Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 23/52 | Independent International
On a dark day-for-night, dogs bark in a graveyard as, I guess, Dracula opens a coffin to find The Monster. The graveyard attendant stumbles upon Dracula, and Dracula kills him. Meanwhile, a woman goes through Dr. Durea’s Creature Imporium in the Venice boardwalk park. But someone, or something, chops her head off. Concurrently, Judith Fontaine puts on her Las Vegas show, then receives a telegram from the Missing Persons Bureau that they still have not located Judith’s sister, Joanie.
Judith goes to the bureau to speak with Sgr. Martin, who tells her that Joanie was last seen with a group of nearby hippies, who, I guess, also engage in slave trafficking? So, Judith takes it on herself to track down her sister. Dr. Durea’s Creature Imporium gets some visitors, and Dr. Durea makes an appearance, along with his assistant, Groton. After the show, they go back to their secret lab, where he keeps the women whom he experiments on, looking for some magic blood serum. He then tries it out on Groton, sending Groton intentionally into a rage with an axe.
During Groton’s murderous hunt, Dr. Durea runs into Dracula, who claims to know Durea’s secret. The two find a private place to chat, where we learn that Durea’s secret is that he is the last living descendant of Dr. Frankenstein. Dracula offers to help the doctor revive the Monster, just as his ancestors did.
Will Judith find her sister amongst the hippies? Will Dr. Durea help Dracula revive the Monster? Will these plots converge in any meaningful way?
The story of how this movie came to be in the state we see it is more interesting than the movie itself. This movie began as an outlaw biker film, with Russ Tamblyn leading a biker gang at the forefront. But when they did a rough cut, the director Al Adamson and writer Sam Sherman decided the film needed “umph.” So they turned it into a Dracula vs. Frankenstein movie, filming additional footage of Dracula and Frankenstein to cut in while removing parts of Russ Tamblyn’s side of the movie. It only makes sense because Lon Chaney Jr. was in the film, so the filmmakers thought, “Oh, Universal Monsters.”
The movie is awful, but it’s a lot of fun. I would love to watch this one with friends.
Stray Thoughts / Spoiilers
- The credits are close-ups of circuit boards cut with animated stills from the movie. Did they think the circuit boards looked evil?
- I couldn’t imagine paying Las Vegas money to see Judith Fontaine. She performs in front of the curtain because there’s so little to her show.
- Judith starts to take off her top, but the camera gets shy and stares at the floor.
- The carnival barker says Dr. Durea’s Creature Imporium has “The Best Living Things in the Whole World.”
- — Let’s get ready for the protest tonight. — What are we protesting this time? — I don’t know, but it’ll be fun!
- The dead bodies blink in the background.
- Okay, the freeze-frame animations for Dracula’s powers are fun.
- Judith tripping! Her memory flashes are so intense.
- The design for the Monster is truly iconic.
- I love the comet animation!
- “It’s not usually this gory on the premises. Maybe we should go inside!”
- Joanie had fantasies about being a “freak.”
- Oh, so the Monster is just going to do Groton’s job of rounding up women to experiment on.
- If you witness a loved one murdered, your blood becomes a health serum or something?
- That decaptitation is brutal!
- Deus Ex Monstera
- Finally, in the last ten minutes, Dracula and the Monster fight. Dracula rips off the Monster’s arms. It’s so similar to the Black Knight scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- Dracula’s slow decay looks neat.
- Judith, with Dracula’s magic ring, will rule the Vegas Strip.
- Even in the half-second cut back to a dead body, they’re blinking!