Dracula vs. Frankenstein: 1971

 

   Alright, no more stalling any longer.  I know that I've been cutting back on the content in my reviews after, "The Phantom of the Opera".  But no longer!  This time I'm going to go back.  Back to when I took a week to write reviews and it was worth it.  I'm really sorry to those of you reading, so think of this review as my apology to all of you.  For this review I've picked something I'm really going to hate for a reason.  The same reason I picked, "Santa Clause Concurs the Martians" so for this film I'm only really curious as to how bad it really is.  I hope you'll enjoy the torture I'm about to go up against in today's review of, "Dracula vs. Frankenstein", and as always, enjoy.

   What can you say about cross-over’s?  It’s the guilty pleasure of the American film addict.  Many crossovers from around the world have experimented on their pop culture icons colliding as well.  To note a few, "Freddy vs. Jason", and basically 90% of the Godzilla franchise.  However, where Godzilla movies were looser with teaming and pitting their characters together, this crossover is a very difficult and delicate procedure.  Great time and effort would have to be spent to create the battle between two of the most beloved horror icons in America.  The era that they tried to accomplish this in was the 70s, and they failed miserably at all of them.  This movie in particular is the more famous one.  However, while in production, this film wasn’t necessarily meant to have Dracula or Frankenstein in it.  In fact, they were added in after they started shooting!  Anyway I'm writing today to tell you what I think of,"The Kings of Horror Battling to the Death"!

   We open in Oakmoor Cemetery, where we see someone, or something stealing a body from a grave.  This scene is really dark (as in I can’t see anything), and I'm surprised that the actors could even act in such lighting.  The park ranger (or in this case,"grave ranger") hears something, and goes outside to meet face to face with...Dracula! And he's got a fro! Wait, what?  Hold on!  Stop the review!  Here's a little Vampire 101 for you.

Vampire 101

1.     Dracula is Hungarian (unless Zandor Vorkov is Hungarian)

2.     Dracula has no super strength, therefore he cannot grave rob single-handedly

3.     Dracula doesn't have a fro!

   Its like instead of telling his barber to give him, "the usual" he says to him, "surprise me".  Well Dracula, you've certainly surprised me!  The next scene shows a young woman walking barefoot in the fog at night, with some very strange lighting for...wherever she is.  We see a couple of tombstones the farther she walks, and then...SHE GETS DECAPITATED!  Wait, why was she outside in the first place?  Why was she barefoot?  Why would someone go out in the fog to walk through a graveyard?  Do you find this quaint?  Because it isn't!  Do you know how many people there are who would agree to me asking, "Hey there!  Do you want to take a walk with me outside, at night, barefoot, in a cemetery, where there are probably people that get there before you waiting with an axe to kill you?"....you'd actually be surprised but that's beside the point!  After this gruesome decapitation, we are addressed to the other writer who thought that this was a completely different movie!  

   We go from a beheading by an axe murderer, to the beginning of the 70's musical.  One of the performers, Ms. Fontain has a sister that was reported missing.  We cut to a fair where we see that a,"freak show" is one of the establishments residing there.  A young couple pays a small person a dollar to go inside...and he eats it.  This is not a typo, he eats the dollar.  I guess it’s to show how, "freaky" he is but he's only small!  That's it! You’re telling me that he is one of the freaks?!    That’s.....just......depressing.  The couple goes inside and they watch a bunch of unexplained weirdness, and one of them is played by Lon Chaney Jr.!  Unfortunately he doesn't have any talking roles, and even worse, this was his last movie he ever starred in.  We also meet another character who owns the Freak show, Dr. Durray, who also starred in "House of Frankenstein", as Dr. Frankenstein's assistant.  Unfortunately this was also his last role as an actor as well!  The couple walks out of the exhibit and away to get ready for a seminar for something.  

   Meanwhile,  the Doctor and Groton, played by Lon Chaney Jr. prepare to experiment on a young woman....the very same woman that was decapitated in the cemetery!  We see that the doctor has managed to ...um...re- capitate her head to her neck.  He talks to Groton about making a serum from her blood, because if you survive getting your head cut off, you now have super special blood.  So, the doctor injects Groton with what I think is the young woman's blood, but nothing seems to change about Groton.  Only, the doctor acts like the serum worked!  Anyway Groton heads outside to the pier.

