"The Severed Head"
Philipe Guérande (Édouard Mathé), a reporter working for the newspaper "The Paris Chronicle" who is investigating a criminal organisation called the Vampires, receives a telegram at work stating that the decapitated body of the national security agent in charge of the Vampire investigations, Inspector Durtal, was found in the swamps near Saint-Clement-Sur-Cher, with the head missing. Being turned down by the local magistrate (Thelès), he spends the night in a nearby castle owned by Dr. Nox (Jean Aymé), an old friend of his father, along with Mrs. Simpson (Rita Herlor), an American multimillionaire who desires the property. After waking up in the night, Philipe finds a note in his pocket saying ‘Give up your search, otherwise bad luck awaits you! – The Vampires’ and a mysterious passage behind a painting in his room. Meanwhile, Mrs. Simpson’s money and jewels are stolen in her sleep by a masked thief, but Philipe is suspected of the crime. Philipe again visits the magistrate, who now believes his case, and they trick Dr. Nox and Mrs. Simpson into waiting in an anteroom. At the castle, Philipe and the magistrate find the head of Inspector Durtal hidden in the passage in Philipe’s room. Back in the anteroom, they find that Mrs. Simpson is dead and that Dr. Nox has vanished. Her pocket contains a note from the Grand Vampire saying that he has murdered the real Dr. Nox and is now assuming his identity.
Read more about this topic: Les Vampires, Plot, Episode 1
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