FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD (1969), aka MALENKA, THE NIECE OF THE VAMPIRE

Director: Amando de Ossorio

Writer: Amando de Ossorio

Producers: Aubrey Ambert, Rosanna Yanni

Cast: Anita Ekberg, Julián Ugarte, Diana Lorys, Adriana Ambesi, Rosanna Yanni, Gianni Medici (as John Hamilton), César Benet (as Guy Robers), Fernando Bilbao, Carlos Casaravilla, Paul Muller, Adriana Santucci, Juanita Ramírez, Aurelia Treviño, Keith Kendal

Model Sylvia Morel (Anita Ekberg) is notified that she has inherited Walbrooke castle and will be a countess. She leaves Rome to visit her new property and meets her strange uncle, Count Walbrooke (Julián Urgarte). He informs Sylvia that her lookalike grandmother, Malenka, was burned as a witch, but not before discovering the secret of immortality. Malenka made her husband immortal by turning him into a vampire. That vampire is actually the present day Count Walbrooke. The Count will not allow Sylvia to return to Rome as he tries to convince her that she is no longer fit to live with mortals.

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Originally titled Malenka, the Niece of the Vampire, Fangs of the Living Dead was Spanish writer-director Amando de Ossorio’s first horror film. Perhaps that explains why it is so uneven and confused in terms of its tone and its logic. Some of this is due to the ending being tampered with by the producer, yet that is no less satisfying than the main characters’ behavior at the finish of the film in its original form.

The gorgeous Anita Ekberg stars as Rome model Sylvia Morel. As simplistic as her character is and as nearly uneventful as her situation plays out, her beauty and some of her wild outfits do manage to maintain some interest.

For all of its faults, this flick certainly does not skimp on the feminine eye candy. Joining Ekberg in the cast are Euro-beauties Diana Lorys, Rosanna Yanni, and Adriana Ambesi. It is Ambesi who provides the most eroticism with the low-cut gown she nearly pops out of and the lesbian vibes in her character’s behavior when she first meets the rather submissive (and receptive?) Sylvia. With all of this pulchritude about, it is a shame that de Ossorio did not make this film just a few years later when the film market became more permissive. Whether these ladies would have been game for it or not, I am sure that de Ossorio would have contrived to have made things much more revealing.

Gianni Medici plays Sylvia’s fiancé, Dr. Piero Luciani. He’s the straight man alongside Max (César Benet), his tagalong best friend. It seems as though Max is around to send up the situations a bit, which just diffuses what little menace the story is trying to generate.

Julián Ugarte, having been featured in Paul Naschy’s debut horror film, Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968), stars here as the main source of malevolence in the form of Count Walbrooke. He is always fine as a cold and aristocratic presence.

Speaking of Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, that film’s great dungeon and some other castle interiors were also used in this film. These sets being actual locations lend a lot of authentic character to the Walbrooke Castle setting that much of the story takes place in.

Writer-director de Ossorio has some terrific assets to exploit in this film, yet his story does not seem willing to really let loose and provide the horror payoffs that the audience is expecting. He is trying to surprise the audience with his climax, yet along the way he rarely provides the thrills to sustain involvement in his story and characters. I am always willing to allow a filmmaker to confound expectations for a satisfying variation that may actually engage one’s attention, but de Ossorio seems to have taken all the bite out of this film’s premise. The final denouement, as originally presented, is dramatically limp. However, the producers-decreed, last-ditch-alteration ending is either totally contradictory, or meant to be a bit ambiguous. Oh hell, they were just trying to salvage this by tossing in a traditional terror tidbit that they thought the fright flick fans would swallow. It still doesn’t go down easy.

Director Amando de Ossorio will always be best known for his four Blind Dead films of the 1970s. The director would go on to become nearly as important an exponent of the Spanish horror film as Paul Naschy. His other horror efforts varied in quality and were often compromised by inadequate budgets, yet he wrote script after script that he kept ready for future production opportunities.

Amando de Ossorio’s Fangs of the Living Dead is chiefly of interest to his fans that want to see how he tentatively approached horror in his debut genre effort. All others should probably steer clear. Sylvia may be allergic to castles, and Max is allergic to garlic, but the most severe reaction will be suffered by an audience allergic to films with the ripe potential for Gothic horror spoiled by plot twists that result in a lot of illogical behavior.

THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT (1971)

Director: Anthony M. Lanza

Writers: James Gordon White, John Lawrence, Ross Massbaum (uncredited)

Producers: John Lawrence, Ross Massbaum (uncredited)

Cast: Bruce Dern, Pat Priest, Berry Kroeger, John Bloom, Albert Cole, Casey Kasem, Larry Vincent, Darlene Duralia, Jack Lester, Jerry Patterson, Ray Thorne, Gary Kent (as Donald Brody), Mary Ellen Clawsen, Mike Espe, Janice P. Gelman, Eva Sorensen, Andrew Schneider, Bill Collins, Jack English, Leslie Cole, Robert Miller, Carolyn Gilbert, Laura Lanza, William Bonner (uncredited), Phil Hoover (uncredited)

Dr. Roger Girard (Bruce Dern) has been experimenting in his home lab transplanting second heads onto various animals. The next step is to try human subjects. If a two-headed human transplant is successful, Dr. Girard will be closer to his ultimate goal: replacing the heads of brain-damaged people with the heads of those who are mentally sound but terminally ill. When insane killer Manuel Cass (Albert Cole) abducts Dr. Girard’s wife, Linda (Pat Priest), Girard and his lab assistant, Max (Berry Kroeger), follow in pursuit. During Linda’s rescue the murderous Cass is shot. Now Dr. Girard has a convenient opportunity to attach the dying criminal’s head to the body of Danny (John Bloom), the mentally handicapped giant staying in the Girard household.

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The title alone guarantees this flick its place in horror history. It also was the attention-getter that would get the drive-in crowd to pay up and pull in. If you were looking for sci-fi horror, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant says that you need look no further.

The story is quite simple and depends on its Frankenstein variation to generate almost all of the interest. The rest of the interest is supplied by the luscious Pat Priest in an assortment of early ’70s outfits that scream, “I’m half-dressed with nowhere to go!” Priest is best known for replacing Beverley Owen as the beautiful blonde Marilyn in the classic TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-66). Her wholesome beauty is once again contrasted with monstrous characters, but in nastier circumstances this time around.

In retrospect, Bruce Dern’s appearance in this thing certainly elevates its curiosity value. Initially, he must have seemed like an odd choice to play a dedicated and ambitious surgeon. However, his past villainous roles have us braced to see him stoop to unethical behavior. He does give the role a sense of sincerity and never comes across as just a mad scientist. In the aftermath of a mental breakdown, Dern’s Dr. Roger Girard needs to prove his merit as a scientist to the world. That need for approval and redemption, along with the nagging of lab assistant Max, misdirects Girard’s moral compass. Girard is conflicted about what his experiment will do to the huge and innocent Danny, to whom he will be attaching a maniac’s head, but Girard overcomes that concern for what he thinks will eventually be for the good of mankind.

Every wannabe mad scientist worth his scalpel needs an unsavory lab assistant. Berry Kroeger plays Max, Dr. Girard’s scientific accomplice. He wants Girard’s transplant experiments to continue, regardless of any ethical considerations or criminal consequences. Former surgeon Max is frustrated by his damaged hands. Once head transplant surgery is perfected, the elderly Max wants his own head ported over to a new body that will allow him to perform surgery again. Geez, I think the guy really needs a hobby. However, it is Max’s mad science peer pressure that prods Dr. Girard onward to make a monster, so I guess I can cut the creep a little slack. After all, we don’t watch a flick called The Incredible 2-Head Transplant just to see two-headed lab animals munch their meals in cages.

Personally, I think the good Dr. Girard, if not mad, must have at least a few screws loose. How can any sane man spend all his time in the lab neglecting a wife who looks like Pat Priest? All Linda Girard wants is a little attention from her husband who locks himself away in his lab for days on end, yet she could become High Priestess of the Cult of the Bikini and have hordes of worshippers at her beck and call. Consider me for Chief Elder and Ogler in that congregation.

Famous disc jockey Casey Kasem, host of the music countdown show American Top 40 and voice of numerous Hanna-Barbera television cartoon characters, plays the role of Dr. Ken Anderson, a friend and confidant to the Girard couple. Dr. Anderson raises the ethical issue of Dr. Girard’s final goal: When replacing the head of someone who is brain-damaged with another head of a dying person, how is it decided who is truly more worthy of life? Kasem should have gotten stunt pay for managing to walk around beneath the crushing burden of his massive early ’70s collars and the biggest belt buckle this side of the WWE championship belt. I assume that his character’s specialty was not ophthalmology as he, and all those around him, run the risk of being blinded by the incredible tie he wears.

As insane killer Manuel Cass, Albert Cole seems to be having the most fun in this flick. He’s a wild-eyed, gap-toothed, laughing maniac who clearly enjoys his work. Slobbering all over Pat Priest is nice work, if you can get it. Cass may have awful manners, but he’s got great taste.

7’ 4” John Bloom plays the innocent, simple-minded Danny that gets the noggin of a maniac transplanted onto himself. The interaction between Bloom and Cole as two very different minds using one body is quite effective. The dominant head of the evil Cass berating and controlling his giant host is bizarre and amusing. Of course, the sadistic Cass makes the best of this bad situation and uses his huge and powerful new body to commit more murders. This is definitely a case of two heads not being better than one, except for horror fans. Bloom and Cole worked together the same year in a scene of director Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). There Bloom also played another product of mad science, the Frankenstein monster.

The success of The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant led to the consideration of a sequel. That ultimately became another unrelated two-headed transplant film called The Thing with Two Heads (1972). Over a decade earlier, The Manster (1959) pioneered the two-headed gimmick. However, it is The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant that has the honor of being the finest two-headed monster movie. That is an honor it truly deserves; the other movies don’t have Pat Priest in a bikini.