L'ultima preda del vampiro (1960)

User Rating:

4.6/10   

Director:

Piero Regnoli

Writer:

Piero Regnoli (story)

Release Date:

1963 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

5 Playgirls Walked Innocently Into His Arms...only to meet the devil in the flesh!

Plot:

Five beautiful showgirls are trapped by a storm and find refuge in a creepy old castle. The owner of the castle, a strange nobleman, has a secret laboratory in the basement and has his own plans for the girls. |

Plot Keywords:

Castle | Laboratory | Refuge | Showgirl | Reincarnation

Cast

Walter Brandi	...	Count Gabor Kernassy
Lila Rocco	...	Vera (as Lyla Rocco)
Maria Giovannini	...	Katia, the victim
Alfredo Rizzo	...	Lucas, the manager
Marisa Quattrini
Leonardo Botta
Antoine Nicos		(as Antonio Nicos)
Corinne Fontaine
Tilde Damiani
Erika Dicenta		(as Erika Di Centa)
Enrico Salvatore

Also Known As:

Curse of the Vampire (USA) (TV title)
Daughters of the Vampire
Desires of the Vampire
Last Victim of the Vampire
The Last Prey of the Vampire
The Playgirls and the Vampire (USA)
The Vampire's Last Victim

Runtime:

USA:70 min | Italy:83 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:15

Filming Locations:

Palazzo Borghese, Artena, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Nord Film Italiana

Great sets all around!

A group of five "showgirls" of varying curvaceousness, along with their manager and bus driver, find themselves in the proverbial Gothic horror movie circumstances: their bus, traveling through a rural area, is forced off the road by a storm, so naturally the thing to do is to take refuge in the spooky old castle that's just up the road, over a rickety bridge. The storm is apparently pretty bad, although we don't ever see any evidence of it, and it looks pretty sunny out during the outdoors scenes. The castle itself contains a few servants and a lone nobleman...oh, and there's also a vampire in the basement.

Our main showgirl, Vera, is a dead ringer for the nobleman's long-dead ancestor, the wife of the long-dead vampire, so she's the main chica-in-trouble, but there's not much going on that's of interest. The story is very silly, and this movie is of note today simply because it features a great deal of scantily clad women on hand, as well as a short topless scene. The photography is interesting, and the sets really get some atmosphere going. I'm a sucker for haunted castle stories with plenty of secret passageway action.

But the hoary aspects of this story were generally of the Ed Wood variety. The film is very campy, and cannot be taken seriously in any way. Ultimately this comes off as too jokey to be a stellar example of an atmospheric Italian "scares & nudity" film, even if it was one of the first.