NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Shout! Factory Blu-ray (October 2020): Shout! Factory have transferred Renato Polselli's The Vampire and the Ballerina to Blu-ray. It is cited as being from a "High-Definition Transfer Of The Film". A text screen informs us more: "This new 2K scan of THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA comes from the last surviving fine grain film print in MGM vaults. A considerable amount of time was spent to restore the film so that we could present it in the best light possible". There were some speckles and very light vertical scratches later in the film but generally this look pretty solid. I saw no unforgivable weaknesses or even flagrant damage. Contrast held up, if not pristinely so and the 1080P image in-motion was pleasing and consistent.

NOTE:  There is a English-friendly DVD by NoShame out of Italy, available HERE.

NOTE: We have added 55 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Shout! Factory offer 24-bit DTS-HD Master dual-mono tracks in both the original Italian and an English language DUB that is passable. There are no demonstrative effects but a supportive score by Aldo Piga (who composed for as  number of similar genre films in the 60's.) The audio quality is clear without issue. Shout! Factory offer optional English (translated from the Italian, or English DUB-title) subtitles on their Region 'A-locked' Blu-ray.

The Shout! Factory Blu-ray offers a 10-minute, parsed down, 8MM home version (in pretty poor condition.) It has no audio, but English subtitles. There is also an image gallery of posters, Italian title cards and a few glossy stills.

I quite liked The Vampire and the Ballerina. I was wondering why it reminded me of Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory and I see both were written by Ernesto Gastaldi - who penned many Giallo screenplays. It also evoked Nightmare Castle (as María Luisa Rolando - Countess Alda - reminded me of Barbara Steele in a few shots and that Severin Blu-ray has Terror-Creatures From the Grave where Aldo Piga does the score, as he does here) and I also thought of The Horror of Spider Island, probably because of all of the females. Louis Paul wrote his book Italian Horror Film Directors in 2010 about The Vampire and the Ballerina stating that it was "an important footnote in the history of Italian horror for being among the first films to blatantly mix sex and horror and it strongly influenced European horror cinema, including late 1960s Hammer productions." I can see that. The gals are more Jazz-dancers than ballerinas and there are two, relatively long, titillating, cheesecake, dance sequences in the film. Also Hélène Rémy seems so besotted with her fanged overlord that she appears to embark on mild masturbation waiting for him to enter through her bedroom window. María Luisa Rolando has some Hammer-esque large breasts but they weren't overly on display - mostly restrained by her Gothic garb. This moves at a good pace and has all the vampiric conventions fans love, plenty of shadowy cinematography, corrupted females with fangs, coffins, an empty castle... and most of the gals are beautiful. The Shout! Factory Blu-ray is, pretty much, bare bones but a decent a/v presentation. I would have loved a Tim Lucas or Kim Newman commentary but none exist for this sexy Euro horror from 1960. I will watch this again though. Still a bit pricey - but, as for myself, I felt it was a satisfying purchase.

Gary Tooze