#545: Curse of the Undead
Mid-century gothic horror with a cowboy twist
Initial release: May 1959
Director: Edward Dein
“A western with vampires?” you might ask. And the answer to that is, “Sure, why not?” This little mid-century chiller from Edward Dein — a smalltime director probably best known for the maybe-satirical Red Scare thriller Shack Out on 101 — is a surprisingly decent flick that mixes a basic Western plot (cattle rustlers, property disputes) with gothic horror (a vampire!)
In a lot of ways it feels a bit like an episode of The Twilight Zone, which had just started airing that year; it has a similar sort of vibe, starting with a mysterious — and shocking — death of a young girl before morphing into the more straightforward plot about a bully of a ranch owner trying to muscle in on his neighbor’s land. When the neighbor, the town doctor, dies unexpectedly on the way home, his son is convinced that their odious neighbor is responsible.
One thing leads to another and the son is killed, leaving his sister to post bills seeking a gunman to kill the man who did it — which brings us full circle when it becomes clear that the man who shows up for the job is a vampire, roaming the earth as a gun for hire after killing his brother and committing suicide decades prior. (The “vampire created by suicide” thing is something I’d never seen outside of folklore, so it’s an interesting detail here. Our once-a-man, played by the late, great Michael Pate, also has no problem being in sunlight, save that he’s lately complained of pain in his eyes when he’s out, even having seen doctors for it — combined with his rather mundane goals of finding work and someone to love, he’s curiously human for a blood-sucking monster who has the female lead under his spell — especially since it’s a little up in the air just how much of her attraction to him is his nefarious doing.)
On the surface, Curse of the Undead (which had a much better working title of Mark of the West) is somewhat incoherent, with the vampire stuff and the property dispute plot not really seeming to gel all that well, at least at first. But a snappy script akin to a Howard Hawks flick, and solid acting from not just Pate but also Rawhide star Eric Fleming do a lot to carry the film, despite a truncated, unsatisfying ending. Good photography keeps things fresh, with a use of light and shadow in certain scenes that feel reminiscent of the best of John Huston.
This was the last film written by Dein’s wife Mildred, after collaborating on several films with him (including Shack Out on 101) throughout the 1950s. What’s odd to me is that I can hardly find any info on either of the Deins; Edward does have a writing credit on Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man, among several other genre films throughout the 1940s and 50s, but other than his basic filmography he’s functionally a ghost, and there’s even less information on Mildred. It’s a shame because the two of them had a pretty deft hand at genre writing, and Curse of the Undead is enough of an oddball genre-bender (westerns and gothic horror are not something easily combined) that I’m surprised it’s not more well known.
Still, famous or not, it’s a decent enough flick, that gets enough of the basics right, that you’ll be reasonably entertained for the 70-plus minutes of the film’s runtime. It’s worth seeing just for the novelty of a vampire cowboy, but the script and performances make it worth sticking through the whole movie.
