The beach possesses an inexplicable charm that captivates all who visit. Whether it's the soft, warm sand beneath your toes or the gentle rhythmic sound of the waves crashing against the shore, a heavenly ambience hovers around you. When you close your eyes and breathe in the salty air, you can almost taste the vastness and mystery of the sea. The sun's golden rays soak into your skin, warming you from the inside out. There is a sense of tranquility that envelops you as you watch seagulls gliding effortlessly through the air, their cries mingling with the distant laughter of children. The beach is a place of escape, where worries and stresses are washed away with the tide.
Robey reports back to Dolores when she sees a bullet hole in his vest – he claims his cigar case stopped Buffer's bullet. Robey learns that Dan is heading for the county seat to get a court order to open the graves. Robey promises to join with Dolores to stop him. Warned by Dolores' housekeeper, Dan makes preparations. Robey heads for town to "talk" Dan out of getting that court order, but Dan will not be stopped. They challenge each other to a shoot-out, and Dan fires first, just as Dolores arrives. Robey collapses and disintegrates into dust, leaving only his empty clothes behind. Dan walks over to Robey's clothes and picks up his bullet. which has his thorn cross on it.
After Dan leaves to get a court order to do so, Dolores, apparently weakened by blood loss, her anger at Dan, and Robey s hypnotic influence, collapses. Robey is a vampire not because he was the victim of another vampire, but because he committed the mortal sin of suicide well into the nineteenth century suicides were buried at crossroads to prevent them from returning as vampires.
The beach is a place of escape, where worries and stresses are washed away with the tide. It's a space where you can become one with nature, meditating to the symphony of the ocean's melody. Time seems to slow down as you stroll along the water's edge, collecting seashells and feeling the cool embrace of the waves lapping at your ankles.
Video Cheese: Curse of the Undead (1959)
Curse of the Undead falls squarely into that familiar ‘things you want to like more than you do’ territory. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not great either. As a very early example of a weird western, you want to enjoy it just for the novelty of the thing. Not to mention it’s a comparatively rare ‘50s horror flick from the one-time home of classic monsters, Universal Studios. Sadly, the film is no Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Objectively it’s quite a bit better than fellow mash-up Billy the Kid vs Dracula, the most obvious comparison piece. However, at least that one’s inept enough to be consistently amusing, especially given John Carradine’s hambone titular performance. And on the other end of the scale, neither is Curse of the Undead as actually good as fellow ‘50s vampire cheapie Return of Dracula. It’s more of the type of thing you watch to cross it off the list.
We open with a small western town’s resident sawbones (Western veteran John Hoyt) and handsome young preacher Dan (Eric Fleming, soon to be the star of TV’s Rawhide opposite Clint Eastwood) scratching their heads over the inevitable Young Woman Suffering from the Mysterious Ailment Plaguing the Area. Here they predictably establish that quite a few young women have died from it lately, raising the old issue of vampires who seem to require way too much feeding to be practical.
The doc and his family are involved in a feud with would be land baron Buffer (played by Bruce Gordon, most famous for playing gangster Frank Nitti on TV’s The Untouchables). When the all-in-black vampire gunslinger Drake Robey eventually shows up, we expect him to start working for fellow blackguard Hennessey. One of the film’s few novel twists, however, is that he is instead hired by the doc’s daughter—and the film’s female lead—to avenge her father and brother’s eventual deaths. This naturally fails to sit well with Dan, both in his roles as preacher, and as, conveniently for the plot, as Dolores’s fiancé.
In the end everything proves to be a plot of Drake’s to reclaim his family’s former land and Dolores along with it. Drake was originally Drago Robles, a Spanish scion several generations back who became a vampire after killing his brother in a jealous rage and then committing suicide in his grief soon after. He fled after returning from the dead and has wandered the Earth in the years since as an unkillable mercenary. Due to a highly convenient diary, not to mention an even more convenient photograph, Dan figures all this out and then must deal with Drake before Dolores falls victim to him as well.
Curse’s biggest issue is that it’s basically a generic, and rather flat, oater with a vampire jammed into it. Although the movie is only 80 minutes it still feels sluggishly paced. Things do pick up some when Drake makes the scene. That first section of the film is kind of a grind, however, and the pacing is still often torpid even in the later section of the film.
The movie’s also weirdly structured. Early on Buffer is posited to be the film’s villain. Once the vampiric gunslinger shows up, though, Buffer’s role is necessarily diminished. At this point, his now largely extraneous presence drags things down quite a bit. Meanwhile, the big reveal that Drake Robey, utilizing the most obvious alias this side of Count Alucard, used to be rich local landowner Drago Robles doesn’t really pay off in any way. If anything the idea feels a bit forced. Still, at least Dolores isn’t the reincarnation of Drake’s former love or anything. We can blame Dan Curtis for that crap.
The film offers several unusual permutations of traditional movie vampire lore. Most obviously Drake is often seen walking around in broad daylight. Drake is never seen to change into a bat or fog, and eats regular food and drinks whiskey. Also, perhaps because of the film’s vampirism-caused-by-sin angle, Drake’s victims don’t become vampires themselves.
While that latter bit mitigates somewhat the scale of the ‘plague,’ it’s still true that Drake seems to have bitten a lot of the townsfolk in his short time there. One wonders how he plans to settle down in an area where the rather sparse local population would be exhausted so quickly, especially after he vampirizes Dolores. (Although, again positing Drake as an anti-hero more than villain, but he eventually declines to vampirize our heroine after falling in love with her.)
