DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN (1971) The fight of the century - or is it ?

 

DIRECTED by Al Adamson

SCREENPLAY by William Pugsley & Al Adamson

STARRING  - J. Carrol Naish as Dr. Durea/Frankenstein,  Lon Chaney Jnr as Groton,  Anthony Eisley as Mike Howard,  Zandor Vorkov as Count Dracula,  John Bloom as The Frankenstein Monster,  Regina Carrol as Judith Fontaine,  Russ Tamblyn as Rico, Angelo Rossitto as Grazbo. 

PLOT - In and around the beaches and amusement parks of Venice, California, young girls are going missing, taken by a hulking brute - never to be seen again. One such victim is Joanie Fontaine - taken from the beach in the middle of the night like all the others.

Joanie's sister - Judith Fontaine - frustrated by the ineptitude of the local police in finding her sister, sets out to discover what happened to her sibling. In the process she meets and befriends a local community of beach hippies with whom Joanie had been friendly - including a man named Mike who vows to help Judith in her mission.

They find themselves drawn to the local pier and a mysterious sideshow attraction run by the elderly and infirm Dr Durea. However, there is more to the sinister doctor than meets the eye...

For Dr Durea is the last surviving descendent of the legendary Victor Frankenstein and it is he and his brutish assistant - the hulking man-child known as Groton - who are kidnapping, murdering and experimenting upon the missing girls.

Durea is seeking to create a blood serum that he hopes will not only cure his paralysis but also cure Groton of the degenerative mental condition that afflicts him. However, an even darker power than the cursed Frankenstein lineage itself has got wind of Durea's experiments - the prince of the undead - Count Dracula himself.

Dracula wishes to use Durea's serum on himself believing that it will cure his vulnerability to sunlight, making him invincible and thus able to conquer the world. In return for Durea's help, Dracula promises to help revive the original Frankenstein Monster whose corpse he has uncovered from the local cemetery. Durea agrees and thus a partnership made in hell is born.

Soon, The Frankenstein Monster is stalking the night-time streets of California and Judith and Mike are drawn ever closer towards the conspiracy of darkness. Will they survive this brush with the Undead or are they doomed to become yet more victims of the insane doctor and the deadly vampire count ?

DIALOUGE - Dracula - "And all those who would meddle in the destinies of Frankenstein and Dracula will see an infernal bloodbath the likes of which has not swept the Earth before !!!"

Tagline - "ITS A REAL MONSTER MASH WHEN THEY CLASH !"

PERFORMANCES - This movie sees the final performances of two classic horror icons from the old days of Universal Pictures - namely J. Carrol Naish and Lon Chaney Jnr. In its way, its sad to see these two legends both in poor health, clearly on thier last legs and fallen upon hard times, forced to appear in a Z grade exploitation picture. Yet, even the once mighty must fall and there does seem to be a precedent for this kind of thing with ageing horror actors - ie Bela Lugosi's final appearance in Ed Woods "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

Naish puts in a classically hammy performance as Dr Durea - a typical mad scientist - always solliquising about the purity of his creations and the dubious morals he employs to fulfill his aims. His own real life infirmities don't really hold him back as he's playing a crippled character anyway, 90 percent of his performance comes from his voice and the ranting dialogue he spouts to others.

Chaney doesn't really get to do a lot sadly, his character is a mute therefore he has no dialogue to speak, instead he shambles around gurning and growling, murdering the occasional girl and being a fairly typical henchman. Chaney does get to show a more tender side to his character at one point when he pets a small puppy - these scenes at least allow him to imbue the character with pathos. All in all its not a great end to the career of the man who once played The Wolfman, Dracula, The Mummy and The Frankenstein Monster. Compared to them poor old Groton is a mere footnote, still, its nice to see him for one last time.

From two of the legends of horror cinema to one of the nadirs. Zandor Vorkov is quite possibly THE worst actor ever to portray Count Dracula. Sporting a 70's afro hairstyle and goete beard he looks completely wrong for a start - he's supposed to be the Prince of Darkness for crying out loud, not some 70's hipster who's trying his best to look a bit like Frank Zappa. Coupled with an absolutely terrible make-up job - It honestly looks like he's gone to a child's birthday party and asked the hired face painter to make him look like a "scary skeleton" and further hamperd with those cheap plastic fangs that you get in kids monster make-up kits - you can just tell this version of Dracula is on a hiding to nothing, this man is no Christopher Lee that's for sure. The only piece of authenticity he has is that Vorkov is wearing one of Bela Lugosi's original Dracula capes and even that was probably getting a bit moth eaten by this point in time.

