Draculas Bluthochzeit mit Frankenstein

BLOOD SEEKERS was Adamson's unfinished gore epic that was filmed in the late 60s. He decided to shoot framing scenes adding the whole Dracula-Frankenstein angle later on, and the whole package goes as follows...

Mad Dr. Frankenstein (J. Carroll Naish) is busy at work reconstructing dead bodies while retarded manservant Groton (Lon Chaney, Jr.) spends most of the time whimpering and petting a puppy. When the doctor injects Groton with a special serum it transforms him into a lurking, laughing, sweating, beach-bunny-decapitating, axe murderer. The cops are already after them, but even more troubles arise when the echo-voiced Count Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) arrives and blackmails the mad doc into resurrecting the Frankenstein monster and giving him the blood of his victims!

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, a lounge singer (Regina Carroll) performs a lounge act called "She Travels Light." They try to make it look like it's a big production number by filming it in a large auditorium, but we only see an audience of about four people. Miss Carrol gets news of her sister's disappearance and heads off to Venice Beach looking for answers. She goes to a club, is slipped LSD in her coffee, has a substandard 70s trip out scene, then teams up with three hippies (led by Anthony Eisley) to find out what's going on.

Possibly Adamson's most famous film, and even though it's cheap, silly, trashy and completely nonsensical, there's enough going on here (and an interesting enough cast) to qualify it as a must see to die-hard horror fans. The cast is just overloaded with familiar faces! Aside from those already mentioned, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Davis, Forry Ackerman, Angelo Rossitto, Gary Kent and other swell folks appear and future director Greydon Clark (of SATAN'S CHERRLEADERS fame) also has a small role. If none of those names are ringing a bell, then you may not be as amused by what you see here.

Side note--Some nudity and violence seem to have been removed so it could pass with a PG rating.

Director Al Adamson's most popular "masterpiece" is often both revered and reviled, but I'm not ashamed to say that I like it. For fans of the old Universal monster mashes of the 1940s, this film sort of updates the exploits of Count Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster to the "modern" times of the late '60s and early '70s. What's interesting is that it was never intended as such when the movie was first conceived...

Originally begun in 1969, producer Sam Sherman and director Adamson wanted to make a biker flick which would kind of be a semi-sequel to their recent SATAN'S SADISTS hit movie. They started shooting with Russ Tamblyn picked to reprise his role of a motorcycle hoodlum and then added a new plot where a mad doctor would be conducting weird experiments on young girls, having his deformed servant stalk them with an ax, supplying their blood to the doctor. At this point the film was going under a title of THE BLOOD SEEKERS or BLOOD FREAKS, and then later it was decided to consider the crazed scientist to be none other than Dr. Frankenstein, so the tentative title became BLOOD OF FRANKENSTEIN. But still the concept changed, and eventually came to include the marketable characters of Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster - and over a course of three years, footage was added or changed or deleted in order to create what's now known as Dracula VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971). Whew!

In the finished movie, Count Dracula (played by a deliciously incompetent curly-haired & goatee'd stockbroker named Roger Engel, adopting a dopey pseudonym of "Zandor Vorkov") digs up the comatose Frankenstein Monster (7' 4" accountant John Bloom) and makes a deal with the elderly Dr. Frankenstein. The infamous doctor (played by an aged J. Carrol Naish in his last role, who has trouble reading cue cards and whose dentures can be heard clacking away as he delivers idiotic dialog) is operating under the phony moniker of Dr. Duryea, and runs a Creature Emporium Sideshow at a local amusement park. The show merely serves as a front for his gruesome blood experiments which he conducts down in the basement. Duryea frequently injects a serum into an over-sized half-wit named Groton (played by horror veteran Lon Chaney Jr., now sadly bloated and ravaged from years of alcohol abuse) transforming him into a "mad zombie". Growling and prowling under the boardwalk on the beach at night with an ax, Groton decapitates young girls for his master's sinister plans. Regina Carrol (wife of director Adamson) plays an older sister of one of the female victim's, who meets up with over-aged hippie Anthony Eisley to find out what happened to the girl, but gets tangled up in the web of Frankenstein and Dracula. Angelo Rossitto (who co-starred with Bela Lugosi in the '40s) is also on hand as a shady dwarf who takes tickets outside of Dr. Duryea's Creature Emporium. The one casualty of the final film who gets a raw deal is Russ Tamblyn, whose few surviving scenes from the original biker fiasco now seem out of place in a revamped movie about monsters and maniacs.

