Track Of The Vampire (1966)
This is a terminally boring vampire movie that gets most of its atmosphere from
being filmed in the dark, leaving the viewer to puzzle over who each woman was
exactly that our vampire menaced at various times throughout the movie. This
identification problem is further exacerbated because two of the three women
are sisters, they are all dark haired and their names are Daisy, Donna, and
Doreen (thanks jerks). Naturally though, this movie's defects exceed merely the lack of me being able
to tell anyone apart. First of all, there is the title. I sat there for most
of the movie and at the end of it all, I realized I had no idea what it meant!
I mean, was it supposed mean that someone was on the trail of this vampire,
that they were tracking him down? Does the track refer to the marks left on
his victim's neck, like the track marks of a junkie? Or maybe it has to do with
all the running scenes in this movie. You know, like the five minute scene that opens the film where this dude in an
overcoat and hat is running after this native girl. They run across the beach.
They run in the ocean. Then they run across the woods and along trails. This
wasn't your average horror movie chase scene, where the victim was running in
her six inch spiked heels and torn skirt. Oh no, this chick was barefoot and
she could run like the wind! The chase finally concludes when the dude catches
her near the shoreline and they roll around on the beach as the surf crashes
into them like a drive-in horror version of From Here To Eternity. I read somewhere that this scene and a few others were inserted into the movie
to pad the original 69 minute running time out to a over-generous (and way too
optimistic) 80 minutes (thanks again jerks). I also read that the original
title was Blood Bath, but they changed it for American TV (and apparently the Madacy DVD) to Track of the Vampire. That makes about as much sense as adding "bonus" chase footage.  Now it's time to introduce the characters that you will grow to know little
about and care even less for. We go to the local restaurant which is actually
inhabited by these pretentious arts-fartsy types that try to look French (i.e.
they don't shave, shower, or wash their hair) and spend their time having
serious discussions about art.
The main guy here is named Max, but to look at him you would think his name
might be Cheech (or am I thinking of Chong?). He's the local top dog when it
comes to bad art masquerading as modern art. I'll say this for Max and his
crew. As the movie went along, you grew to appreciate his pointless interludes
more and more as they were about the only amusing thing in the whole film (and
when I say "amusing," I'm using that in a relative sense). I never get tired of artists being made fun of, so I enjoyed watching the guys
check out someone's latest piece which involved putting a fake eye (I hope it
was fake!) on the end of a metronome and then watching it swing back and forth.
Max immediately denounces it as too formal and everyone quickly agrees. Then
he busts out his latest work of art, which is a portrait of his girlfriend,
Daisy (or am I thinking of Donna?). Everyone kind of wonders why Max has gone and sold out to do portraits, but his
girlfriend finally can appreciate one of his works of art. Then Max pulls out
a paintball gun (always a good idea in a restaurant!) and declares that it is a
quantum gun. That means it operates through quantum mechanics or something and
he is going to use it to paint in a quantum medium or something. Then he aims
the gun and shoots the picture in the head, splattering paint everywhere. Everyone announces that quantum art is the next big thing and congratulates Max
on his genius. His girlfriend congratulates him by pouring a drink on his head.
This leaks off his head onto another picture and he declares that this is an
important new artform. She leaves and heads off to ballet class. You would have thought that after the Fire Maidens Of Outer Space debacle back in 1956 that people in charge of making these clunkers would have
figured out that ballet and crappy horror/sci-fi movies don't mix. Hot
rodders? Yes. Bikinis? Definitely. Skanks in tutus? Ah, no. So we meet Daisy's friend Dorean. Dorean looks pretty much like Daisy (or is
that vice versa?), but this gives us another character we can watch being
chased (and she can dance!). Dorean will actually be your most interesting
character, chiefly because of her tendency to romp around on the beach in
succession of tight bikinis. I'll tell you one thing, if there was one thing
in this movie that didn't need no padding, it was Dorean! Daisy tells her that she and Max are on the outs because she just doesn't
subscribe to the whole quantum art movement that is sweeping their greasy spoon
and wants to know if she can move back in with her. Dorean says sure and then
tells her that she's going to meet her secret boyfriend for a date on the beach
(I smell bikini!). Secret boyfriend, you say? Why pray tell is it a big
secret? Because silly, everyone knows that ballerinas aren't allowed to have
boyfriends. It upsets their balance or something.  Daisy leaves and prowls the streets like you would expect an artist's
girlfriend named Daisy to do. She stops to admire some really bad paintings
not done by Max. These are really scary and yucky paintings about death and
the like so she's pretty startled when Sordi rolls up on her and starts yakking
to her.
It turns out that Sordi is the painter of these paintings (if you saw them,
you'd tell him to stick to doodling AC/DC logos on his geometry book) and he
and she get to talking about how great death is and cool stuff like that. But
what about Dorean and her bikini adventure? I knew you would ask that . It's
time for some more padding. This time it's even more egregious than the chase
in the opening. Dorean starts bounding around the beach in a white bathing
suit or leotard (we were promised bikinis!) and proceeds to a do a very
looooong ballet number on the beach. The length of this is indescribable even if it weren't for my ADHD and you
wonder what the point of it all is (there is none) and in fact there's little
point to her even going down to the beach at all, because her secret boyfriend
didn't show up. In the morning, she wakes up on the beach in a bikini (how'd
that happen? That's the part they should've been showing, not all that
prancing and mincing about the beach!). Her boyfriend shows up and it's Sordi!
