Also known as Hannah, Queen of the Vampires this surprising "R" rated film is in black and white. Professor Bolton (Mariano García Rey) is killed in the first scene inside an ancient crypt on an Italian island. His son Chris (Andrew Prine) comes to the island and meets Peter (Mark Damon) and the local school teacher Mary (Patty Shepard). He discovers that the crypt that fell on his father was that of the vampire Hannah (Teresa Gimpera) who has been there since 1269. To the dismay of the village, he opens the crypt to find a perfectly preserved body.The film is low action. It is boring. At one point we discover the vampire can make herself into a mist and then a wolf, supposedly a werewolf, but it looked more like a regular wolf. Film is not for everyone. Very little cheese value, just a bad film.

You know when everyone hates something that you like, is that what you'd call a guilty pleasure? That's what this film is for me. The fact that most people think it's crap might be an indication that my opinion is not to be trusted. The film takes place on the tranquil sounding Vampire Island, where Mark Damon and a crazy mountain man are worshipping someone called Hannah. A serious looking fellow with a gun and a lamp heads down into an underground crypt and is murdered by Damon, placed under a huge tomb, then trapped under it for the stupidest reason ever. That reason is so that the dead guy's son, Andrew Prine, will be lured from the US to wherever vampire island is on the Mediterranean, because he is an architect or an engineer or something and the only one with the know how to move the four ton tomb that contains Vampire Queen, Hannah! Of course, this crazy plan also needs to be optimistic enough to have to foresight to know Prine would have to remove the lid of the tomb to free Hannah, but let's not think about it too much.The locals hate Prine on sight but Damon, who is pretending to be just a normal guy and not a crazy vampire worshipping loony, tells him that the locals hate everybody and are a bit riled up because Prine's going to start messing with that tomb. Damon's sister Patty Shepherd is the local teacher so obviously that's the romance part sorted out (complete with incestuous sibling jealousy!). Best of all is Frank Bana's blind sailor, who is dubbed by a guy from the Bronx doing an impression of a guy from the Med.Of course they get the lid off the bloody thing and Hannah's looking like she's just stepped out of a hair salon. First chance she's gets she turning into a wolf and chowing down on Frank Bana's guide dog (he shouts 'Bonny' over and over and over again, which is quite funny). "Put. Away. Dem…college books," Frank says, even though no one has any college books. "Hannah is smart…700 years smart." He advises they get some dogbane and garlic because "she won't get by dem, neither." That holds her at bay, but then there's still Mark Damon, the mountain man, and several bitten islanders to contend with…No one is going to run down the street screaming about how great this film is, and even though it is bad in a way, I still like it. Mark Damon's hilarious over the top performance as the seemingly normal brother who is really an insane recovering drug addict is great, especially his speech about drugs: "I've taken uppers, downers, inners and outers. I've shot everything but aspirin and I blew my house down!" Andrew Prine's terrible clothes should have people choking on their seventies nostalgia, and then there's the weird patchiness of the film, which took two different directors to make, in two different aspect ratios.It looks like the film was incomplete and someone (probably Ray Danton) was brought in to fill up the gaps, which is mainly the sub plot regarding the islanders being turned into vampires. At one point, to tie the footage together, they have someone impersonate Frank Bana – surely a first, and last, in Euro-horror?

Crypt of the Living Dead was filmed in colour, but my copy—part of a dirt-cheap Mill Creek box-set of vampire movies—was presented in black and white (despite the packaging stating otherwise); amazingly, the lack of colour might actually work in the film's favour, lending a touch of much needed Gothic atmosphere to an otherwise rather tedious tale of vampirism in a remote island community.The film sees archaeologist Chris Bolton (Andrew Prine) visiting the island to claim the body of his father, who was crushed to death under a stone sarcophagus while investigating an ancient burial site; when Chris attempts to lift the marble tomb, he accidentally releases 700-year-old vampire Hannah (Barbara Steele lookalike Teresa Gimpera) who begins to feed on the locals, aided in her task by a wild-man in a furry waistcoat and a member of the village who seeks immortality.Slow moving and devoid of action for much of the time, the film will definitely prove hard going for many, but director Julio Salvador achieves just about enough effectively haunting moments to make it a worthwhile watch for vampire movie completists: the local fishermen's hostility towards Chris's arrival on the island immediately provokes an unsettling 'Wicker Man' vibe; Hannah's ability to turn into a cloud of mist or a wolf makes her all the more menacing; and the finalé manages to pick up the pace a tad (albeit a little late, perhaps) providing a few reasonable chills in the process.4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.

For the most part, Crypt of the Living Dead or Young Hannah: Queen of the Vampires or Vampire Women is a throughly retched movie. All you really need to know about the story is that 700 year old Hannah is released from her tomb on an almost uninhabited island. She bites a few locals and is then dispatched herself. There are so many negative things to say about this film that I'll just mention a few that really bothered me.One, Hannah has got to be the slowest vampire in the history of movie vampires. I've heard complaints about the slow moving Bela Lugosi in Dracula. Bela is like Carl Lewis compared with Hannah.Two, the characters do not act in a logical manner. I'm not talking about logic as you and I know it, but these people don't even act according to "horror movie logic". For example, a big deal is made about the effect of dog's bane(sp) on Hannah. In one scene, it is used to get Hannah to release the movie's hero. Once free of her clutches, he immediately goes after her. But, does he bother to take the dog's bane that was just used to save his life - NO.Third, nothing really happens in the movie. I'm not talking about a slow story. Instead, I'm talking about no story. There is a great long section of the film (the first hour or so) where, literally, nothing happens. It's not till the slow moving Hannah is awakened to prey upon the illogical victims on the island that anything seems to happen.