Dracula (the Dirty old Man) – review

Director: William Edwards

Release date: 1969

Contains spoilers

Some films are just a complete wtf moment from beginning to end and that is a fitting description of Dracula (the Dirty Old Man). To be truthful Dracula has had some liberties taken with it as a novel, and as a character, over the years, sometimes verging on abuse. This film must have had poor old Bram Stoker spinning in his grave.

From the very beginning we see the tenure of the film, with a drawn picture of a breast, fang punctures and blood, the blood forms the titles (by panning down not by animation). Even the credit list is inaccurate, comparing it to the imdb credit list (which in this case I am taking as accurate as it at least has not confused the gender of actors). Amusingly the credits do inform us that Vince Kelley plays “Alucard (Dracula spelt backwards)” – just in case we cannot work it out ourselves.

This actually fits strangely with the dialogue later when Dracula announces, something along the lines of, I am Dracula, which is Alucard backwards… you can call me Ali. We’ll get to the main dialogue soon enough but the film starts with a panoramic desert shot, with some impressive psychedelic jazz playing (a theme that continues through the film). A voice begins a stream of consciousness that is amusing at first, though tiresome when he goes on about blue hills behind the blue hills behind the blue hills ad nauseam.

Cut to a cave, a coffin opening and Dracula getting up. The first thing we notice is the dialogue. It is his thoughts, it is very silly (with comments about needing the bathroom and interior decorating) and a faux-Jewish accent is used. We discover as things roll on that all the dialogue has been dubbed. It seems that the original sound was so bad the whole thing was dubbed, with the ‘voice talent’ adding in thoughts all the way through as well as narrative dialogue. Honestly, it is like Badly Dubbed Porn all the way through. This works at a puerile level at first but quickly grates.

Anyway, Dracula goes off and spies on a house. This happens to belong to Ann (Ann Hollis), who has just returned from a date with Mike (Billy Whitton). Dracula watches her get undressed (and, of course, we get an endless barrage of dubbed commentary). This scene goes on and on… because this is the level of the movie; it is kind of sexploitation to sub-softcore porn (with disturbing elements). Eventually she goes to her window and he raises cape and turns into – a really crap bat. It looks like a mutant version of Mickey Mouse and the stick it is on becomes clear during the shot.

Mike has taken Ann to breakfast and arranged to go on another date when he is told that his boss is sending him to an old mining town to interview the new owner, Alucard – Mike, it seems, is a journalist. He has to abandon the date as it will take him all day to get there and back. He arrives and eventually finds Dracula in a cave, who hypnotises him and tells him that he is to be a Jackal-Man – think werewolf – and renames him Irving Jackal-Man.

This then is the film. Mike becomes Irving and then chases after girls (the second victim actually cries out something like oh no, Irving Jackal-Man, though how she knew is beyond me). Dracula then instantly transports them to the cave where he strips them, insults them, ties them up, kisses and fondles them and then bites their breast. This leads to some of the worst agony face pulls in movie history.

Ah, but it gets worse, you see Irving is horny and he actually rapes one of the victims – with his pants still on. He ‘kisses’ her during – going too deep (ie biting her) and killing her and so then continues to rape the corpse. It isn’t erotic, it was just plain old wrong. What all this does lead to is a variety of young ladies in a state of undress.

Of course any man attacked (because they got in the way) is killed whilst clothed. Thus the film avoids naked male flesh but does use copious amounts of tomato ketchup to simulate blood. The only other real effects in the film involve quick cuts to make Dracula look like he has vanished or reappeared.

Eventually Irving kidnaps Ann and the monsters end up fighting over her – allowing her to escape and run naked through cave/mine tunnels – until Dracula perishes due to sunlight, but don’t get too excited as the effects are so minimal as to not really exist and one has to question just how the mouth of the mine got so close to Dracula’s lair all of a sudden.

Bad, but it starts off amusing with the dubbing (for all of a few minutes, until it grates) and the soundtrack is nice. Other than this, no real plot, no characterisation, misogynistic and sadistic elements that ensure the sexploitation aspects are less a frisson and are simply distasteful. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Astounding Archive Footage

I came across this embedded over at the marvellous Dracula Blogged, but felt I really should share it with you in all its YouTube glory. Yes, that is Betty Boop, yes that is Bela Lugosi, yes he is putting the bite on…

Concilium news

It has been a while since I mentioned my novel. However, I felt it worth mentioning that it is now available via Amazon US and Amazon UK. Links to the relevant Amazon pages are in the sidebar, to the right, if you scroll down.

