The Night Strangler

Bloodless In Seattle

The Night Strangler
USA 1973
Directed by Dan Curtis
ABC Circle Films/Kino Lorber
USA Blu Ray

Warning: Yeah, some spoilerage occurs here.

So, after the smash hit ratings of the original TV movie The Night Stalker (reviewed by me here), Dan Curtis, who had produced the original movie, jumped into the directing chair to give us his sequel, The Night Strangler. This one again has a screenplay by Richard Matheson but it’s not based on another unpublished Jeff Rice novel as before. In fact, the publication of that first novel was held up while Rice was commissioned to write a follow up novel based on Matheson’s script for this one, so both novels could be released simultaneously and take the number one best sellers spot in 1974.

This movie once again has Darren McGavin playing Carl Kolchak, the role he was born to play, this time relocated to Seattle and still trying to peddle the true story of the vampire killings as depicted in The Night Stalker. And once again, the story is told via his narrative voice overs on the soundtrack. In a truly wonderful scene, after we see the first murder of the film, Kolchak is reunited with his former editor, the long suffering Tony Vincenzo (once again played by Simon Oakland), who is now working for the Daily Chronicle in Seattle under a chief of staff played by veteran actor John Carradine. Against his better judgement, Vincenzo gets Kolchak a job on the paper and assigns him to investigate the murders. In this case, a quantity of blood is removed from each dead girl (as the bodies mount up) and it’s not long before, with the help of the newspaper’s archive librarian and research guru, played by Wally Cox (who died suddenly one month after this was first shown on television), Kolchak finds himself attempting to track down a killer of the supernatural bent.

This time around, the ghoulish looking killer has been around for over a hundred years, a doctor in the union army who stumbled upon an elixir which grants him reprieve from ageing but, every twenty one years, when he starts to look more like a walking corpse (with superhuman powers, naturally), he needs to kill six girls in a period of 18 days and extract blood from them within seconds of their death, as the final ingredient of his elixir. Once he takes the potion those six times, he doesn’t have to worry about losing the effects for another twenty one years.

And it’s all great stuff. As usual, the main source of pleasure from the tale is the absolutely brilliant chemistry between McGavin and Oakland, as they shout at each other across the editor's desk while Kolchak tries to get Vincenzo to publish the facts about the case while under direct threat from the police force. Once again, a more than one hundred years old killer at loose in Seattle is not good for tourist season. Joining Carradine and Cox are a load of fine character actors... these things are really well cast. Among others are Jo Ann Pflug (Lt Dish from M*A*S*H) playing Kolchak’s love interest (of sorts), Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West herself), Al Lewis (that’s Grandpa Munster to you) and, as the aged killer, Michael Anderson (who, of course went on to regularly play Oscar Goldman in the original series of The Six Million Dollar Man, after McGavin had played a similar role in the TV movie/pilot episode of that show).

This is one of only two productions I know of (although I’m sure there must have been more) which showcases the secret underground city beneath Seattle, which was built over and which is now used for tour guides. The other film I know which featured this was the recent, quite wonderful horror movie Malignant (which I reviewed here). Ironically, in the case of The Night Strangler, reproduction studio sets plus the Bradbury Building of Los Angeles were used rather than shoot on location in the real underground city. But still it’s a nice location to include in a story and I’d love to go there one day (although I probably will never get there, it would also be true to say).

The Night Strangler is, it has to be said, not quite as sinister as The Night Stalker but it’s still an absolutely brilliant sequel to the original and it’s hard for me to decide which one I like best. The two films work very well together as a double bill, it has to be said and I’ll continue to revisit them often. And once again, we have the brilliant Bob Cobert providing that jazzy, sometimes chaotic but always toe tapping score which follows Kolchak around, whenever he’s on the prowl for his newspaper story. Unfortunately, Cobert didn’t follow in the next set of Kolchak adventures, instead he was replaced with Gil Mellé.

As I think I mentioned in my review of the first movie, there was a third movie originally planned, The Night Killers but, instead, a TV show was commissioned and plot elements of that third one were recycled into at least one episode of that show. If The Night Strangler has one thing it can be criticised for, it’s the fact that it’s more or less a rerun of the first Kolchak movie (something that could be levelled at a lot of modern day movie sequels too, to be fair). It’s a criticism which stuck with Kolchak when the TV show was aired, with people referring to it as a ‘monster of the week’ show and, perhaps, this element is what led to the show's cancellation, 20 episodes in. More on the TV show tomorrow but, yeah, The Night Strangler is a sheer delight and another great movie where you can watch Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland get in each other’s faces and yell the hell out of each other. Another fun watch.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

Dogging The Law

The Hound Of
The Baskervilles
USA 1939 Directed by Sidney Lanfield
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

Well the time is upon me. I finally get caught up on a rewatch of the classic (and best) series of Sherlock Holmes films on a lovely set of Blu Ray transfers from, judging from this first one in the series, some pretty good prints. Rather than get the expensive, five disc US version I plumped for the Italian/German 7 disc release (since nobody has seen fit to make these available on Blu Ray in the country where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the original stories, lived... as yet, for some unfathomable reason). Both sets have all 14 films with the only real difference, from what I can make out since this Italian edition can be easily set for English language, with or without English subtitles in its menus, seems to be that the Italian set is £30 cheaper than the US set and that’s not including any import fees.

And what a film this is. The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the first of the original run featuring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who were so popular as Holmes and Dr. Watson that they also played them for a number of years on the radio too. This was the first of two Sherlock Holmes films made and released by 20th Century Fox in 1939, the same year that Basil Rathbone and some of the cast of this one shot Son Of Frankenstein for Universal, which I believe was filmed just before this one (and which you can find reviewed by me here). I won’t go over the plot here again because so many people know it (or if they don’t, they don’t want it spoiled) but it takes a few liberties with Conan Doyles original novel (I think I’m right in remembering this was the longest Holmes story he wrote, novel length, as a kind of flashback story in between killing him off in the stories and then, later, snatching him back from death for more money spinning tales).  

Joining the winning team of Rathbone and Bruce (easily my personal favourite Holmes and Watson) was Richard Greene (future TV Robin Hood, star of Sword Of Sherwood Forest, reviewed here and who got top billing above Rathbone), Lionel Atwill, John Carradine, Wendy Barrie (who was in a fair few films in The Saint and The Falcon series) and, of course, Mary Gordon as Holmes’ housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, who would stay with the series along with the two male stars when it made the transition, after the first two films. The transition being that, after the two Fox films, which were both set in Victorian times like Conan Doyle’s original stories were, there was a gap of three years before Universal hired the three actors for a continuation of the series, this time contemporising them so that Holmes' adventures were updated for a 1940s wartime setting.

This one is pretty great and it’s wonderful looking back on these fantastic performers and character actors playing in a well oiled mechanism of a film. The direction and camerawork both look great for the roughly 4:3 aspect ratio of the time and, as evidenced by these quite good Blu Ray transfers (so far), all filmed in a very crisp black and white. There’s also a nice sequence near the start, where Atwill’s character is reading from a manuscript to fill in Holmes on the legend of the film’s titular Hound. The flashback is presented as a live action sequences of events but, it’s depicted as a little vignette superimposed into the centre of the manuscript, with the edges of the pages and the text, some overlapping, at the edge of the action. So, yeah, a nice touch.

