‘Beyond the black mouth of the cursed cave lurk the unfleshed…’
Cave of the Living Dead is a 1964 horror film about a mad scientist and his bevvy of vampires terrorising a European village. An American detective and a local witch join forces to defeat them.
Produced and directed by veteran Ákos Ráthonyi [as Akos von Ratony] (Take Off Your Clothes, Doll; The Devil’s Daffodil) from a screenplay co-written [uncredited] with Kurt Roecken [as C.V. Rock].
The Objectiv Film-Triglav Film co-production stars Adrian Hoven (producer of Mark of the Devil and director of its sequel), Erika Remberg (Circus of Horrors), Carl Möhner, Wolfgang Preiss (Mill of the Stone Women; The 1,000 Eyes of Doctor Mabuse), Karin Field (The Demons; Legend of Horror; Web of the Spider), Emmerich Schrenk and John Kitzmiller.
The movie was released by Richard Gordon in the US in 1966 on a double-bill (“Twice the thrills! Twice the chills!”) with the Italian film Tomb of Torture.
Plot [contains spoilers]:
The local police in a mountain village in the Balkans are left at a loss after seven women are murdered. Therefore, Interpol sends American Inspector Frank Doren (Adrian Hoven). Doren discovers that a girl dies every time the power goes out in the village. After that, the corpses disappear.
The electricity went out again as soon as he arrived; even Doren’s car wouldn’t start anymore. This time Maria is the victim, the cook at the inn where he is staying. Despite his attempts to disguise himself as a tourist, the entire village community soon knows that Doren was sent by Interpol, which doesn’t make his job any easier.
Doren continues his investigations and is suspicious of some of the inhabitants: for example, the innkeeper who tried to force himself on Maria the night before the last murder, or the obscure village doctor who after every post-mortem examination despite clear bite wounds at the young women’s throats, stereotypically insists on his heart failure diagnosis. Even the deaf, dumb Thomas is quite nocturnal, and an old fortune teller babbles about alleged vampires who are supposed to be roaming the area. They all share one thing: they are afraid of an ominous grotto near the village.
The village community is also afraid of the mysterious Professor von Adelsberg (Wolfgang Preiss), who is said to be working on a scientific study on the subject of “blood” at his high castle. At his service is the young, pretty assistant Karin Schumann. It doesn’t take Frank Doren long to find out that the cultivated yet uncanny nobleman is behind the mysterious events.
Meanwhile, Doren takes a liking to the professor’s assistant and they both fall in love. He soon realises that Karin is in great danger, as her boss is the wanted vampire who has the dead women on his conscience. With the help of Adelsberg’s black servant John (John Kitzmiller), they locate the vampire’s coffin in the stalactite cave below the castle. There he made the seven allegedly murdered women docile as undead vampires.
Before the undead fiend can rise again for a new bloody deed, Doren impales him with a wooden stake. Adelsberg’s decomposing body bursts into flames in a small explosion.
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“Though Hoven is an engaging enough presence as the omnipresent Doren, perhaps the major mystery about Der Fluch is that Von Ratony got hold of an iconic figure like Wolfgang Preiss yet gave him so little to chew on. The Professor is a sketchy character; engaged in research that’s presumably intended to reverse his own vampirism, he never gets the opportunity to elucidate it slightly.” Jonathan Rigby, Euro Gothic book
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