View source for Kiss of the Vampire (film)


{{Redirect|Kiss of Evil|the 2011 Finnish film|The Kiss of Evil}}
{{Other uses|Kiss of the Vampire (disambiguation){{!}}Kiss of the Vampire}}

{{Use British English|date=November 2014}}
{{Infobox film
| name           = Kiss of the Vampire
| image          = Kissofthevampire.jpg
| caption        = Theatrical release poster
| director       = [[Don Sharp]]
| writer         = [[Anthony Hinds|John Elder]]
| producer       = [[Anthony Hinds]]
| starring       = [[Edward de Souza]]<br>[[Jennifer Daniel]]
| cinematography = [[Alan Hume]]
| editing        = [[James Needs]]
| music          = [[James Bernard (composer)|James Bernard]]
| studio         = [[Hammer Film Productions]]
| distributor    = [[Rank Organization|J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors]] (UK)<br>[[Universal Pictures]] (USA)
| released       = {{film date|1963|9|11|df=yes}} (U.S.)<br>26 January 26 1964 (U.K.)<ref>Johnson, Tom (1996). Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography. North Carolina: McFarland. p. 229. ISBN 0-7864-0034-X.</ref>
| runtime        = 88 minutes
| country        = United Kingdom
| language       = English
}}
  	 	 
'''''Kiss of the Vampire''''' (also known as '''''Kiss of Evil''''' on American television) is a 1963 British [[Vampire films|vampire film]] directed by [[Don Sharp]] and starring [[Edward de Souza]] and [[Jennifer Daniel]].<ref name="BFIsearch">{{Cite web |title=Kiss of the Vampire |url=https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150030594 |access-date=12 May 2024 |website=British Film Institute Collections Search}}</ref> It was written by producer [[Anthony Hinds]] (as John Elder) and made by [[Hammer Film Productions]].

It was Sharp's first movie for Hammer. He went on to make several more films for the company.<ref>{{cite magazine|first=Stephen|last=Vagg|url=https://www.filmink.com.au/unsung-aussie-filmmakers-don-sharp-top-25/|magazine=Filmink|title=Unsung Aussie Filmmakers: Don Sharp – A Top 25|date=July 27, 2019|access-date=14 February 2020|archive-date=2 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200802203714/https://www.filmink.com.au/unsung-aussie-filmmakers-don-sharp-top-25/|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Plot==
Gerald and Marianne Harcourt are a couple [[honeymoon]]ing in early 20th-century [[Bavaria]] when their car runs out of petrol. They stop in a small village and opt to stay at the local inn until a cart arrives with more petrol. They accept a dinner invitation from Dr. Ravna, who introduces them to his children Carl and Sabena.

At a costume ball at Ravna's chateau, Gerald and Marianne are separated from each other. Donning a mask identical to Gerald's in order to impersonate him, Carl silently leads Marianne to an upstairs bedroom, where Dr. Ravna, a vampire, bites her. Gerald becomes concerned about Marianne's whereabouts, but Sabena gives him a drugged drink which renders him unconscious. Ravna is the leader of a vampire [[cult]] which intends to induct Marianne as a member.

When Gerald awakes, Carl insists that he was travelling alone and that Marianne was never in the chateau. The innkeeper, Bruno, supports Carl's story, and the police say that Dr. Ravna's standing in the community is too respected to investigate his chateau. Only the hard-drinking savant Professor Zimmer, who lost his daughter to the cult, acknowledges Marianne's existence and agrees to help. He advises Gerald that the cult will not be able to complete Marianne's transformation into a vampire until the following night, and prepares an arcane ritual using the [[Seal of Solomon]] that he can use to destroy the vampires once Marianne is freed.

Gerald knocks at the chateau's front door and knocks out the guard when he answers. He breaks into Sabena's bedroom and enlists her help in finding Marianne, but she betrays him to Ravna. Ravna has Gerald tied up and demonstrates to him that they have already brainwashed Marianne into embracing the cult and renouncing her love for Gerald. As Sabena scratches Gerald's chest as foreplay to a vampiric bite, he surreptitiously slips his bonds, then uses blood from the scratch to draw a cross on his chest. The vampires reel from the cross, giving Gerald the opportunity to subdue Marianne and escape. The cult searches the grounds for them, but Zimmer provides a distraction which allows Gerald to topple a pillar on the guard.