He offers some lame excuse about not being there, but at least he knew she'd be
sleeping on the beach. I'd hazard a guess that some girls wouldn't have just
slipped into a bikini and waited all night, but you know those ballerinas. So where was this no account boyfriend of Dorean's last night while she was
chilling on the beach? He was hooking up with Daisy! Daisy decides that she
should pose for him and they go back to his place, which is right below the
old, creepy bell tower and she gets into a slinky pose and it turns out that he
needs to cut her up and kill her to paint her just so. I don't recall how much
cutting and killing you get to see, so it probably wasn't much. We also learn the legend of the Sordi who got burned at the stake or something
from back in the 1500s or so. He was this really great painter who could paint
your very soul. The Church, not unexpectedly, frowned on this and his
girlfriend turns him in as a witch or devil worshipper and laughs in his face
when he dies. This Sordi guy though is not to be outdone by her, so he curses
them all and comes back as a vampire. Apparently this vampire takes over our
current Sordi heir periodically whenever a nubile girl is hanging around the
studio, or at the beach, or on the street, or pretty much anywhere. As an added bonus, Sordi sometimes sees the laughing girlfriend that betrayed
his ancestor. This also seems to provoke a vampiric outburst. It really makes
no sense, but at least it's punctuated with flashbacks and visions to give it
that air of making sense. You know how it goes, "oh, this is Sordi in the
1500s and his girlfriend is laughing at him, now I understand why there's a
vampire possessing a dude today." With Daisy dead meat, Daisy's sister Donna decides that now would be a good
time to look for her. Somehow or other (maybe Max told her) she goes to
Sordi's to look for Daisy. After being told by Sordi that he didn't get
possessed by a vampire and kill Daisy, Donna leaves. It's time for another
chase scene as Sordi chases her through the streets for awhile before
eventually killing her on a carousel crowded full of people. I guess in this
town (I don't even know what country this was supposed to take place in) dudes
with trenchcoats and hats biting people on the neck is right out of the "no big
whoop" file. Also, to fill more time, Sordi manages to have an encounter with a jealous
husband. This dude, who might have been a cop (he had a gun and shoulder
holster) follows his wife to Casa de Sordi and eventually confronts Sordi
telling him something to the effect that "that stripper is my wife!" Sordi
immediately drops his jealous ass into a pit full of goo via a trap door in the
floor. The woman had already returned home and we never saw her again and this
aspect of the "story" was never referred to again. The movie is now nearing
its finale, so it's time for one more bikini scene, another chase scene, and a
couple of final confrontations.  Daisy and Donna are dead which means the focus shifts back (thankfully) to the
bikini clad ballerina Dorean. We find her again on the beach, taking off her
dress which luckily contains a swim suit underneath. She runs around in the
water for a minute then comes back, gets dressed, then notices a dude standing
about ten feet behind her wearing a trenchcoat and hat (uh-oh). It's off to
the races!
They run around a lot before she finally sees Max and his hangers-on. She
tells them that someone is after her. Max and his pals show that not all
artists pretending to be French are poser wusses and they take off to find
Sordi. Dorean says that she has a secret boyfriend she can stay with at the
bell tower. Everyone converges on the bell tower and Max and Sordi climb up on
a ledge and don't do much of anything except that Max kind of pushes him off.
Sordi lands with a thud, but disappears a short time later. He returns to his
home and terrorizes Dorean, before all the people that he'd killed and covered
in the gooey wax-like stuff come to life and kill him. A film marked by an absence of a strong villain or heroes, it's completely
forgettable. This vampire they have is about as lame as vampires get. He's an
ugly old guy with two buck teeth that runs around trying to scare young women
while in a trench coat. Like I can't see that at the payday loan place down
the street. The whole idea here was idiotic. I never did understand what this
vampire could do and couldn't do. I didn't understand why he existed and why
he harassed Sordi. Likewise, the heroes were ill-defined and seem to come and go at the
convenience of the plot. I got the feeling that Max was involved at the end,
merely because there was no other male character to fight Sordi. Otherwise, Max
came off as a secondary, comic relief character, not a main one. All these
women gave me headaches, with their running around and getting killed (but he
didn't kill the stripper? Why not?). Of course the end made no sense. What was that stuff on the people? Why did
they come alive? How did they do away with Sordi when the fall off the ledge
didn't do the trick? The only interesting things related to this movie is that
apparently the dude who played Sordi was at one time married to Judith Exner
who claimed to be JFK's mistress and also that this guy was the alleged
imposter hired to replace Paul McCartney when the "Paul is dead" rumors swirled
about. Sounds like a better gig than this uninteresting exercise in muddled
vampire cinema.
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