Dinner with the Vampire

Alternate titles : "A cena con il vampiro".

Tagline : "It's the horror party of the century!"

A group of aspiring actors win an audition to appear in a new horror film by an infamous genre Director named Jurek (George Hilton), and are invited to meet him at his castle one evening.

Having been plied with food and drink and shown one of his horror films, Jurek makes his entrance, where they subsequently learn that he is in fact a vampire and the real reason they have been invited there, is that he's become tired of eternal life and wants them to find a way to kill him and put him out of his misery.

The rub being that if they fail and he's still alive at daybreak, he will turn them into soulless zombies and they will spend the rest of eternity trapped in the depths of his castle, which is what happened with the previous actors who won his last round of auditions.

Stuck with no means of escape, the group reluctantly try out the usual methods of trying to kill vampires, that they remembered from old horror films. Of course things go predictably awry, as each method, Garlic, Crosses and even a wooden stake through the heart, fails miserably with Jurek berating them for their lack of originality.

With dawn fast approaching, and not being overly keen at the prospect of spending eternity as one of Jurek's zombies, they turn to one of his films to see if there are any clues that may help them defeat him, hoping they can find a way of finishing him off before they end up like the last lot.

Spoofing a lot of old vampire films, like "Nosferatu" (1922) and various horrors, like "The House on Haunted Hill" (1959), this one wasn't actually half bad. I was particularly amused by the hunchbacked servant, which appeared to be spoofing similar characters from old Frankenstein films.

Definitely one of the better entries in the Italian "Brivado Giallo" series.

Overall Marks : 5/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Jurek claims that he has no reflection or shadow, yet his reflection can be clearly seen in a wall mirror, whilst he's scratching at the door to the room where his guests are hiding.
• The film was shot at Castle Sammezzano, located in Tuscany, Italy.
• George Hilton, who plays Jurek, also played Professor Saunders in Ruggero Deodato's "Atlantis Intercepters" (1983).
• The actor playing the film Director during the opening segment was Roberto Pedicini, who played the abusive husband in the previous Brivido Giallo TV film, "Until Death". He's also a prolific voice actor, who regularly dubs the Italian voice for Kevin Spacey, Jim Carey, Woody Harleson and Ralph Fiennes.
• The scene where one of the guests puts 2 chair legs togethor to form a cross, appears to be spoofing the scene where Peter Cushing defeated Christopher Lee's Dracula in Hammer films "Dracula" (1958).
• The hunchbacked Butler, portrayed by Daniele Aldrovandi, appears to be based on Marty Feldman's "Igor" character from the Mel Brooks spoof "Young Frankenstein" (1974). Interestingly, the actor actually played Marty Feldman in the film "Ginger and Fred" (1986), some 2 years prior.
• The trailer for this showed the Black and White footage from the film within the film in colour.
• The scene showing the vampire melting at the end was accomplished by making a wax head and melting it, which was the same effect used for the melting heads at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981).

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