Atom Age Vampire (1960)

Genre: Horror, Mad Scientist, Monster

Source: My Own Collection

Grade: C-

I had heard two very differing opinions on this movie from two online reviews that I really respect and appreciate first one being Brian Collins from Horror Movie A Day who felt that he rather enjoyed this movie and it was a nice little Italian horror movie while on the other hand James Rolf from Cinemassacre flat out said this movie "F ing" sucked. After viewing it myself I feel my feelings on this movie lie some were in the middle though closer to James Rolf`s opinion.

   I had had some pretty high hopes for this movie to, mostly because I loved the poster, the synopsis sounded good, and then just the name was really cool. But alas the movie feel short of my expectations (which were like B- to B range). I am going to start with the positive things positive things I noted about this movie first off the title animation of the bat at the beginning was very cool and creative and got me interested in the movie from its start. Next I really enjoyed the make-up design and work in this. It looked really well done and authentic on both the monster and on the girls scars she gets from the wreck. So very good use of make-up. Finally the movie`s sets were pretty cool especially the mad scientist`s lab, they mad a perfect secret evil looking mad scientist Lab. Also everything else was well designed and looked very authentic.

    Now the bad ...., first of all there`s  no vampire at all like I was hoping for. Instead its really more of a Atom style Dr.Jeckyll and Mr.Hyde kind of deal were a scientist searching for the impossible goes to far and makes himself into a monster. Then I also felt the pace became a tad slow especially towards the end. Plus the edition I have is a cheapie-English dubbed version that gets really bad at some points, but you its still sort of funny.

   Altogether this movie isn`t that great. It`s pretty average with only a couple redeeming values such as it`s monster design and awesome poster. Plus the fact that it gets slow and hard to watch towards the end does not help much, which that plus other things make this movie a bit hard to recommend to people not already familiar with this type of movie.