The Vampire (1957)

After a small town doctor (John Beal) accidentally takes an experimental bat serum pill, he finds himself addicted to the pills but worse than that, he has blackouts and when people suddenly start dying with two small marks on their throat, he suspects he might be their killer. Directed by Paul Landres (THE RETURN OF DRACULA), this low budget horror film takes a more contemporary and different angle on vampires. The movie eschews the trappings of the genre and has no sleeping in coffins, stakes through the heart, fear of crosses or daylight, etc. It's a pity that it isn't better written because the film seems poised to move in a more complex direction  (like using vampirism as a metaphor for drug addiction) but it doesn't, it just dances around it. The acting is mediocre though I can't fault the actors as I suspect they didn't get much help from director Landres. Still, it's an interesting entry in the horror canon of the 1950s. There's a nice underscore by Gerald Fried even if it sounds remarkably similar to his score to Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING. With Coleen Gray, Kenneth Tobey, Dabbs Greer, James Griffith and Lydia Reed.