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Travelling through the Transylvanian countryside on their honeymoon,
Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne Harcourt's (Jennifer Daniel) car
breaks down ... but luckil they find a hotel nearby, and then there's
cultivated Doctor Ravna (Noel Willman), apparently the richest man in
town, who invites them to his castle for dinner - and it is such a nice
evening (even though at least for the audience it is totally apparent that
Doc Ravna is actually a vampire), and Ravna even promises the Harourts to
help them with their car, even if it will take a while.
The next evening, Ravna invites the Harcourts again, for a masque,
where he has no problem seperating them and drugging them. The next day,
Gerald wakes up still in the castle, and the Doctor's son Carl (Barry
warren) throws him out and claims Gerald showed an inacceptably drunk
behaviour the other night. But when Gerald asks about his wife, Carl
claims Gerald has come alone. Everyone else in town can't remember
Gerald's wife neither, claiming he was travelling alone - Gerald seems to
be entering his own worst nightmare, until he meets Professor Zimmer
(Clifford Evans), the village drunkard who is actually a vampire hunter,
and he not only believes that Gerald's wife is held by Ravna, he also
knows that Ravna's a vampire and he knows how to get rid of vampires ...
In the end, after Gerald and Zimmer have freed Gerald's missus from
Ravna and his vampire breed, and Zimmer has all exits from Ravna's castle
sealed with garlic, he starts a Satanic incantation that ultimately has
the vampires elinminated by a swarm of (not very convincing) bats.
To get one point straight - no, Kiss of the Vampire is not a
forgotten Hammer classic or the underrated and underappreciated
masterpiece some critics want to make it ... it's certainly not on par
with Terence Fisher's Dracula or Brides
of Dracula, where these films were inventive, Kiss of the
Vampire is merely repetitious, not to mention it's riddled with
plotholes and leaps of reason.
However, all that said, Kiss of the Vampire is still a solid if
formulaic piece of vampire cinema, greatly helped by Hammer's wonderful
ability to produce period horror on a budget, and by great actors, first
and foremost Clifford Evans' wonderful performance as vampire hunter who
has to drink in order to live with what he's doing. Only Noel Willman as
head vampire makes but a poor substitute for, let's say, Christopher Lee
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