Rathbone is absolutely amazing as Holmes, not quite emotionless and certainly he injects the required air of authority into the character for sure. And then there’s Watson, as played by Nigel Bruce. This guy is fantastic but I notice he’s not quite as bumbly and stupid as I remembered him to be in these. Maybe that comes later with the transition to the Universal scripts but here, he certainly does take the initiative and seems much smarter than he perhaps ended up as, later in the run. Although he certainly doesn’t penetrate Holmes disguise as the old peddler, hawking his wares around the vicinity of the Grimpen Mire. But you know what? That’s okay because, one of the things I remember very clearly and, it’s certainly the case here, is that unless you are seriously looking for it, the audience isn’t going to easily penetrate Rathbone’s disguises in these films. I remember being fooled quite a lot as a kid when I first watched these (at 5.40pm in the evening, week days on BBC2 in the early to mid 1970s, if memory serves) and looking at them now, if I didn’t half remember them, I would certainly be fooled again. Rathbone is hard to spot as he makes his voice gravelly and stoops behind a fake beard and moustache. It’s great make up and works much better than a lot of the stuff you see actors trying in modern movies, it has to be said.

The sets are fantastic too... especially the outdoor sets which try very hard... and succeed... at looking very much like the Moors on which half the action takes place. You can still tell it’s a big studio set but, certainly, it’s much more lavish and believable than, say, the sets used to stand in as exterior locations that Universal were using for their horror movies at the time. These really work and there are certainly no tell tale creases in the sky as people go about their business.

And, yeah, just a treat of a movie. I won’t say much else about it because you should discover these for yourself, if you don’t already know them but, certainly, The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the first in a classic run of much loved and popular films which should be on every film enthusiast’s radar. Definitely one to check out if you’ve not seen it.

House Of Dracula

Creeping House

House Of Dracula
USA 1945 Directed by Erle C. Kenton
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Many people regard House Of Dracula as being the final proper entry from this era to feature Universal’s top three horror franchise characters. Don’t worry though... those people are wrong and not being properly respectful of where the franchise went in the next movie in the series.

House Of Dracula took an awful long time to come out on the DVD home video format and, as a result, it took a long time for me to catch up to it again since seeing it as a nipper. It came very late in the game and wasn’t released on Universal's original run of classic monster DVDs until the reissues, some years later. Thankfully, by that time it was here to stay and is now out in a proper Blu Ray transfer. The missing piece of the Universal horror puzzle is now as easy to see as all the others.

I remember when I did finally catch up with it (having remembered nothing of the film from when I was around 5 or 6 years old), I was heavily disappointed with the movie. The big two problems for me with this one are... well, for one thing, it’s supposed to be a direct sequel to the same director’s House Of Frankenstein (reviewed here) from the year before and, indeed, includes the same three main monsters played by the same actors... John Carradine as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr as The Wolfman and Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster. However, although all three characters met their demise in the last film, the only one who has an explanation of how he survived his death is the Frankenstein monster - who is still clasping the skeletal remains of Boris Karloff’s character from the previous film... although they, quite bizarrely, have been washed up in the mud of an undersea cavern. A cavern which, by a strange coincidence, leads into a secret passage revealing Frankenstein’s old laboratory, below the estate of this film’s scientist character, Dr. Edlemann, played by Onslow Stevens.

Not only that but... the film is once again set in Vissaria, where surely the villagers would remember Lawrence Talbot from that time many years ago (in the last movie) when he was there before. It makes no sense.

The other big problem with the film is that, although the ‘big three’ are in each other’s presence in a scene or two in their normal guises, they never actually get to properly meet up in their full-on monstrous incarnations at any time in the film. Dracula is dead by a certain point in the film (well okay, deader... although has transferred his blood into Edlemann, thus turning him into a vampiric killer with the sole purpose of reviving the Frankenstein monster) and, astonishingly for the franchise, Lawrence Talbot is actually cured of his werewolvery, before the Frankenstein monster is revived for the last five minutes of the film. It turns out that all that was causing his ailment was pressures on the brain from calcium deposits, which fooled his glands into thinking his thoughts of turning into a werewolf were true and caused the body to change in the same way. Um... yeah, that really holds no water at all when you think of the origins of the character in the first film and the ‘man out of time’ nature of Talbot, who by now must be nearly 100 years old in terms of when each film was set (Even though the settings of each film are, somehow, always the 1940s... yeah, let’s just screw the continuity again right Universal? After all, nobody was ever going to see these films again once they’d left the cinema on their original release and they would then be forgotten forever.). So yeah, he’s cured but the treatment makes no sense to the symptoms and, anyway, as we’ll see in the next film in the series... the cure obviously didn’t last that long.

Unfortunately then... a monster mash up with no actual mashing up of the monsters and a sequel which makes no attempt to tie itself into the other movies, not even the same director’s House Of Frankenstein from the year before. Not to mention that, in a similar fashion in this film... well, Dracula’s actual house is nowhere to be seen. Unless you count the coffin in the cellars of Edlemann’s estate.

However, for all that and even excusing the cheapness of the budget on this one, if you can get over the disappointment of the main monsters not having a big fight at the end, you will find that this is actually a pretty good movie. It’s really nicely shot and the other elements that make for a classic Universal horror, even down to the casting of Lionel Atwill playing a similar law enforcement role to others he’s played in the Frankenstein movies, are all present and nicely done. There are some great shot set ups such as one, where Dr. Edlemann goes to open the door of his laboratory, pictured opposite camera and centre screen, which uses the perspective and some beautifully distorted, gothic shadows bending up into the middle to really draw the eye into the focus of the shot.

And talking of focus, when one of Edlemann's assistants looks at the sleeping Dracula, he hypnotises her and the whole right hand side of the screen is like someone has applied vaseline to the lens to fog it up, so only the assistant struggling with consciousness can be focused on. I don’t think it is actually vaseline in this case because the fog seems to move a little later on in the shot but it’s very well done however they did it.

There’s another great moment where the same assistant, played by Jane Adams, witnesses the other assistant (played by Martha O'Driscoll) under Dracula’s thrall and they both walk past a mirror. But no, it must be a window into a replica of the set with another actress behind the frame because, as the two walk in front of it, Dracula casts no reflection. It’s a wonderful shot and this kind of trick always reminds me of the ‘mirror scene’ between Groucho and Harpo dressed as Groucho in Duck Soup. Similarly, the moment where Edlemann finally comes under the transformation of Dracula's blood and he is seen standing in front of a mirror as his reflection slowly disappears is, for 1945, exceptionally well done.

