DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN aka BLOOD OF FRANKENSTEIN; THE BLOOD SEEKERS; THEY'RE COMING TO GET YOU
USA. 1971. Director - Al Adamson, Screenplay - William Pugsley & Samuel M. Sherman, Producers - Adamson & John Van Horne, Photography - Paul Glickman & Gary Graver, Music - William Lava, Visual Effects Design - Bob Le Bar, Electronic Effects - Ken Strickfaden, Special Makeup - George Barr, Art Direction - Ray Markham. Production Company - Independant International. J. Carrol Naish (Dr Durea/Dr Frankenstein), Regina Carrol (Judith Fontaine), Zandor Vorkov (Count Dracula), Anthony Eisley (Mike Howard), John Bloom (Frankenstein Monster), Lon Chaney [Jr] (Groton), Jim Davis (Sergeant Martin), Anne Morrell (Samantha), Greydon Clark (Strange), Russ Tamblyn (Rico), Angelo Rossitto (Grazbo)
Plot: A singer's search for her missing sister leads her to a pier freakshow run by the wheelchair-ridden Dr Durea. But Dr Durea is really a descendant of the Frankenstein family and is injecting his dim-witted assistant with a serum to turn him into a monster to collect victims for his experiments in revivification of the decapitated. And at the same time Durea is coerced by Count Dracula into helping him revive the original Frankenstein monster.
It's one of the great title confrontations of all time, one that Universal in their various monster team-ups of the 1940s (`Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman' (1943), `House of Frankenstein' (1944), `House of Dracula' (1945) and `Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' (1948)) somehow overlooked. And it was a popular idea too - there were at least two other films using the same title conflict that appeared the same year as this. But in terms of delivering on its title challenge, this is a thoroughly wasted opportunity. It's not just what an incredibly shabbily made film it is - it's that Dracula and Frankenstein seem irrelevant to the plot which is really about a girl searching for her missing sister who has been abducted into a mad scientist's ill-defined scheme that has something to do with decapitating and then reviving young women from the dead. Dracula and the Frankenstein monster do have a tussle at the climax to justify the title but it is poorly motivated confrontation.
The rest of the film is a mess. It is badly directed and the plot is a haphazard jumble (not surprising considering that it originally started out as a biker film and was turned into a monster bash to capitalize on the early 1970s classic monster revival). It is sad to watch genre veterans like an ageing and wheelchair-ridden J. Carrol Naish and an alcoholically wasted Lon Chaney Jr (in his last performance) reduced to playing in such impoverished surroundings. Forrest J. Ackerman is credited as technical advisor and has a small part as a doctor victim, something which demonstrates he should really stick to editing. Zandor Vorkov gives a performance that verges on the somnambulistic, making what is possibly the worst screen Dracula of all time.
Screening at the Christchurch 1998 Incredibly Strange Film Festival Reviewed by Richard Scheib
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