**Miserably memorable.** This is one of those movies that, without a doubt, is bad. More than just being bad, it is an object of study for any apprentice filmmaker, because almost everything that could go wrong actually went wrong. The problems begin with Ed Wood's utterly incompetent direction. My cat is the best movie director. Inattentive, careless and incapable, Wood simply lets everyone else do their jobs at their own risk. Wood doesn't seem to be concerned with any question of continuity (days and nights seem to happen at random, props appear and disappear several times), he allows us to calmly see the filming material (cameras, microphones, light equipment, etc.) until the cardboard headstones in his cemetery fall, so obviously fake it's incredible they were used in a movie. And I'd rather not mention the flying saucers, which are obviously children's toys hanging from transparent threads, probably maneuvered by fishing rods! The script is, of course, another problem, giving us one of the most fanciful and clearly false stories that science fiction has ever seen: unpleasantly mixing vampires, undead and aliens, we feel that we just need to find Tarzan, Donald Duck, two or three cowboys and a family from Minnesota on vacation, having a barbecue in the cemetery. The imagination is the limit! And the dialogue? The film is an unstoppable source of jokes and memorable phrases, the result of the childish and idiotic way in which everything was written. The cast brings together a series of names well known to most of the public, not because they are good actors, but because they have played important and notable roles at certain moments. This is the case of Maila Nurmi, the eternal Vampira, who doesn't say a single word and does little more than stare at us and the other characters. Even without opening his mouth to utter a sound, this is undoubtedly one of the most iconic films of this actress, in one of the most remarkable “personas” of her career. The friendly Tor Johnson is also here, with his unmistakable look that made him a striking figure in the cheap horror movies of this era. Bela Lugosi had his last film appearance in this film. Invariably wrapped in his aristocratic vampire cape, which immortalized him and in which he would later be buried, he died during filming, having been very skillfully replaced by another man, who hides his face with the cape so that it is not so evident that they are two different people.

Filipe Manuel Neto

19/09/2022