Customer Reviews

Crypt of the Living Dead

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I must confess that I enjoyed many of these films as guilty pleasures in the 60's, 70's and 80's when going to the movies was a much different experiance than it is today. I saw this as HANNAH, QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES on a double bill with SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES, both starring Andrew Prine and I believe both filmed back to back and in some of the same locations. Neither film is a classic, but neither film is all bad either. There is a nice use of location photography here and some fairly good suspense. The story is good, if the performances leave something to be desired. For fans of 70's schlock who have only been able to see this film in badly worn prints on video, the DVD will be a revelation. A good pick for Halloween party viewing or for curling up on a dark stormy night.

Chris (Andrew Prine) arrives on a bleak, strange little island in order to bury his dead father. Dad died from extremely un-natural causes. A 3-ton stone coffin was dropped on him! Chris must enlist the help of the local fishermen to move the huge thing. His friend Peter (Mark Damon) seems helpful, but is actually the one who killed Chris' father! He's a deciple of the crypt's occupant, a 700 year old vampire named Hannah (queen of the vampires). Meanwhile, Chris has fallen in love w/ Mary (Patty "Stop calling me Barbara Steele" Sheppard), Peter's sister. Oh no! Hannah has awakened from her slumber, and she's awful thirsty! She turns into a wolf and kills a dog to slake her thirst. Hannah spends 99% of the film on her back in the coffin. She never speaks a word of dialogue either! Beautiful but dull, Hannah does finally sink her canines into Peter's throat. The end battle is fairly interesting, consisting of listening to Hannah do a demonic yodeling demonstration after being set on fire. The evil queen then falls off a cliff, winding up surrounded by fishermen. Her final incarnation is hideous and comical at the same time! The "shock" ending is a pretty low-voltage affair. There's also a one-eyed "wild man" (Ihsan Genik) who causes extra mayhem. Watch this with FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD for added bloodsucking cheese...

See reviews for Hanna: Queen of the Vampires. According to IMDB.com, it's the same movie.

Don't be fooled, the VCI release may be longer than the public domain CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD releases, but it by no means uncut.
Every violent sequence has been trimmed to PG levels and the extra blood and gore is intact on the Spanish DVD. About a minute has been cut 3 scenes are affected so while the VCI dvd may be longer, it does not contain the complete film.

A man is drawn to Vampire Island after his father is mysteriously killed on an archaeological dig, where he mistakenly unlocks a 700 year old vampiress from her crypt while trying to solve his father's murder! HANNAH benefits from several atmospheric shots in the high Gothic tradition, including a slew of dark, dank crypts covered in cobwebs and erie graveyard settings draped in fog. It also effectively incorporates cool blue hues and a chilling score set to screeching violins and a primal drum beat that sets the creepy mood for the vampire tale. While it often reflects Mario Bava's masterpiece BLACK SUNDAY, it does its best to differentiate itself through its characters and historical framework. Though many of the effects are rather cheesy by today's standards, they are very ambitious for the time and budget. Hannah is seen transforming into a sickening green mist, then in to a wolf, and then back to human form through a series of lapse dissolves and zooming techniques, which may not be entirely convincing, but does make for a valid effort. Where the film does fall short is in the lengthy exposition which inhibits the forward momentum of the plot, and also in the casting of Hannah herself, who is neither beautiful nor unsettling enough to create a lasting impression on the audience. Julio Salvador and Ray Danton do deliver a fun little vampire tale that is sure to please Gothic Horror fans!

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Hannah does not move more than her eyelids for the first hour. After an hour, she gets out of her coffin and walks around a bit - at times opening her mouth slightly, but never speaking (not one word in the whole movie).

The last 10 minutes were okay, but that is only relative to everything up to that point.

If this is a movie you saw/liked as a kid, it might be worth a view (thus, 2 stars). Otherwise, best to avoid this as it is boring and doesn't have even any b-movie draw.

This is another one of those monster films that you can take or leave. Is it fun enough to have playing in the background, say, as you clean the table or cook? I would never recommend watching this with your full attention, unless you love mindlessly bad monster movies, and there definitely is a place for them in certain consciences. As a kid, I could watch these and believe them totally, get into them like they were high drama. Well, I confess that my taste has changed since then, having watched an uncountable number of them. This one was not one that I saw as a child, so there is no nostalgia connected to it, except for the good guy, who is a b actor who was in a lot of tv and film I saw in the 1960s. Aside from him, there is nothing to distinguish this in my mind whatsoever.

The plot: a guy comes to investigate the death of his father, witnessed at the beginning of the film. I didn't pay attention closely enough to pinpoint the location, but I think it is Turkish islands. An associate is acting weird, which gets him to dig further. As events unfold, he allies himself with the strange villagers and vanquishes the vampire queen. There is a surprise ending, natch, so a sequel may have followed.

Recommended as a waste of time if horror sexy vampires is your bag or for nostalgia.

I managed to fast forward through most of the boring stuff. Didn't see any vampires. Hannah was lying in her crypt most of the movie and where she arose, she was a veiled bore. The rest of the movie was tediously inept even for its time.

Unless you happen to be under the age of ten, this movie is not creepy, scary or any other adjective to describe a movie that is classified as horror. As a movie under the classic genre--by classic I mean the ones that came out before Hollywood decided that horror movies needed blood, guts and gore for a horror movie to be successful. You know the kind that came out in the 1920's to 1930's, were black and white, possibly silent, that kind of thing.
'Crypt Of The Living Dead' was released at the end of this ungorified era. Expecting a movie that was black and white, according to the online synopsis, I was somewhat surprised to find that I was watching a colour movie. The surprise was short lived when I figured out that the "old vampire movie" I was watching came out in the early 1970's.

Anyway, this explorer/scientist is looking around on the island when he happens upon the tomb of Hannah, the bride of King Louis the VII, a king during the time of the Crusades. According to local legend, Louis VII fell in love with Hannah. Not realising that his beloved fiance was a vampire, he (Louis) arranged for a ship to carry her and several of his knights to the Holy Land for the wedding.
The explorer is reading this information on a plaque when a 'priest' comes up behind him and strangles him. He then gestures to a wild-looking man and together they shove the dead guy under the tomb, up to his chin. The priest and the wild man then destroy the legs that are holding up the tomb, which happens to be solid marble. This all happens in the span of the first 10-15 minutes of the movie.

Ok, fast forward probably about a month. The dead guy's son comes to the island to say good bye to his father. He meets this guy Peter and his sister Mary.
A romance between Mary and the son of the dead guy, his name happens to be Chris, soon develops. No surprises there. Any way Chris decides to unseal the tomb so he can move it to retrieve his father's body. Remember, the tomb is solid marble. Hannah comes back to life, kills a couple of people and a blind guy's dog. She kills the dog while in the form of a wolf so she can regain her strength, we find out that Peter was the 'Priest' who killed Chris's father, Chris winds up staking Hannah, after she is reduced to a skeleton by a torch, Peter winds up being staked by one of the islanders, and Hannah winds up not being dead after all, she had put a little girl into a trance earlier in the movie and she apparently turned vampire, only she wasn't a young vampire, she was the 700 year old Hannah in the form of a little girl.