Alternate Version
Retitled Kiss of Evil for American TV, Universal trimmed the original film for its initial television screening so much that more footage had to be shot to pad out the missing time. Additional characters - that didn't appear at all in the original release - were added, creating a whole new subplot. Every scene that showed blood was edited out, e.g. the cinema release's pre-credits scene in which blood gushes from the coffin of Zimmer's daughter after he plunges a shovel into it. Also, in the televised version we never do find out what Marianne sees behind the curtain, a sight which makes her scream. A couple of the cuts result in scenes that don't make sense any more: while the theatrical release had Harcourt, when he frees his hands after being clawed by Tanya, smearing the blood on his chest into a cross-shaped pattern, keeping the vampires away as he escapes, the televised version omits the blood-smearing, leaving the vampires' inaction unexplained.
The abbreviated running time was made up for by the addition of scenes of a family who argue about the influence of the vampiric Ravna clan, but never interact with anybody else in the movie. The teenage daughter throws over her boyfriend in favor of Carl Ravna (unseen in these scenes) who has given her a music box which plays the same hypnotic tune that he plays on the piano elsewhere in the movie. The middle-aged parents are played by Carl Esmond and Virginia Gregg (who gained fame by voicing Mother in three of the Psycho films), while their teenage daughter is played by Sheila Welles.
Read more about this topic: The Kiss Of The Vampire
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