original production:

LA INVASION
DE LOS VAMPIROS

Cast: Erna Martha Bauman (Brunhilde; Countess Frankenhausen), Rafael del Rio (Dr. Ulises Albarran/Dr. Alvaran), Carlos Agosti (Count Frankenhausen), Tito Junco (don Gonzalo Guzman), Enrique Garcia Alvarez (Padre Victor), Fernando Soto "Mantequilla" (Crescencio), Bertha Moss (Frau Hildegarda), Enrique Lucero (Lazaro), David Reynoso (Maximo/the Constable), Mario Cid (Paulino), Jose Chavez Trowe (villager), Armando Gutierrez (Efren), Victorio Blanco (villager), Leonor Gomez(villager)

PLOT OUTLINE:
(From AFI): In the 16th century, Dr. Ulises. a vampire expert, is convinced that Count Frankenhausen is responsible for several mysterious deaths in his village. He visits the nobleman's castle but fails to convince Brunhilda, the count's daughter, that her father is a vampire. Confronting Frankenhausen in his secret laboratory, Dr. Ulises pins the vampire, who has transformed himself into a bat, against a wall. As resurrected vampires besiege the village, Dr. Ulises destroys Frankenhausen with an injection of acid. Brunhilda is released from her father's spell, the other vampires return to their graves, and peace is restored.

GUEST SYNOPSIS:
by David Wilt
As night falls, the fearful villagers are transfixed by the rising of the full moon. One young man waits outside the shadowy Hacienda of the Spirits, and sees a beautiful young woman, clad only in a nightgown, emerge and walk off through the night. He follows her to the Lagoon of Death, and watches her disrobe and enter the cold waters--suddenly, he screams in mortal terror!

Later, a coach pauses as a group of villagers carry the young man's body back to town. One of the men tells Crescencio that it is Paulino, the mayor's son: "We found him like all the others, at the Lagoon of Death." Crescencio tells his passenger, Dr. Ulises Albarran, that every full moon, a young man of the village dies. "Pure coincidence," the doctor scoffs. Crescencio tries to convince him to go back to town and spend the night there, but Ulises says he has to reach the Hacienda of the Spirits. Crescencio hurries off, and Ulises goes on alone. At the hacienda he is greeted coldly by the housekeeper, Hildegarda. He has a letter of introduction to the Marquis, don Gonzalo. She takes the letter, then returns and ushers him into the house.

Ulises is a student of Count Caligostro, a good friend of don Gonzalo. He has been sent to the area to work on an experiment for the Count, who is otherwise occupied. "May I ask what you are dealing with?" don Gonzalo asks. "Vampires!" is Ulises' answer. Both don Gonzalo and Hildegarda are shocked. "What makes the Count think he might find vampires around here," don Gonzalo asks. "I don't know," Ulises replies. "Perhaps magic, or maybe just that Count Caligostro seems to know more than most mortals." He asks if he may stay at the Hacienda, and don Gonzalo agrees, over Hildegarda's protests. "She's as faithful as a dog," don Gonzalo tells Ulises, "but sometimes she forgets she's just the housekeeper."

Ulises and Crescencio arrive at the wake being held for Paulino, the latest victim. The priest, Padre Victor, is conducting a rite to exorcise the devil. Ulises is introduced to Maximo, the mayor. He is suspicious of Ulises when he learns that the young doctor is a guest at the Hacienda of the Spirits. Ulises tells him: "There are things worse than death--to return from the grave, with the appearance of life, but to be one of the Undead." Maximo is angry, thinking Ulises is mocking him, but Ulises says he is in the area to make certain experiments which might help the situation. "How did it all start?"

"One night," Maximo says, "Count Frankenhausen and his wife left their house. The Countess was later found, dead, next to the Lagoon of Death. The Count was never seen again.1 Each full moon the spirit of the Countess appears and lures one young man from the town to the lagoon, where he is found the next day, pale and bloodless. At first I wasn't sure, but now I agree with Padre Victor that this is the devil's work!"

