Monday, December 12, 2011

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Dracula vs. Frankenstein

Some films deserve to be overlooked and this is one of those: inept, badly acted, lousily written, full of plot holes, inane special effects... you name it. But you know what? Dracula vs. Frankenstein is - at times - funny as hell, especially near the end when Dracula tries to run from the monster of Frankenstein. You can probably guess that there's no escaping the Frankenstein monster, even though he walks slowly with stiff feet. There's also probably the least charismatic Dracula on the silver screen, a guy called Zandor Vorkov. He provides lots of laughs just trying to look menacing. The best part of the film are Regina Carrol's tits. (Carrol was Al Adamson's wife.)

I said "at times". At times this is just quite, quite boring. But the climax, the last 20 minutes, is a blast.

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog, Socialist Jazz. Nothing up at the mo', though.

5 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Not yet, because it ain't Tuesday on this continent yet...

Juri said...

Hurry up the sun then, will you?

Richard Moore said...

It does have a place in film history of being the last movies of both J.Carroll Naish and Lon Chaney, Jr. A sad end to their careers although Chaney was in quite a few turkeys towards the end.

Surprised to see the dwarf Angelo Rossitto in the cast. He was in several films with Bela Lugosi in the 1940s and goes all the way back to John Barrymore's 1927 silent "The Beloved Rogue" and the 1929 adaptation of A. Merritt's "Seven Footprints to Satan." But checking IMDB, the 2'11" actor was active till 1987 including a continuing role on "Baretta."

Forrest J. Ackerman has one of his cameos in this one.

Juri said...

Yes, you're absolutely right about those facts, Richard, I should've mentioned them already. Angelo Rossitto's role is small and almost meaningless, but he has some funny lines. Forrest Ackerman's scene is one of the stupidest in the film, though there's some humour in it, while he sits by the Zandor Vorkov Dracula.

Juri said...

But I should also say that Lon Chaney is almost the only one in the film who can act. Well, maybe apart from Naish. There's also Russ Tamblyn, but I didn't even recognize him!