Tonight's movies was something from the vaults- The Vampire's Ghost. I wasn't expecting much from this 1945 Republic Pictures piece, then I saw the author's name: Leigh Brackett. A sci-fi novelist by trade, The Vampire's Ghost was her first movie, but she soon she was working with William Faulkner on Howard Hawkes' The Big Sleep. Now, she's most popularly recognized as the author of the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back.
It's a short film- only fifty-five minutes long and three minutes of it are given to a dancing girl in a bar.
Even at under an hour, it seems to move slowly.
There's a vampire, Webb Fallon, loose in the African country of Bakunda, playing as if he's Rick Blaine, running a bar/gambling den. His secret is compromised when he and a non-native local (white guy), Roy, have gone on an expedition to discover what all the Native drumming is about.
Webb hypnotizes Roy into silence, while turning his attention to Roy's fiancee Julie.
I realize it's a product of a specific time, but The Vampire's Ghost is terribly... colonial. The Africans are very... Native, while the whites are ever so wisely running things.
It's not bad for a low budget b-movie, my only complaint is with the overly sensational title: there's no ghost.
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