For those who haven’t yet read it, a sample chapter is up over at the sister blog. For those who like such things, I have now made the book available in e-form via lulu. Work continues, slowly, on part two.

How did I miss this one?

Bride of Dracula, it seems, was a show in the UK that retold Dracula through the art of belly dancing. I have embedded a YouTube Video from the show and, seemingly, there is a DVD. I have to have it, now if only I could find it… Stay tuned…

Blood Thirst – review

Director: Newt Arnold

Release Date: 1971*

Contains spoilers

*In respect of the release date, there does appear to be some confusion. The majority of the film was shot in 1965 and was completed in 1970. The film was released in 1971.

Let’s get this out of the way – I liked this film… I don’t know why, it is cheesy, it has bad effects, the acting is poor, the logic is flawed and yet the joint U.S./Philippines movie swept me along as though I was riding on its cool jazz soundtrack and I had a big old smile on my face all the way through.

We start as staff leave club Barrio, in Manila. As the hostess Maria leaves, the club owner, Calderon, offers to drive her home but she prefers to walk. She walks a while and then we see a flash of some hideous thing (I’ll get to the monster later) and she screams. She is found, tied upside down, dangling from a tree. The attending police, headed by Inspector Miguel Amos (Vic Diaz), recognise that it is identical to several other murders. Miguel has called in his friend and 'sexual crimes and motivation' expert, American Adam Rourke (Robert Winston).

Rourke arrives and goes to Miguel’s house, where they discuss the case. All the girls had exactly 10 cm cuts on both wrists and they were surgically neat. Their bodies were drained of blood. There was no connection between any of them. It becomes quickly clear that Rourke is quick with a wisecrack and I want to discuss the character now. Rourke is a cross between a noir detective and James Bond with a fast tongue. Winston is not a good actor and yet… I really liked the character, he is the focus of the film, he amused me all the way through and I actually wished there were more films featuring Rourke (Winston did not have a long career and this was his last film).

Miguel’s sister, Sylvia (Judy Dennis) enters and dislikes Rourke’s tongue. Before you wonder, she is Miguel’s adopted sister. Rourke suggests that he goes undercover (as a writer) and checks out the Barrio club as no one knows he is police. Miguel objects but soon accedes. Miguel mentions that there are rumours of a blood cult flying around but Rourke is dismissive of the occult, making a crack about going to the library to look up books on Count Dracula and Medieval witches – much to Sylvia’s disgust. After a crack by Rourke about puncture holes in Sylvia's neck, Miguel forces her to drive Rourke into town. When she drops him off he makes a distasteful joke then kisses her she drives off in disgust.

Rourke goes to the Barrio club and asks to see Calderon, but he is told to wait until after a dance by Serana. Now whilst it was not as, shall we say, exciting this scene brought to mind the Salma Hayek scene in from dusk till dawn. Everyone in the crowd, bar Rourke, seems oddly fascinated by Serana’s performance – including Calderon and Rourke later describes the reaction in terms of supplicants with a priestess or Goddess. Serana finishes, Rourke compliments her and she goes up stairs that Calderon has already taken.

Rourke follows and hears them arguing, Calderon worrying that she is exerting herself. Given the simile with from dusk till dawn it will come as no surprise to state that she is our vampire and I will come to that in a second. The majority of the film, however, is concerned with Rourke – the film seems more comfortable as a detective tale. He is shadowed by Herero, a one legged detective who is his contact, he survives assassination attempts and he gets the girl (Sylvia). Actually he gets the girl after much skirting around and slapping of each other, but there you go.

Serana, as I said, is our vampire. She and Calderon moved to Manila from Brazil – following a series of suspicious deaths. She claims to be an Aztec (for we know the Aztecs were all blonde!), though Rourke seems dismissive at first, “There's a killer on the loose… a homicidal maniac with delusions of ancient history.” We discover that she is a “golden Goddess” and she ages without fresh blood.

