Horror Double Feature: The Playgirls and the Vampire & The Beach Girls and the Monster

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will be flabbergasted by the sight of a creepy castle crypt, a 200-year-old bloodsucker, surfing dudes, and bikini babes! It’s The Playgirls and the Vampire and The Beach Girls and the Monster!

THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE (1960)

The Playgirls and the Vampire, an odd Italian amalgam of sexploitation and Gothic horror, was originally released in 1960 under the perhaps more fitting title The Last Prey of the Vampire. The five gals who are forced to spend the night at the creepy castle of Count Gabor Kernassy, along with their manager and bus driver/pianist, are more showgirls than playgirls (and, judging by a few of their dance routines, bargain-basement showgirls at that!), and the “v” word, strangely enough, is never uttered by anyone during the course of the entire film … even when the 200-year-old, bloodsucking ancestor of Kernassy is revealed to be a resident of the castle crypts. The picture’s scares are few, perhaps nonexistent, and the sex elements, naturally, are very tame by today’s standards (a brief topless moment, a few peeks through a filmy negligee, and one striptease down to her scanties by one of the gals). Indeed, I’m hard pressed to put my finger on just what I found so likable about this film. Perhaps it is the moldering look of the castle crypts, or the overwrought and oftentimes oddball musical score of Aldo Piga. Director Piero Regnoli does a competent job, sometimes even contributing some striking visual flourishes (such as that 360-degree pan during a funeral); Walter Brandi, in his dual role of the count and the aged neck nosher, is pretty decent (although his vampire is quite lame looking); and Lyla Rocco is strangely interesting as she somnambulates through her role of Vera, one of the “playgirls” for whom the castle holds a special attachment. Ultimately, though, the film is a real head scratcher, with some glaring plot holes (can anyone tell me why Vera herself does not become a vampire after having her neck noshed on?) and very illogical actions on the part of the quintet. The picture is a bona fide curiosity, to be sure, but an atmospheric one, at least. Just don’t go in expecting anything on the order of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, which came out that same year…

THE BEACH GIRLS AND THE MONSTER (1965)

What The Night of the Hunter was for Charles Laughton – the sole directorial effort from a great film star – The Beach Girls and the Monster was for ’40s matinée idol Jon Hall. But whereas Laughton’s film is one of the eternal glories of the cinema, Hall’s picture is … well, let’s just say not nearly as glorious. In his film, Hall stars (at this point in his career, looking like Ernest Borgnine’s older brother) as Dr. Otto Lindsay, an oceanographer whose troublesome son, rather than follow in his Pops’ footsteps, prefers to go surfing with his pals and play his guitar at beach parties. This domestic friction is made even more problematic when a seaweed-draped, lumbering, rather ridiculous-looking monster starts to attack kids on the beach… Anyway, Hall’s film is silly in parts but not nearly as goofy as you might be expecting; certainly more serious than a Frankie & Annette movie! It has been well shot in B&W (although utilizes egregious rear projection for all driving sequences), showcases an annoyingly catchy theme song by Frank Sinatra, Jr., is decently acted, and features a twist ending of sorts that goes far in mitigating much of the silliness that has come before. Almost stealing the show is Sue Casey, playing Hall’s trampy wife; my buddy Rob is quite right in pointing out that her sharp-tongued, shrewish vixen of a character would have been right at home in a ’60s Russ Meyer flick. Beach Girls…, with a running time of only 66 minutes, still feels padded, with surfing stock footage, rock ‘n’ roll numbers accompanied by boogying bikini babes (played by the Watusi Dancing Girls from the Whiskey-A-Go-Go!), and assorted hijinks. Still, I can think of much less entertaining ways to spend an hour. As Michael Weldon succinctly puts it, in his spoiler review in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film: “A cheap laugh riot with lots of bongos, murders, and girls in bikinis.”

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Lions, tigers and jaguars! Tippi Hedren! A black mamba! Klaus Kinski! It’s Roar and Venom, in the Shocktober Double Feature #17…