Dracula contre Frankenstein

I first saw this film on the Elvira mistress of the darkness show (sort of like the Joe Bob Briggs thing on TBS). I was about 5 or 6 when I saw it and like many of the movies I saw on that show, it left a permanent imprint in my brain so I had to buy it and watch it again.

Now that I have seen it again, I must say that it is still a lot of fun despite being a really terrible movie. The reason this one works and plays as a fun/bad movie instead of a bad/bad movie is because of it's pacing. It moves from scene to scene very quickly and most scenes have something funny or exciting going on. It never bores or wears out it's welcome.

The story makes almost no sense. something about a descendent of doctor Frankenstein making a blood serum and killing people but not killing them. I could not decipher it at all. There is also count Dracula running around with the Frankenstein monster and using him as sort of a henchmen. I think this all ties together somewhere but I did not see more than a small connection.

One of the funniest things about this movie is the fact that Dracula looks just like Frank Zappa. Another great thing is the way the Frankenstein monster looks. his head is all misshapen and looks like it is about to explode. You have never seen Dracula or Frankenstein look so wacky and the strangeness of the way they look adds to the films originality.

This movie has lots of hilarious sequences.. lots of hippie subculture stuff and a cool psychedelic nightclub dancing scene. The Violence is pretty tame even for the time (nothing like an H.G. Lewis movie for example) so even those with weak stomachs will not be offended by it. It's a fun goofy movie, but not really shocking at all.

The overall production quality of the movie is a mixed bag. Some of the lighting in is truly unforgivable. There are scenes where it is so dark that you can barley make out any shapes. On the other hand, the direction is pretty competent, at least Adamson never slows the pace down long enough to bore anybody and there is nothing amateurish about the way he handles the scenes. He knows all the tricks to keep the budget down and he uses them liberally while still managing to keep them from being overly noticeable. Adamson was not a master of cinema or anything, but (at least in this movie) he was better than many of his contemporary's working in the same genre (take a look at Ted V. Mickles "The Astro Zombies" for a movie that is truly butchered by it's director)

The acting is also slightly better than some of the acting in other low grade American horror movies from the early seventies and late sixties (and much better than I was led to believe). Adamson has a knack for grabbing professional actors with experience to play some of the roles. The guy that plays Dracula is pretty bad, but when you realize that he was actually the filmmakers stock broker, it makes his performance seem a little better. I was even impressed with the sad final performances of Lon Chaney Junior and J. Carrol Naish. They were obviously not in their prime (and no these are not great performances), but both still carry some screen presence and really add to the movies credibility.

Don't get me wrong, it's a bad movie, probably one of the worst ever, but it has a few good qualities here and there. I would definitely recommend this one to somebody looking for a fun schlocky horror movie with lots of unintentional humor.

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!

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.

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.