The manner of feeding is interesting. The girls are drained and she sits next to electrical apparatus (in the past the 'electricity from the sun' was captured in jars – no? I was lost at that point too.) She throws a special root into the blood, there is a puff of smoke and she becomes younger again.

The capture of the girls is carried out by a creature with a lumpy head… what else could I really call it. We discover at the end that this is Calderon. The thing is there are logical flaws through all of this and not just in the fact that the creature has no eyes, in certain shots at least, and that the actress who plays Serana is of a different ethnic origin to that which the character lays claim.

Firstly, she dies when something goes wrong with the process but I couldn’t work out what exactly - she throws some herbs and then suddenly ages rather than becoming younger. Death may be by aging but for some reason she changes ethnicity during the failed process. Having fled Brazil because of suspicious deaths, Calderon and Serana then leave girls strung up all over the place, in plain view, only deciding to hide the bodies properly when the police are after them. The first (unseen) attacks are at random and then they suddenly only attack girls who work with them. They are a pair of the dumbest homicidal monsters in movie history.

Yet it doesn’t matter. The film is flawed to Hell, the logic is weak or non-existent, the hero and heroine fall for each other in a blatant display of mutual domestic abuse, the hero is beaten and then goes right across the city to bodily throw himself through a door for, it would seem, effect and sympathy. The acting is poor. Yet it is good fun, a guilty pleasure no less.

I can’t give this a tremendous score, that would be wrong. 3 out of 10 seems overly generous. Yet I really enjoyed myself watching this…. Tat; ridiculous, rubbish, beautifully enjoyable tat.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Vampire Vixens From Venus

This 1995 flick, directed by Ted A Bohus, suggests two things in the title. One, that it is a sci-fi, and two, that it is about vampires – albeit alien vampires. Obviously there is some doubt here or this would be a review. Whilst the guidelines I set out some time ago for ‘Vamp or Not?’ probably need amending, expanding and generally tweaking the final guideline mentions “But the title indicates it is a vampire movie” and I suggest that this is “the worst reasoning for whether a film is of the vampire genre or not”.

The film starts with a spaceship and some really awful space flight effects. That said the entire thing is so bad it has a kind of cartoonish value to it. The ship passes the moon and enters Earth orbit, going into stealth mode. This is the ship of the titular vampire vixens from Venus.

The occupants beam down and they are three ugly looking aliens. Their dialogue is subtitled but the content of said subtitles does indicate that this is going to be a film of the most low-brow humour. A fiddle with controls at the wrist and they transform into beautiful buxom ladies, ish… The leader Arylai (J. J. North) transforms properly. Shirley (Theresa Lynn) turns into a rather large lady and needs her controls sorted and Omay (Leslie Glass) cannot transform at all, at first.

Their reason for being on Earth is soon revealed when Arylai and Shirley flag down a car, with a sequence involving Shirley hitching with her thumb down and having to get her boobs out (I said it was lowbrow). The man who stopped is teased by the aliens to get him excited and a device is placed on his head to draw out some form of fluid/hormone – I’ll look at the aftermath of extraction and what they are after soon.

Anyway, the only thing that stands between the aliens and their goal is Detective Oakenshield (Leon Head) and his new partner Jack (John Knox). Oakenshield is, unfortunately, distracted by a woman he has just met, Miss Shampay (Michelle Bauer), he is also a klutz. Oakenshield is a British detective who, after an unfortunate incident at Buckingham Palace, has moved to the U.S. He is portrayed as a Clouseau-esque character and my problem with this was it was so clearly an attempted rip-off of Seller’s classic character, with only the Nationality changed.

Back to the vampiric question, we have had alien creatures before who have drained life force or fluid and we have classed them as vampires. However, the extraction method tended to be natural and this is artificial. It is true that we have vampires taking from their victims by artificial methods but this tends to have an anti-aging, feeding, medicinal or life lengthening effect.

We have had vampires who attack their victims due to the narcotic effect of the act and their own addiction, rather than wanting/needing to feed for sustenance. In this case the aliens are extracting something that can be used as a drug. What exactly they are draining is at various times called fluid or essence but it seems to be necessary to life and more potent when the (male) victim is aroused.

