I guess the moral of the film The Vampire is don't mix vampire bat blood into your medication as the town doctor is about to find out the hard way. The film is sort of a vampire film but it's really just another version of Robert Lewis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde.
For a low budget film of $115,000 the producers Arthur Gardner, Jules Levy and the director Paul Landres did a fairly good job of stretching their budget. Paul Landres mostly did film and TV westerns but he managed to work up a couple of decent suspense moments in this film. One scene in particular shows the vampire infested doctor stalking our heroine Coleen Grey at night, Landres photographed some good tracking shots during these scenes.
Obviously the cast isn't the top of the Hollywood heap. John Beal was in a lot of A and B film productions. Coleen Grey had her big break in Howard Hawk's Red River as the woman John Wayne leaves behind. But her career really never big time took off. Then there's every film buff's favorite Kenneth Tobey. He is chiefly remembered as one of the military men fighting off the original Thing. Tobey had a long career in film and TV. He was a favorite of director Joe Dante who hired him for parts in The Howling and the Gremlins, films shot towards the end of his career. Tobey was always a welcome presence when he showed up in a film or TV show.
The film was written by Pat Fiedler, a rare woman writer who worked in the B movie genre. The running time is a brisk 75 minutes.
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