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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