Drácula vs. Frankenstein

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 ****

Each artist has his defining moment. With Picasso, it was "Guernica". Orson Welles had "Citizen Kane".And Al Adamson's is surely "Dracula vs Frankenstein". It is the quintessential example of his style,the ultimate Adamson flick. Sure,"Satan's Sadists" was great and "Horror of the Blood Monsters" had its moments, but nothing combined so many aspects of the master's approach. Cheesy monsters, sleazy bikers, awful music, Regina Carrol, Lon Chaney, Jr.,a cameo by Forrest J. Ackerman, the original lab equipment from 1931's "Frankenstein",a wigged-out LSD trip and even a breezy Las Vegas musical number...in what other film do such iconic elements combine? Truly, "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" is a towering achievement of drive-in cinema.

Al's works are starting to be appreciated much as Ed Wood's are. And why not? Entertainment is the name of the game and Al throws everything into this ghouish goulash with maximum gusto. Put your brain beneath the chair, enter the surreal world of "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" and prepare to be blown away!

This film gets a bad rap from a lot of people. That's understandable, because it's a low budget paste-up job, combining previously shot footage from a uncompleted biker film with the monster team-up. But Dracula Vs. Frankenstein is really a lot of fun -- particularly if you first saw it on late night TV when you were 13 or 14!

Forry Ackerman has a cameo in the film as one of Dracula's victims, so the movie got promoted in Famous Monsters magazine, with "Zandor Vorkov" gracing the cover in his dime store fangs. It was (I believe) the final film appearance of J. Carroll Naish and one of Lon Chaney Jr.'s last roles. Ken Strickfadden's Frankenstein lab equipment is used, and the music is well chosen. Parts of the film are quite moody and effective, with highly competent photograghy considering the budget and haste of production.

To compare this little film with the Hammer films is a bit unfair. No, it cannot match them on any level -- nor was it intended to -- this was drive-in fodder without the budget or resources of England's Hammer and its American partners and distributors. It's too bad none of the major American studios tried to cash in on the 1960's-70's monster boom. Then there might be some truly interesting American monster films worthy of the comparison.

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!

Ah! The 70's was a great time to be growing up a monster fan. Television stations that had little money would show cheap horror movies again and again. Now and then a few of the horror hosts would be around, or horror related shows like Chiller Theatre with its leprous fingers shooting out of the ground and greedily grasping the letters spelling the show's name. Good Times! I, like many of the reviewers here, saw Dracula Vs. Frankenstein at least a few times. There were scenes etched in my mind, most notably the pier and J. Carrol Naish in a wheelchair barking out orders to a grunting, balloon-faced Lon Chaney Jr. I didn't really remember much about the monster, or for that part Dracula, but I gave that up to youth and decided to watch this "classic" of Al Adamson's. Now, I have seen Adamson's work before and knew what to expect. I saw his Blood on Dracula's Castle and Nurse Sherri. They were both real cheap movies but I liked them a lot. So I figured same for this, especially since this one was a part of my cinematic past. Wow! Was I wrong!(guess you knew this was coming!) Dracula was not the only thing that sucked in this picture! This film is a tangled mass(mess) of various plot strands, corny dialogue, bad, bad, bad acting, cheap, cheap, cheap sets and props, worthless cameos by what would have been a great cast twenty years prior to its production, and a pretty feeble direction even by Al Adamson standards(We're talking LOW!) J. Carrol Naish(Yes, the great hunchback from House of Frankenstein) was in a wheelchair(this was his as well as Chaney's last film) playing a Dr. Durea(AKA Dr. Frankenstein) who runs a freak show on the pier in a carnival in California. Almost everything he says is preposterous, idiotic, and totally wooden. His performance is SO wooden, it is as if he were practicing for his casket. Chaney is almost as bad. He look terrible, and its not from make-up. He plays a mute that mumbles and breathes hard named Groton, who likes to cut the heads off of nubile young women with an ax and pet little puppies(an obvious homage/reminder of his performance as Lenny in Of Mice and Men). But wait! We have more has-beens to come. We have Russ Tamblyn as a biker and Jim Davis(with some of the worst one-liners in film) as a policeman. And of course we have Adamson's muse and love interest and wife Regina Carrol(looking as beautiful as ever) as a sister of one of the missing girls. Ms. Carrol actually gives the best performance of the film, except when she sings some interminable Las Vegas show number. Well it seems I have covered everything...wait, what about the two great monsters...the film is about them isn't it? I'm not really sure that is the case, but they are in the film in all their lack of glory. Dracula looks like he just got through teaching the sweathogs on Welcome Back Kotter, and Frankenstein's monster...well, he has definitely seen better days...and better movies. For me, aside from walking down memory lane and being reminded how bad film-making can be, the one real bright spot was seeing Forrest Ackerman in his cameo. He once told me how he did this film as a favor for Al, and how he broke his glasses during the shoot and was not paid for either the cameo or the glasses. Good times!