El vampiro negro [The Black Vampire] (1953)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) Now here’s a curiosity: El vampiro negro is a remake of the classic M in a 1950s Argentinian setting, expanding the cast to include female characters and adopting the fully formed film noir aesthetics of the time. While this interpretation doesn’t have the historical impact of the German original, it’s better-crafted in many, many ways, keeping some of the most striking material such as the musical leitmotif. Many of the more disquieting elements of the original are sanded in more familiar mainstream elements, providing some empathy with the serial killer and pitting a traditional pair of protagonists (one of them a nightclub singer, so that we can have a musical number) rather than digging into the grey underworld of shaded characters like Fritz Lang did. Visually, at least, writer-director Román Viñoly Barreto’s film clearly bridges the expressionism of the original with the film noir style in vogue in the US and in Argentina at the time—for a very satisfying result that reflects the darkness at the heart of the story. The conclusion works rather well in its own way. While it’s not to El vampiro negro’s advantage to be compared to M, it’s well worth some respect of its own as a strong straight-ahead thriller.