Short Film: Ashes of Doom

I nearly ran this under the title of “Commercial Vampire” as it is a commercial – or at least a public information film disguised as a commercial, disguised as a film and created for the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare in 1970 by Grant Munro.

Roughly the first minute is taken up with credits (hence saying this is disguised as a film, before we get into the action. The action itself is a woman (Nadia Salnick) chain smoking and lighting her cigarettes from every available means. Eventually, she is on her bed, smoking a cigarette, as midnight chimes.

Cigarettes, a new apotropaic

At the French window is a vampire (Grant Munro) in the classic Lugosi-mould. He enters, glides to the bed and descends upon the woman (who passed out at the sight of him but still has a cigarette in her mouth). After a chomp on her throat he stands and then clutches himself as he exhales smoke and (we assume) expires.

Short, sweet and to the point. This has an imdb page here and you can see the short for yourself below.