Okay - technically, this is a "bad" film, there's no way to get around that. But it's also a good deal of fun if you take it in the right spirit. It's colorful, "groovy," and is a final showcase for seasoned horror pros Lon Chaney and J. Carrol Naish, even if they are on their last legs. Despite the fact that Lon could barely talk and therefore remained mute for the movie, much to his credit he is still able to elicit sympathy and pathos in his scenes. For fans of the old monsters, it's a kick to see updated (re: early '70s) manifestations of Dracula and the Monster as they arrive into the 20th century: Dracula not only looks like a mod, he actually speaks in a voice that echos through a loudspeaker (don't ask me why) and shoots death rays from his ring; the murderous monster has a mashed-potato face that looks like it was stung by a horde of a thousand bees, and he even gets to strangle none other than Forrest J. Ackerman, celebrated editor of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine! The final clash of the titans at the end of the film is pretty awesome, considering it was filmed with a practically zero budget and was added as an afterthought. You have to be one of those viewers who "get it" when it comes to appreciating grade-Z, low-level exploitation trash cinema -- but if you do, this is as good as they come and is a cult classic of its type. **1/2 out of ****

For the IMDb I gave this movie a 5 but that reflects how awful it really is. If I were to rate it as a serious horror flick I'd give it a 2 or 1; but as a comedy its an 8 or 9. I've watched this movie countless times with my crapola lovin' friends, and some of the dialogue has become a part of our everday speech, especially the line, from a man who can animate the dead, no less "When a man enters my laboratory, and bears on his hand the unholy seal of Dracula, there can be no scientific answer to anything" (generally followed by one of us shouting "Even simple force-mass equations?" "No, I said anything!") Basically, this movie should be treated like Rocky Horror is now: it should be shown in every late-night movie theater and heckled. Its horribly incompetent; we get to see the spectacle of Lon Chaney Jr. and J. Carrol Nash's last, horrible movie. See crappy bikers and hippies come into conflict! See the worst dialogue delivery ever! The Drac makeup is so bad that his hands and arms are tanned while his face is clown-white! We've dubbed him "Frank Zappula" due to his resemblance to the famous rocker. The Frankenstein figure, Dr. Duray, is dressed like COLONEL SANDERS! For this reason we feel it should be re-titled "Frank Zappula vs. Colonel Frankenstein" and released in every major market. If you have the slightest love for crap cinema,do yourself a big favor and SEE THIS MOVIE!

Dracula wears those plastic vampire teeth throughout this awful film that goes nowhere. There's an angry scientist who runs a carnival spook house (he's really Dr. F), the creature known as Grodin played by Lon Chaney Jr., and sci-fi guru Forrest J. Ackerman makes a cameo as a rival scientist who discredited Dr. Frankenstein! There's hippies and bad acting and a midget! (the same guy who played Master-blaster in Mad Max 3) This film has it all!

In one scene, Dracula (played cunningly by Zandor) appears suddenly in the car of the rival scientist. The man notices that a vampire is in his car and exclaims, in un-enthused B-movie fashion, "Who are you?" Drac responds, "I have been known as the prince of darkness- turn left here." Incredible how bad they can make 'em. See it soon if you love bad movies.

This has to be one of the most misunderstood films ever! It's both extremely funny and brilliantly shot. Ok, so it's not Citizen Kane. It's made by Al Adamson for crying out loud! I have this film on Laserdisc and I consider it to be one of the best of the worst..