The Vampire Book by J Gordon Melton

Author:J Gordon Melton [Melton, J. Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57859-350-7
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
Published: 2011-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Lupita Tovar (right) as Mina Murray in the 1931 Spanish-language production of Dracula, which was filmed in Mexico. Also shown is Eduardo Arozamena as Abraham Van Helsing.

The vampire arrived in force in 1957 when German Robles starred as the vampire Count Lavud in three vampire movies: El Vampiro (The Vampire), El Ataud del Vampiro (The Vampire’s Coffin), and a comedy inspired by the earlier movies, El Castillo de los Monstruos (Castle of the Monsters). Count Lavud, obviously influenced by Bela Lugosi, was pictured as a suave Hungarian nobleman. In the first movie he was killed with a stake that subsequently was removed to allow him further life in the second.

Robles secured his claim as Mexico’s first vampire star in 1959 by starring in a twelve-part serial as a bearded descendant of the prophet Nostradamus who had become a vampire. Subsequently, the serial was recut into four feature-length movies: La Maldición de Nostradamus (The Curse of Nostradamus), Nostradamus y el Destructor de Monstruos (The Monster Demolisher), Nostradamus, El Genii de las Tinieblas (The Genie of Darkness), and La Sangre de Nostradamus (The Blood of Nostradamus). (To avoid certain Mexican government film regulations, films were often made as serials and then quickly recut into feature films.) These features were released in the United States by Roger Corman‘s American International Pictures. Robles also played a vampire in the Argentine film El Vampiro Aechecha (The Lurching Vampire, 1959). His final appearance was in Los Vampiros de Coyoacan (1973), in which he played the hero instead of a vampire.

Robles’s success quickly led to an exploitation of the market. Alfonso Corona Blake made his first vampire movie, El Mundo de los Vampiros (World of the Vampires) in 1960. Two years later Blake was one of the directors called upon to work on the movies of the masked wrestler-turned-actor Santo. He directed Santo’s first vampire movie, Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiro (Samson vs. the Vampire Women). Santo emerged as one of Mexico’s favorite movie characters and over two decades fought a variety of supernatural villains. In 1967 he battled Dracula in Santo en el Tesoro de Dracula which was also made in an adult version as El Vampiro y el Sexo. The vampire women returned in 1969 in Santo en la Venganza de las Mujeres Vampiros.

Frederico Curiel, the director of Santo en la Venganza de las Mujeres Vampiros, had emerged in 1959 as the director of the Nostradamus films. In 1967 he directed El Imperio de Dracula (The Empire of Dracula) and the following year Las Vampiras, one of John Carradine‘s last films. He was joined as an important director of vampire titles by Miguel Morayta, who was responsible for El Vampiro Sangriento (The Bloody Vampire, 1961) and La Invasion de los Vampiros (The Invasion of the Vampires, 1962).

The vampire as a theme in Mexican cinema peaked in the 1960s. During the early 1970s the last of the Santo vampire movies, Santo y Blue Demon Contra Dracula y el Hombre Lobo, appeared. Rene Cardona, who had directed

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