Subtitles:

English, none

Extras:

One of the last vampire films made before Hammer Films changed the game entirely with Horror of Dracula (1958) was this United Artists production, which was often programmed on double features with another 1957 monster outing, The Monster That Challenged the World. Interestingly, both films had the distinction of being written by a woman, Pat Fielder, which was something of a rarity at the time in horror cinema. A production assistant at the time, she went on to team up again with this film's first-time director, Paul Landres, for a follow up of sorts one year later, The Return of Dracula, along with the sci-fi film The Flame Barrier. That quartet of features would prove to be her only big screen credits, but she and Landres went on to work together on several episodes of the TV show The Rifleman, which made her a very busy writer for crime shows throughout the 1970s. The year before the release of The Vampire was an unusual one in the history of bloodsucker cinema thanks to the release of American International Pictures' Blood of Dracula, an attempt to fuse the troubled teen fad with the conventions of monster cinema in a manner similar to the more successful I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Serious vampires had been largely absent from American screens throughout the '50s, but the demand for updated twists on the monsters made popular by Universal quickly resulted in the same year's odd alien/vampire hybrid Not of This Earth from Roger Corman. In Mexico, another film also entitled The Vampire (El Vampiro), was released in 1957 as well, provoking no small amount of confusion in some horror movie guides with this particular title. 

One of the strongest assets of The Vampire is its atmospheric score by composer Gerald Fried, a specialist in yielding maximum production value with very little money. This was not only his first horror film but also his first with the Fielder/Landres team, with whom he would also work on their two subsequent features. More relevant to film buffs, however, is Fried's status as Stanley Kubrick's composer of choice since their debut film, Fear and Desire (1953)...

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Audio :

Only a trailer.

BOTTOM LINE:
I was in the mood for this as well as lovely Noir-gal favorite; Coleen Gray., plus Kenneth Tobey (memorable in 1951's The Thing From Another World and the Harryhausen appointed It Came from Beneath the Sea.) The Vampire is an innocent 50's horror grasping for an audience with genre conventions bending the vampire-legend - all on a modest budget.  The Shout! Factory Blu-ray produces a fine presentation - but the bare-bones status reserves it for fans solely keen on the film, genre and era. Enjoyable in its own way, but don't pay too much...