The late Leon Klimovsky, director of such 'classics' as the Paul Naschy vehicle Werewolf Shadow and Dr. Jekyll Vs. The Werewolf pumped out this tale of the undead back in 1972 during his most prolific period.

The story revolves around a busload of people who are heading off to a remote village to work in various positions. Their bus breaks down when their driver drops dead at the wheel and they're forced to stop for the night at a small town they find along the way. When they arrive, the village is empty, though obviously inhabited. They put themselves up at the local inn and that morning they meet a few of the townspeople.

When they try and start the bus in the morning, it turns out that it won't start, so at the insistence of 'the countess' they stay another night, hoping to enjoy the hospitality of the townspeople, but instead, they find out the hard way about the secret that the town holds, and one by one, many of them start to go missing.

And what exactly could that ghastly secret be, I hear you ask aloud? Well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but read the title of the movie and it kind of gives itself away. That doesn't stop the movie from being enjoyable though. Sure, we've seen a lot of this before and since this movie was made (at times the film reminded me of Jean Rollin's 1978 film, The Grapes Of Death), especially those of us who groove on 70s Euro-Vampire films. But Klimovsky still pulls it off with no small amount of flair. The sets are nice, the women are nicer, and plenty of slick shot setups and nice camera moves keep the movie looking good, even if we ultimately know where it's going to end up as we get closer to the end.

Sinema Diable's DVD is the clothed version of the film, which has been released on other 'public domain' labels (most of these were, I believe, pan and scan releases, some may have been edited as well) but aside from the missing alternate nude footage, the film is, as far as I can tell, uncut and appears to be the Spanish version of the film if the titles are anything to judge by.

Video:

The film is presented letterboxed at 2.35.1 but isn't enhanced for anamorphic sets. The colors are pretty dull and there are some ugly pixelization things going on in a few of the darker scenes but as far as print damage and grain go, the movie doesn't look that bad. It's quite watchable and so far seems to be the best looking version of the film released to the North American market so far and is much better than the fullframe presentations put out by other labels.