First up a 1975 forgotten film, Old Dracula. Old Dracula is an interesting piece of classic horror, with some great visual direction and creepy sets. The sets in this film are really cool and gothic looking. There are some great modern features and paleo-future involved with the set up of the coffins inside castle Dracula. I really liked that about this film, and really enjoyed checking out the cool little nuances that made the set design better than most.
The plot is not going to win many fans over. The movie is about an older Dracula who wants to restore his wife's body so that she can rise from the dead. So on a weekend when some Playboy bunnies are set to show up at his castle for some fun, he decides to extract the blood from them to bring back his wife! The catch is that he ends up sucking the neck of an African American woman and his wife changes color when brought back! Yep. This is not a fake film.
The acting is not that great, but it's right up there with Hammer Horror's productions of Dracula movies. While the guy playing Dracula is definitely no Christopher Lee he does in fact try to put something into this role, although laughable by any stretch of the imagination. This movie has some major plot holes as it doesn't even stay consistent with any other film about Dracula.
A highlight of the film is definitely the conversation that he has with a visitor about the origin of the name of Dracula, talking about Vlad The Impaler. If you're a Dracula buff you're going to like that reference, if you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe it's time to read a few books.
Old Dracula's tag line was definitely more of a comedic level, than a horror movie, it states "If you liked Young Frankenstein" you'll love "Old Dracula" with a great sexploitation poster to go along with it. This 1975 piece of horror comedy is a gem on vhs, and really doesn't need a better transfer, as it is only going to be loved by me and a few other horror fanatics out there. I'm sure Rob Zombie has this thing in his collection, and if you haven't seen it, check it out before you grow old...old like OLD DRACULA!
If Old Dracula really wasn't doing it for you, then here is a 1977 movie for you to enjoy; The Pack. Oh yeah, this movie took "Cujo" and turned it into a wolf movie with very low quality features and terrible, terrible music. The movie features some cool dog effects, no gore, and really not a lot more than rabid dogs attacking people.
The movie is really about a "pack" of dogs that terrorize residents of a vacation spot in some island. The dogs are driven by pets that have been abandoned and return to attack! The dogs aren't really that big as they are relentless at attacking the visitors. The movie resolves itself with little to no action and really is a tired formula.
The film grain on this film looks terrible even for a 1977 film. It doesn't hold up well, but it did have a few moments where you might jump back and get shocked. The star of the film is hilarious, as he was in the movie "Goldeneye" if you catch that. This movie is not going to win any awards and is not too cerebral in the way it is presented. Good luck watching this one, it's not very exciting, but the poster was very cool, so I saw it. This one is right above made for television quality, and not today's made for television quality 1977 made for television quality! The Pack is terrible.
This one looked promising. Considering the car's supernatural glowing head lights, this movie poster had some cool terror moments. However, the film didn't quite match up to the cool rendering on the cover. This film looks like it was produced in the 1970's but by all information that I could find it was made in 1990. This kind of looks like a made for television movie, but even a made for television movie would have better production values than this film.
The movie surrounds a lady who drives a school bus and a menacing character that drives a beat up racer. The plot thickens when the Dodge Charger in this film starts kidnapping young girls in the area. Things start to get out of control when the madman targets our bus driver's daughter! He kidnaps her in broad daylight, in front of the woman and the chase is on!
This movie is your basic chase movie, with a little bit of horror element involved. The movie doesn't show any gore, or real graphic terror. There is no sex involved and not a whole lot of foul language. The box cover is the scariest part of this film, and that's really disheartening.
The movie has some cool chase elements, but they are laughable. There is a section of this film that involves a small jump, as all car chases seem to have. However, that part completely shatters your perception with the amount of air that these cars get. The Charger gets about 2 inches of air while the bus barely gets one wheel in the air! This is one of the most hilarious moments ever in a horror movie ever!
The movie also takes a laughable turn at the end. The Charger falls into an a small shack labeled Explosives and blows up. Then as you're watching this explosion from multiple angles you can clearly see a missile hit the building exploding it even further! This piece is also a hilarious take on film, and is the most careless piece to the puzzle.
There are some great shots in this film, despite the overall laughable sequences. There are some great shots of the Dodge Charger that remind me a lot of "Death Proof". I kept thinking that Quentin Tarantino saw this film somehow and was stealing frames from it, but that couldn't be, he would NEVER steal ideas from an old obscure movie. (note sarcasm)
The worst part of this film is that the majority of the plot revolves around that final chase scene, in broad daylight, in Arizona. It's a terrible film, but has such a cool box that I couldn't resist.
So there you have it, three reviews on this Friday in April. These movies are somewhat out of print and in the public domain. If you're clever you can find these films for download somewhere, and if you're really clever you already have the vhs versions of these films. I like this sort of bad attempt at horror film because it shows that even with little to no resources film making can occur. It's not the greatest, but it has a few shining spots, proving once again that horror fans are one of the most creative people in the world. I mean you have to be creative to write a review of these films, and I guess that's me patting myself on the back.
*Just a quick heads up to finish this post, Monday I might not have a review due to family being in town and myself not having free time to write a lengthy horror movie review. Things change, so if you don't see one up, don't fret, I'll get one up sooner than later.
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oh brother! I got a chuckle out of that Old Dracula idea: the wife becoming black. Did they use a black actress or a white actress in black face? Any deep questions in the flick about race relations?
ReplyDeleteI actually might seek this one out.
-C
Hey Carole, thanks for stopping by.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, Nope, she is a black actress and not in black face. However, to spoil the film...Dracula shows up in Black face at the end.
Good luck finding this film. It's rare.