Curse of the Undead: Go back to your grave, please

If one thing can be said about American filmmaking in the 1950s, it’s that audiences loved a good cowboy, and they loved a good monstrous beast. Outlaws dueling in the streets and creatures from the depths of hell were par for the course in cinemas all over the country throughout the decade, and continued to put butts in seats well into the 1960s and beyond. 

With crowds eating up these formulas and hungry for more, it made sense that some Frankenstein-esque filmmaker would eventually stitch the two genres together. Husband and wife team Edward and Mildred Dien did just that in 1959, birthing the rather tepid Curse of the Undead. 

An allegedly satirical take on the tale of the vampire, you won’t find much out-of-the-box thinking here, even for the ‘50s. The writing is typical western fare of the time period, filled with characters that rarely fall in the middle of the moral spectrum; good is good and bad is bad. The addition of a creature of the night does little to shake things up. 

While Michael Pate as vampirical baddy Drake Robey feels about as flexible on screen as a solid 2×4, the rest of the cast’s performances hold up surprisingly well. John Hoyt is a stern-faced treat as Doc Carter, and Bruce Gordon of The Untouchables turns in an excellent acting job as well. Curse of the Undead also features Kathleen Crowley, one of the premiere B-Movie leading ladies of the time. Unfortunately, halfway decent performances cannot turn a bland script into gold. 

Curse of the Undead opens with Doc Carter visiting one of his patients, the daughter of a farming family that has been struck with a mysterious illness. This strange disease has been blighting the young women of the community for some time. While at first the girl seems that she is going to recover, when she is left alone so that she can rest she is quickly accosted and killed. Nobody but the good doctor seems to notice something strange is afoot, but two pinpricks on her neck imply that a vampire is behind her death. Not that it really matters, because Doc Carter is quickly killed off by the creature of the night in order to ignite a land dispute between two neighboring ranches. Enter Drake Robey, a mysterious gun-for-hire who seems bent on inserting himself in the ensuing conflict while seducing Doc Carter’s daughter, Dolores.

While that synopsis may sound genuinely promising, Curse of the Undead simply under-delivers. To the Dien’s credit, the film does delve into the original European folklore behind vampires instead of relying on the cinematic mythos created by Hammer and Universal studios. Drake Robey can walk in the day and was a spawn of mortal sin, not another vampire. While these are unique attributes though, it is not enough to spark interest in your average movie goer.

The worst thing about this forgettable 1950s genre mashup is that it is entirely ordinary. It’s not good enough to recommend to anybody but the most hardcore fan of schlock-horror or camp, and it’s not terrible enough for the connoisseurs of trash. Curse of the Undead is a shining showcase of the fact that a middling movie is far worse than a bad movie. 

TLDR: 2/5 stars, don’t bother unless it is streaming for free and you’ve already seen all the good 50s B-Movies out there. Hint: You haven’t. There’s hundreds.