There are at least three horror films made in Europe in the early 1960s that are all about the same very specific thing. A mad doctor works on repairing the face of a woman who was disfigured in a car crash and in order to get what he needs to do that he has to kill a bunch of other women. This is just how B-movie science works.
The best of these movies is the gory French film Eyes Without a Face from 1960. Then in 1962, reliably shameless Spanish exploitation-meister Jess Franco ripped it off for The Awful Dr. Orloff.
In between those two movies came this Italian stab at the same story. It’s a slapdash film, but it is notable for throwing a few twists into the formula. In the other movies, the disfigured woman is the scientist’s own daughter; in this one, the woman is a pretty blonde nightclub dancer who wrecked both her car and her face while she was driving distraught after being rejected by the man she loves (because he won’t marry a woman who wiggles her hips at leering men for a living). The scientist takes her in, fixes her up and then falls in love with her, but she’s not in love with him and that means he’s got keep her as his prisoner in his stately manor.
Meanwhile, it turns out that his super-genius skin repair method is only temporary. Her scars that make half her face look like a Margherita pizza keep popping up again and that means that she needs continuous treatment.
And our science whiz has to kill more women to replenish the formula. So, that’s what he does and he does it by turning himself into a monster (imagine a lizard with hair) who hits the streets and goes on a rampage.
I wish this movie was good, but it’s slow, its characters act like idiots (including the scientists; in fact, especially the scientists) and it’s shot with all of the style of a cast and crew who just want to get this over with.
For the US release, I guess nobody could think of a good fitting title so they called it Atom Age Vampire, which is a great title, BUT there are no vampires in this movie unless you REALLY stretch the concept. Meanwhile, Italy seemed to have the same the problem. Their original title was Seddok, l’erede di Satana, which translates to Seddok, the Heir of Satan, which doesn’t quite nail this film, either.
I would like to propose a title: The Stripper, the Monster and the Wasted Ninety Minutes.