Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein

Muted Monster Mash

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein
aka Drácula contra Frankenstein
Directed by Jess Franco
Spain/France/Liechtenstein/Portugal 1972
Severin US Blu Ray

Warning: I guess some spoilers but, meh, it’s not that kind of movie.

Like many people who tend to weigh in on the subject, I find that Jess Franco is a bit of a hit and miss affair. Sometimes he’s an absolute genius producing classic films such as Vampyros Lesbos (reviewed here), She Killed In Ecstacy (reviewed here), Countess Perverse (reviewed here) and Female Vampire (reviewed here). Then there are the many movies he’s directed which are just plain awful, such as Nightmares Come At Night (reviewed here) or A Virgin Among The Living Dead (reviewed here). Then there are the in-betweeners... movies which are still pretty awful but have some great sequences in them and also manage to maintain a high entertainment value... like Shining Sex for example (review coming soon... been holding that one back for possible inclusion in a themed ‘sexy week’ on the blog, perhaps?).

Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that his monster mash-up  Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein falls into that third category.

The film stars the British ‘thespian’ Dennis Price playing possibly the most casual and ineffective Dr. Frankenstein I’ve ever seen. Then we have Franco regular Luis Barboo as Morpho, Frankenstein’s variant Igor for the movie. We also have Alberto Dalbés playing the Bram Stoker character Dr. Seward and yet another Franco regular, Howard Vernon, playing Count Dracula himself. All four would be back for what I can only assume is some kind of sequel the following year, The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein (which I’ve not seen but I hope to grab a copy for the blog in the next few weeks), although only Price and Dalbés would be playing the same roles.

Added to this cast you have Geneviève Robert as a gipsy witch woman (of the good variety), Carmen Yazalde as a vampire lady, Fernando Bilbao as the Frankenstein monster and, just in case you thought this film didn’t have enough monsters in it, somebody called Brandy playing the Wolfman!

Okay, so the plot is almost non-existent with its simplicity and lack of credibility. After Dr. Seward tracks down Dracula in his coffin and stakes him through the heart, reverting him to the model bat which we have glimpsed hanging from strings earlier in the film, Dr. Frankenstein absconds with the dead bat, removes the stake and revives Dracula, making him his slave and leader of his growing vampire army (which numbers an incredible... four... by the end of the movie) with which he wishes to dominate the world. But luckily, the wolfman pops up for the last five minutes (the make up is... less effective than you may imagine) and then gets soundly trounced by the Frankenstein monster. 

Meanwhile, Frankenstein sees some kind of betrayal from Dracula (although I couldn’t see one myself) and stakes him again, also going on to destroy his own monster, for no apparent reason that I could figure out. When Dr. Seward arrives on the scene and thanks the spirits for their help in aiding him to defeat the monsters, you have to wonder why he thinks he had anything to do with it at all... he literally arrives on the scene after the monsters are all dead and Frankenstein has fled.

Now, I had a strange experience with this film. The first 17 minutes, which I watched in Spanish, were free from dialogue and, despite the fact that those suffering from epilepsy in the audience might be affected by the huge amount of zoom shots used to establish various environments, it’s actually an incredibly effective and eerily atmospheric film up until this point. However, as soon as I got to the first word spoken... I realised that the subtitles were not working correctly, they seemed to be subtitles for the hard of hearing for the English language version, which was obviously using slightly different dialogue (another subtitle option was heavily out of synch from scene to scene) so I switched to the English dub and rewatched. More wordage is added (when mouths are out of sight ) for this opening and it’s perhaps a little less effective. Although, I don’t think the Spanish dub could possibly save a lot of the rest of the movie, that’s for sure. It’s ridiculous and, although there is a total lack of nudity in the film (hey, Jess, what’s going on?) it does make for an entertaining and, sometimes unintentionally funny movie.

But there are also touches of brilliance. The entrance of Price’s somewhat antiseptic Frankenstein starts with his blurred head in close up in the left of shot inside his car. Then his head, consisting of just his eyes and a bit of his forehead come into focus before, the inevitable ‘Franco zoom out’ reveals more of his features. It’s a brief shot but it works quite well. There’s another shot where two characters eyes are zoomed in and out of, in turn, for about three rounds each, to establish an empathy between them... and that’s not half as bad as it sounds.

Now then, things of note...

Some of the location shots feel a little like they’re a part of a spaghetti western of the time but, honestly, that’s not a bad thing. What is a strange artistic choice, I thought, is the Frankenstein monster’s skin being green (just like the beautiful Mego Boris Karloff version action figure I had as a kid). Now this green colour has quite often been used in some nods to Frankenstein over the years and I suspect it comes from people seeing behind the scenes colour stills of Karloff (and possibly Glen Strange) in the Universal films of the time (there’s some film footage of Karloff in the green make-up from Son Of Frankenstein, reviewed here, for sure). However, I suspect/believe that, since these films were black and white movies, the green paint was applied in the make up to make the features appear drab and lifeless, zombie-like if you will, in monochrome. I don’t think it was Universal’s, or Jack Pearce’s intention to ever suggest that the Frankenstein monster actually had green skin but, yeah, there it is... and certainly the monster in this movie is a beautiful shade of green.

Then there’s the music. Bruno Nicolai’s score is pretty cool in this. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I went to Soundtrackcollector online and found that it has never has a commercial release. But hold on though... I then found a website review claiming that the score was recycled from that composer’s score for Franco’s Justine. So, yeah, I will at some point crack open my Blue Underground Justine Blu Ray set with its bonus soundtrack CD and give that a listen when I get a chance (and, you know, watch the movie too), for sure.

And that’s me just about done on this one, I think. Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein is not a great movie and certainly not a great ‘Franco movie’... but it is entertaining and does still have a certain pizazz to it. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and am grateful to Severin for putting this one out. If you are a Franco fan then you’ll obviously want to pick this one up (if northing else than for another couple of Francophile Stephen Thrower’s entertaining featurettes) but if you’re new to this particular director, I wouldn’t recommend starting on this one.