Vampiress Review: "The Vampire and the Ballerina"

The Gist: Members of a ballet troop preparing for a performance seek refuge in a castle inhabited by a vampire countess and her servant.

Clarification: Your stereotypical vampire film of that time with every cliche you can imagine.  Basically a guy and two women get lost and seek refuge at a spooky abandoned castle during a storm just to find it's inhabited by a beautiful countess and her servant.  The servant takes a liking to the women while the countess takes a liking to the guy and it's revealed that both are vampires and the servant controls the countess by allowing her to only feed on him.

Selling Point: A number of sexy dance numbers throughout the film.

Female Vampire Factor:  The countess is played by Maria Luisa Rolando

 Despite being the owner of the castle she goes down as one of the few female vampires in classic films to play the damsel in distress to the unknowing guy and actually mean it and not use it as a way to sucker the guy into a false sense of security.  Even though she is a vampire it is her servant who is the true villain of the film as he is the one who turned her and is responsible for keeping her in the lifestyle which is found out when we find out that she feeds on him in order to stay alive while he feeds on innocent humans

 This results in a lot of personal conflict for the countess as she does evil things but does so in order to stay alive as she is dependent on her servants blood to stay young and beautiful.

The only other female vampire of the film is a peasant girl who is attacked by the servent early on prior to their official introduction in the film.  The town doctor passes her affliction off as just passing out and scratching herself on plants that happen to look like a bite and that she'd be fine in a couple of weeks.  Obviously this wasn't the case and she wakes up at her own funeral.

Later that night she rises from her grave as a full fledged vampire

Unfortunately for her the only woman the countesses servant wants in his life is the countess so he comes and puts a quick end to her via a stake through the heart.

 Not a terrible movie but does give a little bit too much screen time to the ballet dancing portion of the story which slows the plot to a crawl. I give the film a Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 out of 5. For a similar movie with more T&A check out "The Playgirls and the Vampire"