However, our aliens are not addicted. They are drug dealers and they are stealing this essence to sell. In this respect this is a low budget, puerile comedy rip off of Dark Angel (1990). The fact that they are not doing this for their own food-source or addiction tends to move me away from vampire.

The victims react to the process in a strange way. They seem decayed almost but that process does not stop and very quickly they become a fleshy pod. This is described as dead flesh – though they are pulsating – and that dichotomy is ‘answered’ in a throw-away line that in truth answers nothing. Over-all a device that has no discernable logic. As these pods do nothing, they do not feed into our discussion further.

Over-all I cannot suggest that these are vampires. They are not feeding and they are not addicted (that we know of). They are not genuinely parasitical in the classic sense, though one might argue they are in a socio-political sense. Such an arguement would be too deep for a film of such shallow basis, rather they are exploiters and horny human males are the thing they exploit to deadly effect. Not Vamp.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? I am Legend

I Am Legend is, of course, the Will Smith vehicle and film of the Richard Matheson novel of the same name. When in production I worried about this; could Smith carry the role of Robert Neville, what would they do with the story and would it contain vampires? There has been much debate as to whether the infected “Dark Seekers” are actually vampires and I decided to look at the film as a ‘Vamp or Not?’. That said I will also be offering some critique of the movie and looking at its novel inaccuracies. There will be heavy spoilers.

The fact that it might stray from Matheson’s story was not unexpected. After all the novel has been filmed before. the Last Man on Earth was fairly novel accurate. The Omega Man did not feature vampires and we should remember that the book also inspired the Night of the Living Dead, the Romero movie that spawned the modern zombie genre.

The story takes place, in this, in the near future. In 2009 Dr Alice Krippen (Emma Thompson) – a wholly obvious name – develops the Krippen virus, a genetically engineered form of the measles virus. With it she cures cancer. The Krippen virus mutates, however, becomes airborne and decimates humanity. Later we hear that there were 6 billion people on Earth when the virus hit. KV, as it is known, had a 99% kill rate, there was a less than 1% immune (12 million) and the other 588 million turned into dark seekers.

Neville is a virologist who was working at ground zero (Manhattan). He is immune and the rest of the city survivors are dark seekers. Smith, it has to be said, does a tremendous job as the lone survivor, trying to keep his sanity after three years alone and still trying to find a cure, with only his dog Sam for company. Sam is not only his last handhold on sanity but also his weakness. KV can jump species. This is something I did not like. Other species are immune to airborne KV but Neville uses infected rats and we see infected dogs. To be honest, if the rats could be infected then that would be the end of everything - infected creatures would be everywhere.

Are the infected vampires? Let us look at the evidence. They are very violent and have mutated into a form that is not exactly human normal. They certainly are attracted to blood, and Neville uses this to capture a female for his human trials of possible cures. When he captures the female a male pushes his head into the sun. This shows us that sunlight (or specifically UV) burns them. I immediately took this to be a sign of concern, Neville does not. “an infected male exposed himself to sunlight today. Now it's possible decreased brain function or growing scarcity of food is causing them to... ignore their basic survival instincts. Social de-evolution appears complete. Typical human behavior is now entirely absent.”

The dark seekers then try to hunt Neville and the first thing they do is set up a rather elaborate trap. Neville uses a DVD hire shop and has populated it with mannequins. Outside is one called Fred. They move Fred and use its movement to confuse Neville – they use his loneliness and his thin grasp on reality. They hide a snare in water and copy his exact trapping method. This shows forethought and planning. They then release infected dogs after him. Note that the dogs can only attack when the sun has moved and the infected do not, themselves, attack at this point.

As a result of this Sam is infected and Neville has to kill her, loosing his minimal grip on sanity he becomes suicidal, with a desire to take as many of them out as he possibly can when he dies. The dark seekers know to look for him at the pier and Neville almost dies (or perhaps that might be almost gets captured) before being rescued by Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan), two survivors who have heard Neville’s message that he broadcasts daily. It is here that, for me, the film started to fall apart and we shall look at that shortly.

Anna gets him home before the sun has fully risen and the dark seekers attack as night falls. It is clear that the male is commanding his troops, they act cooperatively (trying to rip open the ceiling to allow access from the roof). The male dodges bullets, he knows danger. We also see a bite to the neck, but this is less vampire and more a mirror of a lion with a gazelle from the start of the movie.

