Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? (1970)

... aka: Does Dracula Really Suck?
... aka: Dracula and the Boys
... aka: Draculas lusterne vampiro
... aka: Dracula, vampire sexuel
... aka: Orgia del vampiro, L'

Directed by:
Laurence Merrick

I'm not sure what happened to Count Dracula, but sitting through the pea-brained horrors of Count Adrian and Count Alucard tonight about made Count Justin drive a stake into his own heart to end his misery. Guy (John Landon) brings his girlfriend Angelica (Claudia Barron) to Dracula's Dungeon, a dreary nightclub and restaurant full of freaks and weirdos. Despite getting a Zombie on the house (woot!), Angelica has a bad feeling about the place and immediately wants to go home. Too bad the damage has already been done. Bloodsucker Count Adrian (Des Roberts), who has grown sick of his current whiny lover, has already spotted her and likes what he sees. Later that night, Adrian decides to pay a nocturnal visit to Angelica at her home. He hypnotizes her and drinks from her. The next day she can't remember anything. Suffering from bouts of dizziness and feeling light-headed, Angelica decides to consult her physician, Dr. Harris (Robert Branche). She discovers she's not only short a few pints, but also has some sort of "foreign element" in her bloodstream. Doc tells her not to worry about it and says the strange puncture wounds on her neck are probably from her "passionate boyfriend." Guess What Happened to Dr. Harris? Your answer should include the words "malpractice" and "suit."

Angelica snuggles down by the fire with a copy of "Vampir: Legend & Fact" just as her drunk friend Sharon (Sheri Jackson) comes by with some people to party. They throw on some music and start drinking, then Angelica is introduced to a suave European count by the name of - you guessed it! - Adrian. Sharon thinks he's "groovy," but when Angelica discovers he's from Transylvania she asks him if he's a Communist (!) When she offers him a beer, he declines because he only drinks blood. Uh, I mean, Bloody Mary's. Har har har. Having gotten to know him so well during their two minute conversation, Angelica takes him to her bedroom and lets him hypnotize her because she has a headache. Adrian assures her he won't molest her while she's out because he's not into necrophilia. Not weirded out by any of this, Angelica invites him over for a thick, juicy steak dinner the following night. Adrian stops by for a thick, juicy neck nibble first. When Angelica wakes, she finds herself avoiding the sunlight and feasting on raw meat.

Guy stops by and notices her weird behavior and pale appearance. Her aversion to his cross really gets him thinking, so he goes to Dr. Harris for help. Harris believes she is somehow letting her Vampir book go to her head, while Guy thinks she might be under a vampire's spell. The two go to her place but by the time they arrive Angelica has already been whisked away to Dracula's Dungeon by the love-struck Count. There, a Brazilian voodoo ritual basically amounting to a woman doing a lengthy dance with a python, a man eating a live lizard to prove his virility and people yelling "Macumba!" over and over again, is taking place. And for some reason there's also a... uh... gorilla in a cage. And a... um... tiger wandering around all over the place. Will Count Adrian put the third and final bite to Angelica, transforming her into a vampire for all eternity? Can Guy and Dr. Harris get there in time to save her? Will the tiger get sick and tired of the cast slowly creeping around it while it's trying to eat and maul someone? I guess you'll just have to watch Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? to find out.

This isn't the absolute worst thing you'll ever see, but I do have to wonder what kind of audience they had in mind when they made this. On the plus side, it's surprisingly stylishly lit, very colorful and not horribly photographed. On the down side, the acting's not very good, it doesn't bring much new to the table storywise and there are lots of glaring continuity issues. I still couldn't figure out why Angelica started calling the vampire "Alucard" during the last few minutes. The guy playing the vampire acts awfully goofy throughout but the film can't seen to make up its mind whether it wants to be a send-up or taken seriously. If it wanted to do both, it doesn't quite pull either off. Strangest of all, there's no gore, no profanity and - biggest shocker - no nudity. Lacking all of those key ingredients for a low-budget vampire film would have kept this out of many drive-ins at the time and yet it's not family friendly enough to be a kid's movie either. I really have no clue what they were shooting for here. However, this very mild, non-exploitative cut wasn't the only one released; just the only cut that is currently available.

