Killer Barbys vs. Dracula

In a Wild West park in southern Spain, a rock band called KILLER BARBIES is playing a bunch of shows. Many strange characters hang around, including a guy who claims to be Count Dracula. Then, a government official from Transylvania arrives - and in the back of her car is the glass coffin with the real Dracula. He is meant to be become a tourist attraction, but soon is back from the dead after listening to the Killer Barbies' tune `Wake Up'. He gets obsessed with Silvia, the singer of the Killer Barbies. Lots of necks and bites later, the vampire hunter Dr Seward comes into town to fight the evil undead. Unfortunately, Seward is blind and the villagers doubt that he is able to stop Dracula. But if he can't, who else could?

Well, you knew from the title it wouldn't be Shakespeare! But the movie has got a legendary director (Jess Franco) and three excellent veteran actors from the late 60s spaghetti westerns (Aldo Sambrell, Peter Martell and Dan van Husen) who raise the whole undertaking above the level of a normal rock band trash video. I must confess I am not a big fan of the kind of music that the Killer Barbies play. It sounds rather like tame pop than aggressive punk to me, but I still could sit the movie through without being bored for a minute. Silvia's skull bikini helped, too. The best fun moment was when one victim asked the vampire with her last breath: `Why are you such a bastard?', and Dracula replies: `I had an awful childhood!'

Just like in his 70s vampire movies like `Vampyros Lesbos', Franco is not afraid of showing a vampire with a mirror image, or letting him walk in the sunshine. Surprisingly for a Spanish director, his idea of a vampire was hardly influenced by the typical Catholic iconography. Franco's vampires are described as outsiders neither bound by a particular morality code nor weaknesses such as fearing the sign of the cross. This horror comedy works by the same rules as Franco's serious movies here, but unfortunately, the visual style doesn't come anywhere near. Especially towards the end, cheap video effects like the so-called solarisation don't really serve a purpose. The speed of the finale made me aware that the movie also had a couple of pacing problems in the middle, probably because Franco never was a comedian in the first place. Voting more than 5/10 would seem unfair to Franco's masterpieces such as `Virgin Among the Living Dead' therefore - although `Killer Barbys vs Dracula' is quite some fun!

It's ironic a director like Jess Franco who has been making films for more than forty years now has been reduced to the kind of ultra-low-budget, shot-on-video projects like this usually associated with first-time amateurs. It's also ironic that the guy that once helmed what was supposed to be the definitive version of Bram Stokers "Dracula" with Christopher Lee (although many of Lee's Hammer Dracula movies were vastly superior to Franco's 1969 version) would make something like this that is laughably bad even for a spoof.

For no apparent reason, a woman (Lina Romay) has brought Dracula's coffin to a Spanish western theme park where the Killer Barbys (a punk band that kind of resembles an Iberian version of The Cramps) are performing. "Dracula" awakens and puts the bite on the park's fake Dracula and a pesky reporter (Katja Beinert) before becoming infatuated with the Barby's lead singer, Sylvia Superstar (can't really blame him there). This is actually a better vehicle for the Barbys than their first collaboration with Franco. They get to play a lot more of their music, which may not be to everyone's taste, but is FAR better than their acting. And Sylvia Superstar certainly adds a lot of sex appeal with her husky Spanish accent and her ridiculously skimpy wardrobe. This is good because otherwise there is a real lack of anything resembling sex or nudity --and a Franco film without sex and nudity is like a tall glass of water without the water.

Lina Romay, Franco's wife and long-time collaborator, actually keeps her clothes on for a change, which is probably for the best as she was pushing fifty here. It's interesting to see Katja Beinert, who was kind of the German version of Traci Lords in the early 80's, except that instead of appearing in actually pornography, she only appeared in several sleazy Franco "nudie" movies and a couple German "schoolgirl report" films. Like Traci Lords, Beinert apparently STOPPED doing nude scenes when she turned 18, but the bigger problem in this movie perhaps is her ridiculous reporter character who interviews everybody (the fake Dracula, the real Dracula, etc) EXCEPT the Killer Barbys. This might be because her scenes seem to have been shot almost completely separately from everybody else's. The same is true of the great Spaghetti western character actor Aldo Sambrelli who is totally wasted here as an elderly suitor of Silvia Superstar (trust me, she would probably kill the old guy in thirty seconds if he actually got her into bed).

This movie definitely has an interesting cast, but otherwise it is strictly amateur hour for Franco.

Killer Barbys vs. Dracula (2002)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Jess Franco's follow up to his 1996 film Killer Barbys features the rock group accidentally bringing Count Dracula back to life. The first film was decent, comic book style fun but this one here doesn't quite reach that level. Franco is basically making a music video for the rock group who I've heard is quite popular in Spain but their alternate/punk rock just doesn't cut it for me. Franco was clearly going for an Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein type feel but only a few gags work. There's some funny dialogue including one scene where a reporter asks Dracula if he's ever infected Aids and another where one woman, before dying, asks Dracula why he's a mean bastard and he replies that he had a bad childhood.

Six years after the mess that was Vampire Killer Barbys (1996) Jess Franco returns. Perhaps someone made a bet with him that he couldn't make a worse film than that!? Franco furthers the blotch on his legendary record with one of the worst films I've seen in a good decade. It's hard to believe he had anything to do with this.

The previous movie was bad but it followed your general formula and was at least watchable. Here there is barely a plot, the movie is full of random events, random sound effects and random coloured filters which make the whole thing even worse.

Silvia Superstar at least returns but oddly playing a different character, which is just yet another weird decision that makes this film so insanely bad.

I'm sure you could make some great drinking games out of this movie, but for entertainment you shall find none.

The Good:

Silvia Superstar is great

The Bad:

Awful cast/character decisions

SFX are awful

Dracula is embarrassing

Dreadful cinematography

Bizarre sound work

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The Killer Barbys are a real band and this was the absolute worst way to showcase them

If you played a drinking game where you take a shot every time something makes no sense, every time there is a sound effect or light filter that doesn't fit the film..............you'd be dead within moments of the opening credits.

I have hardly ever seen a movie of such low quality. It's nice to see actors like Peter Martell making movies again, but this movie unfortunately seems not to have had a script or an original idea. Not to talk about the camera work (probably a first time operator, at least I hope so), although the "day for night" they invented for this movie is shockingly interesting (I understood this only after the first half of the movie and when I mentioned it to the others watching the movie I could see that no one had understood the purpose of this strange color effects before). The film looks like high school kids tried to make something funny and transgressive, but did not dare to really do so. I must see some of Jess Francos older movies because he must have made something better before otherwise he could not be working anymore.