Vampire, despite the unenthusiastic title, is a very solid television movie from 1979, originally intended to be a pilot to a never-developed series (much like 1973's The Norliss Tapes). Regardless, this was quite a good film, and I enjoyed it immensely.
Source: YouTube
Length: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Number of Ratings from IMDb: 190
Country of Origin: USA
Director: E.W. Swackhamer [Night Terror, Vampire, Bridge Across Time]
We begin with the erection of a cross, to dedicate the site of Saint Sebastian's Church. The speaker also thanks the audience for their continued support of the whole Bryant Park Development Project.
He also thanks John and Leslie Rawling, a married couple, both architects, for their vision of this neglected part of San Francisco.
Their plan is to build a community of churches, schools, and apartment homes in this forgotten portion of the city. After a lengthy prayer in order to dedicate the cross to the development project, a man whom the camera focuses on is about to leave, but he then notices something.
Where the shadow of the newly-erected cross is hitting, the ground appears to be peculiarly emitting a smoke-like vapor. Before he can explore this phenomenon further, however, a woman pulls up and yells for him, as they'll be late for a baseball game if they don't hurry. The man, whom we now know as Harry, gets into the vehicle and they drive away.
Now sundown, in San Francisco:
Beneath the cross, emerging from the smoking ground, a figure appears, and from here on out, the lives of those seen above will not be the same.
About a month pasts, and we find ourselves amongst a social gathering/party hosted by Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings, the aforementioned well-to-do architects. A common topic of interest is the recent murders the city has been facing. The bodies are drained of blood, and the police force is baffled.
Not all is bad, thought - Nicole DeCamp tells Leslie about a man she's recently meant, one Anton Voytek. They meant a month ago, according to Nicole, and while at first it was purely business, they began a romance, bringing a new light into Nicole's life.
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| Leslie and Nicole |
A lawyer, Nicole fondly states that life with Anton was better than she could have previously imagined life to be. She then introduces Leslie to Anton, and we meet to wonderful fellow.
Anton greets Leslie with glee, smooth-talking her insofar as she can barely take her eyes off of him. He compliments her art collection, and even names the model in a nearby painting, shocking Leslie, and she and her husband, despite research, have not been able to discover the model's name. Nicole pulls him away before too long,and they make their way to leave the party, Leslie walking with them.
Leslie walks Nicole to her car while Anton speaks with John, confessing that he came to the party in order to speak with him. He claims he's involved in a project that he believes John and his wife would be enormously intrigued in. John is interested in hearing about it, but states that his hands are pretty full already, with his work in the Bryant Park Project. Anton interrupts, and invites them to a ballet later on, which John accepts.
Later that night, Leslie and John reminisce about their past, amazed that they came from so little, yet moved up to where they are now. After a passionate embrace, they go back to bed.
After the ballet, which Anton unfortunately was unable to attend, Nicole pitches Anton's project idea to them, stating it to be a short-term project.
The Highdecker Estate was house built on the land now known as Bryant Park. The family disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the late 1930's, and over the next 40 years, the house fell into ruins. Before it became dilapidated, however, a wealthy European family, fleeing from the Nazis, bought it, though they never made it to America. The family, Nicole informs John and Leslie, is Voytek's. Eight centuries of heirlooms and treasures were smuggled out of Europe and hidden beneath the house, in extensive tunnels and basements.
Simply put, Anton wants to get those treasures back, and requires the help of the two architects.
According to John and Leslie, however, some problems are present. The cost would be enormous, getting clearance would be overly difficult, and even if they could unearth the location of the lost treasures, they believe the weight of the earth and rubble would have destroyed them.
Nicole tells them that money would not be an issue - Anton has a lot of wealth, and would have no problem paying for the best in the field. She also gives a list of partial buried treasures for them to look over. The list includes long thought-lost works of Donatello, Botticelli, and da Vinci.
As the three go out for a sandwich, John tells his wife that they might as well give it a try, eager to unearth those treasures.