   After Groton leaves to kill more people wandering outside, the Doctor is visited by Dracula.  Now, I've gotten past the fro by now, however, Dracula speaks...like the green head from The Wizard of Oz.  I don't know...just listen to this:

  It looks like he's bored playing the role already, but also sadistic as he does it.  Oh, and if you’re wondering, "does he always talk with an echo?", then yes.  Yes he does.  We find out that Dr. Durray is the last of the Frankenstein's.  And while they are talking, Dracula can’t stop blinking.  Bela Lugosi would never do that!  However one thing Lugosi doesn't have is a hypno ring that shoots fire! Wow...I honestly didn't expect that Dracula would carry something like that.  So, we see that the doctor and Dracula are willing to strike up a deal, which is the doctor’s serum in exchange for the body of Frankenstein's monster.  We cut to Groton taking a nice long stroll on the beach with his axe.  The stars are out, the waves are calm, and there's another young couple making out on the sand....Wait!  Watch out!!!  ...Too late.  We then cut to the protest the other couple at the fair were talking about going to.  From what I can tell the protest is ...just a plot device to see them get murdered.  Inside of a club, Ms. Fontain is sitting at a table when a man drugs her.  She starts to take a trip, while the music plays backwards.  I'm starting to wonder if the writers for this film were taking the same thing she was.  But for a movie made in the 70's, there's really no wonder that a scene like this would appear here.  We cut to back at the lab where the doctor is experimenting with an exploded potato.  It looked like this:

                              

  Wait, why does the potato have a bull cut?  And on a completely unrelated note, where's Frankenstein's monster?  It's been a half an hour and we haven't................oh my.  OH MY.  NOOOOOOO!  Why movie?  Why?  Why desecrate Boris Karloff's image that started his career like that?  He looks like a baked potato that you would serve to somebody you hate!  He looks like a mutant mushroom!  He looks like the dried remains of somebody in a cake batter fight!  You know, I wonder how the actor feels to be under all of that make up.  Or better yet, I wonder how he agreed to this job offer.  Actually I know; they showed him this poster:

   Now that's what I want to see!  However, the majority of the time, the artist for the cover of books and sometimes movies don't actually watch or read the movie or book they're making the title for.  This might be the same case here, where the cover artist might have thought the same as us by thinking, "Wow!  "Dracula vs. Frankenstein"?  That sounds awesome!  Time to make a cover that will capture the incredible magnitude of these grades A monsters duking it out!".....Okay, so maybe he/she wasn't thinking that exactly, but I'm sure there was some excitement.  

Now let’s just calm down a second.  I know what you want to see.  Yes!  Dracula and the Frankenstein monster battling!  Let’s skip to that, shall we?  

(One viewing later)

   It’s not worth it.  None of it is.  The whole movie is a waste.  Do you really want to know what happened?  Well here it goes:  The actual fight starts outside, and it’s not really clear as to why they are actually fighting.  Heck, they’re not even fighting!  It’s just a struggle until they move from the building to the forest and when they get there you can’t see a thing!  At one point I could make out Dracula tearing the monster's arms off.  Wait!  Shouldn't it be the monster doing that to Dracula?  Why?! Why?!

Conclusion:  Well that's it!  I can't do it!  This was a thoroughly bad movie, from start to finish.  The acting is bad.  The tone they are trying to set is indefinable.  The casting is terrible. This movie will leave a bad taste in your mouth if you watch it! My hopes for a good horror icon crossover film has been dashed away, and the fact that this was made sets a good cross over film back about twenty years.  But, you know what?  Even though an actual movie hasn't been made yet, the battle between these two icons have lasted all throughout their actors carriers.  Boris Carloft, who played the monster, and Bela Lugosi, who played Dracula.  These two films were both released in the same year of 1931, and gave the actors playing the roles their career.  Ever since their pairing up on the big screen, they've been battling to be better than each other.  This movie never had and never will come close in emulating this epic battle!  I'm not even going to cast this in the same place as, "Santa Clause Conquers the Martians"!  I'd go as far to say that I would put this in the category below it!  And I cannot even fathom what that category would be titled as.  Well, I guess I didn't go in for this movie thinking that it would be executed like this, but I sure as @#!*% hoped something like it would be remade the way I wanted it to be made.  I suppose that's kind of selfish, but I can’t possibly be the only human who actually wants to see this!

   

I can't be.    


            Guess I'll never figure that one out...

Verdict

I give this "film" 1 Frank Zappa Dracula out of 10

Watch this one if you dare...

(The next three reviews will be gorilla based.  Why, you ask?  'Cause  I wanna, that's why!)

Next Review: The Ape Man  1943 

      

Dracula: 1931

Synopsis

The ancient vampire Count Dracula arrives in England and begins to prey upon the virtuous young Mina. 

   Happy Halloween everyone!  For today's review I needed to have something special, and I think that Iv'e found it.  "Dracula", from 1931.  For anyone that knows film, this was a very important time because it was the birth of a new era, "The Golden Age".  This was the time that all the iconic monsters came out; The Wolf Man, The creature from the black lagoon, The Mummy, Frankenstein, and Dracula.  This is a very important movie because it marked many timeless classics to remembered forever.  One of the many aspects about the film generates from the Hungarian actor, Bela Lugosi.  Of course this was a sudonym for his real name, Bela Blasko.  But to be respectful I don't refer to him by this name.  His character of Dracula would forever set the way future Dracula's acted, sounded, and looked.  But, it's a bit confusing being the fact that, "Nosferatu", the original Dracula, takes place in Germany, but the icon of Dracula is Hungarian.  But aside from that, these two films should be looked at separately, mainly because, "Dracula" had the film rights to be based off of the Bram Stoker novel, and, "Nosferatu" didn't.  


