Rent Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

A Monstrous Muddle - Dracula vs. Frankenstein review by Count Otto Black

If this dismal excuse for a horror movie has a redeeming feature, it is that after watching it, you'll never again unjustly accuse Ed Wood of being the world's worst director. The cast of B-listers on the way down, old has-beens who had long since hit rock bottom, wannabes who never would be, non-actors who just fancied being in a movie, and the director's big-breasted, huge-haired, and zero-talented wife struggle gamely with the dreadful script, but nothing could have put a gloss on this steaming super-sized chocolate log!

The two monsters the title would have you believe are the main attractions were clearly inserted into the story at a late stage in production, since they have very little to do with anything outside their own subplot, they carefully avoid being in the same shot as most of the principal cast members even when they're supposed to be in the same room, and the two plot-threads only get properly integrated near the end of the film, right at the point where the original script was obviously supposed to finish.

John Bloom, who you may remember as 50% of the title character in "The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant", is a ludicrous Frankenstein Monster whose face appears to have been sculpted from dough by a small child, and "Zandor Vorkov" gets his one and only shot at stardom as Count Dracula, a performance so absurd that I wondered if the mystery man behind the clown makeup and daffy pseudonym was Frank Zappa, whom he certainly resembles a lot more closely than he does Dracula. As for poor old Lon Chaney Jr., making his last screen appearance as Groton the mentally retarded axe murderer, he wasn't given any lines because by then he was so ill he could barely talk, let alone act.

But worse than the terrible acting, the incoherent script, the non-existent production values, and even the visibly dying co-star, is the fact that it's just plain dull. Without the last-minute addition of the two famous monsters, this film would have been about a bunch of hippies who can't act doing deeply tedious things, some guy in a wheelchair talking mad scientist drivel at great length, and a few tiny, feeble glimpses of gore to maybe keep you half-awake. As it is, it's about that anyway, only with random appearances by monsters who look as though they've escaped from a school play. Not "so bad it's good", just so bad that when you hear that director Al Adamson was eventually murdered and entombed in the foundations of his own bathroom, you wonder if a movie critic might have had something to do with it. Or possibly Zandor Vorkov...?

Two titans meet - and it isn't pretty (spoilers)! - Dracula vs. Frankenstein review by NP

Sometimes you wonder what is going on in the minds of film producers. Al Adamson, a director of low-budget projects whose personal life threatened to enter into the realms of the macabre fantasy, for example. It's a serious question: just what was he aiming for when he helmed 'Dracula vs Frankenstein?'

From the outset, we are bombarded with unconnected images - Zandor Vorkov's bearded Dracula unearthing the cauliflower-faced body of the Frankenstein Monster (John Bloom); a girl beheaded by an axe; Judith Fontaine (Adamson's wife Regina Carrol) performing a musical number in a seedy Los Angeles nightclub; diminutive ticket-tout Grazbo (Angelo Rossitto ) aggressively selling tickets to an exhibition owned by Doctor Durea/Frankenstein (J. Carrol Naish); a mindless, speechless brute (Lon Chaney) who goes by the name of Groton. All this filmed in footage so thick and grainy, it gives a genuinely unhealthy sheen to everything and makes everyone look as they could do with a bath. The scenes seem completely unconnected with each other, and the hope is that clever plotting will weave them all together.

The spectacular electrical equipment designed by Kenneth Strickfaden (from 1931's 'Frankenstein') is interspersed with less impressive fluorescent 1960's paraphernalia in a bid to return the Monster to life, and Dracula is promising 'Soon he will be born again.'

Vorkov's lines are delivered entirely deadpan, his voice filtered through a gadget that makes him sound like a disembodied robot. Whilst this is no-one's idea of what Dracula should be like, I think the character is partially successful - a true dead man walking who speaks in a distant echo, as if he is unused to communicating. When Frankenstein's creation is finally resurrected, the first victim is Dr Beaumant. Beaument is played by long-time horror fan and this film's technical advisor 'Forrest' J Ackerman. Ackerman's is the least convincing performance of all.

And yet just as it seems, often via the art of exposition from Dracula, certain elements of the story are beginning to go somewhere, Adamson insists on returning to Judith Fontaine and her interminable search for her missing sister. These dull walks along sandy beaches to a love song soundtrack seem to belong to another film. This is because Adamson has married two projects together; which explains why Durea/Frankenstein looks older when he finally meets Dracula - Carrol Naish returned to film these scenes a year later in a bid to tie the two plot strands together. The old line 'tonally, it's all over the place' fits particularly well here.

Anthony Eisley is Fontaine's ageing hippy boyfriend Mike, who suddenly has an uncanny insight into the mind of Frankenstein and his plans. This leads to a series of finales, where everyone bar Fontaine is dispatched. In a brave and unexpected move, even Mike doesn't make it.

The clash between the two 'titans of terror' is a fairly easy win for Dracula, who relieves the Monster of both arms and even his head! Sadly, these scenes are filmed with such a dark filter over the camera, it is impossible to see what is happening. The Count's own death is far more satisfying.

How to feel about stars wheelchair-bound Carrol Naish and silent, corpulent Chaney in their final films? Difficult to say. An actor's life is a very public one, of course, and seeing the ravages of their age and ill-health displayed in a cheap and tatty project such as this is hardly a blaze of glory. But they give it their all, and despite everything, I have a really soft spot for 'Dracula vs Frankenstein'. Badly made and edited it assuredly is, but it is enjoyable. In fact, it is great fun. My score is 7 out of 10.