Thoughts on Atom Age Vampire(1960)

Susanne Loret plays a dancer, who after being dumped by her boyfriend,gets in horrible car crash trying to chase him down to get to him. When she wakes up in the hospital later on,she finds her face scarred for life. When shes about to kill herself out of self hate she is visited by a strange woman,who turns out to be the assistant to Professor Levin(Alberto Lupo),a man who might be able to fix her face with a new experiment his working on. After the experiment seems to work,the professor discovers that he loves the dancer and the experiment only works for a short time and the only way to make it last is by killing young women to use there genes. While trying to get those genes, the professor uses a new chemical that turns him into a strange monster.



Atom age vampire plot wise is a Italian version of the french classic,Eyes Without A Face(1958). Just instead of a father trying to keep his daughter young and beautiful, it's a doctor driven by getting together with the victim. So it becomes in a way like a grade z beauty and the beast.



Another thing with the movie is it's tone. Thurout it feels like a over the top soap opera. Susanne Loret plays her role of the dancer to a melodramatic breaking point. Out of the all the actors shes the most over the top,her yelling Perire in the dubbing is extremely painful after a while. The soap opera feel does drag the movie at times,we don't see the monster til 45 mins in, and with this slow pace,it could lose the viewer. Instead of showing the subplot of the Dr and his assistant they should add more vampire action.



On the monster movie side the movie luckily delvers. It has a lab set to die for with all the fake computers with lights that do nothing,Plenty of test tubes as well and chemicals that turn people into monsters. Speaking of monsters, the vampire of the title looks more like a werewolf, which adds another level of cheese to the movie. Also like many 60's and under flicks, the turning into a monster scene is in lap dissolve. The kill scenes themselves are also a laugh riot due to how over the top the victims look when being kidnapped.



Atom Age Vampire was a alright Early 60's drive in movie,it was just held back by too many soap opera scenes.