Miguel Morayta wrote and directed this two part storyline shot back to back in Dec. '61-Jan. '62, concluded by direct sequel "The Invasion of the Vampires." Truth be told there wasn't enough incident for two pictures, and one may safely assume that at 99 often excruciating minutes "The Bloody Vampire" would have benefited had it been pared down to a more reasonable running time. The narrative focuses on Count Siegfried von Frankenhausen (Carlos Agosti), the feared vampire who has taken for his Countess Eugenia (Erna Martha Bauman), the daughter of Marques de la Serna, owner of the Haunted Hacienda near Dead Man's Lake. His mortal enemy is Count Cagliostro (Antonio Raxel), who possesses all the knowledge gathered by his ancestors on the destruction of the undead, using the black roots of a flower that only grows near a vampire's residence and beneath a hanged corpse, from which an elixir can be injected into the body to render it human rather than a victim of the cursed bite. None of this actually plays into this first chapter, which kicks off in fine atmospheric fashion with Count Frankenhausen traveling on a coach driven by the grinning skull of Death, after which it bogs down with expository chatter that really doesn't matter. Cagliostro's daughter Ines (Begona Palacios) is hired to be the new attendant for the Countess, aided by her fiancée Dr. Riccardo Peisser (Raul Farell), reluctantly welcomed by the Count as a way to keep his enemies closer. A protective servant gets his tongue cut out, and housekeeper Frau Hildegarde (Bertha Moss) throws a few tantrums when the Count shows an interest in replacing his wife with Ines as the new Countess. The Count's ultimate goal is to raise an army of the living dead but here there's no conclusion, escaping after putting the bite on the Countess, his comeuppance inevitably waiting for the sequel (Erna Martha Bauman returns not as Countess Eugenia but as her own daughter, who knows nothing of the undead state of her missing padre). The two features ambitiously combine for more than three hours, beginning in shuddery fashion and ending with two reels of spooky doings with an army of vampires emerging from their coffins, but in between it drags interminably with unceasing exposition that simply leads nowhere. Let's not even mention the bat on a wire with ears so large that one wonders how it can stay in the air!