Back at the inn, Zimmer says he knows Bruno only denied Marianne's existence for fear that the cult would harm his daughter, and compels him to bring the local priest to cure Marianne. As Zimmer works on the ritual, Gerald checks on Marianne and finds she has left, having been mystically summoned by the cult. The cult realizes that Zimmer will not destroy them so long as Marianne is with them. Gerald and the priest catch up to Marianne and tackle her to the ground. Zimmer's arcane ritual is completed, releasing a swarm of vampire bats which swarm over the vampires, draining them of their blood. As the vampires die, Marianne is freed of their spell.

==Cast==
* [[Clifford Evans (actor)|Clifford Evans]] as Professor Zimmer
* [[Noel Willman]] as Dr. Ravna
* [[Edward de Souza]] as Gerald Harcourt
* [[Jennifer Daniel]] as Marianne Harcourt
* [[Barry Warren]] as Carl Ravna
* [[Brian Oulton]] as 1st disciple
* [[Noel Howlett]] as Father Xavier  
* Jacquie Wallis as Sabena Ravna
* [[Peter Madden (actor)|Peter Madden]] as Bruno
* [[Isobel Black]] as Tania
* Vera Cook as Anna
* [[John Harvey (actor)|John Harvey]] as Police sergeant
* [[Carl Esmond]] as Anton Stangher (TV movie only)
* [[Virginia Gregg]] as Rosa Stangher (TV movie only)
* Sheilah Wells as Theresa Stangher (TV movie only)

==Production==
===Development===
The film was originally intended to be the third movie in [[Hammer Film Productions|Hammer]]'s ''Dracula'' series, which began with 1958's ''[[Dracula (1958 film)|Dracula]]'' with [[Christopher Lee]] and [[Peter Cushing]], and was followed by 1960's ''[[The Brides of Dracula]]'' with Cushing alone. Following the success of ''Brides of Dracula'', Universal agreed to co finance and the film was put on Hammer's schedule in January 1961. Additional finance was to come from Italian producer Roberto Dandi.<ref name="marcus"/>

However, by the time [[Anthony Hinds]] finished his script in 1962, Dracula had been removed from the project and Dandi was not involved. The script involved left over elements from ''The Brides of Dracula'' as well as the British thriller ''[[So Long at the Fair]]''.

The job of directing was offered to Don Sharp, who later said he had never seen a horror film before being asked to the job by [[Tony Hinds]]. Hinds told Sharp he thought the director would be ideal based on Sharp's other work. The director watched ''[[The Curse of Frankenstein]]'', ''Dracula'' and ''Stranglers from Bombay'' and became enthusiastic.<ref name="auto">Koetting p 8</ref>

"What intrigued me about them was after about 20 minutes I was totally hooked despite a totally absurd situation," Sharp said later. "I thought it was wonderful - here was a genre with its own ground rules and self contained world and you could be theatrical but treat it realistically to grab the audience and make them believe something absurd."<ref name="auto"/>

Sharp said he was worried that "as Hammer progressed, the goal seemed to be for each picture to top the one before it and they were becoming satiated with violence. So I persuaded Tony that it was better to suggest 'Is it going to happen?' and give the audience a little touch of it, and then go on and really get your big shock at the end. There could be a good size shock in the middle too but not all the time."<ref name="auto1">Koetting p 9</ref>

Sharp said "I've always believed there needs to be a separation between suspense and shock. You lead on a mood but if you introduce the shock moment too quickly then it's expected. If you hang on keeping the same mood and tempo as the rest of the sequence, and then shatter the mood with a sudden violent moment, that's when it really works."<ref name="auto1"/>

Sharp says the idea that the vampires belonged to a cult came from Hinds. "He persuaded me that it would be great if, instead of just one person, there were a whole lot of people who couldn't come out in the daylight.”<ref name="auto1"/>

"Not every villain has to be a Bill Sykes," added Sharp. "Some of the most awful corruption has been in the most respectable of places: the old Biblical thing of whited sepulchres that were shining on the outside but absolutely corrupt underneath. Once we had that kind of approach, the whole of the designing and costuming grew from it."<ref name="auto1"/>

===Casting===
The film was made without Hammer's two biggest stars, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.  Edward da Souza had been in Hammer's ''Phantom of the Opera''.

