The Brides of Dracula (1960). ****
Brides was Hammer's sequel to The Horror of Dracula, and it features the same writer and director as the previous effort. This film also has a climactic chase scene and a sufficiently bombastic demise of the vampire.
Black Sunday (1960). ****
Based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol entitled "The Viy," Black Sunday (also known as Revenge of the Vampire) was labeled by critic Carlos Clemens as a "relentless nightmare," and it has been said of cinematographer Ubaldo Terzoni's photography that it was "the best black and white photography to enhance a horror movie in the past two decades." Directed by Mario Bava, the film depicts a witch/vampire's vengeance on the descendants of the people who ritualistically killed her in the seventeenth century. Virtually unknown outside of the horror film, the film stars Barbara Steele, who has become, curiously, a cult figure.
Kiss of the Vampire (1962). ***
Hammer Studios eventually found it difficult to continue resurrecting the Count, but this film, directed by Don Sharp, features a clever script about a young couple seduced into depravity while on their honeymoon in Bavaria.
Devils of Darkness (1964). **
Interesting only as trivia, this was the first of the British vampire films in a modern setting — that of "swinging London."
The Last Man on Earth (1964). ***
Based on Richard Matheson's classic science fiction novel I Am Legend, in which the sole survivor of a horrible plague is a man who wanders around in a grim, deserted world and is relentlessly stalked at night by a group of vampires. Shot in black and white, the film is quite unrelenting in its vision of terror. Vincent Price plays the title role. The story was later re-made in the United States (this production was Italian), and it was entitled The Omega Man (1971).
