Count Dracula's Great Love (1974)

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

I’ve never been big on Dracula or vampires, in general.  I’m all for women with heaving bosoms coming under the thrall of a vampire, and the scenes of “consummation” can be a lot of fun.  Back in the day, I loved watching the Hammer Dracula films on television on a Saturday afternoon, because they were so different from the staid portrayals of vampires up until then (but, hey, isn’t that why Hammer became so popular to begin with?).  I still love Horror of Dracula, largely because of that absolutely kickass ending, and some of the later Hammer films, when they incorporated Satanism into the mix, are a joy, as well.  The 1931 versions of Dracula (Spanish and English language versions) are great stuff (the former especially elides the cumbersome elements of Browning’s take, and it doesn’t hurt any that Lupita Tovar is absolutely ravishing).  That said, the romance angle that so many films hang their coats on does nothing at all for me.  Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula bores me to tears, this despite some fantastic effects work (all done practical and very, very old school).  I’ve never wanted to watch John Badham’s Dracula with Frank Langella even a little, and stuff like Twilight are as far away from the mark for me as you can get.  Give me Nosferatu (1922 or 1979; I’m not picky), or Near Dark, or Martin, or Shadow of the Vampire, anything with either something to dwell on intellectually or respond to viscerally (sure, sex can be considered visceral, but I like monsters, and blood and sex is more interesting to me than sex and sex).  Aren’t you glad I didn’t say, “give me something with some bite?”  Javier Aguirre’s Count Dracula’s Great Love (aka Cemetery Girls aka Dracula’s Virgin Lovers aka El Gran Amor Del Conde Dracula) gives me so much of what I want, but still flubs it.

A carriage carrying Imre (Victor Alcazar), his secret love Marlene (Ingrid Garbo), and three other chicks, Karen (Haydee Politoff), Senta (Rosanna Yanni), and Elke (Mirta Miller), throws a wheel in the middle of the Burgo Pass.  Seeking shelter for the night, and since the coachmen is dead from an ill-timed horse hoof to the head, the gang make it to the old sanitorium, where they are taken in by Dr. Marlow (Paul Naschy).  From there it isn’t long before the blood and boobs start flowing.

I have a weakness for many of Naschy’s films, because, like the man himself, I have a weakness for the classic Universal monster movies.  His Waldemar Daninsky character is a true member of the lycanthrope hall of fame, though my all-time favorite film of his (and Aguirre’s) is The Hunchback of the Morgue (reviewed previously on this site).  He loves his monster mashes, and he’s not afraid to tackle multiple characters in a film (witness: Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf).  He even managed to inject some life (man, the puns are flowing tonight) into the Mummy (The Mummy’s Revenge).  Naschy was fantastic at playing the physicality of monsters, incorporating his background as a bodybuilder to give his performances a kinetic energy.  His films have a concrete atmosphere that plays with the gothic trappings of the classics of the Thirties through the Fifties.

It is entirely possible that Naschy’s Dracula could have been all the things I look for in a vampire film.  The problem is that the movie follows its dopey, half-baked love story to the point of schmaltzy sentimentalism.  The film does have some fine moments for any exploitation/horror fan.  The actresses are all willing to get naked.  There is enough blood to make things pop here and there, and it’s often intermingled with female flesh.  Naschy gets to tussle with other men often, showcasing his Shatner-ian slugfest skills.  The male vampire makeups include these great contact lenses that really give the monsters an otherworldly, creepy mien.  There is just enough sadism to please fans of whippings, and some sleazy moments are mixed in with them (the lady vampires suck the blood from the wounds incurred during a lashing).  There are even some “what the fuck?!” elements, such as the knife sticking through a character’s throat like Steve Martin’s old arrow-through-the-head bit.  

