A 1960 import from Italy, this quintessential B movie presents with utter seriousness a mad scientist, nuclear-age paranoia and a lovely lady fainting into the arms of a hideous creature. Bad movies rarely come so good. The madness begins when statuesque stripper Jeannette Moreneau (Susanne Loret) is disfigured in a car accident. She’s taken in by Professor Levin (Alberto Luno), whose healing serum must be extracted from the glands of other young women. The melodramatic acting is just one of the movie’s inadvertent pleasures. There’s also an evil henchwoman (Franca Parisi), for a change, as well as a bizarrely incongruous score that features jazzy, up-tempo music whenever there’s a close-up of Jeanette’s scarred face. To fully convey the experience of watching Atom Age Vampire it’s probably best to offer one of Levin’s frantic quotes: ‘You will go mad! Mad with horror you don’t know!’ You’ve been warned.
