The 1963 Hammer film opens with a funeral in early 20th century Bavaria.  It’s a solemn affair, full of mourning villagers and taking place in an atmospheric cemetery.  However, just as the wooden coffin is being lowered into the grave, the stern Prof. Zimmer (Clifford Evans) walks through the funeral party, carrying a stake and a hammer.  Without bothering to open the coffin, he hammers the stake through the lid.  As the members of the funeral party wail and scream, bright red blood bubbles up from the coffin.

Yep, it’s a Hammer vampire film!  That means that once again, we’ve got a small village, we’ve got superstitious townspeople, we’ve got an aristocratic vampire and his vampire brides, and we’ve got a mix of red blood and cleavage.  What we do not have is Christopher Lee, despite the fact that Kiss of the Vampire was originally planned to be a Dracula film.  Lee, who was a serious student of the occult and a  fan of Bram Stoker’s version of the legendary vampire, was very much not a fan of Hammer’s interpretation of the character and, whenever he could get out of doing a Hammer Dracula film, he would.

As a result, Kiss of the Vampire features not Dracula but instead Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman), a vampire who lives in a castle and who has a loyal cult of followers.  Both his son (Barry Warren) and his daughter (Jacquie Wallis) are also vampires.  When two British newlyweds drive into town on their honeymoon, Dr. Ravna hopes to turn Marianne Harcourt (Jennifer Daniel) into a vampire as well.  Marianne’s husband, Gerald (Edward de Souza), teams up with Prof. Zimmer to keep that from happening.  It’s vampire doctor versus human professor!

This was director Don Sharp’s first horror film for Hammer and he does a pretty good job of creating an appropriately gothic atmosphere.  Almost all of the things that we love about Hammer films is present in Kiss of the Vampire, from the cobblestone streets to the imposing castles to the elaborate masquerade ball that allows Dr. Ravna to abduct Marianne in the first place.  There’s also a lot of blood, including a wonderfully grisly scene where Prof. Zimmer deliberately sets his arm on fire in order to cauterize a vampire bite.  Visually, the film is full of macabre images and operatic horror.  In fact, one could argue that the absence of Dracula and Van Helsing allows Kiss of the Vampire to go in a direction that the other Hammer vampire films could not.  The finale, which featured the heroes using black magic to battle the vampires, was originally meant to be the finale of The Brides of Dracula until Peter Cushing objects that Prof. Van Helsing would never use dark magic to battle a vampire.  Prof. Zimmer, on the other hand, had no such qualms.

That said, the film really does suffer from the fact that Noel Willman does not have the evil charisma of Christopher Lee and Dr. Ravna and Prof. Zimmer do not share the long history of Dracula and Van Helsing.  Kiss of the Vampire is a good film but it’s hard not to mourn what it could have been.