Other things of note would be the fact that his lab assistant, played by Jane Adams, is the latest in the long line of hunchback assistants in the Frankenstein franchise. The fact that the hunchback is a female might well have been a first in movies and, similarly, the fact that she’s quite an intelligent and peaceful character is also a first for the hunchbacks of the franchise. So good for them. This film even has a scene which, finally, gives us what we’ve wanted to see since the first of The Wolfman films. The arrogant ‘doctor of the mind’ telling Lawrence Talbot, who is locked in a jail cell, in front of one of his assistants and Lionel Atwill, that his belief that he turns into a werewolf is really all just in his head. Then, just after he’s said this, the full moon rises and Talbot proves him quite wrong as he changes into his ferocious alter ego and tries to escape his cage.

And that’s about it for this one. Lovers of the Universal horror franchise will recognise a lot of the musical moments in this (correctly or incorrectly credited to Willam Lava) from previous films by the likes of Salter and Skinner and that certainly gives it a more authentic feel than, say, The Mummy’s Curse from the year before (and reviewed here). As I said... it’s a shame the monsters never really got the chance to fight but, even though Universal didn’t renew Lon Chaney Jr's contract after this film (he can also be seen as the Frankenstein Monster in a few shots tracked in from The Ghost Of Frankenstein, reviewed here... in fact, there’s even a dream sequence using shots from the majority of Frankenstein films, including some with Karloff), he would return along with both Dracula and the Frankenstein monster in a movie which, finally, gave us the big monster fight scene audiences were waiting for... and, in the process, the monsters saved and rejuvenated another famous franchise... but I’ll get to that story when I review that movie here.

House Of Frankenstein

The Man
With Niemann

House Of Frankenstein
USA 1944 Directed by Erle C. Kenton
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so after hitting on the idea of having two monsters for the price of one in Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (reviewed here), what could be a more natural progression than to fashion a movie which would star all four of Universal’s main, flagship monsters? Alas, the budget proved too much for their original line up so, despite originally planning another continuity busting component of this film when it was originally to be titled, The Devil’s Brew, the studio ditched the idea of having Kharis The Mummy getting in on the fun here too.

But we do have, in House Of Frankenstein, the first film to feature Dracula (as played by John Carradine), the Wolfman (as played once again by Lon Chaney Jr) and the Frankenstein monster (played once again by Glenn Strange). Bela Lugosi was originally scheduled to return as Dracula but some scheduling difficulties arose when Boris Karloff, who is also in this film, had to be released from a stage contract... so the studio went with Carradine in Bela's role due to the delay.

Yes, that’s right, Boris Karloff returns to this film as Dr. Niemann, a murderous mad scientist who along with a fellow cell mate, a hunchback lab assistant played by J. Carrol Naish, escape from their prison in order to find the secrets of the Frankenstein monster and seek revenge on the village people who put Niemann in jail (not the ones who sing YMCA). So, yeah, it’s kind of strange to have Karloff in a Frankenstein movie in which he’s not actually playing the monster but, honestly, he’s very good in this. His wonderful line delivery and the way he interacts with the other characters really lifts the film.

There are also a few other names from previous Universal horror movies who people will recognise, all pretty much playing different characters to their previous one... such as Anne Gwynne, Lionel Atwill and George Zucco.

Now, the thing about this movie is that it’s not really a proper monster mash at all. In terms of the story connecting up the three monsters... well, it really doesn’t. Niemann and his assistant are the only connecting tissue in a story that is definitely a game of two halves. The film plays for 1 hour and 10 mins but Dracula is only in the first half an hour and the other two monsters don’t come into the story until after he has made his last bow. Again.

So Karloff and Nash take over a travelling side show trailer, Professor Lampini’s Chamber Of Horrors on the way to the village of Frankenstein. The trailer comes complete with a specialist exhibit in the form of the actual skeleton of Dracula, with a stake pinning it in its coffin. When Karloff pulls out the stake in anger in one scene, not even he would have believed it but we are treated to the skeleton transforming into John Carradine, who kills one of Lampini’s foes (played by Sig Ruman from A Night At The Opera) in return for Niemman’s help... a favour which doesn’t get returned because, while he is being pursued for his crime, Dracula gets caught in the daylight and returns back to skeletal form (until the next film... yeah, we’ll get that one in another review). Of course, this whole back story about the skeleton being unearthed in Castle Dracula in Transylvania makes absolutely no sense in terms of continuity with any of the previous Dracula films but, hey, that seems to become the rule rather than the exception by this stage in the series of Universal horror films.

The other half of the film deals with Niemann not fulfilling his promises to either his assistant or to Larry Talbot, the Wolfman, who he thaws out along with the Frankenstein monster as, it turns out, the flood which engulfed the castle at the end of Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman merely washed them into a cave system under the castle where they were frozen solid for many years. Niemann has promised Larry a brand new brain for his help which, frankly, makes a lot less sense to me than just putting his current brain into a new body but, yeah, I’m not a scientist so what do I know about such things?

Anyway, as usual, things go wrong but, astonishingly, even though the Frankenstein monster and Lon Chaney in his human form share a couple of shots, the Wolfman incarnation doesn’t share screen time with the monster... so there’s not even a big showdown between these two like there was in a the previous installment. So, at the end of this one we have Dracula back as a skeleton, the Wolfman dead by a silver bullet (again, it’s only a temporary fix) and the Frankenstein monster engulfed by quicksand in much the same way that Kharis the mummy had sunk into a swamp the same year in The Mummy’s Ghost (reviewed here).

But, despite all this, the movie is rather well made and quite entertaining. Kenton seems to have an eye for the design and lighting of these things and there are some nice compositions which lead the eye into the centre of the frame quite a lot. Also some great scenes shot through vertical bars of windows and fences (and sometimes both) which make an impression... not to mention the placement of people at different heights to balance out the shots. And, of course, Hans J. Salter’s score does the usual thing and gives it the kind of music one always associates with these Universal monster pictures.

Admittedly, it’s a disappointment that at least two of the monsters don’t actually meet up properly in this one but these characters would all share the screen two more times for this era of Universal horrors and so, their time would come. House Of Frankenstein is one of the better B-movies of this era and a pleasure to watch every now and again... even if it features neither Frankenstein (it just features his more famous monster) nor, you know, his house. Essential viewing for admirers of these franchises, though, for sure.

Lucifer's Women/Doctor Dracula

Svengali VS Dracula

Lucifer’s Women
USA 1974 Directed by Paul Aratow

Doctor Dracula
USA 1978 Directed by
Al Adamson & Paul Aratow
Rafael Films/AIP/Vinegar Syndrome Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Yeah, this one has spoilers
if you’re worried about that kind of stuff.

This is another one of those stories where a film was made, Lucifer’s Women... and then, four years later, Al Adamson was asked to direct a whole load of new scenes and recut it with bits of the original picture, making and releasing what amounts to a completely different movie with kind of ‘guest highlights’ from the first version. In many cases the originals were often better than Adamson’s, admittedly enthusiastic effort to turn them into completely different films and, yeah, this one is no exception.

Lucifer’s Women is a case of the original being thought lost until the wonderful Vinegar Syndrome label managed to release an uncut, fully restored version of it to Blu Ray a couple of years ago. I’m really glad they did because, otherwise, the Adamson excerpts would have been all that remained of what is actually a pretty good movie. I’ll review the original first.