The following day, I believe, John is going over rough plans with his employees to begin digging out the tunnels. Leslie and another woman come in, and inform John that if Nicole's list is correct, the findings would turn the art world on it's head. More so, each of the paintings on the list were looted throughout the centuries. Leslie hasn't told Nicole, afraid to sound as though she's indicated that Voytek's family has all of these stolen paintings.
Meanwhile, they found the right location, and an excavation is underway.
Not only are paintings being found either. After moving a painting, one of the workers stumble across a skull, a necklace crucifix next to it.
Before the coroner can take it away, Harry, who is on the work site, comes up to talk to him.
Harry Kilcoyne, who we now know is a former police officer, takes an interest in the cross, claiming he placed it on his ex-partners neck before he disappeared around 1946 and 1947. After Harry asks, the Coroner allows him to take the crucifix with him.
In a storage facility, John informs a friend that the estimated value of the unearthed collection is well over 25 million dollars. We then learn that Voytek is likely to be arrested because of the nature of the paintings, many of them being stolen and looted in the past. John never wanted it to come to his arrest, but it's now out of his hands.
John is also told about the remains found at the site. They belonged to a Precinct Captain who retired from the force in the 1930's to become a priest, who in fact founded the original St. Sebastian's Church.
Voytek, unaware that a warrant is out against him, comes by the storage facility, and is immediately arrested for conspiracy to commit grand theft. He is less then pleased, telling John that he trusted him, and he shall be repaid.
He is bailed out before long by Nicole, but before he so much as thanks her, Voytek literally runs all the way back to his apartment, in perhaps one of my favorite sequences in the film (due mainly to the background music). He gets back to his apartment just in time, by the looks of him, as he is literally smoking.
The following day, John is speaking with Nicole - she defends Voytek, and due to her experience as a lawyer, understands that controversy is very common upon finding old artwork. She claims the litigation due to the recently unearthed treasures will keep her busy for years. John tries to get her to see reason, and ask herself how much she truly knows about Anton. She just replies that he should trust her, and goes on her way.
At the Rawlins house, Leslie is dressed up, and ready to go meet John and some friends, when a doorbell sounds out, and to her surprise, it's Anton Voytek. After he's invited inside, Anton claims he wanted to try and rekindle their friendship, assuring Leslie that he'll talk to Nicole, who's friendship with Leslie has been strained of late.
He then pulls Leslie into a passionate kiss, who at first tries to overcome his hypnotic charm, but is unable to.
From here on out, the film takes a drastic turn.
John comes into his house, looking for his wife, but instead finds her corpse. Leslie is now dead.
John is now a different man. A friend of his, Christopher, talks with him, telling him he's got two tickets to paradise, and they can spend as long as they need away from there.
John, not really hearing his friend's offer, states (in a pretty amusing delivery, mind), "He killed her and mutilated her and nothing is being done about it!"
Christopher states that they've been through this: Nicole vouches for Voytek, and according to her, he never left his apartment the night of the murder. John still isn't listening, and later that day, in fact, goes into his apartment, probably to kill him, but is scared away when he sees Voytek beginning to come out of a coffin.
The police pick him up, and Christopher gets him to accept his offer of staying over at his place. As they walk by, Harry watches them leave.
Common consensus is that after his wife was murdered, John's become nuts, according to a police officer speaking to Harry.
During another montage after John gets out of the police headquarters, we see him learning to accept the fact that his wife is gone, and more so, he begins to read up on vampires, now convinced that is what Voytek is. Outside of Voytek's apartment, John raises a crucifix to his window.
While Harry is conversing with the Captain who's working on the recent murders, they're interrupted by another officer, letting the Captain know that John has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital after "flipping out." Listening curiously, Harry hears that John took crosses and wooden stakes to Voytek's apartment. Harry decides he wants to speak to John, and goes off to the hospital to meet him.
John is restrained and muttering for his cross, clearly drugged out of his mind. Voytek decides it's a good time to pay his old friend a visit.
Now in his room, Voytek taunts John, claiming it was so easy, yet passionate, to kill her. He leans over the immobile John, and is about to kill him.
