The suggested eroticism of The Vampire and the Ballerina was amped up in Polselli’s quasi-sequel, which was a troubled production started in 1961 and was not released until three years later, it was started as Il vampiro dell’opera (The Vampire of the Opera) and once box office fortunes changed against vampires, the name was slightly altered. Along with Piero Regnoli’s L’ultima preda del vampire (The Playgirls and the Vampire), even more eroticism was added to the bloodsucking. Of course, Gastaldi also wrote all three of these movies, even if he demurred that they were movies similar to others he wrote, only with vampires.

The difference in the few years in between movies is that now the dancers may embrace and even have a timid kiss between one another. Those that devour Polselli’s later films will giggle a bit at this; no corncob penetration here. For 1964, it had to be pretty titillating. So is the opening, in which the monstrous fiend in the opera chases a woman in a nightgown who is carrying the much-needed candelabra until he stabs her with a pitchfork.

Sandro (Marco Mariani) is the leader of an experimental dance group with Giulia (Barbara Hawards) as the star. Soon they are attacked by the titular bad guy, Stefano (Giuseppe Addobatti), and his five vampire wives. The human victims must keep dancing to battle Stefano’s psychic attacks and the suggestions he’s put inside their minds to stay within his crumbling theater.

Polselli’s later films aren’t just insane. They look that way as he never stops moving the camera. That starts happening here as well and I can’t get enough of this movie. Let that fog flow in, chain those vampire women to the wall and let’s dance.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy it on the Severin Danza Macabra: The Italian Gothic Collection Volume 1 set.

Hammer’s Dracula was a big deal in Italy and, as you know, my people see imitation as the most sincere way of saying they like something. Except that Renato Polselli was a believer in the magical power of not just violence, but also sex.

1960 was a big year for Eurohorror: Bava’s Black Sunday, Majano’s Atom Age Vampire, Vadim’s Blood and Roses, Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Böttger’s Horrors of Spider Island, Ferroni’s Mill of the Stone Women and this movie’s spiritual relative, The Playgirls and the Vampire. All of these movies on some level — and some more than others — have the blood on the throat and the hot blood in the heart, so to speak.

As a crew of ballerinas rehearses in a castle, the professor (Pier Ugo Gragnani) explains vampires to them. This goes down as several young girls have already had their blood drained, you know, just like a vampire would.  There’s also romance, as Luisa (Hélène Rémy) and the master of the dance troupe Giorgio (Gino Turini) are getting together while Francesca (Tina Gloriani) is falling for the professor’s son Luca (Isarco Ravaioli).

The four decide to go on a double date into the woods where they find the abandoned castle of Contessa Alda (María Luisa Rolando). Are you the least bit surprised that the Contessa is still there and wearing a dress that looks ancient? Or that Luisa is soon attacked by a monster and becomes the Lucy to Francesca’s Mina? Perhaps the biggest surprise, seeing that this is made all the way back in 1960, is that Luisa and Francesca seem to be closer than any of their relationships with men.

Polselli sets the trend for many Italian exploitation directors that will follow. And by that, I mean, he outright copies not only from Terence Fisher but from nearly every vampire movie that has come before, all the way back to Vampyr.

This was written by Polselli, Giuseppe Pellegrini and Ernesto Gastaldi, who would go on to make so many movies. I love the idea that the Countess uses Herman to drain the women, which makes him young and vital again, then she drains him to do the same for herself, making him ugly again and someone who she rejects. This has been their pattern for what seems like years and he does it all for love. She does it all for herself.

Taken from Groovy Doom.

I can’t believe that MGM brought this to America and released it in a double feature with Tower of London. There’s a great new Shout! Factory release that has not only the film, but the Super 8 United Artists home version, which tells the story in so much less time.

“Artificial Intelligence from far into the future arrives to immediately CLEANSE the human species of millions of humans who are harmful to other humans. A VISIONARY, REVOLUTIONARY FILM which pushes the human species to the limits of controversial, thought-provoking actions.”

As the film begins, Breen’s character lies dying in the Las Vegas desert, the victim of a group of drug smugglers and human traffickers. In his last moments, he is overtaken by a future messiah of artificial intelligence that plans on walking our world and then killing at least 300,000,000 evil people along with the help of a tiger named Vlad.

