Overcome by emotion, due to being dumped by her boyfriend, Pierre (Sergio Fantoni), beautiful model, Jeanette Moreneau (Susanne Loret) gets into a car accident. She scars her face in the process, looking like she fell asleep on a waffle iron. We know she was distraught at the time, because she kept screeching, "Pierre! Pierre!" a lot. Luckily, a certain Prof. Levin (Alberto Lupo) wants to use his latest formula on her, and dispatches his crony, Monique (Franca Parisi) to fetch Jeanette. Levin uses his serum on her, achieving amazing results. However, there is a cost. Levin will have to up the ante, and commit unspeakable crimes in order to keep Jeanette's face unscathed. He even decides to try a new formula -involving r-a-d-i-a-t-i-o-n- on himself, causing a fairly predictable outcome. Meanwhile, Pierre searches for Jeanette in every belly-dancing jazz club he can visit. Can he find her before Levin sinks even deeper into madness? ATOM AGE VAMPIRE is a nice slab of sci-fi hyper-schlock, culminating in a wonderful monster-runs-amok finale! EXTRA POINTS: For Levin's stop-motion transformation scene! "

Atomic Age Vampire, is not your average vampire movie.The movie opens with a woman horribly disfigured after an automobile accident.The story, it does not immediately feel like horror.Unusual treatment is suggested. The movie adds a mad scientist; or a weird science horror twist, to the plot.The treatment, suggesting: affecting people with vampirism.Miraculous regeneration treatment with a cost.From the start, it feels more like science fiction than actual horror.The story, seems to be a little over- drawn. It takes a while, to get to the vampire element of the tale.When I think atomic age; I think of films lie Return of the Vampire. I don't see the relation to era in the movie's title.Atomic Age Vampire, is not necessarily a bad movie; it just does not feel to me as being a classic horror film.

There are no vampires in this cheapo Italian B-movie, atom age or otherwise. Instead, we get an obsessed scientist, Professor Alberto Levin (Alberto Lupo), who turns himself into a hideous monster in order to kill women for the gland needed to restore the looks of once-beautiful blonde stripper Jeanette Moreneau (Susanne Loret), whose face was horribly disfigured in a terrible automobile accident.Clearly influenced by French horror classic Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960) and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, the plot for Atom Age Vampire is uninspired drivel, which might not be such a problem had the film been brilliantly paced, incredibly sleazy, wonderfully acted, or directed with flair, or if there had simply been some decent special effects to enjoy. But there aren't.Anton Giulio Majano's direction is flat, the movie seriously drags its heels with far too much talk and not enough action (I watched the heavily cut 86 minute edit—God only knows how dull the fully uncut version is), the cast are wooden, Loret offers a glimpse of cleavage, but that's all, and the transformation effects are of the crap time-lapse kind used several decades earlier to turn Lon Chaney Jr. into a wolf-man.For a really fun film that explores very similar territory, check out Corruption (1968)—it's everything that Atom Age Vampire should have been.

On the strength of my theatrical viewing of THE WOLFMAN (2010), given that I am currently going through a "Euro-Cult" phase anyway, I opted to check out a handful of Gothic Horror efforts for the coming week. More by accident than design, I started things off with this one, involving as it does a man turning into a monster (though the change, in this case, is self-imposed in the "Jekyll & Hyde" manner). Actually, apart from the latter (much-abused) tradition, the film was obviously inspired by one of the more influential horror classics of the era – the sublime EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959). In fact, here we have yet another girl whose face gets scarred (though the auto accident occurs so quickly that one can hardly even see what it was the driver had averted to end up off the road!) and cured (if only for a little while, causing periodical resort to murder) by an eminent but clearly deranged scientist (who has no qualms about sacrificing a devoted assistant to the cause on realizing he has fallen for his patient!). In spite (or because) of the poor-quality print I acquired, the Gothic atmosphere – though, like EYES WITHOUT A FACE (or, for that matter, a similar albeit vastly superior Italian offering i.e. I VAMPIRI [1956]), this actually retains a modern-day setting – is quite nicely done (with the laboratory scenes in particular exuding that recognizable Universal feel, even if the radioactive chamber in which the transformation occurs seems to derive more from the tele-portation machine of THE FLY [1958]) and we even get the obligatory hulking dumb servant. The make-up, by the way, is reasonably hideous but as for convincing (to say nothing of scary), that is another matter entirely: incidentally, I found it quite insensitive to suggest that radiation victims could go insane and embark on an apparently haphazard killing spree!; at one time, he even performs the gland extraction vital for his operations (off-screen) in a packed cinema and under the cops' very nose! For what it is worth, both the film's international and original titles are misleading – the monster is clearly not a vampire but, then, the Italian moniker translates to SEDDOK, THE HEIR OF Satan (though actually referred to by that name, it makes no sense and also seems to come out of nowhere!). Unfortunately, the English dubbing is atrocious and so harshly recorded as to make the dialogue unintelligible at times!; all things considered, however, I found the film – whose most recognizable cast members are Alberto Lupo's villain and heroic Sergio Fantoni – to be a pleasant surprise (especially in view of Leonard Maltin's unflattering BOMB rating). For the record, although the version I watched is 87 minutes long, apparently there are other prints in circulation running anywhere between 69 and 105!