One of the Very First Horror Westerns Started Out as a Joke

The big picture

• The concept of the horror western, like the vampire western, brilliantly combines old and new genres, creating a unique aesthetic interplay.
• The Curse of the Undead
  was a joke turned into a successful western horror film, mixing gothic vampire elements with classic western narrative archetypes.
• The film's eerie atmosphere, stark lighting and subtle horror elements offer a new and exciting take on the Wild West in a thoughtful way.

In recent decades, as the mainstream Western has waned in popularity, the genre has become a playground for strange genre fusions and stylistic exercises. In addition to the tinier modifiers you'll hear like spaghetti western, anti-western, neo-western, post-western, or acid-western, you also get broader fusions like sci-fi western or “weird” western. . One of the most enduring of these is Western horror. These films are playful exercises in camp as often as they are genuinely terrifying, and have a unique interplay between their aesthetic influences because of their commonality in depicting the tension between old and new. This interplay is particularly clear in the even more niche subgenre, the western vampire, as it is a combination of two genres that usually focus on outsider narratives, religious iconography, and the anxieties of the present reflected through those of the past.

When you see something as thick and radical as Kathryn Bigelow's Near the dark, it is easy to assume that it was a total departure from tradition. However, the vampire western dates back even to the earliest revisionist westerns Edward Dein1959 film The Curse of the Undead. An 80-minute low-budget B-movie, The Curse of the Undead remixes various gothic vampire tale tropes and small-scale westerns. Despite its modest budget, the film holds up surprisingly well. It has a great pace, avoiding the stagnation that plagues many B-pictures of the era. It moves quickly between scenarios and doesn't save all its punches for last, instead peppering the plot with deaths, tense confrontations, and narrative twists. It uniquely captures its Old West town setting through simple but effective high-contrast lighting, but lets the romantics down when the characters speak through its thin, solid, near-black dialogue. To look The Curse of the Undead, It's easy to see how the western vampire gained enough momentum to become a formidable subgenre in its own right. But perhaps the most surprising thing about the film is that the idea started as a joke between husband and wife.

The idea for “The Curse of the Undead” started as a joke between the writers

The script for The Curse of the Undead was written by director Edward Dein and his wife, Mildred Dean. The idea started as a gag between the two. On the recent DVD/Blu-ray release, film historian Tom Weaver expands on this fund. When Universal, the central studio behind the biggest monster movies of the century, heard the idea and came calling, the joke had to turn into something more. They were able to bring not only a functional narrative arc but a unique and cohesive style to this idea. As a result, this horror western has been able to achieve a real sense of prestige in the decades since, even securing a restoration for Kino Lorber's Blu-ray release.

Far from comic satire, it was initially conceived as, The Curse of the Undead skillfully mixes his influences in narrative and form. In doing so, it creates an effective and prescient recapitulation of the violence at the heart of most Western narratives. The basic premise is simple and well-trodden: a mysterious gunman crosses a small town and gets caught in the middle of a land dispute. On both sides of this feud are familiar archetypes. The invading baron, a ball of slime named Buffer (Bruce Gordon), and his band of thugs have set out to push the townspeople around any time they want if they promise capital gains. Meanwhile, the de facto examples of good townspeople are the local preacher Dan (Eric Fleming), and Dr. Carter (John Hoyt) and his family.

In addition to this classic conflict, the young women have been contracting a mysterious disease, which leaves them dead with two stab wounds to their necks. When the story begins, the town is already falling apart. The doctor disappears one night and, blaming Buffer, his son Tim (Jimmy Murphy) goes out looking for a fight, one he loses along with his life. This leaves the principled young preacher and the doctor's beautiful daughter, Dolores (Kathleen Crowley). The two are romantically linked, but are divided on what to do. Despite Dan's protests, Dolores hires a leather-clad gunman to kill Buffer.

“The Curse of the Undead” approaches Western self-criticism like the revisionist classics

The gunman, a tough assassin named Drake Robey, is played by Michael Pate. While the performances in this are mostly solid, Pate outshines everyone else. He was a veteran of classic Western TV shows and captures the perfect balance between the tortured theatrics of classic vampires and the coolness of the steady hand of world-weary cowboys. His character also offers a compelling twist on the cowboy anti-hero. While the morally gray interloper he pretends to be would normally find redemption by helping the innocent besieged by a greedy and duplicitous land baron, Robey wants nothing more than to prolong the cycles of violence plaguing this town. Not only that, but with him in town, all violence inevitably becomes gendered, as he wades into the chaos to pray for the most vulnerable and ignored people there: women. Robey presents an implicit commentary on Western heroes and, despite the silly premise, The Curse of the Undead it is handled with a level of restraint that allows for a candid critique of the Western genre's historical faith in violence.

The intense lighting gives the film an oppressive atmosphere, as if even the shadows themselves are reaching out to grab the characters. This style, derived directly from the classic images of universal monsters like Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) i James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), complements Robey's predation. In one scene, where he first feeds on Dolors, he moves through a moonlit room with the strange theatricality of Bela Lugosi. This isn't scream-inducing horror, though captures the eerie atmosphere of horror classics. The film also strategically withholds certain information, leaving viewers to connect the dots. When someone goes missing, even though the eyes of the town are on Buffer, we know we have to keep an eye on Robey. This gives the film a sense of mystery and unease. It's not a thrill-a-minute ride, but it takes its horror elements seriously enough to represent the Wild West in a new and exciting way.

Not only does Robey feed on the blood of young women, he thrives on the violence inherent in America's westward expansion and industrialization. As with great Westerns, a conflict of material interests also functions as a conflict of principle. By the end of the story, only Dan knows of Robey's true nature. In a scene shortly before their final showdown, they engage in a heated argument. Dan's faith reflects his ideals of peace and progress, while Robey is a creature of bleak nihilism. The Inevitable End argues that none of their philosophies can be fully sustainable in the course of America's origins. The film ends in victory, in accordance with Western conventions of the time, but it is imbued with the tragedy of a Gothic fable. The Curse of the Undead it is more than an artifact of film history. Deins' film broke a code with this unlikely genre fusion. The Curse of the Undead it may have been the first of its kind, but given its unique atmosphere and approach to genre self-deprecation, there's a reason it wasn't the last.

The Curse of the Undead is available to watch on Tubi.

Look at Tubi