Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s
Character has generally been replaced by gore or slaughter in the modern horror film. Ever since Hammer ruled the roost, blood-letting has assumed greater and greater significance, and ever since The Exorcist (1973) the genre has traded on shock values. Current box office sensation Sinners (2025) has gone some of the way to re-aligning the balance with its emphasis on character and thematic symmetry.
So it’s somewhat reassuring to discover that prior to those developments there could be an absolute chiller of a tale where nonetheless character, and not just for the two principals, was all. I should tell you right away that there is a vampiric element in the drawing of blood but that is carried out in the more refined scientific manner of medical blood transfusion…