Sunday, October 14, 2018

PRIME EVIL: FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD (1973) **


Anita Ekberg inherits a crumbling old castle and heads off to the old country to claim the title of countess.  She stops for a drink at an inn where she learns everyone in the countryside is afraid of her family.  When Ekberg arrives at the castle, she discovers she comes from a long line of vampires and that her uncle (Gianni Medici) is a master of “necro-biology”.  Naturally, he plans on making Ekberg a vampire too. 

Fangs of the Living Dead comes to us from Amando de Ossorio, the director of the Blind Dead movies.  Although those films were atmospheric and unforgettable, everything about this one is thoroughly ordinary.  There’s nothing here you haven’t already seen hundreds of times before.  We have busty barmaids serving drinks in taverns full of suspicious townsfolk, flashbacks of women being burned alive at the stake, angry villagers brandishing torches, lap dissolve vampire deaths, and crumbling castles complete with spooky graveyards, creepy crypts, and a torture dungeon. 

De Ossorio relies heavily on these durable clichés and proudly wears his influences (the Universal horror movies of the ‘40s and the Hammer horror films of the ‘60s), but never quite finds a way to make them gel.  It mostly feels like a greatest hits package of horror clichés than a real movie.  All of this is watchable certainly, mostly because of Ekberg’s heaving bosom.  Even then, it isn’t quite enough to make Fangs of the Living Dead a winner. 

AKA:  Malenka.  AKA:  Bloody Girl.  AKA:  Malenka, the Niece of the Vampire.  AKA:  The Vampire’s Niece.  AKA:  Malenka, the Vampire.

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