That said, the filmmakers are infinitely more interested in the love between Dracula and Karen, and even that they get wrong.  Much ado is made about how the only way for Dracula to regain all of his powers and resurrect his daughter Rodna (yes, Rodna) is for a virgin to fall in love with him of her own free will.  Now, you may recognize this plot device, as it’s the exact same one used in every one of Naschy’s Daninsky films, and it’s handled in the exact same way (as is the film’s structure).  The women in these films fall in love at the drop of a hat, all for the sake of the tragic endings these movies have to have, and it feels like it.  Karen is not only no different from any other Naschy heroine (and I really hesitate to use that term to describe them) in this respect, but the boundaries of just how much love can forgive is stretched past breaking.  After giving of herself physically and emotionally to the Count, he promptly cuts Karen open as part of Rodna’s resurrection ceremony.  Then he throws her into a cell for what must be a couple of months (he keeps having to inexplicably wait for another full moon to complete the next step of his little ritual), where she sleeps on a straw bed and shouts for help.  During all this time, he keeps begging her to love him (I’m confused; didn’t she already say that she did?).  

Before the “finale,” Dracula and his lady vamps bounce around the countryside, attacking peasants, thither and yon (these sequences are actually entertaining, and had there been more of this, the film probably wouldn’t stink as bad as it does), and Dracula continues to pontificate about this, that, and the other thing and plead with Karen, who remains as emotionless here as she does in the rest of the picture.  The filmmakers then give up on any semblance of reason or narrative in one of the most anticlimactic endings you’re likely to see.  There are so many “WHY?!” instances in the film, it really deflates the bits that work well (because they do work so well).  I can’t say I recommend Count Dracula’s Great Love, but goddamn it, I want to.

MVT:  The elements that deal with the more graphic aspects of the story, both red and pink.

Make or Break:  Dracula’s monologue in the third act, that seems to go on for over twenty minutes and not make a lick of sense.

Score:  4/10

The Boneyard (1990)

I’ve said before that I’ve been to a lot of funerals.  From the time I was a toddler, I’ve seen quite a few corpses (post-undertaker, of course).  I believe the first time I ever saw a dead body in the more distanced, clinical sense was in Faces of Death, the notorious Mondo/faux-u-mentary film that included crime scene footage and scenes of bodies being cut open in morgues.  The dispassionate way that faces were peeled off to display the skulls underneath was both instructional and repellant (let’s be honest, I’ll never be a doctor).  But it’s because this is something most people don’t see every day, and death is something which fascinates and terrifies many folks, that it feels forbidden and sideshow-esque, and that’s the appeal.  Compare that to most narrative film morticians, who are usually quirky, nonchalant, and flat-out morbid.  These are people who seem to make a point of eating while performing autopsies (some even place their food on top of the corpses), and their sense of humor is jet black.  Sure, sometimes they’re portrayed as strict professionals, but this is typically when their sole purpose is to supply some expositional information for other characters to pursue.  In James Cummins’ The Boneyard we get Shepard (Norman Fell), who looks as if he were auditioning to be one of Zartan’s Dreadnoks in a G.I. Joe movie and falls squarely in the former category.  Yet, both he and his colleague Miss Poopinplatz (an un-feather-boa-and-fright-wig-adorned Phyllis Diller) are incongruous in a film seemingly built on incongruity.  They are comedic characters instructed to play it straight.  Sort of.  It’s things like this that make the film simultaneously stand up and fall over.

Children are turning up dead, and, having hit a brick wall in the investigation, Lieutenant Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) turns to psychic Alley Oates (Deborah Rose), who has holed herself up in her house.  Following a lead on Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn) who speaks about having to feed dead flesh to some evil being called a Kyoshi (which, according to my minimal research, doesn’t exist in Chinese folklore; the closest thing I could find to its name is the Jiangshi, or hopping vampires, which the monsters in this film definitely are not, so perhaps “Kyoshi” is the spirit’s/demon’s proper name, like “Phil” or “Stan?”), our heroes find their way to the county morgue where the dead kids’ cadavers don’t want to stay dead.