Lucifer’s Women is a real gem... a kind of marriage of an occult plot mixed with soft core pornography. This one stars Larry Hankin as an academic writer who has published a book about Svengali, only to have been helped by the ‘Bleeding Rose’ society in the form of his publisher, a black psychic, to become possessed by the spirit of Svengali himself. So Hankin is Svengali, who is also, on occasion, fighting a battle with his former self to control his host body.

The film starts strongly with one of his magic shows (there are at least two magic acts by him in the film) where he levitates a woman and cuts off her clothing so she’s floating topless. I don’t know what night clubs he plays but we never got magic shows like this on television in the UK in the seventies.

Anyway, his publisher wants him to procure a specific girl, Trilby, played by the wonderful Jane Brunel-Cohen. She is one of a number of strippers who work in a night club run by obnoxious pimp Roland, played by Paul Thomas (oh yeah, I’ll get to him in a minute). Svengali’s task is to bring the girl to his publisher Sir Stephen (played by Norman Pierce) in seven days’ time... because she has a pure, psychically charged soul she is not aware of... and hypnotically manipulate her while having sex in a black magic ritual with Sir Stephen so that she first kills Stephen on the stroke of midnight at the point of orgasm... and then kills herself so that his soul can be reborn in her body.

However, complicating things is the fact that Svengali’s body’s former personality is falling in love with Trilby. Shenanigans ensue and the film has a wonderful, laid back charm of its own as another girl also falls prey to Sir Stephen and his occultist friends, while Trilby and her fellow stripper and room mate indulge in lesbian sex ripped straight from the pages of an underground comic book she is reading. Finally, there's a threesome with their boss Roland... who is later put in a trance by Svengali and accidentally gets run over because of it.

There’s a bizarre double ending too, where Svengali’s former personality rescues the girl and everyone else dies... but, as they run off, another Svengali and all his friends are suddenly alive again, watching and laughing from the grounds of their big house. It’s a little like the end of Fellini’s Eight And A Half in tone, rather than a conclusion from which you are meant to gain any insight from, I think.

But, I found myself thoroughly entertained as it’s a nice little movie including an interesting score which has a kind of mild atonalism with creepy but charming synthesiser overlays on top of it in some sections. And some interesting personalities... despite what one of his co-stars says of him in the extras, Larry Hankin is a tremendous Svengali. He has hypnotic, expressive eyes and a kind of laid back attitude which really works for him and the movie. Jane Brunel-Cohen is absolutely amazing too, giving off ‘young Margot Kidder’ vibes and channeling that same kind of ‘naive innocent energy’. I can’t believe that her only other credit, apart from archival footage from this used in Adamson’s Doctor Dracula, was as a masseuse in Freebie And The Bean. This woman should have gone on to be a huge star, if there was any justice in the world.

And then there’s Paul Thomas. Starring in almost 400 adult movies and directing almost 500 of them to date, Paul Thomas is a porn star who also had a mainstream movie career around the same time, for a bit... you may recognise him as playing Peter in the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar. And he gives a hilarious, 20 minute interview about his time on the film (one of his last mainstream movies) and his career in general. In one story he talks about the threesome involving Jane Brunel-Cohen and how she didn’t want his ‘hard cock’ touching her because she wasn’t a porn actress. He says that usually, on one of his porn shoots, the crew has to keep taking breaks to enable the lead male actor to be able to achieve and maintain his erection again for the next shot... which is a hard thing to do, apparently. Here, it was the exact opposite situation... he was so enamoured of the actress that he kept getting an erection and, since it was an R rated movie, they couldn’t afford to have his penis getting into the shots... so they kept having to take breaks to try and get his erection to cease and desist while piecing together the scene. It’s a great extra and worth a watch almost as much as the film.

And then there’s Doctor Dracula. Okay, so Adamson has a new, animated title sequence more in keeping with many of his other movies of this time. He grafts a completely new story onto it involving psychiatrist Dr. Gregorio (played by Geoffrey Land) who kills a lady at the start by biting her on the neck... as he’s really Dracula. The film uses bits of the Lucifer’s Women footage as a background canvass for Dracula’s efforts to stop the Bleeding Rose Society, now headed up by John Carradine in a number of spliced in scenes trying to look like they all belong with the original movie.

It’s about what you’d expect from one of Adamson’s more ‘hands on’ cut and paste jobs and some of the scenes kind of make sense and others don’t. Adamson’s characters are all played by completely different actors in fresh roles (including his wife Regina Carrol, giving some bad line readings in this) but he did manage to get Larry Hankin back for a few new scenes in an effort to integrate the two films together more credibly... including a scene where Hankin crosses two candles in an effort to kill Dracula, but dies instead.

The bizarre thing is... although Adamson adds scenes of women undressing and having baths... you never see any nudity in this cut of the movie. This includes all the footage recycled from the original film, where the sex and nudity has been completely excised from this ‘lowlights’ version. This must have made for some bizarre jumps in logic for people who hadn’t seen Lucifer’s Women. For example, when asked about the nature of what she does, Trilby talks about it just being a job and, unless you had seen the original cut where you see she works as a stripper in a night club, you might have been scratching your head at this point wondering what the heck they are talking about.

Similarly, the character of Roland is barely glimpsed in one brief scene from the start in this one... he’s been taken out almost completely. So when Svengali confesses in a throw away line to Trilby later that he’s killed him, the audience must have found it strange, to say the least, that this character had killed someone... especially since it’s someone they don’t know about. Cutting these scenes back into a completely different movie sure makes for a lot of problems here, that’s for sure. Not to mention the  comic moments of a night club audience watching a magic show then cutting to a close up of people like John Carradine, who are also suddenly supposed to be part of the same audience. Stuff like this kept me smiling, for sure but, not necessarily for the right reasons.

I found it interesting that both directors used posters in character's bedrooms from famous films but that, neither shot made it into each other’s version. In Lucifer’s Women, Trilby has a Sands Of Iwo Jima poster in her apartment. In Doctor Dracula, random female victim number ‘whatever’ has a poster for Cassavetes’ A Woman Under The Influence in her house. So we have one director acknowledging his admiration for classic Hollywood and Adamson showing his support of the contemporary independent scene. Good stuff.

At the end of Doctor Dracula, the film finishes with the cult all deceased and then, when Dracula gets into a car with one of his victim’s daughters (played by Susie Ewing), she blows the car up with a remote device in her hand, killing them both. Being as this is Adamson, I immediately recognised the shot of the car blowing up as featuring in at least one of his other movies. I’m not sure if it was recycled for this one or whether this was the first use of the footage but, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

And that’s me done on these two. I had a really good time with Lucifer’s Women and would recommend it... not such a good time at all with the Adamson, recalibrated Doctor Dracula version but at least it’s interesting to see how that director would take the material and reshape it, although I’d probably say steer clear of that version. Either way, Vinegar Syndrome’s welcome Blu Ray release of the 'two on one' edition is pretty good and worth the admission price, as far as I’m concerned. So thanks to them for their ‘Half Way To Black Friday’ sale, where I picked up a few of their titles.

The Mummy's Ghost

Wrappy Campus

The Mummy's Ghost
USA 1944
Directed by Reginald Le Borg
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Another Mummy movie, another Bey. This time it’s Youssef Bey, played by young John Carradine. In an opening scene for The Mummy’s Ghost, George Zucco also appears as the High Priest, handing down the secret of the Tana leaves to Bey and giving him the mission of having Kharis The Mummy (once again played by Lon Chaney Jr), go with him to Mapleton, New England to rescue the remains of Princess Anankha and return her to Egypt. Remember the location where the rest of the film is set... Mapleton, New England.

Okay, so we then have the tentative male lead of the film, student Tom, played by Robert Lowery, attending his regular college lessons on the local campus in Mapleton, where the geology teacher is telling all the students about the last time Kharis was in town (in The Mummy’s Tomb, reviewed here), many years ago... even though, once again, the setting of the film is contemporary to the year it was released... which makes absolutely no sense, of course. He tells of the last rampage of the monster and how Tana leaves can be used to revive it because, well, of course that’s the kind of lessons you have in an American university, isn’t it?

Anyway, after class, Tom goes to see his strange Egyptian girlfriend Amina, played by Ramsay Ames. The audience can tell she’s strange because she doesn’t like talking about Egypt, has an undisclosed past and later on, when the resurrected Kharis (who it turns out, isn’t all that worse for wear after once more perishing in the flames at the end of the last movie) passes by her house on the way to murder the Professor of the college (who stupidly figures out that you need nine Tana leaves to call the mummy... so therefore does just that)... she sleep walks to the scene of the crime and collapses outside after Kharis drinks his fill of the potion and the professor is dead. Although, quite why Kharis chooses to strangle the professor for giving him a nourishing hot drink and not do the same to Youssef Bey is anybody’s guess.

The shenanigans continue for the running time of 1 hour and 25 seconds (a very short feature indeed) and it’s nicely paced and shot, although not as well done as the previous film. There’s a nice moment when the watchman at the Scripps Museum is reading a strange detective tale magazine and listening to a horror themed radio show (I’d like to think it’s an episode of Inner Sanctum but I don’t know for sure what it is) and the narrative on the radio foreshadows the watchman’s death 5 minutes later. I’m sure this brought grins of delight to the audiences who first saw this in a theatrical venue, as it still does to me.

It’s pretty run of the mill stuff throughout but, like I said, it’s certainly watchable. There’s a nice moment when Kharis is caressing the bandages of the princess in its museum case at Scripps when the bandages suddenly go limp to indicate the figure inside has vanished into the ether and it’s implied, quite strongly, that Anankha’s soul has jumped into the body of Tom’s special lady friend Amina. This would seem to be about right as there was obviously a family ancestry connection between the two anyway. When she faints the first night, she awakens with a pseudo-Lanchester white streak in her hair. When she faints again and is taken by Kharis, she then has two white streaks in her hair. Then, as Bey is struggling with himself and deciding to take the woman for his own and to make her his ‘forever partner’... in an attack of sexual attraction which seems to afflict most of these Egyptian sect members sent to be caretakers of Kharis... he looks down at her still unconscious form and her hair is suddenly replaced by a white wig.

She isn’t actually awake and when, at the end, Kharis has killed Bey and cut short his sexual enthusiasm, we see shots of her skin ageing considerably as Kharis approaches his final resting place for this movie, as he and his captive are chased into the swamp and sink into its depths to their forever sleep (where forever sleep equals... until the next sequel). Yes, sinking to their death in a swamp in... where? Oh yeah, New England. Remember that folks, for when my next Mummy movie review is up. Mapleton, New England.

Oh, and by the way, the place Bey and Kharis are seen to be hanging out at seems to be those long steps which, I believe, have somehow found their way from the coal mine in The Invisible Man Returns (reviewed here) and into this picture. I don’t mind though, it’s a nice set and it looks pretty good.

So there you have it... The Mummy’s Ghost is an okay entry into the franchise and it would be followed with another ‘continuity screwing’ sequel which tried to follow things from where they were left off in this movie, while still making no logical sense at all. If you thought the continuity was bad up until now, just you wait until the next part. All in all, though, a watchable movie and I will always watch these ones again.

The Invisible Man's Revenge

Clear Vengeance

The Invisible Man's Revenge
USA 1944
Directed by Ford Beebe
Universal  Blu Ray Zone A

The Invisible Man’s Revenge is what I would call the last ‘pure’ film in Universal’s original classic take on the characters and concepts from H. G. Wells much abused source novel, The Invisible Man. And it’s also a very strange one at that.

For starters, the titular character is back to being the film’s antagonist again but, considering the other characters in the film, it’s hard to pinpoint who the main protagonist is in this... even the romantic male lead, who to my mind looks almost exactly the same as the feller playing the invisible man in this, kind of gets overpowered at the end and has to be rescued by a dog.

The film headlines Jon Hall, which is a strange one in itself because, two years prior to this, he’d played the main, heroic protagonist of the previous film in the series, Invisible Agent (reviewed here). Here, though, he’s an unmistakable and unapologetic villain. It’s revealed very early on in the film that’ he’s psychotic and escaped a mental hospital after killing two people there. When he arrives in London to see his two friends, Sir Jasper and Irene Herrick, a husband and wife played by Lester Matthews and Gale Sondergaard, he proceeds to attempt to blackmail them for his half of the diamond mine he’d found with them years before. Thing is though, he appears to be absolutely right and, honestly, there are barely any actual ‘good’ characters in this movie except for, perhaps, the daughter of the Herricks, played by Universal monsters semi-regular actress Evelyn Ankers.

Anyway, a curious thing to note that, perhaps due to legal reasons (I have no idea), Hall’s character name is Robert Griffin. Griffin is, of course, the last name of the character in the Wells novel and is a surname which usually crops up in these to cement the relationship between other family members and the current ‘invisible man’. Here though, the character has no connections whatsoever to any of the former Griffins so, yeah, baffling. In fact, it’s only because he stumbles into a stray scientist, played by Universal horror regular John Carradine, that he ends up becoming invisible in the first place... and therefore better equipped to start a reign of terror on his former ‘friends’ and attempt to swindle them out of, well, what is technically rightfully his anyway. It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest.

Adding to the confusion, at least to my mind, is the fact that we have a purely psychotic character, played to the hilt as such and liable to flip his mood on a dime at any second... but he’s befriended by a down on his luck, comedy relief local, played by the famous Leon Errol. Errol was top lining gazillions of his own comical shorts throughout the 1930s to the 1950s and was a huge comedy star. What he’s doing in this, playing exactly the same kind of bumbling comedy character, is a mystery to me. There’s even a scene where he takes on a bet in a local pub as to being an ace darts player and we get a whole comedy routine where the ‘unseen’ and invisible Griffin is grabbing the darts and guiding them into the bullseye from all kinds of silly trick shot throws. It’s a bizarre and somewhat out of place scene which, nicely done as it is, seems uneasily out of kilter with the black hearted Griffin, who very soon in the film kills Carradine’s scientist and drains him of his blood to regain his visibility, just so he can attract the attention of Anker’s character.

It has to be said, the character here is fairly monstrous... almost as much as Claude Rains portrayal of the original Griffin in The Invisible Man (reviewed here). So, yeah, perhaps the studio felt you needed some strong comic relief to go with it but, as I said, it makes for an uneasy marriage here.

The film is directed by Ford Beebe, who also directed such great Universal theatrical serials as Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here), Buck Rogers (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). There’s nothing really flashy about his direction here, it’s merely competent and pacey, which perhaps is his strength as a director but, not so much that he is particularly noted for rising to ‘star director’ status over the years, it seems to me.

Composers Hans J. Salter, William Lava and Eric Zeisl are on scoring duties and, it’s okay. It does that very interesting thing where, when you see a packing crate arriving on the docks which says London, it lapses into a paraphrase of a patriotic tune associated with the English. I recognised the tune but can’t quite place it’s name but, yeah, this is a device which I’ve heard Elmer Bernstein point out in a documentary... that it’s a huge intellectual leap to make in musical scoring because it re-enforces the scene setting in the minds of the audience at an almost subconscious level.

And there’s really not much more I can offer on The Invisible Man's Revenge. It’s probably the least interesting one in the franchise and the Invisible Man would not return to the screen from Universal until two separate encounters with Abbot and Costello. And, yes, reviews of those two particular films will be forthcoming here at some point soon too.

Horror Of The Blood Monsters

Crusty Asian Crustaceans

Horror Of The Blood Monsters
USA/Philippines 1970
Directed by Al Adamson
(plus various, I guess)
IIP/Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Horror Of The Blood Monsters is the next film in the wonderful Severin Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection Blu Ray boxed set I’ve been watching but, to paraphrase a great writer, this must be some strange usage of the word ‘masterpiece’ of which I was previously unaware. This film is easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen and, I can tell you, I’ve seen some real clunkers in my time.

The film stars what seems to be the magic triangle of Al Adamson’s regular cast around this time, John Carradine, Robert Dix and the lovely Vicki Volante and, out of the three of them, Carradine seems to be the only one really doing a good job of it although how, with the dialogue they have here, anybody could attempt to make this work is beyond me. Dix and Volante did a pretty great job in Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here) and you wonder how their acting took such a nose dive that they got to this. The only other member of the cast worth talking about is Joey Benson, who actually does a brilliant acting job despite a script filled with science fiction techno-babble that doesn’t in any way reflect real life. You may remember him from Psycho-A-Go-Go and its subsequent recuts as Fiend With The Electronic Brain and Blood Of Ghastly Horror (all of which I reviewed here) and it’s a shame this guy was only in a few movies because, of all the actors here, he’s the one that most deserved to go on to better things. I think.

The film itself is an Al Adamson patchwork job. He liked an unreleased Filipino movie directed by Rolf Bayer called Tagani from 1956 (goodness knows why) so he bought the rights out of his own pocket and shot a load of new footage (at least half of this movie, maybe a bit more) to add to it, creating a new storyline which is both ridiculous (that is to say, even more ridiculous) than the original and that also doesn’t really hold together that well as a single, focused through line. He also added footage from some other films as well such as Man And His Mate and Unknown Island but, well, if there was ever a case for less is more then maybe this film would go some way towards demonstrating that idea.

Okay, so somebody in distribution must have wanted a horror picture because the first five minutes of Adamson's footage is about vampires on the streets and, although the IMDB seems to have the plot summarised pretty easily, I can’t say I came away with an impression as to why it’s here at all, other than to say the vampires (one of whom is Adamson himself, in a cameo) come from another planet and are bringing their disease of blood drinking to Earth. If they’re meant to resemble any of the creatures in the spliced in footage from other films well... it would be a huge leap of faith, for sure. There are no real vampires on the planet on which our ‘intrepid crew of explorers’ end up journeying to, apart from... no, I’ll save that bit for later.

So John Carradine leads a crew, including Bishop, to another planet to inspect the Spectra Solar System he has discovered. At ‘mission control’, Robert Dix and Vicki Volante communicate with pseudo-scientific babble and keep tabs on the crew. Actually, let me tell you about mission control for a minute because, frankly, most of the time it’s a static photo of the backs of two actors' heads from another film while a television screen image of the one or other of the crew are either superimposed onto or, possibly, just showing through a TV shaped hole in the picture. This then doesn’t match in any way with the single shots of the front of Dix and Volante’s heads as they talk their space race drivel when cut to. They are both seen head and shoulders only with some kind of black drape cloth behind them and, if I said this is worse than anything you can expect to see in an Ed Wood movie then, yeah, maybe you’ll get some idea of what this movie is like. The two are never seen in the same shot at the same time in their mission control setting, which makes me think that there was only a small amount of black backdrop to go around and they both just filmed their scenes sitting on the same stool in a photo studio.

However, when a couple of completely random scenes of Dix and Volante having tame sex are inserted for, from what I can make out, absolutely no reason whatsoever, they do at least share a screen. And a bed. And also this is the one time you might get a sense that this film is supposed to be set in our future as the two have ‘future sex’, which means they roll around kissing but have electrodes fitted to their heads with bright lights and beepy sounds. At one point, one of them confesses to making love in the ‘old way’ but, honestly, I’m past caring by this stage. And if I’m not even interested in the sex scenes in a movie, well... they’ve really lost me.

Meanwhile, the heroes have reached the planet and their footage is intercut and merges seamlessly with footage about two warring tribes on a prehistoric Earth, some of whom have tusks for teeth and look just like the three beast-men Buster Crabbe fights at the end of episode one of the 1936 serial Flash Gordon (which I reviewed here). But, you know, a lot worse. And when I say seamlessly, well... there were traces of irony and sarcasm to be found in that sentence I’m afraid because... okay... so did I mention that the footage from Tagami is in black and white. So, when our crew get to the planet they are also in black and white but... drive-ins wanted colour movies for their shows so everybody on the planet (other footage included), are tinted in different colours throughout like an old silent movie... which is somehow explained (or attempted to be explained) by the fact that the atmosphere of the planet emits some kind of chromatic radiation which means everything looks like hand tinted monochrome that constantly changes from red to green to yellow etc. Um... yikes.

Anyway, our crew rescues a slave girl called Lian from one of the warring factions, played here by Jennifer Bishop and, yes, of course her footage doesn’t match up with the Filipino movie she purports to have come from. Of course, she speaks alien but, that’s okay, because John Carradine’s professor character talks in the radio from their spaceship and instructs the away team on how to do a quick bit of minor brain surgery and place a translator device directly into Lian’s head. Lian is none the worse for wear from this invasive procedure (she doesn’t even need any of her hair shaved) and can now, of course, understand and speak perfect English.

And then there’s more shenanigans including some kind of crab men, some flying bat ape men who, well they have to be seen to be believed and kind of bounce rather than fly but, yeah... I’m sorry to say that both these ridiculous beasts, along with some truly pathetic looking men-in-suit tyrannosaurs (worse than you could possibly imagine in their saggy costumes) in no way save the film and turn it into a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of experience. They are highlights in a very weak production it’s true but, no, this film gets beyond saving very quickly and I have to wonder why this was even accepted for distribution (something like 5 years after it was in the can, to boot).

I don’t know how people like uber cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond got work with a regular studio after working on ‘filler’ material like this but, well, I guess nobody must have looked at his CV that closely and, in an age before the internet, I guess it was fairly easy to hide your involvement in projects such as this one. You know, it’s funny but every time I see a touch of promise in the films of Al Adamson like Psycho-A-Go-Go or Five Bloody Graves, he then comes out with something which is some of the most terrible rubbish I’ve ever seen, like Horror Of The Blood Monsters. Once again, though, I am grateful that Severin have made stuff like this available to us and, as usual, they’ve done their best to save this with a great transfer from what must have been a shoddy print. So, yeah, I shall continue my occasional journey through their Al Adamson box set as the weeks go on. The man worked in a lot of different genres, it would seem.

Blood Of Dracula's Castle

 

Blood Bank

Blood Of Dracula's Castle
USA 1969 Directed by Al Adamson
Severin Blu Ray Zone A

Okay, so the next film up in my mammoth exploration of the beautifully put together Severin box set, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, is... Blood Of Dracula’s Castle. And, it’s a surprising one because, after Psycho-A-Go-Go (reviewed here) and Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here), I was coming around to maybe thinking that Adamson wasn’t just a director of trash and was actually an unsung genius and, you know, as I go through this set more I may find that to be the case. However, this movie is truly an argument for the opposite conclusion.

It starts of nicely enough with Vicki Volante as an unnamed character driving her open topped car through roads cut into what looks like a half desert, half forest kind of environment, to the sound of a pretty simplistic pop song. However, she turns out to be a not so intelligent character when she discovers she’s not filled her car with enough petrol and it runs out, stranding her in the 'desert forest'. So she gets out and goes to try and find help, walking slap bang into... a thuggish brute called Mango, who works for Mr and Mrs Dracula... who lease a castle just nearby. She gets chained in their cellar, along with a bunch of other young ladies, so Dracula’s butler, played by John Carradine, can slowly syphon off their blood, day by day, to pour into wine glasses for Count Dracula (played by Alexander D'Arcy) and Countess Dracula (played by Paula Raymond) to sup from. So, yeah, they have their own little blood bank in their cellar.

Immediately following the abduction of the gal by Mango, we cut to a bunch of dolphins and the two main protagonists of the movie. Here we have Glen (played by Gene Otis Shane), who is a professional photographer taking shots of his model fiancé  Liz (played by Jennifer Bishop). There are a lot of shots of Seaworld while Glen takes pictures of Liz in various costumes and poses as she cavorts with sea lions and such like. The only reason I can think all of this padding is in here is because Seaworld must have been relatively cheap to hire and so they wanted to get some substantial footage shot there. Anyway, while they’re at Seaworld, Glen gets a message handed to him because, yes, you would get a stray telegram or post handed to you while you’re out visiting Seaworld, right? Um... okay, ignoring this new rumple, the message says that Glen’s Uncles Tom has died and left him his castle in his inheritance. So Glen and Liz decide to go off to visit the remote castle to live there (because, of course a model and photographer who are living in the city where their jobs are would want to go off to some remote spot hours away from civilisation and live there). However, they are a little worried because Uncle Tom’s castle has been rented to an old couple for the past 90 years (so Tom never lived there then?). You can see where this is heading, right? When they do get there a bit later in the ‘story’, the couple don’t look as old as they expect and, that’s because they’re really hundreds of years old vampires, of course.

Meanwhile, as they make their way through the same desert/forest roads that Mr. and Mrs. Dracula’s last victim took at the start of the movie, Dracula has arranged for ‘friend of the family’ Johnny, played by Robert Dix, to be 'released' from prison where he’s serving time for being a crazy, homicidal lunatic. There’s a cameo from director John 'Bud' Cardos as the prison guard under Dracula's pay who asks Johnny to hit him over the head to make his escape look realistic. Johnny does him one better, getting to like it after the first hit and then bashing his brains in with a rock as he smiles and laughs about it. It wouldn’t really need anything else to cement this character's reputation as a psycho with the audience but the writer and director then proceed to drive the message home by showing us his long trek through the desert, pursued by prison guards.

Even though, you know, Johnny needs to make good his get away and find his way back to the castle, he suddenly comes across, in the middle of nowhere and cavorting near a small waterfall, a bikini clad gal. Who, of course, he then drowns in the water. He then comes across another guy with a car and he smacks his brains in with another rock (a fine weapon of choice), loading him and his handy shotgun into the back seat to drive back to his mates, 'The Draculas'. However, on the way he comes across a hitchhiker who he shoots through the window with his shotgun, dumping him into the back seat with the other guy and switching clothes with one of them (in the most ridiculous and less than credible manner possible, while he is still driving). He then pushes the car off the cliff with the corpses in it, knowing the cops will find his clothes on one of the men and somehow assume it’s him and stop looking for him. Bizarrely, although I was pretty sure both guys in the car were dead, as the car goes over the cliff and rolls down the rocky terrain, one of them lets out a scream. Yeah, I really don’t know what’s going on here at this point. Robert Dix was pretty good in Five Bloody Graves but, honestly, though he tries his best in this one, he just doesn’t have any decent dialogue to work with and his forced, maniacal laugh isn’t quite what the doctor ordered to be honest.

Pretty soon after Glen and Liz arrive at the castle and stay for both dinner and the night (in a guest room) but, after refusing Dracula’s offer to buy the property, they know something’s up. The next day they go to investigate the ‘toucan’ they were told was responsible for all that screaming they heard in the night and find the chained up gals. They then get chained up themselves but are all left free as they are forced to wear robes and go up a hill while John Carradine and his employees burn Vicky Volante at the stake, as a sacrifice to the great moon God Lunar (I’m not making this up, by the way). But, when they get back to their dungeon they break free and Carradine, Johnny and the Draculas are killed. However, Liz is nabbed by Mungo who takes her up a cliff. Glen follows and, though it looks like they are doomed to a dumb demise due to Mungo’s brutish strength, Glen happens to find a nearby axe just handily laying around by one of the rocks and finishes the towering man servant off. End of story and, frankly, that ending came in none too soon.

It’s easy to trash this as just a really terribly made movie... and so I have. However, I will say that Adamson’s visual flair... or eye for hiring someone with visual flair... does come into its own in a few places. The cinematographer here was a young Lazlo Kovacks and it does show from time to time. Seriously, how did Adamson get to work with so many ‘A’ list, award winning professionals in his early movies? I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

So yeah, there are some nicely done shots with vertical split sections and they manage to get a lot of depth into some of the frames. The print is in terrible shape though but Severin have, as always, done their best with the materials they have to work with. They have also included another, extended TV version of the movie where someone, probably not Adamson, has added 7 or 8 minutes of werewolf sub plot. It’s hinted that Johnny goes more than a little crazy when it’s the full moon (although I honestly don’t see how he could get to be any more of a volatile nutter than he already is in this) and so I guess he goes 'full wolfman' in this cut. I was going to watch this version so I could give a more rounded view of it here but then found out that it’s been cropped into a 4:3 aspect ratio for television and, well, I’m sure fans of cinema will forgive me if I take a pass. I’m sure some of you, like me, get stabs of pain and deep anxiety when forced to watch a film in an incorrect aspect ratio. It’s not something I would wish on anyone so, I can live without those extra minutes of lycanthrope filled footage, to be honest.

And that’s that. I don’t know why Carradine is only playing the butler here when he already played Dracula twice for Universal in the 1940s but, it’s not so much of a missed opportunity when you see how awful this film is. I can’t recommend Blood Of Dracula’s Castle in any way, shape or form but I can certainly recommend the wonderful box set it comes as part of and, again, my compliments to Severin on this one.

Solar Powered Corpse With Lingerie Fetish

Astro Zombies 1969 US

Directed by Ted V. Mickels

Image Entertainment DVD Region 1

I’m feeling a little ambivalent towards Astro Zombies after my first viewing. I was expecting it to be bad... that’s where the fun of watching this kind of movie comes from as far as I’m concerned. But it was a lot less entertaining, if truth be told, than most of the B-movies I’ve seen recently. And of course, there’s the few odd little moments which induce a big grin as most anything made badly on a low budget does.

I’m not sure how I’d really summarise this particular movie because I was having a really hard time following the plot on this one. The one active Astro Zombie in the movie is not from out of this world and in the strictest sense of the term it’s not even a zombie. He is, as far as I could work out though, at least a reanimated corpse... a reanimated corpse with a giant metal skull for a head and a strange propensity for grabbing at young female victims with the intent of stripping away their outer garments and, apparently, stabbing them repeatedly through their lingerie.

The story follows two separate factions: The CIA headlined by Wendell Corey and a criminal faction headlined by Tura Satana of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Both factions are after one Dr. DeMarco played with perhaps a little less gusto than usual by John Carradine, an actor not unfamiliar with mad scientists and movie monsters from his Universal horror days. The reason he is in demand is because he, with the help of his immensely and unbelievably hilariously gurning lab assistant (very much in the Igor mode), has perfected a process, where you extract... um... stuff... from the brain of a dead body by attaching an old funnel and hooking it to some wires so you can record it on a small circuit board which you place (literally place, it doesn’t connect to anything) in a metal box inside an obscurely named piece of machinery. Blood also needs to be extracted and somehow this helps create a metal, skull-faced astro zombie. Ooh... and there’s also mention that the creatures brains are solar powered... this becomes important later. But of course their only successful astro-zombie went psychotic and escaped and started murdering local women... which is why the CIA are looking for the good doctor since they are familiar with his work.

The movie starts off with a gorgeous woman driving down a highway... there are lots of shots of driving in this movie... just as there are lots of very long and interminable sequences of John Carradine babbling absolute gobbeldygook technical jargon and painstakingly unscrewing things and trying to look desperately scientific. It’s like the director really needed to pad this movie out big time to get it up to feature length for exhibition purpose... so why cut away from the boring stuff when you don’t have enough script to keep the action going... anyway I digress...

The woman is driving down the highway and after a while she parks her car in her garage where we know the monster is hiding. It has to be said that this young lady’s acting talents do not match her obvious charms and as she looks around the garage because, presumably, she thinks she’s heard something... you can kinda see the director standing behind the camera and pointing at the different places where she has to turn her head to look at before the monster grabs her... and of course the monster does grab her and then proceeds to undo her clothing a little with much vigour... almost like they don’t want you to realise that her clothing has come undone as anything other than by accident... and then, down they go below camera and said monster begins to repeatedly stab her. Blood and screams ensue. The blood splashes against the side of the car repeatedly in this film's one attempt to pull off something like an artistic shot... and the screams go on for quite a while than you might normally think necessary. This monster can’t be a very dab hand with a knife... he must keep missing every major artery for her to carry on quite that much.

Cut to the credits sequence of some Japanese made Black clockwork robots battling a model tank to the sound of machine gun fire. I’ve seen this done somewhere before but I can’t think where... and before you ask the question... no, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the movie. Unless the writers who happen to be the director and Wayne Rogers (who played Trapper John for all those years on M*A*S*H) are trying to push a metaphor here... if they are though it was kinda wasted on me. Answers on a postcard would be welcome.

After this we are treated to the sight of a bloodied man inside the wreck of a car crash... in the middle of a large open area of flat green landscape... a place where it would be almost impossible to crash your car... and even if you could find something to crash your car into (and there really is no evidence it’s crashed into anything specific) then you’d have to really defy the laws of physics to have it end up like this... but then the brilliant hunchback sidekick played by William Bagdad comes lurching on the screen to steal the body for his masters dastardly experiments.

After this you get the CIA briefing including an impossibly dashing and frankly fake looking “hero figure” played irritatingly by Joe Hoover. The character is called Chuck Edwards and that’s actually pretty apt because after less than five minutes I really did want someone to chuck Edwards through the window. And shortly after this we meet the villains... Tura Satana has a bizarre little henchman who’s quick to reach for his knife. Later on in the movie he seems to develop a penchant for wearing a beret made from white fur... I hope I never again have to watch a heavy wearing a white fur beret... I felt for him, I really did.

Pretty soon the monster makes one of its very rare appearances and kills one of the lab assistants in a lab belonging to a “generic good-guy scientist” who has been partnered with an undercover CIA agent. The lab assistant stays behind after work to “finish up” and the monster makes its entrance... nonchalantly ripping off her clothes until she is down to her lingerie and then violently stabbing her repeatedly... hmmm... seems to be a theme developing here.

I’d normally do a list of tantalising highlights at this point in the proceedings for this kind of film... but it has to be said... a lot of this movie is just padding out overlong scenes and I just didn’t get the same “B-movie glee” as I did out of, say, Dracula VS Frankenstein or Superargo Contra Diabolus. So I’m hard pushed to offer up a menu of exploitative delights for you on this one...

Apart from one great moment... or okay moments... which made me laugh. I said that solar powered thing was important, right? When fighting one of the CIA heroes and his girlfriend the monster has the hero on the ropes and the girlfriend down to her lingerie and is about to move in for the kill when he starts making “ooh, something's wrong” movements with his arms and reaches for a handily placed electric torch which he turns on and jams against his forehead... See there? Solar power! He then runs away with the torch firmly jammed against his head.

At the end of the film, when the heroes and villains have all congregated in the good doctor's laboratory to face off over the inert form of a freshly created “astro-zombie”, the previous astro-zombie crashes the party to kill off all the bad guys... he rushes into the basement laboratory... still clutching his electric torch in his hand, jammed against his forehead. Quite unintentionally funny.

And that’s about it I’m afraid... I don’t have very much else to offer on this movie other than to say that, while I’m really glad to have seen it, it’s not something I’d necessarily show anyone else for laughs... there is quite a lot of padding in there and some of it is not all that watchable. But don’t let that put you off watching it if solar powered, mechanical zombies are your thing.