The DVD carries an alternate ending and I will flick to that for a moment. In the alternate ending Neville realises (through means almost mystical, which I will look into later when I see why the film failed towards the end) that the dark seekers have humanity. The male is trying to get his mate, whom Neville has succeeded in partially curing. Neville wheels her out and the male ensures the others do not attack. He carries her away and Neville survives - driving off in a faux-'original cut of Bladerunner' ending.

This social intelligence says vamp, rather than zombie or infected killing machine. However the alternate ending strayed from the book because Neville survived. In the theatrical ending Neville dies, but it is an act of self sacrifice to save the other non-infected and the cure. This is out with the book.

Todd Rundgren suggested, when it came to covering songs, that you should make the cover identical to the original or make the song your own. When it comes to movies and I am Legend specifically it is not identical to the original (book) and fails to make it its own. The film owes too much to previous films, be it Omega Man or the legacy of Romero and that genre development (28 Days Later). In the book Neville dies (off page through execution, though there is intimation of suicide) because he is the bogeyman, he is the monster killing the innocent, he is the old order. This film does allude to this subtly with the wall of shame – past attempts to cure the infected that led to the death of the patient – but pulls from the brink.

With I am Legend Matheson wrote a scientifically grounded book, it is actually sci-fi and one might even dare to say secular. There is no mystical element, everything happens because of science based reasons. When Anna appears and starts spouting on that God is speaking to her, telling her about a survivor colony and revealing his plan to her, I lost hope. There was no need to add pseudo-religious mysticism. This is in place from the head of the film, the film establishes the butterfly as the icon of God and, at the very beginning of the movie, we see a sign “God still loves us” and a butterfly shape is ripped into it.

Before I make a judgement on the vamp aspect I must also mention the animated comics that are on the DVD. These are, in many respects, more interesting than the film and beautifully drawn. “Death as a Gift” is set in Hong Kong and is the poignant suicide of a lone survivor. “Isolation” sees the closing off of Colorado and the coming of the infection through the eyes of a convict still classed as public enemy number one as he was a domestic terrorist. Central America is the location for “Sacrificing the Few for the Many” a coldly, brutally poetic film about the attack on an isolation hospital in the jungle.

It is the final comic “Shelter”, set in New Dehli, which I wish to concentrate on. A girl is locked out of a safe, by her hiding family, as she insisted on seeing her love before hiding. She is infected. Interestingly when she gets into the safe she sees monsters – as the thing progresses the idea is given to us that the infected see the non-infected as something evil. She needs blood specifically to relieve her hunger, giving us a vampire aspect, and she and her infected lover recognise each other and still have feelings for each other.

The social groupings, the communication (albeit in an animalistic, non-human vocalisation), the use of traps, the need for blood, the display of emotion and the burning in sunlight. All this says to me that I Am Legend is most definitely a vampire flick.

The imdb page is here.

New Film: Loved Ones

A new film, Loved Ones has a MySpace page but, other than the synopsis below, not a huge amount of detail as of yet. There is a teaser video on their page, but no film content in it so far. That said, I love the musical theme going on over the teaser. More details as they become available but for now the synopsis is as follows:

“Loved Ones is a contemporary Vampire story set in present day Seattle. Serbia (the son of an Oracle whose father sat at the right hand of Zeus), once roamed the earth as the man Judas Iscariot, and is now the leader of an entire race of Vampires. His goal, as it has been since the crucifixion of Christ, is to bring into captivity, enslave, and feed upon the entire human race.

“Taw, a retiring Police Detective whose life up until now has been filled with car chases, shootouts, and family barbeques, is currently up against the biggest foe of his life. The question, however, is whether this foe is Serbia or himself. The suspense heightens as Taw Jones is placed in the precarious position of choosing between his lovely wife Beth or the beast who is determined to bring evil upon all of humankind.

“With characters such as the sexy and seductive Hillary, the off-the-hook Vampire slayer Gus, the hot and sultry Isabella, a junkie-pimp called Jesus, the meek and mild Mr. Tingle, a street-hardened cop by the name of Tony, and Taw's loving wife Beth, you are bound to be able to relate to at least one person… even if you aren't yet a Vampire.

