Blood of Dracula's Castle

BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE opens with a woman being abducted by Mango the monster-man (Ray Young) while the world's grooviest theme song plays (Next Train Out- yeah!).

Next, we're off to Sea World for a photoshoot featuring a beautiful model with the universe's most incredible beehive hairdo, ever! Ever!

We're eventually introduced to Count and Countess Townsend (the inimitable Alex D'Arcy and Paula Raymond). Their decrepit butler is played by the one and only John Carradine. In order to keep their blood supply flowing in the castle, the Townsends have a dungeon full of tender, young lasses.

By now we should be catching on that this is indeed another opus from Director Al Adamson.

Enter Johnny, an escaped convict with a love for all things homicide. Need proof? Well, within minutes he kills a bikini-clad sunbather. He then kills a motorist, steals his car, and mows down a hitchhiker for good measure. All, while ultra-dramatic music blares.

By the time Johnny arrives at the castle it seems like this is going to be an action-packed, insanely entertaining movie. We almost forget who created it.

Then, all action simply dies. The non-plot implodes, leaving the nonsensical remains to plod on to the end. At this point, many viewers have been rumored to have removed their own brains with salad tongs!

Meister Adamson has once again concocted a magnificently screwy, senseless, idiot masterwork of dunderheaded filmmaking!

Hallelujah!...

Anyone looking for a fittingly horrendous Al Adamson film, look no further. While this film is not the usual paste-up job that Adamson specialized in, BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE is pure bad cinema, which is Adamson's true field.

D'Arcy and Raymond play Mr. and Mrs. Dracula, looking stiff and embarrassed (who can blame them?) The Draculas feed on the blood of the young women they have chained in their dungeon (including Adamson regular Vicki Volante). Carradine plays the Dracula's butler, a wasted opportunity for this horror screen legend to do his Dracula bit (get the pun?) A psycho shows up at the castle, and a stupid couple stay there.

BLOOD is boring, with only a few laughs produced from the bad acting and flimsy-looking props. Adamson made more hilarious films than this (like DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN), and it was unintentional (of course). Adamson, however, deserves the credit to having gotten anything on film for the tight budgets he was given.

Still, BLOOD is bad, and more mediocre than entertaining.

Like many of the movies I've been writing reviews for, Blood of Dracula's Castle is part of a twelve movie boxed set from Mill Creek, a company that deals in very cheap (and sometimes public domain) films. The transfer isn't great. In fact, when I first started watching this, the screen was so completely covered with green lines (from wear) that it reminded me of The Matrix. Personally, though, I believe this adds to the aesthetic of the movie; something about the apparent age of the film makes it that much more enjoyable to watch.

In some ways, this movie reminds me a bit of a 60's version of The Addams Family, as it features a sophisticated, middle-aged couple that lives in a rented castle and are quite open about their vampirism (or their being "the living dead," to be grammatically correct). In addition to a standard manservant (George, played by the great John Carradine), they also keep around an orange-skinned feral guy named Mango around, who roams the surrounding wilderness, hunting and capturing the bikini-clad young women who, for some reason, seem to be in abundant supply in this area. The young hotties are collected and contained in a dungeon, where they are harvested for their blood. Occasionally the charming vampire couple also let Mango have one of the babes for his own purposes, which are thankfully never shown or fully described. They also have a younger friend, Johnny, who is an open and quite charming serial killer who goes nuts when the moon is full.

Enter into the picture a young couple, the incredibly condescending Glen and his fiancé Liz. They enter the scene because Glen has inherited the castle from some relative, and the two stumble around in a manner not unlike Scooby-Doo and the gang, slowly discovering the danger that surrounds them. It's actually very cute, in a campy sort of way. The dialog between the spooky castle residents and the innocent young couple is so corny, it could have been penned by Ed Wood himself.