===Shooting===
The film went into production on 7 September 1962 at [[Bray Studios (UK)|Bray Studios]] and finished on 25 October.<ref>Koetting p 10</ref>

Sharp enjoyed making the film and later said Tony Hinds was the best producer he ever worked with.<ref name="donthree">{{cite interview |last=Sharp |first=Don |subject-link= |interviewer=Teddy Darvas and Alan Lawson |title=Don Sharp Side 3 |work= |date=2 November 1993 |publisher=History Project |location=London |url=https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/don-sharp |access-date=14 July 2021 |archive-date=13 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210713092443/https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/don-sharp |url-status=live }}</ref>

The film's climax, involving [[black magic]] and swarms of bats, was intended to be the ending of ''The Brides of Dracula'', but the star of that film, [[Peter Cushing]], objected that [[Abraham Van Helsing|Van Helsing]] would never resort to black sorcery. However, the paperback [[novelization]] of ''Brides'' does use this ending.

The finale involving the bat attack was shot using plastic bats. "It was a chaotic day shooting that scene, but everyone seemed to believe that we were on to something and people started taking chances and put their all into it," said Sharp. "I'm very proud of it."<ref name="auto1"/>

==Alternate version: ''Kiss of Evil''==
Retitled ''Kiss of Evil'' for American TV, Universal trimmed so much of the original film for its initial television screening that more footage had to be shot to fill the missing time.

Additional characters that didn't appear at all in the original release were added, creating a whole new subplot. Every scene that showed blood was edited out, e.g. the pre-credits scene in which blood gushes from the coffin of Zimmer's daughter after he plunges a shovel into it. Also, in the televised version it is never revealed what Marianne sees behind the curtain (Ravna lying on his bed with blood trickling from the corners of his mouth), a sight which makes her scream. A couple of the cuts result in scenes that no longer make sense: while the theatrical release had Harcourt smearing the blood on his chest into a cross-shaped pattern (keeping the vampires away as he escapes), the televised version omits the blood-smearing, leaving the vampires' inaction unexplained.

The additional footage shot for the televised version revolves around a family, the Stanghers, who argue about the influence of the vampiric Ravna clan but never interact with anybody else in the movie. The teenage daughter, Theresa, throws over her boyfriend in favor of Carl Ravna (unseen in these scenes) who has given her a music box which plays the same hypnotic tune that he plays on the piano elsewhere in the movie.

==Release==
When the film was delivered to Universal the studio was concerned about the accidental similarities between the film's ending and that of ''The Birds''. The release of ''Kiss of the Vampire'' was delayed in America until September 1963. It was not released in Britain until 1964 when it went out on a double-bill with ''Paranoiac''.<ref name="marcus">{{cite book|pages=76–77|url=https://archive.org/details/hammerstoryautho0000hear/page/76/mode/2up?q=%22kiss+of+the+vampire%22+|title= The Hammer story : the authorised history of Hammer films|last=Hearn|first= Marcus|year=2007}}</ref>

==Critical reception==
Howard Thompson of ''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote,"Until the picture floridly hops off the track toward the end, this horror exercise is a quietly stylish, ice-cold treat, beautifully tinted, well-directed (Don Sharp) and persuasively acted (Edward de Souza and Jennifer Daniel have the leads)."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Thompson |first=Howard |author-link=Howard Thompson (film critic) |date=October 10, 1963 |title=Screen: Knights and the Supernatural |journal=[[The New York Times]] |page=49 }}</ref>

''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'' wrote "Horror fans will dig this latest effort from the Hammer Film shop in Britain. It is a slickly-produced color story of evil doings in Bavaria, circa 1910, replete with suspense, demonism and mystery tightly wrapped in a skillful package of effective performance and well-paced direction."<ref>{{cite journal |date=July 31, 1963 |title=Kiss of the Vampire |journal=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] |page=6 }}</ref>

''[[The Monthly Film Bulletin]]'' wrote "No new developments seem to have emerged in the vampire world, and this film is a straightforward and rather tame rehash of the standard formula...The direction is competent enough, though Don Sharp reveals no flair for this kind of thing, and there is a signal lack of atmosphere."<ref>{{cite journal |date=February 1964 |title=Kiss of the Vampire |journal=[[The Monthly Film Bulletin]] |volume=31 |issue=361 |page=26 }}</ref>