“With an all-star cast that is filled with seasoned actors, Nashville singers, and some of the best makeup, costume, and tech people in the movie industry, this is a film you won't want to miss. However, it does come with a warning of sorts : "If you are faint of heart or pregnant, do not watch this movie, because it will disturb you".”

Kung Fu Zombie – review

Director: I-Jung Hua

Release date: 1981

Contains spoilers


Despite the title, this is a Chinese vampire flick rather than a zombie flick. However, I have noticed that there is some cross over between kyonsi (traditional hopping vampires) and zombies and the summoning thereof as well as the control is similar in the main. However, with ghosts, possessions and a more traditional (almost Western style) vampire this really covers all the bases.

As a voice tells us about the evil priests who summon the dead we see a priest/wizard in traditional Taoist robes performing a ritual. He does this to raise four zombies, although in their behaviour they are more like controlled kyonsi. The entire scene has an undercurrent of comedy and this film is played more for laughs than anything else. The reason he has summoned them; a criminal, Lu Dai, wishes to gain revenge on Pang (Billy Chong) but he is a great martial artist. In a rather convoluted plan he and his henchmen fill a coffin with knives, put it in a shallow grave and cover it with branches and leaves. They will challenge Pang, the zombies will be summoned and they will push him into the deadly coffin.

Pang himself is a young man and we first see him (with ripped off Bond music) fighting several men. He is really shot in hero mode but, as the film progresses, not a single one of the characters seems that redeemable. Pang, we later discover, is arrogant and has no respect for his father – who in turn has no real love for his son. Having defeated the men he decides to rest and is bashed by his father who hired the men to help him train.

That evening Pang suggests that he needs to go out and relax but his father refuses, telling him he must meditate. There is some argument and he and his father fight. His father ends up clutching his chest and falling to the floor – for all the world looking like he has had a heart attack. So Pang goes out - at this point Pang has not noticed the collapse but we see later he tends to ignore such incidents anyway.

The criminals see Pang approach and we get a flashback indicating that they want revenge because Pang walked into a bank they were robbing and foiled their plans – landing them in jail. Things seem to be working until Lu Dai becomes the one pushed into the coffin. His body is struck by lightening (a rather poor effect), after the others have left, and his ghost becomes free. He orders the priest to find him a new body. At first this might be the father but he isn’t really dead.

The reason the father has trained Pang so hard is because a criminal named Lung has vowed to kill them both due to the fact that Pang’s grandfather and great grandfather were policemen who arrested (presumably) Lung's family. This is not done to defend his son but to defend himself. Lung, for some reason, is in a coffin and the priest tries to get Lu Dai into his body and fails as he still alive.

Pang defeats Lung and the priest then tries again (seemingly there are only three attempts allowed). This unleashes the undead force in Lung and he becomes a vampire. I mentioned he is in more of a Western mode and this seems to be the case, though his fangs are oddly displaced. The father, however, has had a heart attack and Lu Dai gets that body (this is all rather convoluted) but the ritual is interrupted by the henchmen leaving him half human and half ghost. Pang has the vampire and the possessed corpse of his father to deal with. However Lu Dai wants revenge on his henchmen and the priest also (for fouling up the ritual) and they work together with Pang to defeat the enemies.

Phew… for such a convoluted plot, however, it is really a rather simple film, relying on vast martial arts scenes and comedy scenes – many around the fact that only the priest, at one point, can see the ghost. One nice moment was during a resurrection ritual where flashing lights appeared on the face of Lung and the Close Encounters tones were played – odd but amusingly referential.

Very standard Chinese lore was used in the main, and it was sparse at that. We do hear that ghosts cannot see someone in a leaf hat (so you can look silly but evade the ghost) and cannot enter either temples or jails. The comedy was lightly amusing, from my point of view, though my son sneaked in and started watching this behind me. Content wise it wasn’t bad (no nudity, no profanity, no real gore, no real horror) so I let him stay and he thought it was hilarious – which shows the pitch of the comedy level.

It is far from being the finest Hong Kong vampire movie. I’m no real expert but I guess it is far from being the finest martial arts movie released from there either. This strikes me very much as a few drinks with your mates and have a laugh film. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.