Heart of Darkness done vaudeville, with vampires. This odd duck transplants Transylvania to a backlot Congo, dire in budget, peopled with imperialists both malevolent and paternal. John Abbot is a bloodsucking Rick Blaine who runs a degenerate watering hole and preys on the locals when the sanguine urge hits. His downfall comes in falling for a white chick--naturally--whom he wants for all time, rather than just a quick feed (the moody, beautifully shot opening shows Abbot biting a 'native' girl, with a self-pitying V/O). The black actors playing 'Africans' keep their American accents, which I take as a witty commentary on the absurd mise en scene, a totally beguiling construction which resembles a Wisconsin Tiki bar gone horribly wrong. Everyone plays it cool under the plastic palms and weird Hinduish icons; note the bedspread with Arabic calligraphy, butlers ambling around with spears, and a mad Afro Cuban number well-shaken by the lovely Adele Mara doing voodoo pole cat. Vampire Abbot wears shades during the day, a la Dr Livingstone, while his backstory places him as an Irish Quisling, sentenced to walk the earth under Elizabeth I because he overstepped his bounds. In the colonies, while managing port and freight for its river outposts, he acts like a fixer for the joint stock companies and administrators. The bone-nosed Natives communicate via drum morse code, taking a cue from the 'Indians' populating similar Western programmers Republic was churning out one stage over.
This is pretty ingenious programmer, and the first film to draw a line between the vampiric colonial enterprises of Dutch East India-style regimes and folksy vampirism. What with the war and some nervousness about both the imperial holdings of the Third Reich and the Allied European Powers, this strange little footnote of a flick seems an admission that pulp can acknowledges what newspapers rarely will. The heroes and vampiric villain all treat the natives like furniture or food; the Africa' of the mega budget actioner and the bargain budget basement is the same--but there is more humor and play going on in the depths, consciously or unconsciously. Scriptwriter Leigh Brackett's next job was with William Faulkner, doing The Big Sleep. She wrote this humble horror film off right after she penned it, which is a shame. There are some good ideas in the pasteboard and rubber palms, and the cheaply constructed colonial hinterland mirrors the despicable illusions of the pale parasites who have ruined Africa and plundered it like a swarm of mosquitos. If Republic Pictures would have hired someone like Edgar G Ulmer, this relic could have been a dime store masterpiece. But as it stands, director Lesley Selander keeps the rickety horrorshow moving along just fine. Martin Wilkins, already a vet of countless racist 'jungle' products such as Law of the Jungle and White Cargo, manages an aloof dignity in the cringeworthy part of a servile Black butler. He later appeared in the 1998 documentary Classified X, talking eloquently about these kinds of roles.
Vampire's Ghost would make a fascinating double bill with Bill Gunn's 1973 masterpiece, Ganja & Hess, whose protagonist is an agonized colonial bloodsucker stateside. Like The Vampire's Ghost, it also invents clever new powers and folklore for creaking old tropes, but Gunn's film uses a college campus rather than a rubbery jungle as the arena for demonic possession, predatory interests, and the corruption of one's soul in a savage land.
This is pretty ingenious programmer, and the first film to draw a line between the vampiric colonial enterprises of Dutch East India-style regimes and folksy vampirism. What with the war and some nervousness about both the imperial holdings of the Third Reich and the Allied European Powers, this strange little footnote of a flick seems an admission that pulp can acknowledges what newspapers rarely will. The heroes and vampiric villain all treat the natives like furniture or food; the Africa' of the mega budget actioner and the bargain budget basement is the same--but there is more humor and play going on in the depths, consciously or unconsciously. Scriptwriter Leigh Brackett's next job was with William Faulkner, doing The Big Sleep. She wrote this humble horror film off right after she penned it, which is a shame. There are some good ideas in the pasteboard and rubber palms, and the cheaply constructed colonial hinterland mirrors the despicable illusions of the pale parasites who have ruined Africa and plundered it like a swarm of mosquitos. If Republic Pictures would have hired someone like Edgar G Ulmer, this relic could have been a dime store masterpiece. But as it stands, director Lesley Selander keeps the rickety horrorshow moving along just fine. Martin Wilkins, already a vet of countless racist 'jungle' products such as Law of the Jungle and White Cargo, manages an aloof dignity in the cringeworthy part of a servile Black butler. He later appeared in the 1998 documentary Classified X, talking eloquently about these kinds of roles.
Vampire's Ghost would make a fascinating double bill with Bill Gunn's 1973 masterpiece, Ganja & Hess, whose protagonist is an agonized colonial bloodsucker stateside. Like The Vampire's Ghost, it also invents clever new powers and folklore for creaking old tropes, but Gunn's film uses a college campus rather than a rubbery jungle as the arena for demonic possession, predatory interests, and the corruption of one's soul in a savage land.