Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!

Roberto Mauri isn’t talked about as often as he should be. There’s his oddball King of Kong Island, his Westerns like He Was Called Holy Ghost and his masterful Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Now, after this, I need to look up more of his movies.

Released in America on TV as Slaughter of the Vampires and then as a double feature with The Blood Beast Terror — renamed as The Vampire Beast Craves Blood — as Curse of the Blood Ghouls, this has the kind of tagline that definitely made me want to watch it: “Satan’s Horror Henchmen enslave beautiful women through weird ways of love transforming them into Blood Ghoul Vampires to satisfy an insatiable LUST.”

This stars Walter Brandi, who was also in The Vampire and the Ballerina and The Playgirls and the Vampire. He plays Wolfgang, who has just become married to Louise (Graziella Granata), and they are unaware that a vampire (Dieter Eppler) has entered the party they’re having. He soon seduces Louise and bites her, which means that Wolfgang must look for a cure, finally meeting Dr. Nietzche (Luigi Batzella).

Where Hammer has rich color, this is shot in black and white, but it’s a whole different type of beautiful filmmaking. The real castle adds quite the scenery and if this movie can’t have crimson blood, it can have bosoms barely held back by their costumes and that is always enough.

You can watch this on Tubi.