terms of theories about the killer and concerning Marguerite, and
he persuades the townfolks that the killer is actually a man and convinces
the professor to give up Marguerite. Now this is a very decent thing to do
but problematic on two accounts: a) the townfolks now thinks hunchback Zan
(Mischa Auer), the professor's loyal hunchback who has never hurt a fly,
is the killer, and b) the killer is actually the professor himself, whose
mum was bitten by a vampire bat when pregnant with him, which causes him
to turn into a fiend every time the lights go out, without even knowing
it. And when he pays a visit to Marguerite to release her from their
engagement, the lights do go out and he lmost kills her. Ultimately
though, the professor can only just keep the townsfolks from killing Zan,
who has known about his master's condition and covered up his killings out
of loyalty, and in the end, the professor kills himself to save the others
by hurling himself off a cliff to his death. Loyal Zan fololows just one
step behind ...
A low budget horror film that is not without
its interest in terms of giving the vampire genre a whodunnit twist, plus
it's quite atmospheric for a mere B picture - but that said, Condemned
to Live is far from perfect, and the main reason for this is its
completely boring cast of characters: They are all so good, so benign,
there isn't a mean streak in any of them (after all, even the professor
doesn't know what he's doing), so apart from the main plot about the
killer, there is hardly any conflict in the whole story - which pretty
much derives the whole movie of any meat on its bones ...
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