The film centers on death and grief through metaphors of same, while not being strictly about the cessation of physical life.  Alley refuses to leave her home because being out in the world is painful.  Her psychic powers are too emotionally agonizing, and she cannot handle the grief that comes with them.  She carries a burden for the dead, and it is killing her.  She also has a more personal reason for her sequestration, and this turmoil is reflected in the state of her house.  It is in complete disarray, a mirror for her mental state as she deals (or refuses to deal) with the torment of living.  Likewise, Dana (Denise Young) attempted ending her own life because she couldn’t handle it.  The two women encompass the despair of living, one mentally, the other physically.  In this way, these living characters relate to the living dead in the film.  These people have stopped living though they continue to draw breath.  The correlation is that, if Alley and Dana continue on the paths they are on, they will become truly dead and, like the zombie kids, corrupted and evil.  The core of their journey then is to find a reason to live, but they must desire this and fight in order to do it.

The Boneyard also deals with issues of horrors of the past and their effects on the present.  Alley carries the weight of a personal loss which cripples her.  This is portrayed in the files and photos she keeps from previous cases.  She tries to burn these things, to divest herself of her responsibility, but she can’t do it.  It is tortuous for her to get involved, but she is obligated to do so; she owes the dead a debt only she can pay.  Similarly, Chen is a descendant of people who first unleashed a force of evil centuries ago (in order to do something good, though selfish), and his family have been doing penance ever since (and still performing questionable acts, though now for a more “noble” purpose).  The zombies and monsters are a legacy of evil, a bastardization of good intent, and they are the embodiments of what happens when the agony of grief is not dealt with in a healthy fashion.  For the characters to find closure and new roads toward their emotional healing, they must confront this debasement and defeat it.  

One of the first things that stood out about this film for me was that the leads are completely not the standard for the Horror genre (or most mainstream, populist fare, for that matter).  Jersey is a middle-aged cop, and Alley is an overweight woman.  Not being teenyboppers or hip, energetic twenty-somethings, they go against type, and Cummins gears the story, at least initially, toward a more serious, adult-oriented audience.  This is reinforced by the inclusion of Dana, a woman who is in the morgue because she was mistakenly presumed dead following her failed suicide attempt.  You would suspect that her character and her relationship with Detective Mullin (James Eustermann) are included in order to appeal to a younger audience and handle the film’s action scenes, but this is not strictly the case.  Alley still gets to do quite a bit of physical action, and it’s refreshing to see.  The zombie children are also extremely creepy and truly shiver-inducing.  Even Diller doesn’t go for a lot of one-liners (though she does get a few in).  The casting of both her and Fell in more earnest roles is perplexing, since neither one is especially known for this type of character.  

Still, there are heightened elements that don’t match up with the more somber aspects of the film.  The story begins as a police procedural, and the first half of the movie is rather slow-paced and inactive.  It isn’t until after the half way mark that the supernatural aspects kick in.  Once they do, the film attempts to tread a thin line between genuine frights and outlandish, creature feature action.  A couple of the monsters toward the end are discordant with what comes before and appear to have been inspired by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (and if you’ve ever seen a still from this movie it was most likely the semi-iconic Floofsums who is given more importance than she probably should have [while being a fantastic-looking beast]).  The absurdities that pop up in the back half just don’t sit well with the more somber first half, with the finale being a full-on series of action sequences which do work rather well.  Nevertheless, while The Boneyard never gels as a whole, and I can’t say that I loved my viewing of it, I value the chances that the filmmakers took and the ideas they brought up, and I respect them for that.

MVT:  The monster effects are great on the more serious and the more absurd creatures equally.  So, big applause to Andy Clement and the entire makeup effects department on the film.

Make or Break:  The first dream vision that Alley has is chilling and effective.  After seeing it you can understand why she is reticent to use her abilities, and you understand a lot more about her character.