   Lets talk about the atmosphere.  For any good film, an effective ambiance is required, and Todd Browning pulled this off very accurately.  Every type of horror setting is put into play. There are dark, dilapidated castle walls, bats, carriages, dungeons, cobwebs, and midnight fog.  Everything about it just screams horror authenticity.  The music, if any, consists of, "Swan Lake", which only appears in the credits.

   I really like this.  It kind of shows the unlimited occasions you could use this in.  I find that if you are watching this film and not the play, "Swan Lake", you'll find that its quite intriguing to have music that feels so different from other horror films.  But it feels like it's meant to be there, somehow.  Bela Lugosi's Dracula is much the same as it is different from other Dracula's.  He is very humble, and polite with his victims, unlike Christopher Lee, in the Hammer films, but I'll get into that later.    


  Now, to be fair, I don't really know which of the movies follows the book the closest, and I still can't decide which of the films I like the best.  However these aren't all of the Dracula films.  Many productions of this horror icon have been re-imagined, remade, and resurrected, more notably from Hammer Films.  This was a production agency used solely to bring the golden age back to life.  Every, and I mean every monster was brought back in their own feature length film. As for the quality of it all, I cannot say because I have never seen a Hammer Horror Film, I just know of it.  


  A very special thing about this film in particular, is the fact that, with the golden age, comes the age of sound.  So, if you have ever seen, "Dracula" before, you have watched the first horror talkie.  However, my only complaint is that although there is talking, there isn't any music to back it up.  It's in this way that, "Dracula" can get a little slow.  But I think that the character's make up a bit for that.  I'm talking about the actor that plays Renfield, Dwight Fry.  His character in, "Nosferatu", was the one that sells Count Orlok his house.  However, in this film he slowly goes crazy and kind of reminds me of the character from, "The Vampire Bat", who also goes insane.  You know, there seems to be a pattern with characters in Vampire film history.  There always seems to be a crazy person in each of the films.  I don't know why.


  Anyway this concludes my review of, "Dracula".  Now for my verdict.  This was a very good movie.  It was mostly from Bela Lugosi, but it's different than, "White Zombie", because in that movie he was holding everything up.  In this, he deserves to act with these people, because they aren't actually that bad.  The only problem that I might have for this film is that there isn't any music forgetting the opening credits.  I think I'll give this film a similar rating to that of, "Nosferatu", because I like them both, but in different ways.  Dracula had a sense of great feeling with each role and was pure horror at its finest, and, "Nosferatu" gave off a captivating conceptual feel to the architecture and characters around them.  I don't think that you have to even like horror to enjoy this.  Unfortunately I can't show, "Dracula" to you on this site.  If your lucky enough to be able to rent this masterpiece, I encourage you to check it out, and Happy Halloween!

I give this film 8 "Children of the night" out of 10 

P.S

   

   I really liked how this review turned out, and I'm going to try and to review a, "Golden Age" film every Halloween.  Thanks for reading.

      

Nosferatu: 1922

    For my first review I thought it would be fitting to start off with one of the first vampire films.  Nosferatu was made in Germany and was released in 1922 by director F.W. Murnau.  The film opens on Jonathan Harker, who was at the time living in the city of Wisborg. His boss Renfield, wants Harker to travel to Transylvania to sell a house to Count Orlok (Dracula).  The reason that the characters names were altered was because they couldn't obtain the rights to, Bram Stoker's," Dracula", the novel Nosferatu is based off of.  


   Now, the music that is played throughout the film is very well done because it(most of the time) accurately sets the tone of every scene, however strange it is.  However, sometimes the music playing just sounds like the same pitch of notes being played over and over which can sometimes be annoying.  You could actually replace the soundtrack of the film with something whimsical and it would work in its favor.  But if we did that nothing would be taken seriously.  I've also noticed something that many other people might have noticed if this was also their first silent film which is that many ,if not all, of the actors in Nosferatu have heightened emotional reactions to most everything around them (they overact).  However in this case I think that the film needed this because of the lack of actual dialog to express themselves.  


   I know that the film makers didn't mean for this to be an effect, but the film grain that was created during filming adds an eerie and displacing effect.  To add on I also believe that the architectural designs  used for Transylvania hold up to this day and can still be quite surreal compared to normal towns.  Although Ill have to point out that the overacting can be very funny at times and this does lower the seriousness trying to be placed in every act.  In conclusion I recommend this movie to hard-core horror film fanatics as it can be a little boring at times.  The atmosphere is quite scary besides that and is very fun to look at.  So if you can get past the overplayed characters and the silly facial expressions that are made, you are in for an enjoyable film.


5 stars


   Live the life surreal, 


 Vérité  

     Next Review:  The Invisible Man 1933