The vampirism born of personal sin is a nicely novel flourish, and harkens more closely to actual vampire (and werewolf) folklore than the traditional movie rules. Dan’s rejection of Drake’s tragic-torment-of-the-damned spiel, based on the idea that by committing suicide Drake had of his own choosing closed himself off from the Lord’s forgiveness, is theologically credible. However, chances are it will also be incomprehensible to many modern viewers. In the wake of Anne Rice’s redefining if infantile take on vampires as glamorously decadent fantasy fulfilment, Dan would probably have come off better today if he had instead rejected Drake’s self-serving pleas for sympathy by citing all of the, you know, murders he commits.*
[*Indeed, in Tom Weaver’s commentary, Preacher Dan takes quite a beating. I listened to the commentary after writing the above, whereupon I heard Dan being given both barrels for being an insufferable, ineffectual and sanctimonious stuffed shirt. Meanwhile, Weaver dubs the admittedly more complexly written Drake to be “Joe Cool.”]
The film only occasionally attempts any directorial flourishes. The best scene is Drake stalking Dan through the deserted nighttime town square. Here we get a lot of Nosferatu-esque shadow work. In a panic, Dan eventually rushes to the entrance of the church. In a shot (literally) foreshadowing the climax of The Brides of Dracula, Drake is stymied by the large shadow of a cross. Dan blinks, and Drake has disappeared, although we ourselves see the vampire’s wall-cast shadow speeding unnaturally from the scene.
The cinematography is lackluster as well, although perhaps that’s partly due to the blu ray’s digital presentation. Nighttime scenes, especially those featuring Drake and presumably meant to evoke a noir-ish feel, are frequently overly dark. In contrast, many interior shots are ludicrously overlit, making one wonder how prevalent klieg lights were in the old west.
In terms of successfully merging the western and vampire elements, the most successful bit is Drake’s rather douchebag signature play of letting his gunfight rivals shoot him before gunning them down. Therefore they all die while grousing that they know they plugged Drake first. This also sets up the climatic gunfight with Dan. While I can’t say I found the mechanism of the vampire’s demise is particularly impressive—and it’s also super heavily telegraphed—at least it forgoes the traditional staking him in his coffin bit.
Characterization is overall stolid at best, with again only Drake being even two dimensional. Fleming does what he can with Dan, but it isn’t much. Busy actress Kathleen Crowley as Dolores also fails to shine, as like Fleming she’s hampered by the script and stilted character direction.
On the other hand, veteran heavy Michael Pate, a Michael Ansara-type, clearly enjoyed—no pun intended—digging his teeth into his far flashier role. He’s still hampered by the film’s shortcomings, but easily gives the picture whatever juice it has. Apparently he looked back at the movie with a degree of fondness, and you understand why. Apparently he and Kathleen Crowley especially enjoyed working together, a fact well established in Weaver’s commentary.
The Blu Ray for Curse of the Undead, which never got a lot on TV play when I was a kid, was issued by the reliable Kino Lorber. As previously indicated, it also offers a typically fun and informative audio commentary from film historian Tom Weaver. I don’t know how much Weaver makes for these things—probably not all that much—but it’s a wise investment for the companies putting the discs out. I certainly wouldn’t have laid out $15 for this film, or for the recently reviewed Karloff vehicle The Ape, if not for the commentaries they included as sweeteners.
Weaver’s commentary is, as usual, well worth a listen. Indeed, it’s one of the better ones I’ve heard from him. As is his wont, he uses actors to read comments from the cast and crew that he had interviewed over the decades. He point out pertinent similarities to other undead films, including the even more obscure Africa-set Vampire’s Ghost. You can’t go wrong with a Weaver commentary, they are always informed, impeccably researched and wryly humorous. I laughed when Weaver quoted a friend of his who, after seeing Drake gun down Buffer, “…retitled the movie ‘Vampire, the Buffer Slayer.’”
The doc and his family are involved in a feud with would be land baron Buffer (played by Bruce Gordon, most famous for playing gangster Frank Nitti on TV’s The Untouchables). When the all-in-black vampire gunslinger Drake Robey eventually shows up, we expect him to start working for fellow blackguard Hennessey. One of the film’s few novel twists, however, is that he is instead hired by the doc’s daughter—and the film’s female lead—to avenge her father and brother’s eventual deaths. This naturally fails to sit well with Dan, both in his roles as preacher, and as, conveniently for the plot, as Dolores’s fiancé.
The sheer vastness of the horizon stretching out before you reminds you of the limitless possibilities that life holds. As the day draws to a close, the sky becomes a canvas of vivid hues as the sun sets, casting a fiery glow upon the water. It's a divine spectacle, a reminder that beauty exists in the simplest of moments. The beach is a sanctuary, a place where you can recharge your weary soul and find solace in the embrace of nature's wonders..
Reviews for "Harnessing the Power of Beach Spells: Creating a Heavenly Retreat"
- Jennifer - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with "Beach spell heavenly ambience hovers around you". The ambience was definitely not heavenly. It was basically just a looped recording of seagulls and ocean waves that sounded very artificial. I didn't feel like I was transported to a beach at all. The sound quality was also not great, it was quite staticky. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this product.
- John - 3 stars - I purchased "Beach spell heavenly ambience hovers around you" with high hopes, but unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. While the sound quality was decent, the ambience just felt lacking. It didn't have that serene, relaxing effect I was looking for. The seagull noises were too prominent, almost distracting, and the waves sounded more choppy than soothing. It's not terrible, but it's not something I would purchase again.
- Sarah - 2 stars - I was really excited to try "Beach spell heavenly ambience hovers around you", but I found it to be quite underwhelming. The sound of the waves was too repetitive, and it didn't have that natural ebb and flow you would expect at the beach. The seagulls were also quite loud and obnoxious, making it difficult to relax and enjoy the supposed ambience. I ended up returning it and finding a different beach sound recording that was much more soothing and realistic.