In Europe, Guess? actually was released as a sex film with a new director listed (Mario d'Alcala). New nude and sex inserts were added for releases in France, Italy, Switzerland and West Germany. Some of the titles translate to Dracula, vampire sexuel, ("Dracula, Sexual Vampire"), L'orgia del vampiro ("The Orgy of the Vampire") and Draculas lusterne vampiro ("Dracula's Lustful Vampire"). The film may have also been released with hardcore sex inserts added for both foreign and domestic distribution. A version called Does Dracula Really Suck? supposedly contains hardcore straight sex, while a version called Dracula and the Boys had gay hardcore sex added. I have been unable to verify those claims and no prints of either of these alternate versions have surfaced.

Angela Carnon (from the fairly well-known hardcore horror A CLIMAX OF BLUE POWER) shows up as a nurse for a lame double entendre joke, but the rest of the cast is virtually unknown. Something Weird paired this up with DRACULA (THE DIRTY OLD MAN) (1969), which is even worse despite copious amounts of nudity, for the DVD release.

★1/2

Cerebro del mal (1961) [filmed in 1958]

... aka: Brain of Evil
... aka: Evil Brain, The
... aka: Santo contra cerebro del mal
... aka: Santo vs. the Evil Brain

Directed by:
Joselito Rodríguez

In 1958, several years before he became a matinee idol in Mexico, silver-masked wrestler Santo appeared in two low-budget crime adventures that were filmed in Havana, Cuba immediately before Fidel Castro seized power there. I'm not sure these things played anywhere outside of their home country immediately after they were made, but they weren't screened in Mexico until some time in the early 60s after Santo became a box office draw with several subsequent hit films. As demand for Santo increased both of these earlier films were dusted off and reissued with brand new titles. This one, originally called "Cerebro Del Mal" (or "Brain of Evil"), was reissued as "Santo contra cerebro del mal" ("Santo vs. the Evil Brain"). The other, "Hombres Infernales" ("Infernal Men") became "Santo contra hombres infernales" ("Santo vs. Infernal Men"). Though later promoted as the star, Santo actually wasn't the star of either one of these. I'm sure his fans may have found it odd to see the courageous hero sitting off in the background much of the time looking dazed and having to play second fiddle to a mad doctor (who just shoos him away at one point) character and others. Rumor has it that Santo was initially reluctant to even do movies, but was talked into doing them by this film's director and co-star, fellow grappler Fernando Osés. And the rest is history.

After a car chase, three thugs armed with their own unique weapon (switchblade, brass knuckles and a chain) corner crime fighter Santo (playing El Enmascarado, or "The Masked One") in an alleyway. A badly-choreographed fight ensues, ending with our masked hero getting choked out. He's put in the back of a car and driven out to the country, where Frankenstein-like Dr. Campos (Joaquín Cordero) injects him with a mind-control serum and places him under some kind of radiation lamp thingy which kick starts the formula. Now under the control of the bad guys, El Santo becomes a handy ally in committing various crimes, especially considering he's trusted by all the city folk. Er, at least he WAS trusted by all of the city folk until word gets around that he's been running with this new crowd. A few of the thugs and The Masked One beat up two guys and then kidnap a famous scientist, who gets the same mind-control treatment. Seeing how their little technique is working out so well, they next do a bank president and have him clean out the bank's safe and bring them the loot.

Dr. Campos, who has been living a double life of kind professor by day and mad scientist and master criminal by night, has the hots for a woman named Elisa (Norma Suárez), who is inconveniently dating his friend Gerardo (Alberto Inzúa). Guess how Campos plans to win her love? You got it, by mind control. He has his thugs beat up Gerardo and then kidnap Elisa and even goes so far as to accompany Gerardo to the police station to report the crime to cover his ass. Meanwhile, El Incognito (Osés), a second masked man in an outfit similar to Santo's except it's all black, is also lurking around and has used a radiation meter to locate Campos' lab. While Dr. Campos is off at the Casino de Capri watching a nightclub dance act, Incognito sneaks in through the skylight, steals some papers and tries to mix up an antidote to the mind-control serum. Santo sneaks in for a little wrestling action until Incognito breaks a bottle over his head. He then injects his wrestling buddy with the antidote. Back to his normal self, Santo can now secretly spy on the crime ring from the inside.