Suddenly, Harry bursts into the room, his gun drawn. Before his can shoot, however, Voytek exchanges a few words with him, and then jumps out the window, leaving Harry to exclaim "Mother of God!"
Afterwards, John is over at Harry's apartment. And they talk. Over both having recently lost their wives (Harry's wife died of cancer two years prior), and the evil they are both facing.
Harry tells John about his ex-partner, Maurice. In 1939, they were assigned to homicides committed in the Bryant Park area - the victims' throats torn out, though no blood found at the crime scenes (much like the recent murders). Maurice, always a religious man, believes they were after a vampire. He retired early, and entered seminary, forming St. Sebastian's Church two years later, a "stone throw's away" from the Highdecker Estate.
Harry went off to fight in World War II, and when he returned, Maurice had completely vanished. Harry believes that Maurice knew Voyket (or whatever alias he was using at the time) was at the Highdecker, and went to face him in a showdown of sorts. Voytek, according to Harry, must have brought down the Estate on the both of them, burying him and killing Maurice.
John then tells Harry about Voytek's hypnotic stare, knowing it is the last thing his wife ever saw. He then claims he wants to kill Voytek, and Harry agrees, stating that they should join together in this task, believe that separately, it would be impossible, but combined, they may very well succeed. A knock at the door jolts them both, but it's just a neighbor of Harry, Andrea, and her son, Tommy, who Harry babysits while she's working.
Later, once Tommy is asleep in the guest room, John and Harry are discussing the history of Voyket, and tactics to destroy him.
According to a book John has been reading recently, Voytek could be as much as 700 years old, which shocks Harry once he hears it.
Harry believes that their vampiric adversary probably has five or six sanctuaries around San Francisco. Harry wants John to check in with casket companies in the morning, to look for individuals who have made large purchases. If they can find that out, they then track down each individual coffin. If Voytek is in one, they kill him, but if he's not, they make the coffins unusable, eventually ensuring he only has one or two coffins left to sleep in, making it easier to track him down.
John warns Harry that Voytek may very well use Andrea and her son against him. Thinking through this, Harry states that Tommy's due to visit his father, who lives in Arizona, next week, and theorizes that he can convince Andrea to send him off the following day.
Once Andrea returns from work, John offers to carry him to her apartment. What happens next is a mystery.
According to the person who uploaded this video onto YouTube, a five-minute portion had to be removed due to a "visual copyright claim." I already described how utterly ridiculous this is
here.
So I don't know what happens in this five minutes, nor can I find a full synopsis online, and thus I really have no idea what occurs. I'll try to make sense of it with the following scenes, when possible, but I apologize for this inconsiderate restraint placed on me by the company who "owns" the movie.
The plan they set forth the previous night is now in play. Harry goes to his church and stocks up on bottles of Holy Water. Andrea sends Tommy off to his father (probably due to the unseen event). Harry then has a friend of his make wooden stakes for him. John researches caskets, and finds that Voytek (using the name of one of his previous victims) attained five coffins from a casket company.
He shares this with Harry while eating lunch at a restaurant. They were all delivered, according to John, to a house on Howard Street. John wants to go immediately to the house, but Harry believes that none of them would be there, and that it was just a shipping point.
They check it out regardless, and find a coffin in a dusty room. John prepares himself with the hammer and stake, while Harry holds out a cross.
Upon opening the coffin, however, John gets a shock - in the casket is his wife, Leslie.
Having difficultly, Harry offers to do it for him, but John declines, saying he must be the one to do it. Harry begs of him to hurry, as it is almost sundown. John waits too long, and as her eyes open, Leslie talks to him once again. He almost succumbs to her sweet words, but with a shout from Harry, he brings the hammer down, killing the vampire that was once his wife.
After burying her, they begin to make their way to the workplace of Andrea, wanting to pick her up before Voytek can get to her. To ensure she stays safe while working, Harry tells John that he has an old friend of his keeping an eye on her.
