- aka “Vampires in Venice”
- Directed by Augusto Caminito, Klaus Kinski
- Written by Alberto Alfieri, Leandro Lucchetti, Augusto Caminito
- Stars Klaus Kinski, Barbara De Rossi, Yorgo Voyagis, Christopher Plummer, Donald Pleasance
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yce3MOugcB0
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
It’s creepy, adds some neat things to movie vampire lore, is much more fast-paced and less artsy-fartsy than the original. If you could tolerate the first film, this is a much more straightforward vampire story. With Klaus Kinski again nicely adding his strange touch to the role.
Synopsis
As credits roll, we see hunters in the field shooting at ducks. One of the men shoots a vampire bat by mistake, but that’s OK, as they are cursed.
Professor Catalano narrates that story; explaining that he’s devoted his life to the study of Nosferatu and his disappearance during the great plague.
The priest Don Alvise is with the Princess, a creepy old woman who says Catalano has come to destroy the peace of the village. Catalano mentions that he expects to die very soon. Catalano is the leading expert on vampirism. “Vampires are everywhere,” he tells Una and Dr. Barneval over dinner.
Maria takes Catalano into the catacombs thirty feet beneath the great canal of Venice. There’s a crypt down there with a locked coffin. It’s sealed with iron bands. She says Nosferatu is in the tomb, buried during the plague hundreds of years ago. She wants to open the tomb and set him free. He explains that this is a very, very bad idea.
That night, Catalano goes snooping, and the princess knocks him out with her cane. Next morning, the princess explains the family curse to him.
We flash back to a priest and a couple of helpers doing an exorcism in that very building long ago. They open the door, and Nosferatu is in there. Nosferatu uses his magic to bring up a wind that blows all three of the clergy out the window to be impaled on the fence below. Nosferatu disappeared shortly thereafter, not to be heard of again.
The princess calls for a medium to come, but Alvise doesn’t approve. Catalano explains all the ways a person can become a vampire; there should be a lot of them. Alvise leaves as the seance begins. She calls on Nosferatu, and we see him rise from a coffin and climb up the steps, although it’s not the sealed coffin we saw earlier.
Helietta is one of Nosferatu’s descendants, and she calls to him from the seance; he hears her. She passes out, and the seance is over. Catalano and Barneval run downstairs to check on the sealed coffin, which is still sealed.
Nosferatu must have been somewhere else all along, but he’s awake now. He stumbles along the beach until he runs into a gypsy beach party. They know he can take them immortal, but he wants to know who summoned him. The gypsy woman pulls out a crystal ball and shows him who called. He drinks from the woman and her daughter, and he is recharged. Apparently, these gypsies had been watching over his crypt for 200 years.
It’s carnival time, and there are fireworks and everyone is wearing strange and creepy ornamental masks. Nosferatu comes home and runs into the Princess, who recognizes him right away. She then “falls” out the window and onto the spiked fence below.
Catalano opens the crypt in the basement, and the woman inside sits up, but then immediately decomposes. Catalano finds mercury in the tomb, which is the only metal that can truly kill a vampire.
Meanwhile, Nosferatu tracks down Helietta at the ball, and she looks just like the woman in the painting that the Princess had. She also resembles the woman that dissolved in the crypt. He follows her home. He comes into her room after bedtime and does things to her.
She explains what happened to Catalano in the morning. Nosferatu, in the meantime, viciously attacks Uta Barneval. Catalano and Barneval set an ambush for the vampire, but he comes in behind them instead. They shoot a great big hole right through him but it instantly heals. He grabs the shotgun and bends it like a toy. This is one powerful vampire!
Catalano does whole “Get back!” Spiel, but Nosferatu just makes the cross burn. Helietta offers herself to him willingly, but the strange sister, Maria, follows them up into the church tower and jumps to her death. Except Nosferatu flies by and grabs her before she hits the ground.
Catalano, Alvise, and Barneval figure out that he’s probably hiding in the old plague cemetery. Alvise yells at Catalano, who gives up hope and kills himself.
Nosferatu says only Maia can help him attain death, which is what he really wants. She wants to help him get that too, because she loves him. We were told that true, innocent love can cause his immortality to end.
Barneval and his friends come to the island where Nosferatu lives. They have shotgun shells filled with mercury this time. They find three coffins: one for the gypsy girl, one for Helietta, and one for Nosferatu himself. They stake him, and he turns into Una, who was disguised with magic. The real Nosferatu is off having sex with Maria.
The men break in shoot them both, but neither dies right away. Barneval runs into Helietta, who is really Nosferatu in disguise. He’s killed messily. Maria wants Nosferatu to turn her into a being like him, but he doesn’t want to do that to her because he loves her as well. They walk off into the fog together. What will happen?
Commentary
Who knew Venice was so foggy? This is one of those vampire movies that takes place entirely at night, but all the outdoor scenes look like they were hot in bright daylight with a hazy filter. It makes following the passage of time difficult.
There probably should have been some indication that the vampire after being locked in a box for 200 years would have a little trouble adapting to 1988 Italy. They have electricity, motorboats, recorded music, and lots of other things he had never experienced. He doesn’t show any confusion or curiosity at all.
It’s much less tedious than the first film. It still has some excellent locations and sets, but it doesn’t dwell on them for ridiculous lengths of time. It adds some fun things to vampire lore: he only sleeps 24 hours every 24 days. He can only really be killed with mercury. He can be seen in a mirror if he wants to work at it. Even his ability to withstand the daylight comes into question.
Still, it’s a bit long, and the music is very dated. I definitely liked it better than the first one, which tried to be weird for the sake of being weird. This one at least had a good story behind it.