[[Leslie Halliwell]] said: "This unsubtle variation on ''[[Dracula]]'' is handled in lively fashion, with a splendid climax in which assorted white-robed vampires are destroyed by bats."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Halliwell |first=Leslie |title=Halliwell's Film Guide |publisher=Paladin |year=1989 |isbn=0586088946 |edition=7th |location=London |pages=565}}</ref>

''The [[Radio Times]] Guide to Films'' gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Newlyweds honeymooning in Bavaria find themselves up to their necks in vampires in this lesser-known Hammer horror from director Don Sharp. Studio stalwarts Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are absent here, so it's Clifford Evans (''[[The Curse of the Werewolf]]'') who takes on the mantle of the vampire killer determined to put an end to the evil reign of chief bloodsucker Noel Willman. It's pretty formulaic stuff, but the camerawork (by veteran British cinematographer [[Alan Hume]]) at least makes the tale a vivid experience."<ref>{{Cite book |title=Radio Times Guide to Films |publisher=[[Immediate Media Company]] |year=2017 |isbn=9780992936440 |edition=18th |location=London |pages=512}}</ref>

The [[review aggregator]] [[Rotten Tomatoes]] reported an approval rating of {{RT data|score}}, with an average score of {{RT data|average}}, based on {{RT data|count}} reviews.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kiss of Evil |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kiss_of_the_vampire_1963 |website=[[Rotten Tomatoes]] |access-date=29 November 2021 |archive-date=10 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211010223352/https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kiss_of_the_vampire_1963 |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Home video release==
In North America, the film was released on 6 September 2005 along with seven other Hammer horror films (''[[The Brides of Dracula]]'', ''[[Nightmare (1964 film)|Nightmare]]'', ''[[The Evil of Frankenstein]]'', ''[[The Curse of the Werewolf]]'', ''[[Paranoiac (film)|Paranoiac]]'', ''[[Captain Clegg (film)|Night Creatures]]'', ''[[The Phantom of the Opera (1962 film)|The Phantom of the Opera]]'') on the four-[[DVD]] set ''The Hammer Horror Series'' (ASIN: B0009X770O), which is part of MCA-Universal's ''Franchise Collection''. This set was re-released on [[Blu-ray]] on 13 September 2016. In July 2020, [[Scream Factory]] released the film with a [[collector's edition]] Blu-ray that included both 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 aspect ratios as well as the TV version ''Kiss of Evil'' in [[standard definition]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Barber|first=Ryne|date=2020-06-30|title=Kiss of the Vampire Blu-ray Review (Scream Factory)|url=https://cultsploitation.com/kiss-of-the-vampire-blu-ray-review-scream-factory/|access-date=2020-07-10|website=Cultsploitation|language=en-US|archive-date=9 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200709155717/https://cultsploitation.com/kiss-of-the-vampire-blu-ray-review-scream-factory/|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Bibliography==
* {{cite book|last=Rigby|first=Jonathan|title=English Gothic : A Century of Horror Cinema|date=July 2000|publisher=Reynolds & Hearn|isbn=978-1903111017|oclc=45576395|ref={{harv|Rigby|2000}}}}
*{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/details/Hammer_Horror_004_1995.Marvel/page/n9?q=%22don+sharp%22|magazine=Hammer Horror|date=1995|first=Christopher|last=Koetting|title=Costume Dramas}}

==Notes==
<references />

==External links==
* {{IMDb title|0057226}}

{{Don Sharp}}
{{Hammer Horror}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kiss Of The Vampire, The}}
[[Category:1963 films]]
[[Category:1963 horror films]]
[[Category:1963 English-language films]]
[[Category:1960s historical horror films]]
[[Category:British historical horror films]]
[[Category:British vampire films]]
[[Category:Films directed by Don Sharp]]
[[Category:Films scored by James Bernard]]
[[Category:Films set in the 1900s]]
[[Category:Films set in Bavaria]]
[[Category:Films set in Germany]]
[[Category:Films shot at Bray Studios]]
[[Category:Hammer Film Productions horror films]]
[[Category:Universal Pictures films]]
[[Category:1963 British films]]
[[Category:English-language historical horror films]]

{{Wikipedia attribution|original_title=Kiss of the Vampire (film)|access_date=2026-03-04}}