Brain of Blood (1971)

...aka: Brain, The
...aka: Brain Damage
...aka: Creature's Revenge, The
...aka: Oozing Skull, The
...aka: Undying Brain, The

Directed by:
Al Adamson

Abdul Amir (Reed Hadley), the beloved and respected leader of a fictional Middle Eastern country called Khalid, is dying of cancer, so he, his doctor friend Robert Nigserian (Grant Williams) and his assistant Mohammed (Zandor Vorkov) make arrangements to have his brain transplanted into another body. After he dies, Amir's aluminum-foil wrapped body is then hand delivered to Dr. Lloyd Trenton (Kent Taylor) in America for the operation. Trenton can't wait to try out his new machine, which uses lasers to cut through skulls without damaging the brain, and after using a scalpel to peel back the skin, he finally puts the machine to work, removes the brain (which looks nothing like a human brain and is in fact came from a local butcher!) and then hooks the brain up to some machine with electrodues and tubes to circulate blood through it to keep it fresh. The blood transfusions come from a couple of unwilling female prisoners - Katherine (Vicki Volante) and some nearly-dead, unnamed Asian girl (Margo Hope), who are kept chained up in the dungeon and are tormented by the doctor's cackling dwarf assistant Dorro (Angelo Rossitto) before he drains them of their blood.

While Dr. Trenton waits, his giant, bald, retarded, acid-scarred conehead henchman Gor (John Bloom) goes out looking for a nice, strong body to house the disembodied brain in. He pushes a thief off a fire escape and brings the body back to his lab. It's rejected by Dr. Trenton, who instead decides to put Amir's brain into Gor's body. He also arranges for an assassin to kill the guys from India. The assassin runs them off the road but Robert manages to bail out before the car explodes and then picks up Amir's lady friend Tracy Wilson (Regina Carroll, with her amazing giant platinum blonde hair) at the airport. The two of them then head to Trenton's mountaintop clinic, where Amir awakens, freaks out about his appearance and puts the beat down on both Trenton and Robert. Tracy mutters something about a plot to overthrow Khalid (?) then flees into the woods with Amir-Gor. Meanwhile, Katherine manages to get keys to her shackles and then tries to navigate her way out of the dark, rat-and-spider-filled dungeon, which sees to extend for miles.

The last half hour basically consists of Amir-Gor, Tracy, Trenton (now armed with some sonar device that can control the monster), Robert and Katherine running around outside trying to find one another and is capped off with a surprise twist ending. There's some truly terrible acting (particularly in the case of Ms. Carroll), silly dialogue, a bit of gore (the brain transplant scene, which is very bloody and fairly well done, goes on for about five minutes), a car chase, a couple of explosions and a Gor flashback that reveals the history of his deformity (a couple of rednecks took his toy away, hit him with a shovel and then poured battery acid in his face). It's cheap, badly made and overloaded with assorted nonsense. In other words, your standard Al Adamson flick.

.

Samuel M. Sherman wrote the story and produced. The cast also includes Richard Smedley (THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED) and Bruce Kimball (NAZI LOVE CAMP 7). It's available on DVD either in its original format through Image Ent. or in the series "Cinematic Titanic" (under the title THE OOZING SKULL); with silhouette commentary from some of the people behind the cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. I always recommend watching these films in their original format without being distracted by being spoon fed wisecracks the whole time, but whatever floats your boat...

★

Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

...aka: Blood Freaks

...aka: Blood of Frankenstein

...aka: Blood Seekers, The

...aka: Revenge of Dracula, The

...aka: Satan's Bloody Freaks

...aka: Teenage Dracula

Directed by:

Al Adamson

THE BLOOD SEEKERS was Al Adamson's unfinished gore epic (well... actually it started life as a biker flick, but that's a long story...) filmed in 1969. He decided to shoot framing scenes adding the whole Dracula/ Frankenstein angle in 1971, and the whole package goes as follows... Mad Dr. Frankenstein (J. Carroll Naish) is busy at work reconstructing dead bodies while retarded manservant Groton (Lon Chaney, Jr.) spends most of the time whimpering and petting a puppy. When the doctor injects Groton with a special serum it transforms him into a lurking, laughing, sweating, beach-bunny-decapitating, axe murderer. The cops are already after them, but even more troubles arise when the echo-voiced Count Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) arrives and blackmails the mad doc into resurrecting the Frankenstein monster and giving him the blood of his victims! Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, a lounge singer (Regina Carroll) performs a lounge act called "She Travels Light." They try to make it look like it's a big production number by filming it in a large auditorium, but we only see an audience of about four people. Miss Carrol gets news of her sister's disappearance and heads off to Venice Beach looking for answers. She goes to a club, is slipped LSD in her coffee, has a substandard 70s trip out scene, then teams up with three hippies (led by Anthony Eisley) to find out what's going on.

