31 Days of Horror: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Thursday Movie Picks: Adaptations of Classic Literature (No Poems or Plays)

Argento's Dracula

Directed by Dario Argento.

2012. Not Rated, 110 minutes.

Cast:

Thomas Kretschmann

Miriam Giovanelli

Rutger Hauer

Asia Argento

Marta Gastini

Unax Ugalde

Giovanni Franzoni

Even when you think you know what you're getting yourself into, it still might be hard to believe when you're actually there. Argento's Dracula is one such place. I mean, the cover of the DVD drips with ooey-gooey cheese. It's animated and shows a guy I presume to be the titular Dracula in the upper left hand corner. Next to him is a larger picture of a female vampire with a lower-than-low cut top. The words beneath her are from some critic proclaiming this to be a throwback to the vampire flicks made by Hammer Films, complete with "heaving bosoms." I paraphrased most of it, but put quotation marks around the phrase "heaving bosoms" because I definitely remember seeing "heaving bosoms." Perhaps it's sad that I couldn't directly quote all of it, but clearly remember "heaving bosoms." In fact, I'm pretty certain I can remember every bosom I've ever seen heave. By this point, I'm just appeasing my own juvenile sense of humor by harping on this. Can you blame me? How often does a guy reviewing allegedly legitimate movies get to talk about heaving bosoms? Too often, apparently, so I'll stop.

And I should. Because the fact of the matter is...sigh. Let's stop for a moment. Occasionally, I have to chastise myself. I started a sentence with 'and,' then followed that by starting the next one with 'because.' Every professor who had a hand in getting me through to an English degree is collectively groaning as you read this. Or, not. They probably have no knowledge of this blog, let alone pay attention to it. Whatever. You're here about a movie, right?

To pick up where I left off, there was something else on the cover letting me know I was in for a cheesetastic experience. In fact, this was the thing that really inspired me to check out Argento's Dracula. This thing is actually a man. He's not just any man, but one who has come to symbolize B-movie madness. Of course, I'm talking about the one and only hobo with a shotgun, Rutger Hauer. Perfect. Play.

The movie is a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic tale. By loose, I mean very loose. It uses the same main characters, presumaby, the same time period, and the same basic idea. Jonathan Harker (Ugalde) is hired by the mysterious Count Dracula (Kretschmann) and travels to stay at the Count's castle. What exactly he's hired for is never made clear, unless I just missed it. That's entirely possible since I was distracted by the rather early appearance of a heaving bosom. To be honest, this bosom doesn't actually heave. It's completely free of any of the constraints that might make heaving possible. Sorry. It's to the point where I can't help myself. Shortly, Tania (Giovanelli), owner of said bosom, is taking the walk of shame through the woods after a tryst with a dude in a barn when a gigantic owl swoops down on her and reveals itself to be Dracula. Yup, an owl. Chomp, chomp, suck, suck, lady vampire. Her job for the rest of the movie is to try to seduce Harker every time she sees him only to be thwarted by the Count himself who has other plans for the dude he hired for reasons undisclosed. Other folks run around trying to figure out what to do about the Count and after about an hour, Rutger Hauer shows up as Van Helsing and takes matters into his own hands.

Most of what's going on here can't possibly pass for good film making. However, the only part of this that's problematic is the clunky pacing, particularly during the first half of the movie. There are a few stretches where you might find yourself bored. Everything else that's happening is terrible on a hilarious level. This even includes the one "good" thing going for it, aside from heaving bosoms, that is. I'm talking about the acting. These performers are all in, going for broke. Most of them are over the top in a manner reminiscent of classically trained Shakespearean thespians doing MacBeth in the park like their next meal depends on it. This gives the whole production a little extra pop, adds to the zaniness of it all. And yeah, dammit - did that again, Rutger Hauer goes Rutger Hauer and Dracula has all the classic vampire strengths and weaknesses plus a few more. Owl and stuff. By stuff, I mean giant praying mantis. Boys and girls, we're dealing with a movie so bad it's bosom heavingly awesome.

MY SCORE: -10/10

More horror that's so bad it's awesome...

