NekoHomey
Purely Joyful Movie!
Sarita Rafferty
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Bezenby
You know when everyone hates something that you like, is that what you'd call a guilty pleasure? That's what this film is for me. The fact that most people think it's crap might be an indication that my opinion is not to be trusted. The film takes place on the tranquil sounding Vampire Island, where Mark Damon and a crazy mountain man are worshipping someone called Hannah. A serious looking fellow with a gun and a lamp heads down into an underground crypt and is murdered by Damon, placed under a huge tomb, then trapped under it for the stupidest reason ever. That reason is so that the dead guy's son, Andrew Prine, will be lured from the US to wherever vampire island is on the Mediterranean, because he is an architect or an engineer or something and the only one with the know how to move the four ton tomb that contains Vampire Queen, Hannah! Of course, this crazy plan also needs to be optimistic enough to have to foresight to know Prine would have to remove the lid of the tomb to free Hannah, but let's not think about it too much.The locals hate Prine on sight but Damon, who is pretending to be just a normal guy and not a crazy vampire worshipping loony, tells him that the locals hate everybody and are a bit riled up because Prine's going to start messing with that tomb. Damon's sister Patty Shepherd is the local teacher so obviously that's the romance part sorted out (complete with incestuous sibling jealousy!). Best of all is Frank Bana's blind sailor, who is dubbed by a guy from the Bronx doing an impression of a guy from the Med.Of course they get the lid off the bloody thing and Hannah's looking like she's just stepped out of a hair salon. First chance she's gets she turning into a wolf and chowing down on Frank Bana's guide dog (he shouts 'Bonny' over and over and over again, which is quite funny). "Put. Away. Dem
college books," Frank says, even though no one has any college books. "Hannah is smart
700 years smart." He advises they get some dogbane and garlic because "she won't get by dem, neither." That holds her at bay, but then there's still Mark Damon, the mountain man, and several bitten islanders to contend with
No one is going to run down the street screaming about how great this film is, and even though it is bad in a way, I still like it. Mark Damon's hilarious over the top performance as the seemingly normal brother who is really an insane recovering drug addict is great, especially his speech about drugs: "I've taken uppers, downers, inners and outers. I've shot everything but aspirin and I blew my house down!" Andrew Prine's terrible clothes should have people choking on their seventies nostalgia, and then there's the weird patchiness of the film, which took two different directors to make, in two different aspect ratios.It looks like the film was incomplete and someone (probably Ray Danton) was brought in to fill up the gaps, which is mainly the sub plot regarding the islanders being turned into vampires. At one point, to tie the footage together, they have someone impersonate Frank Bana – surely a first, and last, in Euro-horror?
Ben Larson
As I am a big Paul Naschy fan, I have seen Patty Shepard in The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman. Of course, you can't help but have seen star Andrew Prine, as he has appeared almost 200 times on TV and movies. Teresa Gimpera, who plays Hannah, was in the excellent Spirit of the Beehive.Sound effects and music were definitely irritating at times, and certainly lessens whatever enjoyment you might find in the movie.There really wasn't a lot to recommend. The story is pretty common for the genre. Despite warnings, they let the vampire out of the cave and spend the rest of the movie chasing her. Blood and gore were minimal, and there was no nudity to distract.
Doctor_Mabuse
DVD title: Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires. An archaeologist (Andrew Prine) visits Vampire Island to bury his father, who has died under mysterious circumstances. He ignores the warnings of a schoolteacher (Patty Shepard) and, prodded by an historical novelist (Mark Damon), he opens the tomb of the 13th-Century vampire Queen Hannah (Teresa Gimpera). This routine but decent little import benefits from a colorful Mediterranean location, good photography and an engagingly casual performance by the slumming Prine. Despite a tedious midsection and poor dubbing of minor roles, the film has a mildly distinctive flavor, like a failed Euro-Trash Count Yorga, Vampire (1970).Of the cast, Gimpera played the Crying Mother opposite Christopher Lee in Jesus Franco's El Conde Dracula/Count Dracula (1970), and Shepard (Spanish cinema's answer to horror star Barbara Steele) was Paul Naschy's co-star in the cult classic La Noche de Walpurgis/The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman/Werewolf's Shadow (1971). Damon (House of Usher, 1960) had faced vampires before in Il Plenilunio delle Vergine/The Devil's Wedding Night (1973) and in Mario Bava's I Tre Volti delle Paura/Black Sabbath (1963). (Today a Hollywood producer, Damon faces a different kind of vampire.)Originally titled La Tumba de la Isla Maldita, the completed film (directed by Julio Salvador) was reworked for American release with new scenes shot by former actor Ray Danton, whose horror films as director include Deathmaster (1972) and Psychic Killer (1975).It is more interesting to learn about such films than to dismiss them out of hand.
Clayton
Pretty terrible film about a vampire woman terrorizing a community. About the only saving merits are the always understated Prine and an interesting conclusion.