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Universal Pictures released more than its share of sci-fi/horror pictures in the 1950s -- indeed, they were the studio's bread-and-butter, and achieved a certain notable level of quality, mostly through the skills of their directors, helped by an occasional nifty idea (i.e. The Monolith Monsters). But Curse Of The Undead is easily the strangest of the studio's entire cycle, a genre-bending opus mixing vampires and the Old West, in what was almost certainly a first for movies. The direction by Edward Dein (a PRC alumnus best known for his 1940s Universal programmers and the Cold War spy thriller Shack Out On 101), is dark and brooding, and fills the movie with a tone of menace that overcomes its obvious low budget. He manages to balance the seemingly disparate genre elements with a lot of help from a screenplay co-authored with his wife, which provides a suitably western-friendly explanation for the existence of the undead Drake Robey (Michael Pate), and a reason for the fact that this vampire can walk around in daylight. Eric Fleming is a bit stiff at times in the role of the minister who confronts the mysterious Robey, but even he puts some considerable heart into the role and is finally convincing; and the rest of the cast is okay -- the only problem, of course, is that some of the players subsequently became so well known for their work on television, that it only boosts the somewhat threadbare look of the production, but director Dein keeps matters interesting enough to get past that problem.