A drunken man comes in at that moment and scoffs. He is Efren Lopez, the local "doctor," who doesn't believe in the supernatural. "This town is a pit," he declares, "where civilization hasn't yet arrived." He greets Ulises as a colleague, but Ulises says "I am a doctor of alchemy and the occult sciences, not a physician." "Neither is he," says Maximo--Lopez is just a "curandero" (herb doctor). "I have many years of practice," Lopez protests. "I believe the deaths are all caused by heart failure: the whole town is hypnotized into believing in this spirit, and the young men die of heart failure from fear." Ulises says he isn't sure what to make of the rash of deaths. Before he leaves the wake, he looks at Paulino's body, and sees the bite marks of a vampire on the corpse's neck.

As dawn arrives, Hildegarda extinguishes the candles at the Hacienda of the Spirits, and opens a secret door, revealing a coffin and the crest of the Frankenhausens. "You can come in, the guest is asleep," she says as she opens the window. A large bat flies in, and then the coffin closes on its inhabitant.

Ulises reads the parish records with Padre Victor: he finds the notice of the Count's marriage, and the date of the birth of their daughter, Brunhilde. Padre Victor shows him a separate list of the victims of the "plague"--twenty-three in all, including the first, Countess Frankenhausen. The bodies are being held in a separate crypt. "They won't be buried in sacred ground until we're sure the devil has nothing to do with their deaths," the priest says. Ulises questions him further: no one knows who the Count was, or where he was from. His daughter, Brunhilde, also disappeared after her mother's death, and don Gonzalo arrived at the hacienda some time later. "Have you ever seen the Frankenhausen coat of arms?" Ulises asks. "No, I don't think so," the priest replies. "If you had, you wouldn't forget it," Ulises says.

That night, Ulises is prowling around the darkened hacienda when he sees a young woman, dressed in a nightgown, appear. He follows her, and watches as she opens the door to the secret room containing the Count's coffin. She is in a trance, and faints when she turns and sees Count Frankenhausen outside the window. Ulises also sees him, but when he runs outside, he can find no trace. Furthermore, when he comes back inside, the girl is gone! Hildegarda comes in: "You are abusing don Gonzalo's hospitality by entering a room he prefers to keep closed," she says. Ulises apologizes, but demands to know "Where is the girl who fainted here?" "There is no girl," Hildegarda insists. "I saw her with my own eyes! She was right here!" Ulises says. "You had better go back to the capital," Hildegarda replies, before you lose your mind.

Maximo, Crescencio, Ulises and a workman open the crypt of Countess Frankenhausen. Ulises is surprised to see that she is the exact image of the girl he'd seen in the hacienda. But he knows she wasn't a ghost. The Countess bears the marks of a vampire on her neck. "Count Frankenhausen is a Living Vampire: his victims are Dead Vampires, who exist in a state of catalepsy, but will emerge from their graves if the Count is destroyed with a stake through his heart." The men hear a scream, and run outside to discover a large bat flying away, leaving the man they left on guard dead. "Another victim of the vampire," Ulises says. "But it isn't the full moon," Crescencio notes. "It doesn't matter now, he's angry because we profaned his wife's tomb. We must finish him, or he will finish us." "You're the expert," Maximo says. "What do we do?" "We must burn the bodies of the victims," Ulises replies.

However, as they prepare a bonfire to cremate the vampire's victims, Padre Victor orders them to stop. "If you burn one body, I'll excommunicate you," he threatens. Ulises says perhaps there is another way, but Maximo is angry at the priest: "If there is one more victim, I'll hold you responsible."

The full moon: Count Frankenhausen hypnotizes his daughter, Brunhilde, and orders her to act as "bait," by walking to the Lagoon of Death. This time it is Ulises who follows her, but he manages to ward off the attack of the vampire, and returns to the hacienda with the unconscious girl. He asks Hildegarda and the mute butler, Lazaro, to assist him. "He [the butler] acts as if he has no tongue," Ulises complains. "He doesn't," Hildegarda replies, "it was torn out because he talked too much."! As Ulises goes out of the room, she mutters, "Knowing too much can also count one...his life."