Possibly Adamson's most famous film, and even though it's cheap, silly, trashy and completely nonsensical, there's enough going on here (and an interesting enough cast) to qualify it as a must see to die-hard horror fans. The cast is just overloaded with familiar faces. Aside from those already mentioned, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Davis, Forrest J. Ackerman (who plays a victim and also credited as the "technical advisor"), Angelo Rossitto, Gary Kent (also the assistant director and one of the make-up fx artists) and other swell folks appear. Future director Greydon Clark (of SATAN'S CHERRLEADERS fame) also has a small role, as does cinematographer Gary Graver, who also shot this one. The executive producer was Mardi Rustam, who also produced PSYCHIC KILLER (1975) and Hooper's EATEN ALIVE (1977). If none of these names are ringing a bell or if you're just not interested, then chances are you aren't going to be very amused by what you see here.

Not to be confused with 1969's Waldemar Daninsky opus LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR (aka ASSIGNMENT TERROR aka DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN) or Jess Franco's goofy DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (1972 aka SCREAMING DEAD aka DRACULA VS. DR. FRANKENSTEIN). Another side note - Some nudity and violence seem to have been removed so it could pass with a PG rating.

★★

Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)

...aka Castle of Dracula

...aka Dracula's Castle

Directed by:

Al Adamson

Considered the worst vampire movie ever made by many (nah!), this Al Adamson bomb is nonetheless chock full of laughs and tacky entertainment value. Mr. and Mrs. Dracula (Egyptian born schlock star Alexander D'Arcy and Paula Raymond) disguise themselves as the Count and Countess Townsend and are living it up in Falcon Rock; renting a secluded castle located in the middle of what appears to be a desert (a great place to avoid the sunlight, eh?). The castle comes complete with the usuals... lavish rooms, coffin-filled bedroom chamber, candles, a large dungeon, a pool table (?!) and two faithful employees who have to do all the dirty work as the bloodsucking duo lounge around spouting their insipid dialog. The two servants are a hulking, facially-scarred, hunchback retard named Mango (Ray Young) and a slack-eyed butler named George (John Carradine), who worships the "great God Luna." Mango kidnaps beautiful girls (because, of course, the blood of 'beautiful young women' always tastes the best), takes them to the dungeon and chains them to the wall as a sort-of personal live-in blood bank. George uses a huge syringe to extract blood from victims and serves it up as cocktails to Dracula and wife.

The most recent addition to the harem is Ann (Vicki Volante, a star of many other Adamson movies), who has a bad habit of passing out whenever the going gets tough... a problem that got her dumb ass abducted in the first damn place. She screams her head off when a rat gets within ten feet of her, has a tarantula crawl on her dress and may end up being the chief sacrifice to Carradine's Moon Cult (yes, there is also some kind of black magic mumbo jumbo going on here). There are a few other prisoners as well; two or three other ladies in ripped-up dresses whose expressions never change despite what is going on around them. When one of those ladies is all used up, Mango is given permission to drag her off into a dark corner of the dungeon (hmm... For what, I wonder?) This comfy living situation is threatened when the owner of the castle dies, leaving the place to a favorite nephew (Gene O'Shane), who wants to boot them out and move in there with his fast-track fiancé Liz Arden ("Barbara"/Jennifer Bishop). Liz is a model and aspiring "Universal Magazine" cover girl, who will end up having more problems to deal with than being upstaged in her saggy bikini bottoms by dolphins, seals and a flipper-chewing walrus while at Sea World.

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And as if that isn't enough... There's this family friend named Johnny Davenport (Robert Dix), who has just bought his way out of prison. Get this... A guard accepts five thousand dollars to let Johnny out. But to make it look more convincing, the guard actually turns around and allows this convicted mass murderer to knock him unconscious! So, not surprisingly, instead of just laying him out, Johnny just beats the guy to death before taking off! Before making it to the castle, Johnny has a fun-filled day of murder and mayhem. He's chased by a posse with dogs, drowns a woman in a polka-dot bikini under a waterfall, bashes an old man over the head with a rock, shoots a hitchhiker in the face with a rifle and wrecks a stolen car over a cliff. There is mention of Johnny being a werewolf, but there are no make-up effects to convey it.

When Liz and Glen arrive at the castle, they sleep in separate bedrooms. And when she hears one of the women downstairs screaming, he comforts her by saying "I think it's probably someone using an electric tooth brush that just got short circuited." (??) After an encounter with Mango, the two find themselves prisoners in the dungeon as well, but they manage to escape after being forced to perform in a black magic ceremony. During a struggle with Johnny over the gun, Glen aims the gun way off target, but ends up pulling the trigger and shooting Johnny in the stomach. Carradine falls down a flight of stairs and attacks with a whip. Will Liz, Glen and the imprisoned lovelies escape with their lives? Does this entire film seem like an odd extended dirty metaphor for the joys of S&M? Also in the cast are future director John "Bud" Cardos (who was also the production manager) and Ken/Kenny/Kent Osborne (who also did the make-up). It was shot by "Leslie" (Lazslo) Kovacs, who also worked with Ray Dennis Steckler before becoming a respected Hollywood cinematographer, so you know this movie looks pretty good. Gil Bernal performs the non-hit single "The Next Train Out." I've seen the production year on this film frequently listed as 1967, but according to the original credits it is 1969.

So yeah, not the "worst vampire movie ever made..." Bad, but pretty fun schlock.

★1/2