Bring Me the Vampire (1963) User Reviews (5)

3/10 **/5 ~ Vintage Mexican Vampire opus with spooky atmosphere but poor comedy.

[Doctor_Mabuse · 3/10 · 15 October 2002]

Échenme al Vampiro (1963) (Bring Me the Vampire) is an unfunny "spooky comedy" set in an Old Dark House and reminiscent of The Cat and the Canary and Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None.

The film is contemporary to, but no match for, the classics of the Mexican vampire cinema (notably Fernando Mendez's El Vampiro/The Vampire (1957) and El Ataud del Vampiro/The Vampire's Coffin, and Alfonso Corona Blake's amazing Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiras/Samson vs. the Vampire Women) which are rich in shadowy atmosphere carefully modeled on the Hollywood Gothic films of the 1930's and 1940's. Students of international mid-century genre films might enjoy the pleasantly spooky visuals.

The low-budget film is one of dozens of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction films imported to U.S. television and kiddie-matinées by American entrepreneur K. Gordon Murray with unintentionally humorous dubbing done at the infamous Soundlab Studios in Florida (where people must have been literally dragged off the street to do the readings).

Charmingly old-fashioned Mexican haunted house flick

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 16 December 2015]

A lively Mexican haunted house tale that bears more than a passing resemblance to the earlier PHANTOM OF THE RED HOUSE, this remains a mildly diverting experience despite the multitude of flaws. Unsurprisingly the film is the work of sure hand director Alfredo B. Crevenna, who also helmed the generally entertaining NEUTRON series, a rival to the Santo movies. Such flaws in the film include a monotonous English dubbing (congratulations, K. Gordon Murray), a dumb-as-hell twist ending in the tradition of MARK OF THE VAMPIRE that makes no sense whatsoever, lots of dull interchangeable characters who look and act alike, and of course the feeble attempts at comedy which fall flat every time. The predictable storyline (heirs have to live in a creepy house to inherit the fortune of a dead man) was done to death two decades before this movie was made and there isn't much in the way of surprise. Also the film has an episodic feel to it and, come the conclusion, a lot of the plot elements don't seem to gel with each other. Or maybe they just don't make sense.

Where the film does succeed is in a fine spooky atmosphere and in a lot of imagination, effects-wise. This is a film where we get to see macabre disembodied heads (which even leave ectoplasm on the walls when they pass through them). Talking skeletons which laugh irritability. A man literally disintegrating before our very eyes (a simple effect but my favourite). Haunting apparitions. Severed hands. There's even a sub-plot about a vampire who lives in a coffin in the basement and a pair of rifles which, when fired, make machine-gun sounds. As a film, BRING ME THE VAMPIRE is never boring. Sure it may be stupid and with a cast of third-rate comedians, but something is always guaranteed to happen (even if it does make little sense) which is why I found it kind of charming.

Weird. Not Funny or Scary. Just Weird. (Spoilers)

[newportbosco · 3/10 · 20 August 2006]

If you can find a copy of this thing for about 2 bucks, pick it up and have a look. Any more, and you are over paying. It IS worth a look, by the way, but not for the reasons you might think. It's supposed to be a comedy/horror movie, like HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL or OLD DARK HOUSE. But winds up telling you more about the film makers who thought these jokes were funny and the people who laughed at them. For instance, what are we to think about gags based on the situation of a lady being tortured? (And it's not funny...the lady is in PAIN..)I wonder, but I also worry.The movie also tries to make fun of rock and roll with a pretty good take off of an Elvis musical. So, yeah, anti-rock and roll, angry at women..take it from there.. It's probably not rated, but I wouldn't show it to kids, either..it would be too STUPID for them..the SOUNDLAB dubbing would be too berserk. Don't look for logic or even a plot. You'd swear it was cut with a meat cleaver from some sort of serial... Just enjoy the atmosphere. And the atmosphere is first rate here..it also has a very beautiful lobby card..even by the marvelous Mexican lobby card standards...

It's like a Scooby snack south of the border.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 22 October 2020]

You know you are going into live action cartoon territory when a Mexican version of Elvis twists and shouts to a song about sneezing. He's hysterically flamboyant, one of the heirs to the fortune of a generous patriarch whose death has caused a great deal of suspicion of what caused it. Heirs from all over are gathered together at the wealthy man's home for your typical haunted weekend where the survivors are guaranteed to inherit their share and then some. You've got the severe housekeeper, a rather shady legal team and assorted relatives that don't seem like any person alive or dead, just cartoonish buffoons of both sexes who just are too bizarre for words.

Every silly comical cliche dating to 30's style gags are utilized, and they become all the more absurd in the English dubbed print. The cheap filming makes this look like a silent movie with spoken dialog added in, but the atmosphere is eerie in spite of the Kmart blue light special budget. I found it enjoyable for that and for an innocence in its theme even though I've pointed out similar themes in close to a hundred low budget films made that I've reviewed. The sound effects leave no doubt that this was made with a child's mentality in mind, although the actors seem to be emulating everybody from Hugh Herbert and Laurel and Hardy to the ensemble of "The Carol Burnett Show".

Bring me the Paracetamol.

[BA_Harrison · 1/10 · 13 July 2023]

Bring Me the Vampire is another Mexican movie dubbed into English for the American market by producer K. Gordon Murray. It starts off in traditional 'Old Dark House/Ten Little Indians' mode, with a group of heirs assembling at an old mansion where, in order to inherit a fortune, they must remain for a whole month. However, someone intends to get their hands on the whole fortune and starts to bump off the beneficiaries, the bodies disappearing shortly thereafter.

The film's crazy 'everything including the kitchen sink' approach involves ghostly apparitions, the random torture of a young woman, a mummy, a vampire, mysterious robed characters, bumbling detectives, a talking skeleton, and a glass of hot milk that causes the drinker to disintegrate. It's utterly nonsensical, and the diabolical dubbing makes the already awful comedy even more unbearable (Mexican humour from the '60s seems to consist largely of pulling silly faces and broad slapstick accompanied by a slide whistle).

The far-fetched finale reveals that the murdered heirs aren't really dead, the whole thing a ruse cooked up by their still-alive benefactor to unmask his treacherous lawyer and greedy brother while also forcing the beneficiaries to realise their full potential. All of the seemingly supernatural occurrences were simply tricks engineered by one of the 'victims', a mechanical genius.

1/10. The sheer inanity of the whole thing gave me a headache.