The Kiss of the Vampire

A beautifully photographed film in which an English honeymoon couple are lured towards a fate worse than death by a Bavarian disciple (Willman) of the late Count Dracula. The main trouble is that some of the acting, especially from de Souza and Daniel as the young couple, is terribly stiff (against which must be set Isobel Black, playing a very fetching vampire). The use of scenery is particularly superb, giving it an almost Dreyerian quality. Ironically, the film's release was delayed until 1964 because the distributors thought that the bat-infestation climax (one of the best scenes) flew dangerously close to The Birds, even though it was made quite some time before Hitchcock's film.