WILLIAM SMITH...VAMPIRE-SLAYER by Dave Goode

 

For years I've imagined some American movie producer back in the 1960s making masked wrestler flicks. The heroes portrayed most likely by the stars of the European sinew & sandal movies.The American bodybuilders who traveled from Muscle Beach to Italy to play Hercules, Maciste, and Ursus. Actors like Steve Reeves, Rock Stevens (Peter Lupus), and Mark Forest. But especially Gordon Scott, Dan Vadis, and Brad Harris.

 

 

Recently I was watching GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE (1972) again and thought the perfect name taking, butt kicking answer to Mexico's Blue Demon could have been "Big" Bill Smith, King of the Biker Flicks, who would play a professional wrestler in the 1978 sports drama BLOOD AND GUTS. But without a mask.

 

 

 

 

GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE directed by John Hayes from a screenplay by Hayes and David Chase (Kolchak) has gained a cult following over the years. The story has actor Michael Pataki playing Caleb Croft a rapist/murderer who rises from his grave a vampire after being electrocuted 30 years earlier. He brutally attacks a young couple who are making out in a parked car in a grave yard. And maybe it's just me. But can you think of a less romantic place to make love than in a grave yard? Killing the man the vampire rapes the woman in an open grave.

 

 

The woman gives birth to a strange gray hued baby. It of course is the child of her undead attacker. But she is a bit unhinged after her attack. And believes the baby to be the child of her murdered boy friend. This is the reason she continues to carry the child after she is told the baby is a parasite draining her of blood from within. After giving birth she continues to feed him with her own blood. Sending her to an early grave. There is one very eerie seen that shows the child watching from the shadows as other children play in the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

The grown son James Eastman played by William Smith tracks down his vampiric father who is now teaching night courses in the occult under the name Professor Lockwood. The climax of the movie has father and son throwing down against each other in a battle of good vs. evil. Not quite as good as the fight Smith had in the movie DARKER THAN AMBER (1970). But then what is? And it does make you think of Smith opening a can of whup @#$$ on other supernatural menaces. 

 

 

 

 

Art by Vance Capley