The Invasion of the Vampires
The Invasion of the Vampires
| 20 June 1963 (USA)
The Invasion of the Vampires Trailers

A doctor and his assistant hunt down a vampire named Count Frankenhausen, who is terrorizing the populace.

Reviews
Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess
Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict
pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) LOL the English language dub track for the INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES bootleg I managed to find at a used record store is a marvel in itself. Some sort of surrealist masterpiece. Sounds like it was recorded in the lobby of a church over coffee by an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Then there's the huge, and I mean HUGE fake flapping bat -- makes the fake bat from Jess Franco's "Count Dracula" look like a masterpiece of animatronic puppeteering by comparison.Then there are the names: Count Frankenhausen and Broomhilda are the best (yes, I know it's Brunhilde but I'm having fun here), and all those wild electronic sound effects cues heard in like 3 other of these MexiVamp potboilers. Can't get enough of them actually ... I think this one comes after BLOODY VAMPIRE and WORLD OF THE VAMPIRES, which is a trip with that funky haunted bone organ by H.R. Giger.Seriously though, these Mexican vampire movies are a treat for fans of Gothic atmospheric horror, filmed ingeniously by non-Hollywood types with a sense of style that is unique. There's about seven movies from this era that aren't too difficult to find:The Vampire (1957) The Vampire's Coffin (1958) World of the Vampires (1961) Santo Vs. the Vampire Women (1962) The Bloody Vampire (1962) Invasion of the Vampires (1963) Bring Me The Vampire (1963) Empire of Dracula (1966) This one being perhaps the most difficult to score, though all are floating around on various public domain DVDs and underground DVD-R releases of varying quality. Mine was pretty poor but you know, it's sort of fitting. Watching this creaky old movie on a flickering B&W screen at 3:20 in the morning on a Saturday is kind of what material like this was made for. Though a hearty archival restorative effort to resurrect these movies is long overdue. They are all marvelous!6/10
wdbasinger I enjoy some of the supernatural thrillers from south of the border. My favorite Mexican movie may be "The Braniac" with Abel Salazar. In any case, this could be my second favorite. This supernatural thriller has a lot of atmosphere and suspense as a doctor arrives to investigate a series of terror attacks from vampires. The resolution in which a chemical substance is isolated which eliminates the fiends is quite original.The background music adds to the overall eeriness of the film. Indeed, it is really quite haunting and combined with the special effects, can really scare the viewers. 8/10 Dan Basinger
evilskip Another south of the border terror brought to you by K Gordon Murray.This in fact is the sequel to The Bloody Vampire and actually is quite a bit better. This adds some truly hackneyed but eerie new things to the vampire lore.When the vampire is staked, all of his victims will rise up to seek blood.So we are treated to a very scary silent scene of vampires prowling about in the fog with huge stakes in their chest. You can actually watch this movie with little or no knowledge of The Bloody Vampire.The only returning characters are the Count and his butch assistant Frau Hildegard. Maybe it will come out on dvd like The Bloody Vampire has.It is the better of the two.
pmsusana Like most of the Mexican horror films imported to the U.S. by K. Gordon Murray, much of this film is rendered unintentionally funny by some really awkward dubbed dialog. However, the film is worth checking out because of one splendid sequence which survived the dubbing process with its eeriness intact: When head vampire Count Frankenhausen is fatally speared during a brawl with the film's hero, Frankenhausen's numerous victims (despite each having already been staked through the heart) rise from their coffins in a quite unsettling scene, and march on the town. The reason this sequence still works so well is that it's mostly silent, with no mood-shattering dubbed dialog. Even in its Americanized version, this film still creates a powerful atmosphere of hovering evil, and the black & white photography is excellent.