8/02/2013

Atom Age Vampire/Seddok, l'erede di Satana (1960) or, Spaghetti Mutant Trash



It's pretty much guaranteed that you will not 'gasp with horror' from watching Anton Giulio Majano's Atom Age Vampire, as this poster promises, - although you may... - FALL ASLEEP!!


A stripper gets disfigured from a traffic accident, and she fears that her boyfriend will leave her as a result, so she gets a mad professor to cure her with radiation. He, of course, falls in love with her, and turns into a kind of mutant.

Recounted like this, the plot may sound pretty funny. If you have a thing for mad professors/doctors and/or strippers in movies, you may wanna check this film out, which is now in public domain and available for free, legal watch right here.
No vampire ever actually appears in the film, which must be its main defect. The sensational title promises something spectacular and a lot more thrilling than the actual movie, unfortunately.
Susanne Loret (Uncle Was a Vampire/Tempi Duri per i Vampiri (1959)) as the stripper acts horribly; the dialog is long and boring, and the American dub is scratchy.
Co-writer-director Anton Giulio Majano (The Eternal Chain/I Grandi Peccatori (L'Eterna Catena) (1952)) was a life-long director in Italian films and TV, - something that is not beneficial to Atom Age Vampire, but interesting to know. Majano wrote the script with Alberto Bevilacqua (Black Sabbath/I Tre Volti Della Paura (1963)) and Gino De Santis (Fury of Achilles/L'ira di Achille (1962)), and with Piero Monviso (Red Lips/Labbra Rosse (1960), second assistant director) contributing story elements.
What keeps Atom Age Vampire from totally failing is the dark fear of the atom age, which shines through it and remains fascinating, and also that it does have a fairly good ending, which I won't spoil here. Still, Atom Age Vampire is a terrible film.

Listen to the theme from the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 90 mil. Italian Lira (Italy only)
= Unknown
[Atom Age Vampire opened 16 August (Italy) and runs 105 minutes; there are truncated versions of the film; the release outside of Italy was 89 minutes, and there is also a 69 minute version in rotation. Majano only directed one more theatrical feature before committing himself exclusively to TV: The Corsican Brothers/I Fratelli Corsi (1961). Loret returned in The Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete/Teseo contro il Minotauro (1960), Alberto Lupo (Blood Feud/Il Sicario (1961)) in Anna Christie (1960, TV movie) and theatrically also in The Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete. 1,170 IMDb-users have given Atom Age Vampire an average rating of 3.7/10.]

What do you think of Atom Age Vampire?

No comments:

Post a Comment