Animals

The Car

Cat People (1982)

Die Hard Dracula

Fist of the Vampire

Happy Birthday to Me

It's Alive (2008)

Kingdom of the Spiders

Piranha (2010)

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Texas Chainsaw 3D

Trip with the Teacher

Ranking the Batman Movies: #14

14. The Batman vs. Dracula

(2005)

Directed by Michael Goguen

Batman…Rino Romano

Alfred…Alistair Duncan

Vicki Vale…Tara Strong

Dracula…Peter Stormare

The Penguin…Tom Kenny

The Joker…Kevin Michael Richardson

This time around, The Dark Knight takes on the real Prince of Darkness, Dracula. Things start normally enough by Gotham standards. The Joker and The Penguin bust out of Arkham Asylum in an effort to find a stash of loot somewhere in Gotham Cemetary. Bada-boom, bada-bing, Penguin manages to wake up Dracula who then tries to take over the city by creating an army of the undead. Admittedly, it is a bit odd seeing Bats take on a supernatural villain, but it’s well done. Also odd is seeing The Joker as someone else’s pawn. Speaking of The Joker, he’s part of the reason for this movie’s low ranking. I am not a fan of Kevin Michael Richardson’s voice-work as the Joker or the way the character is drawn. The overall effect is he’s much more brutish, lacking any of the character’s normal refinement. Finally, “vs. Dracula” is a little more graphic than I was expecting but it fits the plot since we are dealing with vampires here.

Die Hard Dracula

Directed by Peter Horak.
1998. Not Rated, 90 minutes.
Cast:
Bruce Glover
Denny Sachen
Kerry Dustin
Ernest M. Garcia
Chaba Hrotko
Tom McGowan
Nathalie Huot
Talia Botane
Peter Horak
John Slavic
Art Vanik

In case you didn’t get the full impact, let’s start by talking about that title. Die Hard is one of the most beloved action franchises of all time. Bruce Willis built an entire career on the success of that series. Without doing any research to substantiate this, I believe there have been more incarnations of Dracula than any other character in cinematic history. Even if you’ve somehow never seen a Die Hard movie or a vampire flick you still can’t possibly go into a movie named Die Hard Dracula expecting it will be any good. I didn’t. I went in wanting to see just how bad it would be.

To kick things off we’re given a brief history of Vlad Dracul AKA Vlad the Impaler. This little portion ends with fast forwarding 300 years from his death late in the 16th century. Here’s where we get our first hilariously bad moment. Vlad…ahem…Dracula wakes up, grumbles about not being able to take it anymore and his coffin lifts off the floor, busts out of his tomb and takes off flying across the countryside while “Ride of the Valkyries” blares from the speakers. Oh my, this might even be worse than I’d imagined. Yes!

The coffin lands in a vacant castle in Moravia. The king chase some random chick there and stabs her right on top of the coffin. Dracula wakes up again, kills the guy and brings the girl back by turning her into a vampire. We fast forward again to “present day” California. We meet Steve. The first thing we realize it that he’s played by a really bad actor (Denny Sachen). He’s the worst of the three very bad actors in this scene. Of course, this means he has the biggest part of the trio. Anyhoo, Steve loses his girlfriend to a water-skiiing accident. Distraught over her death, he decides to go to Europe on a little vacay. After a few drunken nights he wanders around and somehow finds himself in…Dun dun dun DUUUNNNN...Moravia. He meets Carla (Dustin) which totally freaks him out because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend. Even creepier, Carla also drowned. It just so happens that the falling star Steve saw and wished upon when he was back home struck Carla’s casket and brought her back to life. Uh-huh. This has nothing to do with anything else in the movie, but I’d thought I’d mention it. Well, it has a little relevance. Apparently, her resemblance to his girlfriend helps the two fall quickly and madly in love.

So the locals have figured out that Dracula is slinking around, munching on peasant girls. I almost forgot to mention that for some unexplained reason he appears in three different guises in human form. One is normal looking, one like a walking corpse and one even worse than that. No, there is no rhyme or reason for which way he’ll look during a given scene. Of course, they do the same thing everyone else in movies seems to do. They call in Dr. Van Helsing (Glover). Since the actual locals are too chicken to help the doc out, he recruits Steve. What follows is Van Helsing and Steve making repeated attempts to kill the vampire and failing miserably.

We have to forgive our would-be heroes for their lack of success. These boys have a lot to overcome. We’re told Dracula can go out in daytime so long as he’s not struck by direct sunlight, but we find out the sun seems to have no effect on him at all. We’re told he can be killed by silver bullets, but we find out that doesn’t actually work (I thought that was werewolves, anyway). Anytime they stick something in his chest he just pulls it out and keeps going. The thing that seems to hurt him the most is the dentist yanking out one of his fangs. Yup, Dracula actually makes and goes to an appointment with the dentist just like us regular folk. I wish I was making this up. Well, yanking out a fang doesn’t kill him, only pisses him off. He’s invincible. They even chop his head off, which we’re also told will kill him. No problem. He just screws the damn thing back on. I guess Die Hard Dracula is a good title after all.

