Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)

 Crypt of the Living Dead (1973) - also known as Hannah, Queen of the Vampires - is one of those films that feels, as you watch it, as if it is having something of an identity crisis.  The presence of various recognisable American actors, in both main and supporting roles, and the crediting of Ray Danton as director, would suggest that it is a US production.  Yet several continental actors, familiar from European exploitation films, in supporting roles, some of the plot elements and the locations suggest a different origin.  In reality, Crypt of the Living Dead was actually La Tumbla de la Isla Maldita (1973), a Spanish production, shot mainly in Turkey and directed by Julio Salvador.  Or rather, it is a version of that film, reshaped and partially re-shot by US producer Lou Shaw, who had bought the US rights to the film.  Although the film already starred US actors Andrew Prine, Mark Damon and Patty Shepard, Shaw felt it necessary to further 'Americanise' it, having Ray Danton shoot new sequences, with US supporting actors and Prine, in California.  To be fair, the match between the two sets of footage isn't too bad, with most of the new scenes turning up toward the end of the film, adding a new climax and adding some additional action in the lead up to the finale.  Watching the film, it perhaps isn't surprising that Shaw wanted to reinforce the film with these new, more action-orientated, scenes as, prior to this, the film had moved at a deathly slow pace, with lots of talky exposition, but little of any substance actually happening.

The film starts briskly and atmospherically enough, with an archeologist entering an underground tomb, despite someone having hung a slaughtered animal over the entrance to deter him, only to be set upon by two strange figures, one in furs, the other in a hooded robe.  Shoved under the tomb, he is crushed to death when his assailants smash the stone legs holding it up, before being decapitated by them.  After that, it slows down as it chronicles the arrival on the island where these events took place, of the victim's son, who is intent upon finding out what happened to his father.  The movie subsequently settles down into a series of predictable scenes where various island inhabitants try to warn him off from prying into ancient mysteries, he arrogantly dismisses local legends about the 'Vampire Queen' whose tomb his father was investigating, (with the legend being spelled out to him at length by the local school teacher, a fellow American), and people generally act mysteriously and suspiciously.  Inevitably, he goes too far when he tries to lift the tomb in order to find out how his father came to be under, which, of course, releases the vampire.  Not that he believes in her, dismissing reports of her activities as ignorant superstition.  He only changes his tune when people start getting murdered.

It isn't as if these parts of the film don't contain some interesting ideas - when first free, for instance, the vampire isn't strong enough to attack and drink the blood of anything other than animals in order to build her strength up - and they're also very atmospherically shot, making excellent use of the Turkish locations, establishing a real sense of isolation for the characters.  Hannah, the vampire queen herself, is also cuts a very striking figure, as played by Teresea Gimpera, icily beautiful, exuding a strange air of serenity and periodically transforming into a wolf.  It's just that it moves so slowly, with only a few brief flashes of action.  There are some typically (for a continental exploitation piece) bizarre elements, most notably the 'Wild Man', who wears a fur waistcoat and looks as if he could be a close cousin of Bela Lugosi's Ygor, from Son of Frankenstein (1939), an acolyte of the vampire queen.  Consequently, it comes as something of a relief when Ray Danton's footage kicks in to provide some action toward the film's end.  The best part of this footage is undoubtedly Hannah's extended death scenes - she plunges, in flames, from a cliff, as the surviving islands gather around her smouldering, skeletal corpse on the beach, it suddenly gets up again to menace them before Prine finally stakes her.   

While the new scenes bring some welcome action, you can't help but wonder what the original Spanish version was like in its entirety.  The US version runs around seventy five minutes, suggesting that a fair amount of the original footage was cut.  The original was, reportedly far gorier and I wouldn't be surprised if it had also included some nudity, (which would have been par for the course for a Spanish horror movie of this era).  As it stands, Crypt of the Living Dead is a passable, but minor, vampire movie which rather squanders what decent ideas it has and spends far too much time setting up its plot - it feels far longer than its seventy five minutes.  It doesn't help that it has a not particularly likeable hero in the bland Prine.  Indeed, few of the main characters are especially sympathetic, with the most memorable character being Frank Brana's salty old blind sea dog, forever coming out with prognostications of doom.  There's also something about the lighting and film quality, in both old and new footage, that, at times, gives the movie something of the feel of a seventies TV movie (although far better shot).   Not exactly a 'must see' film, Crypt of the Living Dead is, nonetheless, watchable when nothing else is available.