Ulises tells don Gonzalo he doesn't really know what is wrong with Brunhilde: when he found her, she had practically no pulse, and so he suspected heart trouble. But now her heartbeat is normal, although she lies in a deep trance. They'll see if she remembers anything when she awakes. "But who could have done this?!" don Gonzalo asks. Ulises' answer is cut off by the sudden arrival of Hildegarda with the older man's "nerve medicine." After Ulises leaves, don Gonzalo tells Hildegarda to butt out. "Someone has to help you save your granddaughter," she replies. She serves the interests of Count Frankenhausen.

Meanwhile, Ulises finds his room has been torn to shreds. Hildegarda comes in, and he says "I was looking for something I couldn't find, and you know how it is." She tells Ulises that Brunhilde is a sleepwalker, and don Gonzalo is ashamed of her--he doesn't want anyone to know about her.

Later, Ulises tells don Gonzalo that Hildegarda's lie was the final link in the chain--he knows she's working against them. Gonzalo knows she is working with the Count: they told him that Brunhilde was cursed with the hereditary disease of the Frankenhausens, and they needed his help to find a cure. Ulises says they fooled him, he's merely been a tool of the vampire. There is a way to destroy vampires, through an infusion of a particular type of acid into their veins, but the formula has been stolen from him. He can probably reconstruct it from memory, but he needs a lab to work in. don Gonzalo says the Count has a fully-equipped lab in the hacienda that he can use.

Brunhilde begins to regain consciousness. Ulises tells don Gonzalo to pretend that he (Ulises) is a medical doctor, rather than an occult scientist. Brunhilde doesn't remember anything that happened under the spell of the vampire; Ulises recommends that she live a normal life, taking walks, riding horses, and so on.

Hildegarda opens the window to let the Count in at dawn. She gives him the stolen formula: "You won't get away with it, Caligostro," the Count says. "Shouldn't we flee?" Hildegarda asks. The Count scoffs at this: "Soon the whole world will be under the control of the Living Vampire, me!"

Ulises tells Maximo and Crescencio that he needs their help in fighting the vampires. He needs black Mandragora plants to make the acid; Maximo says they may be found on the shores of the Lagoon of Death. Crescencio isn't interested in helping fight vampires, he's frightened, but Maximo forces him to agree to help. Ulises says they will have to stake all of the vampire's victims: "Sometimes a stake helps, sometimes it is useless." They stake the Countess.

Ulises and Brunhilde go riding; they arrive at the Lagoon of Death. Brunhilde can't understand why her grandfather has forbidden her to visit this place, since she thinks it's lovely. She suddenly hears a voice calling her name--although Ulises tells her it's just "auditory hallucinations," she is drawn to the shore of the lagoon, and he has to hold her back. "It's my mother's voice!" she cries. "Your mother is dead--I've seen her," Ulises says. "You've seen my mother dead?" Ulises tries to cover his slip: "Well, I've seen her tomb." Brunhilde tells him that even she wasn't allowed to view her mother's body at the funeral. Ulises tells Brunhilde she must trust him, he will help her. There is something he wants to tell her, but has to withhold it until the proper time. He does give her a crucifix that belonged to his mother. "Now we must gather Mandragora roots for my experiment." Brunhilde tells him that she knows of a field near the hacienda where they could have gathered enough roots, but he says he needs only the roots of the Black Mandragora.

don Gonzalo gives Ulises a key to the Count's lab. This is the only key, he says, the other was lost with the Count. Gonzalo says he doesn't want Brunhilde to know about her father's vampirism, and Ulises promises. Hildegarda is eavesdropping. The Count, meanwhile, is repulsed by the crucifix on the sleeping Brunhilde.

The next morning, Brunhilde tells Ulises the crucifix mysteriously disappeared, stolen while she slept, "like all of the others I've had." Ulises tells her his Mandragora roots were also stolen from the locked lab: someone must have a duplicate key and is trying to sabotage their work. He has a plan.

That night at dinner, Ulises and Brunhilde let it drop that they gathered a large quantity of Mandragora roots that afternoon. Ulises gives Brunhilde a map to show where the roots are hidden: "like a pirates' treasure map, although the roots mean more to me than any treasure to a pirate." Hildegarda overhears, as she was meant to.