Through all the shenanigans we’re blessed with some of the worst dialogue you’ll ever hear. To say it’s cheesy is an insult to cheesy dialogue. I’m talking stuff my 11 year old daughter would write then ball up the paper and throw it in the trash for being too corny. It doesn’t help that the acting is all over the place. Glover as Van Helsing and the three guys that play Dracula ham it up pretty good, delightfully overacting. Yes, they actually use a different guy for each of Dracula’s looks. Why? Who knows. I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with anything you actually see on the screen. Oops. It’s actually four guys. They have another guy that does the voice. One more thing: Glover is actually the father of Crispin Glover. He’s got a list of credits longer than my arm that includes some of the most beloved TV shows of all time (The Six Million Dollar Man, The Dukes of Hazard, Mission: Impossible and Kojak to name a few) and a few well known movies (Chinatown and Diamonds Are Forever among them). I’m not sure how he ended up here. I have three theories I’m deciding between: 1) he was desperately in need of money (but can’t imagine he made any on this) 2) he was friends with the director and 3) someone had pictures of him naked with farm animals.

The rest of the cast ranges from really bad to Steve’s nearly catatonic reading of lines. He makes Keanu Reeves look like James Cagney. As far as other production values go, well, I’ll just say that I could tell they used several different types of cameras during camcording…er…filming. If you’re a lover of bad movies this one should be on your must-see list. It’s so bad, it’s awesome!

The Batman vs. Dracula

Directed by Michael Goguen.
2005 . Not Rated, 84 minutes.
Cast:
Rino Romano
Peter Stormare
Tara Strong
Tom Kenny

While trying to beat the Joker (Kevin Michael Richardson) to a treasure buried in Gotham Cemetery, the Penguin (Kenny) accidentally awakens the legendary Dracula (Stormore). The Prince of Darkness then tries to take over Gotham by creating an army of undead. Of course, none of this sits well with the Batman. It’s a little strange seeing the Dark Knight battle a supernatural villain but it’s well done like most of the animated fare concerning Batman. However, I will admit the reason Dracula came to be buried in Gotham City is completely contrived. Other than that, the action comes fast, Batsy does some serious detective work and even whips out the garlic-tipped weaponry. It’s a little more graphic than I was expecting but it fits the plot since we are dealing with vampires here. All in all, good stuff but I may be a bit biased being a big Batman fan.

Dracula (1931)

Blood of Dracula's Castle

Directed by Al Adamson and Jean Hewitt.
1969. Rated R, 84 minutes.
Cast:
John Carradine
Paula Raymond
Alexander D'Arcy
Gene Otis Shayne
Jennifer Bishop
Robert Dix
Vicki Volante
Ray Young

Glen (Shayne) inherits a castle when his 108 year old uncle dies. He wants to move in with his fiance/model Liz (Bishop) but first, he has to evict the elderly couple that rents the place. What he doesn't know is that they're really vampires who keep girls chained up in the basement to supply them with blood. That really sounds interesting, but it's not, in the least. This version of Count Dracula (D'Arcy), who now prefers to go by Count Charles Townsend (what the _?) and his bride Countess Townsend (Raymond) are full-fledged members of the bourgeoisie. No neck biting or villainously sexy seductions for these two. Instead, they have mute deformed giant Mango (Young) round up any young hotties that find themselves in the woods on the castle's property. By the way, despite a number of scenes in these woods, whenever we see exterior shots of the castle they're nowhere to be found. In fact, in these shots the castle appears to be in a desert. Anyhoo, Mango brings the ladies back to the house, chains them in the dungeon...er...basement, then drains just enough blood from them to fill the two wine glasses our blood suckers are fond of drinking from. They sip with delight and inquire about what "vintage" it is. For the most part, that's all they do. No, we don't even get to see the blood draining. There's also their butler/cultist George (Carradine) who worships the moon god Luna and the Townsend's buddy Johnny (Dix), who is a hoimicidal maniac. Johnny is crazy under normal conditions but keeps telling us he's so much worse when there's a full moon. Foreshadowing be damned, we never actually find out if this is the case. The dialogue is hokey when it's at it's very best but mostly cringe-inducing. My thirteen year old son could choreograph far better fight scenes and don't even get me started on the copy and paste job they tried to pass off as someone being on fire. I'll admit, some allowances have to be made for it being over 40 years old. However, this was released the same year as Rosemary's Baby and the year after Night of the Living Dead, two horror classics. This steaming pile holds no frights, provokes no thought and may indeed cure insomnia. It's quite possibly the lamest vampire movie ever made, including the Twilight movies. At least those have enough charm and melodrama to appeal to millions of teenage girls. This might only appeal to those involved in making it. Maybe. And why the hell does Dracula rent, anyway?


MY SCORE: 0/10