The NA38/NA50 experiments have measured, at the CERN SPS, the dimuon produc
tion in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. In this paper it is
shown that the mass continuum between the phi and the J/psi can be satisfac
torily described, after having removed the combinatorial background due to
uncorrelated pi and K decays, as a sum of two contributions, namely the Dre
ll-Yan process and the semi-leptonic decay of pairs of charmed mesons, whos
e mass shape in the acceptance of the experiment has been evaluated using P
YTHIA. However, in order to describe the A-B (namely S-U and Pb-Pb) mass sp
ectra, the dimuon yield from open charm decays, which in p-A collisions is
found to be consistent with direct open charm measurements from other CERN
and FNAL experiments, has to be enhanced with respect to a linear extrapola
tion of p-A results. The size of the enhancement smoothly increases from pe
ripheral S-U to central Pb-Pb interactions, reaching a factor similar to 3
in central Pb-Pb collisions. The pr distributions of the events in the mass
continuum are also compatible with the hypothesis of open charm enhancemen
t in A-B collisions.