Vamping In A Minor Key

The title vampire of The Vampire’s Ghost is not your expected sanguinic movie predator. No tux, no tails, no slicked-down hair or Mittel-European drawl. Instead, as played by John Abbott, he’s restrained, well-mannered, very proper British; and, despite managing a grubby gin-and-gambling joint in a small African village, whose habitués haven’t come to terms with soap and water, he’s always impeccably dressed in a perfectly white suit and a perfectly knotted tie. In looks and screen presence, Abbott significantly lacks the suave, menacing sex appeal of Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee (The New York Times described him as “an unprepossessing sort”). Instead, with his heavy-lidded, melancholy eyes, his thin, ironic face and sad, quizzical smile, and a soft, clipped voice that never changes tone, he’s like a low-key version of Noël Coward—if Coward had ever run a dingy dive in a foreign land (not that that’s likely) while dipping into an unsuspecting neck vein now and then. All that’s…