This safeguard doesn't help much, as Voytek enters the club and dispatches with Harry's friend in the men's restroom.
After work, a friend of Andrea's tries to get her to come to a party, hosted be a friend, with her. Andrea takes a rain check, stating that she has to get back home. Her friend says that she's making a mistake; the man is young, loaded, and even has a limo waiting to take her to the party. Andrea sees this and gets excited, deciding that she can get in with her friend, and just ask the limo driver to drop her off at her apartment after her friend is dropped off at the party.
While Andrea is looking over the perks of the limousine, Harry and John drive by the club, and Harry learns that his friend, a private investigator, has been killed, his neck snapped. They drive back to Harry's apartment, hoping that Andrea is there safe.
When the arrive, after determining Andrea is not in her apartment, Harry picks up his ringing phone - it's Voytek.
Voytek tells Harry that he indend to touch and kill Andrea, and she will love every moment of it (Voytek is quite fond of taunting his prey). He then hangs up, the last thing Harry hearing is Andrea's screams.
Dispirited, Harry has the demeanor of a man who is giving up. He only snaps out of it when John tells him that Voytek must have someone else working for him, making arrangements for him, as he cannot do anything himself during the daytime. John suspects Nicole.
Nicole, who once could stand up for herself, is not weak and small, almost completely controlled by Voytek, whom she feels a deep love for despite the way he treats her.
After being shouted at by John a bit, though, she gives in, and gives them the files she has on Voytek's properties. John tells her to move out immediately, and leave all of the madness behind.
They now know where all of his coffins are: The Nobhill Apartments, the Mill, an old Brewery, a theater, a place down the coast a bit, and the last, a property up in Mendocino.
The Apartments, they believe to be empty, as that is the location John already went to twice to go after Voytek. They've already been to the theater, which is where John killed his vampiric wife. The problem lies in the property in Mendocino - if they need to get all of these locations searched today, as Mendocino is a three hour drive from San Francisco, they have a very short timetable.
But they have a plan, and they have the locations - they just need to find Voytek, before he kills Andrea. Hopefully, with this information they now have, they will succeed in their aim.
Vampire is a fantastic television movie, although I do wish a television station had picked this intended pilot up. Because it is an intended pilot, much like 1973's The Norliss Tapes, the conclusion is open-ended. I can't hold this against them, really, but I cannot pretend I'm not a bit annoyed.
Overall, though, the film is really damn solid. After the wife was killed, it took a far different route than what I expected of the film. The team-up between John and Harry was a very good one, I felt - two people with similar tragedies in their background, yet slightly different personalities. In fact, the scene in which they were preparing for their journey together (Harry having stakes made for him, and John searching for the casket) was one of my favorite combination of scenes in the movie. I thought they worked well together, and the team-up, as a whole, was charming.
Anton Voytek was a very threatening force, which perhaps his most terrifying scene being in the psychiatric hospital, as he's about to kill John. The whole history behind the Highdecker Estate, and it's relation to Voytek, was interesting also, I felt. Also, the whole conversation between John and Harry about how they intend to proceed was great, as I generally don't see that much non-action in a vampire film, yet it didn't feel unnecessary whatsoever.
Also worth mentioning is the music - it was absolutely excellent in many scenes, really setting the tone in some of them. Very atmospheric, and really helped the movie along.
This film is now out-of-print; no DVD or Blu-Ray version has yet to be released. VHS copies of the film can be bought from users on Amazon
here, and raredvds.biz is offering VHS-rips (on DVD-Rs), though I will add, it's more expensive then it has to be, and it's not exactly what I would consider legal. Still, there's only so many options when a film is out-of-print.
This was a fantastic television movie, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who tends to enjoy the 1970's television movies. It's definitely worth a watch, especially since it's as forgotten as it seems to be. The cast (Jason Miller, E.G. Marshall, Richard Lynch, and a cameo by Joe Spinell) is great, despite the occasional hammy line delivery by Miller (who played John).
I highly recommend this film, though just don't expect a closed-book conclusion.
My rating: 8.5/10
- Michael
