Fangs of the Living Dead (RiffTrax)

Film Year:  1969

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Armando de Ossorio

Starring:  Anita Ekberg, John Hamilton, Diana Lorys, Adriana Ambesi

RiffTrax Year:  2013

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

The voluptuous Sylvia has inherited a castle out in the country and travels with her fiancé to see the estate and learn more about her lineage.  There she meets her uncle, Count Walbrooke, who accommodates her in her new home and also happens to be a vampire in his spare time.  Walbrooke tells Sylvia about his wife, Malenka, who looks exactly like Sylvia but in a black wig, and how she was burned at the stake and convinces Sylvia that her family is cursed, resulting in Sylvia turning her back on her fiancé and the outside world.  Little does she know that Walbrooke intends to use her superstition to turn her into a vampire.

There is some fascinating history to this movie.  Originally from Spain, the film was released under the title of Malenka but it was changed to Fangs of the Living Dead for what appears to be a themed marquee of foreign imports, which also included renamed dubs of Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill (released as Curse of the Living Dead) and another film titled The Murder Clinic (released as Revenge of the Living Dead).  In it's original release the supernatural element was also apparently a Scooby-Doo style hoax, as Walbrooke's plan was actually to drive Sylvia mad and inherit her estate.  The version released in the US was an alternate ending filmed specifically for the market where it turns out there was no hoax and there's a dumb twist right before the "The End" tag.  Also at one point Boris Karloff was meant to play Walbrooke, but had to bow out due to other commitments and passed away before filming was completed anyway.

Researching this movie is more interesting than watching it, which is a fairly static attempt at gothic horror that doesn't have much momentum.  The movie looks nice, and nearly every actress wears low cut tops, so that snaps a viewer to attention.  While the story itself is could be interesting, there isn't much intrigue to it.  Fangs of the Living Dead might be better off if there were slow unveiling of its supernatural elements and twists, but it puts its cards on the table pretty early and the rest of the film is Walbrooke glaring at Sylvia telling her what to do.  Sylvia's internal conflict and pending madness might be more engaging if she didn't seem to drop whatever sanity she has at Walbrooke's insistence at every turn.

I kind of wish we received the original Spanish ending over here so there would be more of an element of Walbrooke's mind games.  But even if that were the case, those mind games seemed to be at the expense of someone who is easily manipulated and because of that Fangs of the Living Dead probably would never be as interesting as it could be.

The Trax

Fangs of the Living Dead is a bit of a dull one, which could make for a tedious RiffTrax experience.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill seem to be resisting the movie's urge to be boring and decide to give it a flavor.  They're pretty solidly goofball throughout this riff, enhancing this dry film by giving the viewing a personality.  Or maybe they're just as thrilled about all the low cut tops in this movie as I am.  There are a lot of cleavage jokes at any rate.

This film, in what they refer to as "How I Met Your Mother:  The Despair Version," has a lot of miserable turns to it.  Not just in making the characters miserable but just things like poor comic relief and nonsense plot turns to it, each of which are ragged on with ease.  The death of Walbrooke is a kick, as he turns into a burning corpse rather easily and Kevin notes he wasn't likely to survive with a paper mache skeleton anyway.  The acts of vampirism are fun, mostly because the closest the movie gets to springing to life are when vampires threaten to suck necks.  The vampire cat fight at the end gave me giggles, with trash talk like "Vampire, huh?  As loose as you are they ought to call you TRAMP-pire!"

It's not a fully smooth experience.  Sometimes the film becomes a blank wall and it's hard for them to do anything with it.  Bill has a period toward the beginning of the third act where he acts as a disembodied voice in a hall that just goes on and on to the point where even he gets tired of it, and then continues even after he acknowledges the bit is dying.  There is also a section where the guys perform as "the ignorant mob," which isn't very funny to start and just...keeps...going.  But even with the slow spots, they boys make Fangs of the Living Dead funny enough to sit through its tediousness at least once.

And dammit Mike, if Bill wants to be Anita Ekberg who are we to stand in his way?

Good