Quality and Hollywood Formula B Movies - The Vampire’s Coffin
Review
The vampire’s coffin (1958) is about – who would have guessed
– vampires. It’s atypical 1950’s B Movie shot in black and white and sometimes
so dark that it’s hard to see anything at all but nonetheless they really tried
to make the monster convincing. The music is very sensational and contributes a
lot to the film (i.e. makes it hilarious not boring) and the characters act in
the typical over dramatized way you would expect from a play, not a film, but
it works.
The special effects consist of a shadow of a man changing
into a bat and then with stop motion, flying towards the camera. If the viewer
is fully engrossed it might even look believable, unlike the giant claw film
where the monster unfortunately turned out to be just hideous.
No one seems to take themselves seriously in the cast so a film
that is not meant to be funny has a certain element of humour to it, which adds
to the entertainment of today’s viewers.
The film is redeemed by actually having an amusing plot, the
music making everything worthwhile, the acting, seemingly coming from people
that worked on stage before is nicely over pronounced and would be enjoyable on
a very small screen too, the bat is great to watch (it even flaps its wings)
and the female lead only faints once.
All together the vampire’s coffin is a film of its time but
not too bad as far as 1950’s B Movies go and it is certainly enjoyable in the
right set of mind. Unlike the producer intended though, it’s not scary to
nowadays standards and therefore not really a horror film.
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