Atom Age Vampire Reviews

This typically bizarre Italian horror offering, produced by Mario Bava, stars Alberto Lupo as a berserk professor who falls in love with torch singer Jeanette (Susanne Loret). When she is horribly disfigured in a car accident, he restores her marred face by injecting her with serum from the glands of the dead, causing her to turn into a vampire. The professor also regularly transforms himself, inexplicably, into a reptilian monster, supposedly as a result of his exposure to Hiroshima victims he has been treating. Pierre (Sergio Fantoni) and friends finally seek out the awful pair and destroy them. Highly derivative of George Franju's classic THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DR. FAUSTAS (LES YEUX SANS VISAGE), ATOM AGE VAMPIRE is a lame imitation that lacks the kind of visual verve producer Bava brought to his own work. Although the film is a failure cinematically, some perverse delight can be had in the pure luridness of the premise. The original Italian cut ran 105 minutes.