Score:  6.25/10 

Kung Fu Zombie (1981)

AKA: Wu long tian shi zhao ji gui
Director: Hwa I-hung
Starring: Billy Chong, Chan Lau, Cheng Kang-Yeh

Oh Kung Fu Zombie, what a treat you are. In the realm of low-budget kungfu mayhem, it's shard to be a film this energetic, stupid, and loony. The under-rated, should-have-been superstar, Billy Chong, stars as a snotty, rebellious kungfu student who ends up fighting the undead, or at least two undeads. Things get crazy right out of the gate, as a gang of cut-throats employ the services of a black magic priest to resurrect some corpses to fight Chong. Something of a complex plan. Employ a priest to resurrect zombies that will, once given the cue, fly through the air and push Chong into a pit filled with spikes. A spike-filled pit also seems a rather conventional culmination for a plan that involves resurrecting the dead, but then I'm not really a martial arts bandit, so I guess it's not my place to question their machinations.

Chong dispatches the zombies without much difficulty, not to mention that he's unimpressed by the fact that he's being attacked by the living dead. For Chong, however, a gang of zombies is no different than any other gang. The evil gang leader and his legendary muttonchop sideburns gets pushed into the pit of spikes during the ensuing melee, being justly undone by his own treachery. Satisfied that the night of being attacked by creatures of the night returned from the grave for bloody revenge has ended, Chong heads off for the local tavern to make merry. The wizard is soon plagued by Muttonchop's ghost demanding resurrection., but complications arise because Muttonchop's body is badly mutilated after taking the tumble into the spike-filled pit.

While Billy Chong may not be an ugly ghost adorned with mangy muttonchops, his life still isn't perfect, either. Just about every interaction between Billy and his dad winds up with a few minutes of fighting that culminates in the father nearly dying of heart failure, muttering "You're killing me, you ungrateful son of a bitch!" which elicits a smirk from Billy, who will wave bye-bye and go out on the town with his pal Hamster.

Meanwhile, Muttonchops is busy haunting the priest, who eventually agrees to resurrect the punk, as the nightmarish haunting takes the form of things like the ghost pulling the priest's seat out from under him, constantly moving his wine out of reach, and other dastardly spooktacular shenanigans. Down at the local morgue, they find the freshly dead body of a powerful kungfu fighter who is obviously evil on account of his long hair and black cape. When the gang leader tries to inhabit the corpse of the super-baddie, they discover that the guy is, in fact, not quite dead. Awakened from his slumber, the villain makes a beeline toward Billy's home to extract a little revenge, as he has a blood feud against Chong's family.

Billy and the bandit fight for hours, and Hamster whiles away the time by constantly dumping buckets of water on Billy for no real reason other than it makes Billy's muscle glisten a bit more. Chong eventually kills the bad guy and collecting a sizable reward, which his father promptly takes for himself. The wizard-priest and Muttonchops figure they can try to use the bandit's corpse again for another resurrection attempt. They mess up again, discovering this time that the bad guy is simply too evil to be killed by normal means such as breaking his neck. The failed possession attempt also transforms the baddie into a super-invincible mega-bad zombie still bent on killing Billy Chong.

Kung Fu Zombie is crude and cheap, but it also has great energy behind it, not to mention some spectacular kungfu and a few creepy seconds scattered throughout the madcap zaniness. Chong is a more than capable performer who manages to be charismatic and utterly loathsome as a character (par for the course in this type of film). By the time of its release, this style of kungfu film was going out of style, ushered out the door by the stunt films of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung (himself making Encounter of the Spooky Kind and producing Mr. Vampire around this same time). But there is still a boundless amount of joy to be mined from Kung Fu Zombie's nutty pile of kungfu, screaming, blood-drinking zombie kungfu villains, and wizards with giant leaf hats.

Make or Break: It's one thing to have a fanged vampire-zombie kungfu villain as your foe; It's another thing when that zombie gets frustrated by your kungfu ability and reacts by causing its own hands and feet to burst into flames.

MVT: Billy Chong. The guy never hit the big-time the way many of his contemporaries did, but he was still a great martial arts movie star who brought a perfect blend of physical talent, natural charisma, and smug condescension to his roles.