A rash of murders in and around the African village of Bakunda have the natives crying “vampire” and the white folks worried about how this is causing problems on the plantation. Plantation manager Roy Hendrick (Charles Gordon) talks it over with Father Thomas Vance (Emmett Vogan) and his girlfriend Julie Vance (Peggy Stewart), and decides to chat with newcommer and nightclub owner Webb Fallon (John Abbott), who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the seedier side of local society. He does indeed, as he is the vampire, a fact the natives quickly discover. An attack by the natives forces Fallon to mind control Roy, which also brings him closer to Julie.
1940s Poverty Row horror tends to looks horrible and generally copy plot elements from Universal or other earlier Poverty Row pictures. The Vampire’s Ghost is an exception. Made by Republic pictures, whose bread and butter was Westerns, it is a cheap film, but it isn’t ugly. The studios experience with jungle pictures may have helped, but there’s style here, and the result looks better than many of Universal’s monster movies of the time. It’s not only generally well shot and lit, but it has moments where shadows and camera movements carry the suspense; Val Lewton would have been pleased.
The script is also better than I normally expect from Republic, no doubt in part due to co-writer Leigh Brackett. She was one of the greats, a science fiction author who moved into screenwriting, working with William Faulknew and Jules Furthman on The Big Sleep (one of the best screenplays ever written) just a year after this. She’s probably better known now for The Empire Strikes Back. There’s only so much she could do with a 59 minute low budget flick, but what she and less renowned John K. Butler managed to do was something different. Setting a vampire story in modern Africa was unusual, but it is the character of Fallon which makes this memorable. Here we have a world-wearied vampire, who can be easy going and pleasant. He fits in with humans, and while he can be poetic, he generally seems to be just a guy. He’s layered: cursed but in control. Friendly, though he can be petty. Resigned, but hopeful. Abbott rules the screen by underplaying and making Fallon one of my favorite vamps of all time.
Another clever move was to take the heroic pretty-boy out of action for most of the film. Roy is exactly the type of one-note male lead that pulled down so many films during the studio era, but not here. Unable to act, we see him struggling, and failing, as Fallon taunts him.
And The Vampire’s Ghost gets points for how it deals with race. Not exactly enlightened, but by the standards of horror films of the decade (horror comedies were particularly racist), it does amazingly well. The Africans are smarter than Roy and his acquaintances. They posit possible answers, explore them (they don’t just decided Fallon is undead; they examine him and test it), and then take action.
Additionally, the sexy night club dancer doesn’t hurt.
Shot in less than two weeks, and written in around three, The Vampire’s Ghost was never going to be a classic, but it hits above its class and is as good as a Poverty Row horror movie of the ‘40s could be.