Dracula vs. Frankenstein

You have to give credit to producer-director Al Adamson he has a rare talent for getting well-known actors to star in his atrocious movies. This film (and several other Adamson projects) was put together slowly over a period of years. What Adamson ended up with was a film that features J. Carrol Naish (in his last role) as Dr. Frankenstein, living under an alias while he manages an amusement park (!), Lon Chaney, Jr. (in his last role) is Frankenstein's moron assistant who obediently fetches the heads of young girls. Russ Tamblyn ("West Side Story", "tom thumb") plays an aging biker. Even Jim Davis (Jock Ewing from "Dallas") has a part in this disaster. And Forest J. Ackerman (editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland) is one of the monster's victims, along with Anthony Eisley ("The Navy versus the Night Monster").

Adamson also manages to insult several famous props from classic films; some of the lab equipment he used is from "The Bride of Frankenstein". Adamson's busty blond wife (Regina Carrol) is bitten by Dracula (played by an actor named Zandor Vorkov, who looks like Frank Zappa in "Kiss" makeup). Frankenstein also has a dwarf assistant, played by Angelo Rossitto, who starred in the bizarre 1932 film "Freaks". All in all, a remarkable film from the man who gave the world "Blood of Ghastly Horror".

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!

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!

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..

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.