Kiss Off The Vampire 

Director :  Don Sharp

 Genre    :   Horror 

Duration:   128mins  

Gerald and Marianne Harcourt  are a honeymooning couple in early 20th-century Bavaria who become caught up in a vampire cult led by Dr. Ravna and his two children Carl  and Sabena . The cult abducts Marianne, and contrives to make it appear that Harcourt was travelling alone and that his wife never existed. Harcourt gets help from hard-drinking savant Professor Zimmer , who lost his daughter to the cult and who finally destroys the vampires through an arcane ritual utilising the Seal of Solomon that releases a swarm of bats from Hell.Originally intended to be the third movie in Hammer's Dracula series , it was another attempt by Hammer to make a Dracula sequel without Christopher Lee. The final script, by Anthony Hinds, makes no reference to "Dracula," and expands further on the directions taken in Brides by portraying vampirism as a social disease afflicting those who choose a decadent lifestyle.

The job of directing was offered to Don Sharp, who later said he had never seen a horror film before being asked to the job by Tony Hinds. Hinds told Sharp he thought the director would be ideal based on Sharp's other work. The director watched Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and Stranglers from Bombay and became enthusiastic.

"What intrigued me about them was after about 20 minutes I was totally hooked despite a totally absurd situation," he said later. "I thought it was wonderful - here was a genre with its own ground rules and self contained world and you could be theatrical but treat it realistically to grab the audience and make them believe something absurd."

Sharp said he was worried that "as Hammer progressed, the goal seemed to be for each picture to top the one before it and they were becoming satiated with violence. So I persuaded Tony that it was better to suggest 'Is it going to happen?' and give the audience a little touch of it, and then go on and really get your big shock at the end. There could be a good size shock in the middle too but not all the time."

Sharp said "I've always believed there needs to be a separation between suspense and shock. You lead on a mood but if you introduce the shock moment too quickly then it's expected. If you hang on keeping the same mood and tempo as the rest of the sequence, and then shatter the mood with a sudden violent moment, that's when it really works."

The film went into production on 7 September 1962 at Bray Studios. It was not released until 1964.

This is the only credited feature film screen role of Jacquie Wallis, who plays Sabena.

The film's climax, involving black magic and swarms of bats, was originally intended to be the ending of The Brides of Dracula, but the star of that film, Peter Cushing, objected that Van Helsing would never resort to black sorcery. The paperback novelization of Brides does, however, use this ending.

Backgroud info on the director Don Sharp 

Donald Herman Sharp (19 April 1921 – 14 December 2011) was an Australian-born British film director.

His best known films were made for Hammer in the 1960s, and included The Kiss of the Vampire (1962) and Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966). In 1965 he directed The Face of Fu Manchu, based on the character created by Sax Rohmer, and starring Christopher Lee. Sharp also directed the sequel The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966). In the 1980s he was also responsible for several hugely popular miniseries adapted from the novels of Barbara Taylor Bradford