Seddok, l’erede di Satana (literally translated as Seddok, the Heir of Satan) was renamed Atom Age Vampire in America to cash in on the sci-fi horror craze, despite having virtually nothing to do with the atomic age beyond a loose scientific footnote. It was directed by Anton Giulio Majano and written by Majano alongside Gino De Santis and Alberto Bevilacqua.
The film kicks off with a horrific car crash that leaves an exotic dancer named Jeanette (Susanne Loret) with her face brutally scarred and disfigured. When she catches a horrifying glimpse of her reflection in a mirror, she spirals rapidly into madness and despair. Enter Monique Riviere (Franca Parisi Strahl), the loyal and perhaps overly devoted assistant of the brilliant but morally compromised Dr. Levin (Alberto Lupo). Monique offers Jeanette a lifeline: Dr. Levin’s experimental new serum.
The prospect of restoring Jeanette’s lost beauty immediately consumes Dr. Levin, who quickly crosses the line from clinical detachment to obsessive infatuation. He begins injecting her with a revolutionary experimental drug called Derma 28, a concoction he developed based on controversial research conducted on burn victims in Hiroshima. Before you can say, “Corruption is not a woman’s picture” or invoke Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, Levin has fallen hopelessly, madly in love with her.
Naturally, this love comes with a steep body count. The serum only offers temporary results, and with each successive treatment, the effects fade faster, requiring a fresh supply of human tissue and glands to keep Jeanette ravishing. To silence his fading conscience and push past his remaining morals, Levin begins shooting up with a heavier variant called Derma 25. This transforms him psychologically and physically into a feral, hulking monster who no longer cares how many innocent women he has to slaughter to maintain his obsession.
To add insult to injury, when the local police bring Dr. Levin in as a top medical expert to consult on the string of gruesome murders, he smoothly deflects suspicion by blaming the city’s crimes on Japanese immigrants. Of course, the audience knows from the jump that the seemingly respectable doctor has been the culprit all along.
If the original Italian gothic-sci-fi hybrid isn’t bizarre enough for you, the film’s cinematic afterlife is even wilder, boasting two genuinely inspired avant-garde remakes:
- Scott Bateman’s Animation: Animator Scott Bateman took the wonderfully clunky, out-of-sync English dubbing of the original film and completely repurposed it as a surreal audio track for his own wildly imaginative animated interpretation of the movie (Vimeo).
- Adam Roberts’ Remake: Filmmaker Adam Roberts took a completely different artistic route, crafting a scene-for-scene reshoot that retains the original English-dubbed soundtrack. The genius/madness of his approach is that he deliberately shifts the camera framing so the audience never actually sees any of the characters’ faces or bodies. Styled to look like a heavily degraded, glitchy VHS dub, it turns a classic monster movie into an eerie, disorienting exercise in voyeurism.
Despite the American title, there’s not a single fanged creature or actual vampire in sight. But once Dr. Levin completely loses control of his inner beast and the body count starts piling up, you won’t miss those traditional blood drinkers for a second.