That night. Hildegarda enters Brunhilde's bedroom through a secret passage and begins to search for the map, but is seized by Ulises: "You're the thief!" She says she is working for Count Frankenhausen. Brunhilde asks if this means her father is alive, but Ulises tells the servant to be quiet, and has to knock her out to keep Hildegarda from telling Brunhilde about the Count. "Why did you do that?" Brunhilde asks. "I can't explain, now," he says. "You always say that!" she complains. don Gonzalo and Lazaro come in, and help carry the unconscious Hildegarda out.

Ulises is working in the lab when Count Frankenhausen appears, then changes in a huge bat and attacks him. To save himself, Ulises throws a pointed spear and pins the bat to the wall. At that moment, all of Frankenhausen's victims rise from their graves, despite the stakes in their hearts.

Crescencio and Efren Lopez are walking through the village when a man runs up, shouting "The vampires are coming, they've risen from their tombs!" Crescencio urges Lopez to come with him to the church to seek sanctuary: "They suck us dry like mangoes, and I have no desire to be a sucked mango!" Lopez refuses: "Ignorant one! Vampires don't exist!"

At the hacienda, the inhabitants are awakened by the sound of churchbells ringing. They think it might be a fire, and don Gonzalo says he'll send someone to town to see what's happening. Ulises comes in and tells them "No one must leave the house." He knows why the bells are ringing--away from the others, he informs don Gonzalo that Count Frankenhausen is dead. Crescencio and Maximo arrive. The townspeople are safe in the church. Ulises says they can safeguard themselves in the hacienda by hanging Mandragora roots at all of the windows, to protect themselves. "What are you all talking about?" Brunhilde asks. "Who is coming here that we have to protect ourselves from?" Crescencio: "Vampires!" Brunhilde faints. Later, don Gonzalo says he told Brunhilde the whole story, leaving out the fact that Ulises killed Count Frankenhausen. The vampires surround the house, and Countess Frankenhausen calls to Brunhilde, and Paulino calls to Maximo, his father. Ulises restrains them: "You musn't see them--it's a trap!" Ulises promises to finish the vampire-killing acid as quickly as he can. The vampires begin calling for Count Frankenhausen. Brunhilde wants to see her father, but Ulises says "Not now--he's dead, in the form of a huge vampire bat. You can see him when he's reverted to human form." Hildegarda bursts in, disheveled. She wildly denies that the Count is dead: "Cound Frankenhausen will be the leader of the world! The Count isn't dead!" "He is dead," Ulises tells her, "I killed him." Realizing what he's just said, Ulises turns to Brunhilde and says, "I had to do it." They all go into the lab and stare at the vampire bat, pinned to the wall. Brunhilde faints again.

The next day, the villagers discover Efren Lopez's body on the street, murdered by the vampire horde. Padre Victor: "He preferred to stay in the street rather than seek sanctuary in the church. May God have mercy on his soul." Maximo asks Padre Victor to ring the church bell and call the villagers together, so they can be informed of the means to protect themselves from the vampires.

That night, the vampires walk again. Ulises has finally created the acid from Mandragora roots, and "The threat of the vampires will be ended!" At this, Hildegarda leaps to her death from a window, and the vampires move in to feed on her body. Ulises injects the acid into the bat's body, and it gradually resumes the form of Count Frankenhausen: "Count Frankenhausen is no longer a vampire--he's a harmless corpse like any other." Ulises tells don Gonzalo that Brunhilde will also be freed of the curse of vampirism.

The Count and Countess Frankenhausen are finally given Christian burial, along with their faithful servant Hildegarda, "who did not abandon them, even on their journey into the beyond."

THE END

REVIEW:
THE INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES is a classic, a genuinely creepy and moving film, a classic of gothic horror, and surely the showpiece of the Murray horror canon. It is haunting, and effective. It is the film which takes the Murray horror catalog out of the obscure, oddball or "camp" categories and plunks it smack dab in the "neglected horror classics" section.

There is high drama, supernatural revelation, and even some sexual perversity in this strongest of Mexican horror imports.

The absolutely avant-garde, very unique musical soundtrack is quite unnerving. As in its cousin, THE BLOODY VAMPIRE, the memorable score is by Luis Hernandez Breton, which combines weird electronic riffs with majestic religious choral arrangements, synthesized. The effect of this music is profound upon the mood and atmosphere of the piece, and must be counted as one of the film's many highlights. In fact, this score would make a hell of a soundtrack album.

