The assistant becomes enchanted by the local tavern keeper's daughter, Sarah (Sharon Tate), who is promptly abducted.

Abronsius is old and withering and barely able to survive the cold ride through the wintry forests, while Alfred is bumbling and introverted.

The two stay at a local inn full of angst-ridden townspeople who perform strange rituals to fend off an unseen evil.

While staying at the inn, Alfred develops a fondness for Sarah, the overprotected daughter of the tavern keeper, Yoine Shagal.

In despair and armed only with a bunch of garlic, Shagal sets out to rescue Sarah that night, but in the morning, he is found frozen outside the inn, with fang marks on his wrist, leg and abdomen.

After Shagal, now a vampire, rises and attacks Magda, the tavern's beautiful maidservant and the object of his lust when he was still human, Abronsius and Alfred follow his trail in the snow, which leads them to the Count's ominous castle in the snow-blanketed hills nearby.

Meanwhile, Shagal, no longer caring about his daughter's fate, sets up his plan to turn Magda into his vampire bride.

The next morning, Abronsius plans to find the castle crypt and destroy the Count by staking him in the heart, seemingly forgetting about the fate of Sarah.

Abronsius and Alfred flee from Herbert through a dark stairway to safety, only to be trapped behind a locked door in a turret.

As night falls, they become horrified witnesses as the graves below open up to reveal a huge number of vampires of various past centuries at the castle, who hibernate and meet once a year only to feast upon any captives the Count has provided for them.

The fact that we were filming in Italy entailed the employment of a certain number of Italian technicians and that, in turn bred some international friction.

MGM head editor Margaret Booth and head of theatrical post-production Merle Chamberlain cut 12 minutes' worth of material, and along with adding the animated prologue among other changes, the character of Professor Abronsius was re-dubbed to give him a goofy, cartoony voice that would suit the "kooky" tone of the film.

In the early 1980s, MGM unearthed a print of Roman Polanski's original cut and sent it to various repertory & revival houses for screenings.

Since then, the original version of the film is the one more commonly available today and has been released on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-ray, and occasionally airs on TCM.

The sequence begins on a sunny day when a bird is minding his own business when the sun behind him sinks and the crescent moon rises in its place, starting the night.

He hides behind the tree and tries to scare them again, but the sun replaces the moon, signaling the vampire to run, and Abronsius and Alfred chase him to a coffin.

A region-free Brazilian DVD was issued by Cinemagia that, while using a dated 4:3 letterbox master of the original cut, has the US prologue as a bonus feature.