Good grief just look at that make-up...

All these things are - of course - merely cosmetic and not really Vorkov's fault, what IS Vorkov's fault however is the quality of the performance itself - he just looks SO BORED !!!

Never have I seen a Dracula seem so indifferent to his own villainy - I think Vorkov was aiming for a sort of detached arrogance for his version of the Count but he totally misfires and just looks like he'd sooner be somewhere, ANWHERE, other than on a filmset portraying one of the greatest, most iconic horror villains of all time. Also he blinks...he blinks a lot... a HELL of a lot. Every line of dialogue he speaks is accompanied by this squinty eyed, nervous looking blinking - he blinks so much that even the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who would get pissed off with him and tell him to bugger off. To make matters worse Vorkov's voice has been overdubbed to make it echo everytime he speaks. I think this is supposed to sound sinister and sephulcrul but it just comes across as a man shouting clunky dialogue in an echo chamber. Jesus wept !!!

The Frankenstein Monster played by John Bloom is no better - wearing a cheap jokeshop Halloween mask and staggering around like he can't even see properly (I'm not surprised in that mask), he has little to do and is onscreen for a surprisingly small amount of time considering his prominence in the films title.

The other performances are all fine for a B-movie - Regina Carrol makes for an effective heroine and Anthony Eisley is a bland but functional hero in the form of Mike. There are also some interesting actors in supporting roles - Adamson mainstay and future Twin Peaks star Russ Tamblyn pops up as a memorable, thuggish villain - he's onscreen for far too short a time. Angello Rossitto also shows up as Durea's other henchman - the sinister carnival barker Grazbo. Rossitto was a cast member of Tod Browning's infamous 1932 movie "Freaks" and is a perfect fit here, his role clearly a callback to that earlier film. Its a nice touch.

SFX - Imagine the Halloween aisle at Poundland and you're just about there - fake watery looking blood and rubbery looking horror masks. Oh - and Dracula fires a laser from his ring - I think its supposed to be Satanic lightning or something but it makes a noise like a laser, so sod it - a laser it is. This is accompanied by a shoddy looking piece of animation that flashes across the screen briefly.

SEX & VIOLENCE - There's a few murder scenes that are largely bloodless with the exception of Russ Tamblyn's gang being killed - a bit of Tomatoe Ketchup gets spilled there.

The main act of violence is the titular bout itself - the battle of the titans of terror, the clash of two of cinemas biggest horror icons. In the red corner we have the Lord of the Undead - Count Dracula !!! In the blue corner - we have a surgical mishmash of monsterousness - Frankenstein's Monster !!! Surely this will be the fight of the century !!!

Well...er...not really. The problem being you can't actually see the bloody fight properly. It's filmed with really, REALLY subdued dark lighting, all you can see are a pair of shadows thrashing around - someone gets an arm ripped off - I think it's the Monster - and there's a bit of grunting and screaming, and then after about two minutes it's over. Finito...KAPUT !

RATING - This film is the very definition of a shit sandwich - it looks like it's going to be tasty but then you bite into it.  It's a mixed bag to say the least - on the one hand you've got some great little nods to classic horror cinema - Chaney Jnr, Naish, Rossitto - also the laboratory sets used are the actual props used for Frankenstein's laboratory in the original 1931 Universal "Frankenstein" movie - it's clearly intended to be a love letter to that bygone era.

However - it then completely steam rolls these good intentions into the ground by casting the spectacularly inept Vorkov and Bloom and then climaxing in a battle royale that looks like two drunks stumbling around in a back alley at 4am...if you could see it...which you can't.

Despite all this - I did enjoy this film - but then I watch utter crap, so what do I know. Its got a nice carnival funhouse atmosphere and I think that's the best way to approach this film - it's a cheesy ghost train ride with moth eaten monsters that you can't see properly, it's cheap and gaudy and tacky as hell, it's good, clean, shitty fun and that's what we're all here for at the end of the day.

Final score for the bout of the century - 3 jokeshop Draculas out of 5.