Curse of the Undead

• Directed by Edward Dein
• May 19, 1959 (US)

A preacher must save a Western town and his girlfriend from a hired gunslinger who is really a vampire.

Sometimes you can tell a film is cheap within seconds like Curse of the Undead. Everything about it screams ‘bargain basement’. The acting occurs on sparsely decorated sets and for a bustling town it is devoid of people in the background. Yet there is plenty of good here and I was left thinking almost immediately this is a movie perfect for a remake with a budget. You wouldn’t need to change much of anything. I can’t help but think after viewing that this was a touch ahead of its time. It has surprisingly more pluses to it than it does minuses.

I say that because this is so frustratingly close to being high quality by modern standards. The script is excellent. The performances by some though not nearly enough are solid and the direction is serviceable but it looks like it was filmed on an old television set and the camera does little to help the atmosphere of the story. Our vampire walks in the daylight with his powers diminished. As I recall the weakness to sunlight was invented by Hollywood to kill vampires in a way that would not violate the censor standards of the era.

There is a distinctly religious vibe to this. A consecrated bullet with a cross made of two thorns from the Holy Land is the object that ultimately kills the vampire. Harkening back to the older vampire stories, our villain Drake Robey (Michael Pate), whose real name is Drago Robles, killed himself over so he rises from the dead. And Preacher Dan (Eric Fleming) who owns the consecrated bullet is the ultimate hero of the story. Preacher Dan is little more than a godly man, but he’s rounded enough that you’ll get through the movie. Drake Robey is not totally irredeemable, but he’s not exactly running from the darkness either.

It gets its religious themes across while keeping your attention because of its distinct efforts at quality. Edward Dein in a script with his wife Mildred squeezed everything they could from the idea by avoiding heavy action and (mostly avoiding) dumb decisions by characters. The casting is good with Michael Pate cutting an imposing figure as a gunslinger that has the added advantage of being a vampire.

Low budget schlock for the time tended to be (though not consistently was) sexist though this largely avoids that with Dolores Carter (Kathleen Crowley). Dolores is Preacher Dan’s girlfriend and the object of desire for ol’ Fangface because she is the only attractive woman in town. Crowley gives her a little bit of fire and you don’t think that the only reason she feels anything for Drake Robey is because of sexy Dracula powers. You can believe that she has some genuine attachment to him. Then again what woman doesn’t like a bad boy?

Dolores hires Robey because of some very shady land grabbing tactics going on that also include her brother Tim (Jimmy Murphy) getting killed by would be land baron Buffer (Bruce Gordon). What starts out as Robey taking a job to kill Buffer becomes him taking a job to ride around the ranch at night with the excuse that in the daylight his eyesight and his reflexes aren’t as good. It is a good way for him to hide his true nature as he picks off the locals though the whole hired gun bit gets moved past too quickly.

Robles’s story has a tragic tone and fits well with the pre-Hollywood vampire lore. You almost feel bad for the guy until you realize he is an undead killer. What bothers me is the use of a silver (pure metal) dagger but we need to go with wood because reasons. They went more traditional with the lore so why not mix things up a touch with how he can be dispatched/dealt with there though the bullet was used.

Maybe it was just meant to show he was evil or maybe it was an inside joke by the people but our vampire is dressed all in black. It wasn’t unusual for villains in Westerns to wear a black hat or dress darkly. This guy is dressed in the darkest leather in the hottest weather to point it got silly and not a mark of villainy.

There is supposedly a mysterious illness attacking the youngest daughters in the area. A mysterious illness that causes puncture marks in the neck? Really? Not the first movie that’s chalked up the vampire plague to a mysterious illness but if you’re going to show puncture marks you can’t call it a mysterious illness.

The music is that same generic low budget horror music that I think just about every cheap horror movie from Universal had. It doesn’t say ‘Western’ and it doesn’t say ‘horror’. Or maybe it does in a way. It certainly evokes cheap ‘science-fiction horror’.

Curse of the Undead is a movie that almost gets there and because of that it is watchable. It just needed a little more. If you can get past the cheap you will enjoy this hidden gem.