Villain(s)  Vampire

Actor(s):  John Abbott, Charles Gordon, Peggy Stewart, Grant Withers

Brief Description  The Vampire's Ghost (1945) is a 59-minute American horror film directed by Lesley Selander and produced by Republic Pictures. Breaking away from traditional European gothic tropes, this B-movie thriller transport the classic vampire mythos to a sunny, colonial African setting. Notably, it features the very first screenwriting effort of acclaimed science fiction author Leigh Brackett (who later wrote The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, and early drafts of The Empire Strikes Back) alongside co-writer John K. Butler.

Plot:
The story takes place in Bakunda, a small, fictional African port town where a series of mysterious deaths have occurred, each body bearing two distinct puncture wounds on the throat. The local constable suspects native voodoo rituals, but others suspect a more supernatural cause. At the center of the local underworld is Webb Fallon (played by John Abbott), a seemingly ordinary but peculiar man who runs a tawdry waterfront saloon. In reality, Fallon is a 400-year-old vampire who has become deeply weary of his immortal existence. He controls his vampire urges using hypnosis, possesses the ability to walk around in the daytime by wearing dark sunglasses, and cannot find eternal peace.

Fallon becomes infatuated with Julie Vance (Peggy Stewart), a local plantation owner, and begins exerting a sinister psychic influence over her. This creates friction with her fiancé, Roy Hendrick (Charles Gordon). As Fallon's supernatural grip on the town tightens, the local missionary, Father Gilchrist (Grant Withers), realizes the true nature of the evil in Bakunda. Armed with faith and intellect, the priest intervenes to break Fallon's hypnotic hold and defeat the vampire, culminating in a dramatic clash between spiritual faith and the undead. The film replaces gloomy European landscapes with a sun-drenched, tropical African village. Instead of a caped, suave aristocrat, Webb Fallon is a brawling, unpretentious tavern keeper who looks more like an intellectual than a monster.