If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Trying to resolve matters in a land-border dispute, a family's hiring of a strange gunslinger eventually causes them to realize he's the culprit behind a series of ghastly murders around town by draining women of blood and race to stop him before he completes his task.This is an overall curious and quite enjoyable effort. Basically this here turns out to be a cunning combination of Western and vampire horror, but for once the mixture is not a detriment to the other as they usually result in forsaking one part of the story for the other if the two chosen topics really have little in common with each other. Here, we get a typical Western about a ranch family involved in a border dispute with their neighbors who resorts to underhanded tactics to keep his side of the property without repercussions, involved in numerous shady deals with the authorities to keep himself in line and offers up plenty of shoot-outs, beatings and scenes of everyone wandering around on horse- back to fulfill that part of the storyline, and basically turns the script around by having the loner coming in to deal with the situation being a vampire. By still incorporating those tactics, where he resides in coffins, can't stay out in the sunlight for long periods of time and resorts to blood-drinking to carry out his orders all fall in line with known vampire lore, as well as the defense tactics used to stop his rampage that carries out on the outskirts of the story before being brought in by the land dispute where everything finally makes sense. The only real problems here is the last half, where the vampire far more often than necessary taunts the hero with long-winded speeches about humanity and faith of God, which really hurts his effectiveness as a villain since it all comes off so lame and stupid. Overall, though, it more than makes up for that one little flaw.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

Curse of the Undead is another of those movies that I had been after for a long time and have just obtained a copy. I found this quite good.A series of strange deaths in a small town in the West turn out to be the responsibility of a gunslinger. This gunslinger turns out to be a vampire as all his victims, including the Sheriff have bite marks on their necks. The town's preacher manages to bump him off at the end.This movie has an eerie music score which moves it along nicely.The cast includes Eric Fleming (Conquest of Space, Queen of Outer Space), Michael Pate (The Black Castle), Kathleen Crowley (Target Earth) and sci-fi/horror regular John Hoyt (The Lost Continent, Attack of the Puppet People).Curse of the Undead is worth checking out. Excellent.Rating: 3 stars out of 3.

As I sit here, I'm watching this film, Which I recorded off of AMC a few years back. I remember how big western TV series were back in the late 50's "although I was'nt born until 1958" so I saw most in re-runs. This film I feel played well off the popularity of that TV genre. Eric "Gil Favor" Fleming plays well as the Preacher Who goes after the bloodthirsty Vampire, portrayed By Michael Pate...The story seems a lot like any other western, with the exception of the head gunslinger also being the "Undead". As usual Universal Produced a nice little Horror? flick, With a solid cast for "B" fare. I would recommend this for all "Hardcore" horror fans of the 50's genre. As a side note I also remember a couple of episodes Of Rawhide that dealt with Ghost's & the supernatural... makes me wonder if the producers of those episodes had'nt recently viewed "Curse Of The Undead"

I was just a kid when I saw this so, my memory could be shading my judgment. However, after viewing some of the "Highlander" TV series, this western is along the lines of a tale told in flashback about an immortal who lived through the time of the old west. In the case of this film, the immortal happens to be a vampire. What a great gig for a vampire--be THE best gunslinger in the west. Even if you are a slow draw, you can never lose.I also was impressed with the use of a preacher as the protagonist. I remember a very positive portrayal. I haven't too much a memory about the acting, though. A good gage would be to conjure up memories of the lead actor when he played Gil Favor the trail boss on TV's "Rawhide."