Dracula vs. Frankenstein

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!

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!

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.

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".

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.