The opening shots, of terrified villagers gaping at a deadly full moon, are terrific in setting the mood of the piece. Through acting, atmosphere and music, a palpable terror is formed.

The opening scene is absolutely dynamite, in which a distraught male watches a robed ghost-woman walk through the foggy dawn, in a morbid yet sexually terrifying scene, made even more uncanny by the bizarre reverse-harmonics on the soundtrack.

The woman strips, walks into a nearby lake, and kills the man, all to a horrific choral arrangement. The murder which transpires seems also most sweet, and certainly romantic, in comparison.

Then there's the great big rubber bat-puppet of Frankenhausen, with incredible rabbit ears and a grimacing ghoul-face like something Paul Blaisdell might have made for an AIP drive-in quickie. This is a great prop.

The "burning of the corpses" scene illustrates well the eternal, unwinnable battle between sanity and religion (who are never bedmates).

The eventual "invasion of the vampires" is terrific as well, with the thick ambience, wonderful choreography and disturbing music, as powerful as similar "the dead walk" scenes in INVISIBLE INVADERS, LAST MAN ON EARTH and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. They all still have their stakes-in-heart, a nice touch.

The miracle potion called "Vampirina" in THE BLOODY VAMPIRE is here referred to merely as "Clamic Acid". An intentional switch, or a dubbing oversight?

What is most memorable, even subversive about this, and other Murray horror films isn't their shock or gore or blood or sex content, all of which are quite tame by any standards. It is the raw interpretation of gothic horror traditions, plus the strong religious/supernatural content, which makes them significant in cultural memory.

Even in the mid-60s, when these films first hit US TV, the country was habituated to repress its religious tradition, and the frank, even stark allusions to devils, demons, Jesus and Hell were already somewhat "incorrect", philosophically-speaking.

In fact, the gore films of the 60's and 70's may be a knee-jerk, anti- intellectual reaction to the strong content in films like Murray's, in which the exotic, uncensored theological opinions of foreign countries like Mexico are unleashed, virtually intact, into the intellectually and spiritually sterile US culture, thanks to the literal-minded dubbers at Soundlab, Inc. .

To be blunt, the Murray horror films are a significant, if ironic, messenger of Catholic culture to the US, which was rapidly losing Catholicism, thanks to the destruction of "Camelot" (the murder of JFK). The sometimes decades-old Mexican horror films, then, were a flashback or reminiscence, of the US theologic "soul" several innocent decades previously.

In a culture where learning has long been reduced to mere audio and visual input, this raw input of undiluted, atmospheric supernatural drama probably had a greater effect upon the TV viewers of the US, aka "Young America," than we realize...

The obligatory expositional scenes, which are many here, counteract the mystical, revelatory scenes which predominate, and the mix is a wild and wooly romp in cultural hallucination.

THE INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES is a true star of the K. Gordon Murray horror catalog.

COMMENTS:
* (updated 02-14-06) Thanks to a terrific new book we just received, "Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold" by Kevin Heffernan, (2004, Duke University Press), we have been able to update the U.S. television release date for this Murray horror title to 1965. The appendices to this study of the horror film in America, circa 1955-1968, include complete listings of syndication feature film packages from many distributors, including American International Television, who subleased the K. Gordon Murray film catalog under the title THRILLERS FROM ANOTHER WORLD. It seems that 1965 was the watershed year for genre film sold to television, with a veritable flood of titles released by both domestic and foreign distribs.

* (effective 05-01-03) After a very brief window of availability, this long-sought K. Gordon Murray title is once again out of print, due to international copyright issues. Used video tapes of this title may be found on online video dealers and auction sites. Stay tuned for further developments!

THE BLOODY VAMPIRE beget a sequel, INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES. According to Mexican film historian David Wilt, EL VAMPIRO SANGRIENTO and INVASION DE LOS VAMPIROS were shot back-to-back in December 1961-January 1962. EL VAMPIRO SANGRIENTO was released in September 1962, and INVASION..., the sequel, was released the following summer.

NOTABLE DIALOGUE: