Sandra Harrison plays the new girl at a secluded boarding school...
...who falls prey to a demented teacher who turns her into a bloodthirsty vampire girl!
The result is one of the coolest makeups in any low-budget 1950s monster movie...
...in this companion film to I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN.
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
(Originally posted 12/19/2015)
For prolific Spanish cult director Jesus "Jess" Franco, COUNT DRACULA (1970) was a welcome venture into classier territory than that found in his more exploitative efforts such as BLOODY MOON and THE HOT NIGHTS OF LINDA.
Not only that, but it served as a vehicle for Christopher Lee to finally get to play the character of Dracula closer to the original Bram Stoker version, with more of the novel's dialogue (at least in the early scenes in Dracula's castle during which he tells Jonathan Harker of his family history) and a Dracula who more closely resembles the one described by Stoker.
Shot in Spain, the film (now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Severin Films) benefits not only from some terrific found locations that add immeasurably to to its production values, but also from a top-notch cast headed by Lee and the equally venerable Herbert Lom as Professor Van Helsing, who now runs the clinic at which Dr. Seward (Paul Muller) works and where a grievously distraught Harker (Fred Williams) ends up after his ordeal at Castle Dracula.
Originally posted on 3/13/11
It's fun to see filmmakers take a low budget, apply hefty amounts of talent and imagination, and totally ace it. It's also fun to see a movie called BONNIE & CLYDE VS. DRACULA (2009) in which the infamous outlaws actually do go up against the King of the Undead. And it certainly doesn't hurt if Tiffany Shepis gives a stunning performance as Bonnie and happens to get nekkid along the way, too.
The film opens with Bonnie Parker (Shepis) and Clyde Barrow (Trent Haaga, who wrote the incredible DEADGIRL) driving the backroads of the deep South, looking for a place to hide out. Meeting up with old crony Henry (F. Martin Glynn) at a roadside whorehouse run by crotchety old Jake (T. Max Graham), they embark on a scheme to make fast money by swindling some moonshiners. Bullets fly and a doctor's aid is needed, so Bonnie is sent to the spooky mansion of Dr. Loveless (Allen Lowman), who, as it turns out, is harboring none other than Count Dracula himself.
Writer-director Timothy Friend doesn't use this outrageous subject matter as an excuse to make a stupid movie. Indeed, much of BONNIE & CLYDE VS. DRACULA could be a pretty nifty low-rent gangster flick on its own if not for the horrific cutaways to Loveless' mansion along the way. When the outlaw pair finally do meet the ghouls, we get to see them react in realistic style (shock and outrage, followed by lots and lots of bullets) with the humor coming mostly from the incongruity of the situation. Russell Friend's impressive-looking Dracula also strikes a good balance between dry wit and genuine supernatural menace, as do his hordes of fanged, blood-craving minions.
Thanks to Friend's deft direction and some superior cinematography, the film looks great. Artistic lighting and rich colors combine with good costuming and sets to give everything an authentic period feel. Some shots, in fact, have a pictorial splendor that is suitable for framing. The synthesizer score by Joseph Allen enhances the off-kilter aura of the story nicely.
Trent Haaga makes a fine Clyde, alternately goodnatured and ruthless, but Shepis steals the show as a sassy, sexy, and bloodthirsty Bonnie. Her performance is stellar and she milks every line of tough-gal dialogue for all it's worth--I don't think Warren Beatty could've handled her. She's a joy to look at too, as when she gets the last word in an argument with Clyde simply by standing up in the bathtub. (I found myself speechless as well.) In addition to pulling off a more than passable Southern accent, Shepis also handles a Tommy gun or pump shotgun with gleeful abandon and don't take no guff from nobody, alive or undead.
Another standout in the cast is co-producer Jennifer Friend (writer-producer of CADAVERELLA) as Dr. Loveless' simpleminded sister, Annabel. With an electric restraint collar locked around her neck, the childlike Annabel is forced to help Dr. Loveless in his dastardly scientific endeavors although she'd rather dance and sing and play her harmonica, and put on "The Annabel Show" in her bedroom. Well, I just fell in love with her and think she's adorable. I could watch "The Annabel Show" anytime. Her final scenes during the gangsters vs. vampires melee raise the film to a totally unexpected level that had me glowing with admiration for both the actress and the filmmakers.
The DVD from Indican Pictures is in 2.35:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. No subtitles. The screener I reviewed didn't have extras, but the DVD should include two trailers, a behind-the-scenes featurette, "Loveless Viral Video", and a cast-and-crew commentary track.
Hardly the intentionally-bad, "it sucks, so it's fun" type of yuckfest the title suggests, BONNIE & CLYDE VS. DRACULA distills solid acting, a sharp screenplay, hardboiled action, Gothic horror, and a delightfully wicked sense of humor into something that adventurous genre fans should lap up like moonshine out of a Mason jar.
7 More Goofiest Horror Movie Songs Ever
(Thanks to everyone who contributed with their suggestions)
"Puppy Love" Jerry Blaine (Blood of Dracula, 1957)
"Brownsville Road" Arch Hall, Jr. (Eegah, 1962)
“Shook Out of Shape” Carol Kay & The Stone Tones (The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies, 1964)
"Yipes Stripes" Kathy Haddad (Teenage Strangler, 1964)
"The Cat Came Back" Sonny James (Hillbillies In A Haunted House, 1967)
"The Blob" The Five Blobs/Written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David (The Blob, 1958)
"Do the Jellyfish" (Sting of Death, 1965)
Thanks to everyone who contributed with their suggestions!
Originally posted on 5/9/18
"Yipes Stripes" clip via Something Weird Video
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Originally posted on 3/10/17
Universal's belated follow-up to DRACULA (1931) and DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936) is the richly atmospheric horror tale SON OF DRACULA (1943), one of the studio's finest supernatural films of the 40s.
At first, Lon Chaney, Jr. may seem a bit beefy for the role of Dracula's son (some believe the title to be a misnomer and that this is actually Dracula, Sr. himself) but he gives the Count an aggressive physicality that predates Christopher Lee's similar portrayal in the later Hammer films.
Chaney's Count, however, augments Lee's aloofness with a manic emotionalism. Having settled in the American South due to a shortage of "fresh blood" in his own little corner of Transylvania, Dracula falls in with the native tendency toward steamy melodrama (in fiction, at least) and surrenders to passions of both the flesh and the spirit when choosing tempestuous, raven-haired Southern belle Kay Caldwell (Louise Allbritton) as his bride.
Originally posted on 7/6/21
Currently watching: American-International's BLOOD OF DRACULA (1957) starring Sandra Harrison as Nancy, a teenage girl who becomes a blood-sucking vampire while attending an exclusive girls' boarding school in the mountains.
After Nancy's mother dies, her father waits a mere six weeks before hooking up with a gold-digger and sending Nancy off to boarding school to get her out of their hair.
Nancy is understandably distraught and resentful, and her first days at the school find her clashing with a clique of spoiled bullies who call themselves the "Birds of Paradise."
Eventually, the headstrong Nancy wins their grudging acceptance and also the attention of an oddball science teacher named Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), who finds in Nancy a perfect subject for her weird experiments in bringing out certain supernatural powers inherent in human beings.
Under hypnosis, and with the aid of a mystical amulet she obtained in the Carpathian mountains, Miss Branding succeeds in turning Nancy into a horrific fanged creature who stalks the campus thirsting for warm teenage blood.
If you catch it in the right frame of mind, BLOOD OF DRACULA is just as much fun as it sounds. It helps to be a fan of producer Herman Cohen and director Herbert L. Strock's other teen monster classics I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN.
Except for the different-sounding title, this one fits right in with these and forms an ideal trilogy of teen variations on classic horror monsters. It also boasts a rock-and-roll song performance (Jerry Blaine's "Puppy Love") so awful that it rivals the ungodly "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo" from TEENAGE WEREWOLF.
The isolated setting, with its shadowy surrounding forest and adjoining cemetery, adds considerably to the film's atmosphere, as do composer Paul Dunlap's characteristically downbeat, piano-heavy score and the moody black and white cinematography.
Performances are generally good, with Richard Devon, Malcolm Atterbury, and Paul Maxwell (HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, ALIENS) as local detectives baffled by the brutal blood-draining murders that begin to occur whenever Miss Branding exercises her mental powers over the hapless Nancy.
Louise Lewis gives a restrained performance as the psychotic Miss Branding, who, just like the great Whit Bissell's psychiatrist character in TEENAGE WEREWOLF, uses hypnosis to turn an unsuspecting teenager into a fearsome creature in the service of some mad perversion of science.
Sandra Harrison is quite good as Nancy, especially when overcome by the vampiric curse which, thanks to a cool transformation sequence that occurs three or four times throughout the film, turns her into a wonderfully weird-looking fanged vampiress who's way more bestial than her Hammer counterparts.
In fact, I'm surprised that her monstrous visage isn't more well-known (I've only seen it a few times in monster magazines over the years) and that this film itself seems almost obscure compared to the others in the series.
While sparing in its scenes of horror and with a somewhat anti-climactic ending, the film as a whole should prove a satisfying view for fans of Herman Cohen and Herbert L. Strock's brand of low-budget chiller fare, especially those who appreciate a really cool monster makeup. At any rate, BLOOD OF DRACULA was a treat for this old-school monster fan.