Okay, so the whole premise of this flick doesn't make a lick of sense. And the print the DVD was made from is terrible. And the crazy man-beast that everyone keeps talking about is named after a tropical fruit which does, of course, prevent him from ever being taken as a serious threat to anyone. It doesn't matter. What matters is this is good, cheesy fun for the whole family, if your whole family is plenty drunk.

This movie opens with a woman (Vicki Volante, a Joan Baez lookalike) driving along listening to her car radio. The song, "The Next Train Out" is so catchy I went around singing it for days after I had first seen this movie. Amazingly John Carradine does not play Count Dracula, even though he had recently done the role in "One Shot" Beaudine's BILLY THE KID VS. Dracula in 1966; he is George the family butler. Dracula is played by Egyptian actor Alex D'Arcy whom you can also see in HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND and FANNY HILL. Countess Dracula is Paula Raymond who costarred in BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and the newly rediscovered HAND OF DEATH. It seems everyone has relationship problems eventually and after 400+ years Dracula has been reduced to the henpecked husband of a domineering wife! (Hmmmm, maybe that is why John did not want to play The Count this time.)

Hiding behind the names Count and Countess Townsend the vampires live in a castle in the Arizona desert. Victims (all of them female of course) are brought to them by their cretinous henchman Mango (just where do movie villains go to finds all these hunchbacked lumbering brutes that scary movies seem to abound in?) and drained of their blood by George. They drink blood from martini glasses and wonder if they will ever be accepted in polite society. The Draculas have also got religion in this film. Thanks to George they are devoted worshipers of the Great God Luna and occasionally burn a victim alive at the stake as a sacrifice to him(her? it?).

When the new owner of the castle (Gene O'Shane) turns up with his fiancée (Barbara Bishop) the Unholy Three (I'm not counting Mango among the conspirators) try to get him to sell the castle. When he refuses all Heck breaks loose . . . well, as much as director Al Adamson's budget will allow!

Watch for Robert Dix, son of silent film leading man Richard Dix, playing family friend Johnny. He is usually a likable guy but when the moon turns full he becomes a psycho killer. TV prints splice in a quick shot of some guy wearing a Don Post werewolf mask in an attempt to make the plot more interesting but theatrical prints do not have this embelishment. Robert also appears in FORBIDDEN PLANET and FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER.

63 year old John Carradine looks younger than his years with his hair dyed black once again. He even does his own stunts for his death scene. Speaking of death scenes, Mango (Ray Young) goes through enough to kill 10 men; shot, hit with an axe and set on fire he just keeps coming back! Whew!

Is this film a classic? Gosh no! But it IS a lot of fun! Just seeing Long John stomping around a dusty old castle like it was still the 1940's at Universal makes it worthwhile. Besides, you just might find yourself singing along with "The Next Train Out" after more than one viewing.

Okay I'm going to say something that I can rarely said to have ever willingly said, this is a watchable Al Adamson movie. Adamson was a bad filmmaker from the late 1960's and early 1970's who churned out a great deal of really bad, and not in a fun sort of way, films. A good many of them had John Carradine, which is apropos of nothing but its just the way things are. Most are so bad you'd want to pluck your eyes out rather than watch them. A few a precious few are awful but watchable in that bad but good way. This is one of those bad but good sort of films. Actually its bad but watchable which is a different kettle of fish. I don't know why this film kind of works in a 3am late late show way but it does. The plot has a couple inheriting a castle from a 108 year old uncle. The castle was and is being rented by a nice old couple who are really Dracula and his bride. Carradine is the butler who along with a 7 foot tall hunchback keep women chained in the basement for the vampires blood needs. Just as the couple decide to go to the castle to pitch the tenants Dracula has their werewolf buddy sprung from an insane asylum so that he can get them better blood. Jaw dropping silliness ensues. I think this film works on any level because I think its suppose to be funny. I don't think the humor works as intended but it does give this mess watchable quality, especially if you're into movies that are so bad they are good