Curse of the Undead (1959)

Director: Edward Dein

Writers: Edward Dein, Mildred Dein

Composer:Irving Gertz

Starring: Eric Fleming, Michael Pate, Kathleen Crowley, John Hoyt, Bruce Gordon, Edward Binns, Jimmy Murphy, Helen Kleeb, Jay Adler, Eddie Parker, John Truax, Frankie Van, Rush Williams

More info: IMDb

Tagline: His body is an empty shell that hides a lustful fiend!

Plot: The cinema's first vampire Western! Young women in a small Western town are dying one by one of an unknown malady involving massive blood loss. The Carter family's ranch is being terrorized by ruthless land baron Buffer. And a mysterious black-clad gunfighter with an aversion to sunlight has just arrived in town.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? Probably not until I exhaust every other cowboy vampire movie out there.

I'm a sucker for a horror or sci-fi flick that's also a Western.  Gimme, gimme, gimme. This claims to be the first vampire western and it just might be.  It's too bad the vampire is the least charismatic six iron in the holster.  It's a pretty standard, by the numbers Western but with the added twist of featuring a vampire as the bad guy. Everyone but Drake (Pate), the vampire, is delivering the kind of B-Western performance you'd expect.  But Pate is just...well, strange.  However, by the end of the picture I was kind of getting used to it.  Maybe a second watch would fix that but there are far too many movies to watch before I ever get the hankerin' to see this one again.  Still, it's worth your time but don't expect a whole lot.