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The Black Vampire (Spanish: El vampiro negro) is a 1953 Argentine horror film directed by Román Viñoly Barreto, starring Olga Zubarry and Roberto Escalada.[1] It is inspired by Fritz Lang's M.

This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (June 2018)

The Black Vampire
Directed by	Román Viñoly Barreto
Written by	Alberto Etchebehere, Román Viñoly Barreto
Cinematography	Aníbal González Paz
Edited by	Jorge Gárate, Higinio Vecchione
Music by	Juan Ehlert
Release date	1953
Running time	80 minutes
Country	Argentina
Language	Spanish

Plot

This article needs a plot summary. (June 2018)

Amalia, a glamorous nightclub singer, witnesses, through a small barred window in her basement dressing room, the dark figure of a man dumping a small body into a sewer storm drain in the alley behind the nightclub at night. The man is the vampire serial killer who has been murdering little girls and disposing of their bodies without leaving a trace of his own identity despite intense efforts exerted by the police to catch him. When Dr. Bernard, the government Prosecutor, questions Amalia, she falsely denies having seen anything because she has a daughter in a private girls school and is afraid that if she gets publicly involved in a police investigation and her occupation as a nightclub singer, a less than respectable profession, is exposed, she could be deprived of custody of her daughter. A merchant seaman seen furtively hiding in the dark environs of the crime is arrested as the first suspect, but he is merely an adulterer having a clandestine affair with a married woman in the neighborhood, and Dr. Bernard realizes he is not the guilty party.

In the meantime, a peculiarly shy, self-effacing language teacher, Professor Ulber, who is always dressed in a black overcoat, is seen stalking and then killing another little girl by cleverly catching her on the stairway of her apartment building because he has disabled the elevator. The police set a trap for the vampire killer by staking out a little girl on a sidewalk while they watch from inside a car, but the Professor, though tempted by this bait, narrowly evades it. By coincidence, however, the Professor is an admirer of Cora, one of Amalia’s co-workers at the nightclub, whom the Professor frequently visits, but only to stare at her because he is pathologically inhibited, and Cora merely tolerates while ridiculing him, which aggravates his deviant lust for children’s blood.

Dr. Bernard, the Prosecutor, is very solicitous of his invalided, wheelchair-bound wife, who exhibits the virtues of a saint, but this has left him a very lonely man sexually, and when he questions Amalia again because he is sure she lied to him, he cannot resist the opportunity to seize and kiss her, although Amalia rebuffs him. Amalia does, however, admit to Dr. Bernard that she saw the vampire through her window and explains to him why she did not want to become involved. The police suspect that the owner of the nightclub, Gastón, has returned to trafficking in narcotics, and they stage a raid of his club in which he is shot and killed and the club is closed. Out of a job, Amalia brings her daughter home from school and one afternoon leaves her with Cora while she departs on an errand.

It is at this point that Professor Ulber, the vampire, comes to visit Cora, who, not realizing that Ulber is the vampire, gets rid of him by telling him to take Amalia’s daughter out for a walk, during which Ulber takes her on rides at an amusement park, creating suspense that he may kill her too. Ulber has a habit of whistling a tune that he was heard whistling by some homeless street beggars while escorting one of the little girls he has already killed. The tune, not identified in the film, is one of the numbers from the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, “The Hall of the Mountain King.” One of the street beggars, a Norwegian, recognizes it, and when he hears it again while Ulber is walking by with Amalia’s daughter, he sounds the alarm and all the beggars as well as the police chase and catch Ulber, rescuing Amalia’s daughter in the process. Unlike the dénouement in the film “M” (which inspired this film), in which the outcome of the serial killer’s trial is left untold, Ulber is sentenced to death, and Dr. Bernard is reconciled to his virtuous wife, who has forgiven him for his interlude with Amalia, and Amalia gets to keep her daughter.

Cast

• Olga Zubarry as Amalia / Rita
• Roberto Escalada as Dr. Bernard
• Nathán Pinzón as Teodoro Ulber, 'El profesor'
• Nelly Panizza as Cora
• Georges Rivière as Presunto culpable
• Pascual Pelliciota as Gastón
• Gloria Castilla as Sra. Bernar
• Mariano Vidal Molina as Lange
• Mathilde García Lange
• Enrique Fava as El noruego
• Ricardo Argemí as Juez
• Absalón Bernal
• Emma Bernal as Srta. Fermina
• Lucía Besse
• Alberto Barcel as defense lawyer

Reception

This adaptation of Fritz Lang’s M is highly regarded but not widely known. The Film Noir Foundation regards it as “extraordinary in every respect.”[2]

References

External links

• El vampiro negro at IMDb

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