This same AI — Thigl — will also fulfill the storylines which are demanded of every Neil Breen film: he will come to the rescue of a young woman — Amanda (Kathy Corpus) and her niece Kim (Chaize Macklin), who are on the run from those human traffickers — as well as befriend a young person — two child astronomers (Abraham Rodriguez and Taylor Sydney) — and also come to grips with the forgotten people of our nation — the dying professor who is teaching those precocious astronomers (James D. Smith)  and a veteran with PTSD (Jason James).

He also finds the time to attend the cocktail parties of the rich, famous and ultracorrupt so that he can learn exactly who must die and also walks the desert to explain to us that the laws of nature mean more than the laws of man. He ends all of this by wiping out the news anchors that we have listened to throughout the movie as well as blowing up the mansion that said party was in, because why wouldn’t you nuke big pharma if you had space god AI powers?

That’s the point, I think I’ve arrived at, after five Neil Breen movies in a day. We must all become the beings that we have the potential to be and if his movies are the sand in the shell that creates the oyster, that is his role. I’ve loudly bemoaned the fact that with cameras in everyone’s phone, no one has seized the democratic nature that now exists within film, taking advantage of the opportunity that regional and shot on video filmmakers struggled so hard to attain. Yet Neil Breen does with every movie and while so many laugh or throw away insults that may them feel superior like so bad it’s good — and what does that even mean? — he’s one of the lone voices out there in the desert — the philosophical and artistic one, not the body-riddled one outside of Las Vegas — that is saying something no matter how many people decide to watch and how much even fewer deign to listen.

Neil Breen gives me hope.

Aaron Brand (Neil Breen) is the best there is at what he does. Really, he is. A mercenary killing machine who work counterterrorism assignments for both American and foreign governments, his life is ruined when his fiancee Megan (Laura Hale) is murdered while they’re in the pool together. That’s when he decides to become a terrorist himself, all while helping the world defeat other terrorists, he’s turning a car into a killing base complete with numerous hacking laptops and an invisibility device, all with the plan of unleashing anthrax in the middle of Las Vegas.

Also, all he eats is tuna. And yes, just like every other Neil Breen character, he met the love of his life at the age of seven.

But unlike so many other snarky reviews of his movie, I’m not here to make fun of the work of Breen. No, quite the opposite. I’m absolutely fascinated — and comforted — by his movies. The tics of character, the repetition of story beats, the fact that his character is absolutely impossibly skilled in a way that no human being could ever be. He’s an infallible man — or sometimes god or even God — facing off with an imperfect world so often, a world that has let him down in the most horrific ways possible and must reconcile his infinite power and need to perhaps destroy those that have wronged him with something missing, often love or connection.

This is the conundrum and duality at the heart of every Neil Breen hero. This is someone who makes millions of dollars a year for world governments keeping order yet keeps none of it, barely scraping by in the desert while he donates that money to various children support charities all over the world such as “orphanages, hospitals and schools and supporting evacuees from national disasters around the globe like hurricanes, like Katrina.” With bio-electric implants, he does things like shut down the Vegas strip — Sam’s Town probably stayed open — or kills white collar criminals, leaving the desert filled with their bodies, all while the blood money goes to the kids. Kind of like how we had to begrudgingly admire Jerry Lewis for doing his telethon despite by the end of the weekend he was snapping at his band and verbally abusing the crew on national television.

Now, you may ask, why don’t the governments of the world kill off Aaron if he’s becoming so powerful? Well, he planted bioterror bombs in seven critical cities and if anyone tries, the whole world pays. He’s the kind of good at his job that never has to go look for a new one. But you know, who else would be qualified for whatever exactly his skillset is. And if anyone tries to get to him in the desert, there’s an invisible shield that kills anyone but Aaron.

Despite being the best ever, Aaron screws up a hit and the people he was supposed to kill are so afraid that he’s after him, they end up killing themselves. Problem solved. He also meets an old man in the desert who dies in his arms. And through it all, he just wants to believe that something extraordinary is possible.

Or he’ll kill the world.

I refuse to ironically like these movies or find them to be some kind of pose. Because there’s something in these, some vision and message. Certainly they are in no way like any other movie you’ve ever seen and instead of making them fit into that box, why not open yourself up and go beyond, you know?