There's a police chase, an attempted poisoning, tons of shots of cars driving around, lots of newspaper headlines, a bunch of guys sitting around playing cards for what feels like an eternity and a few more poorly-done fight scenes. It was nice to finally pop my Santo cherry, but if I were a female I might be pissed off that I shaved my legs for this. It's a very bland, dull and completely unoriginal serial-like film that probably seemed poorly dated even in the early 60s and didn't exactly get this viewer very excited about the prospect of watching the rest of the Santo titles. It's not even good for camp value; just boring and predictable. Hopefully it's all up from here. As an aside, there's some very familiar-souding music here that I'm pretty sure was used in several of Ed Wood's 1950s productions.

Executive producer, co-writer and co-director Enrique Zambrano gave himself a third-billed heroic role here as Lt. Zambrano. It was never released to American theaters and the only release in the U.S. was on VHS through Something Weird (who only offered a Spanish language version with no subs). However, a fan-subbed version is floating around the net if you're interested.

★1/2

Bloodbath in Psycho Town (1989)

... aka: Small Towns Are Murder
... aka: Video Demons Do Psychotown

Directed by:
"Allessandro deGaetano" (Alessandro De Gaetano)

Filmed as Small Towns Are Murder, this received a very obscure VHS release under the title Bloodbath in Psycho Town by American Video in the late 80s. That title likely pissed off a lot of people who rented it because this film has next to no blood in it, let alone a bloodbath! Well, unless you think someone getting killed in the bath tub constitutes a blood bath. As it turns out, video renters weren't the only ones to feel burned by this particular production. I noticed on IMDb that a crew member who worked on the special effects (Brett Kolarik) had posted a comment stating he and others got stiffed by writer/ director De Gaetano, who fled town so he wouldn't have to pay everyone. Kolarik refers to deGaetano as "a thieving conceited mean-spirited moron" and adds "He was consistently rude, obnoxious and overbearing..." He also apparently didn't like the lead actress ("The tramp he imported from L.A., by the way, was a complete snob - and I had to put up w/her B.S. for an entire month...") or the male leads ("The two stiffs were boring as hell, and thought they were God's gift..."). Regardless of what went down behind-the-scenes, this incredibly bad low-budgeter *should* have died alongside the video stores that originally stocked it. Unfortunately, Troma later acquired it, gave it a memorable new title (Video Demons Do Psychotown) and then unleashed it upon the unsuspecting masses. Now it can live on to annoy and bore a whole new generation.

We first meet two thoroughly unlikable people that I refuse to call our "heroes" because by the end of this film I hated both of them. College student Eric (Ron Arragon) needs to complete a video project to graduate so he drags along his cute girlfriend Karen (Donna Baltron) to Casa Della to film a documentary. Casa Della, which has a population of just 360 people, is a strange town full of secretive psychics who don't like or trust outsiders. Eric's father is helping to restore an old hotel in the area ("The Packard Place") and that's where Eric and Karen are staying while they're in town. Just a week earlier a man mysteriously died at the hotel after falling off some scaffolding (the chalk outline for his corpse is on the front steps when they arrive!) and Karen gets upset Eric didn't tell her about it before they came. Well, not that upset I guess since she's having sex with him about three minutes later. The two go around town dressed in their matching jean jackets working on the video but have a hard time getting an interview with anyone. Everyone is nasty and uncooperative. And what the hell kind of "video class" is this, anyway? One where the person taking it doesn't even operate the camera? Oh brotha.

Eric visits a psychic's shop. She acts like a complete bitch and says she hopes the hotel burns to the ground. Me too sister, and preferably with every existing copy of Video Demons Do Psychotown inside of it. A visit to another psychic reveals that the townspeople actually object to Karen's presence, not Eric or his father's. See, Karen also has powerful psychic abilities and keeps seeing and hearing things associated with the death of the hotel's former owner; a death the whole town seems to want to cover up. Someone dressed in a raincoat is lurking around the hotel, cuts the power lines and then stabs an electrician to death. A general store owner is next seen polishing a knife by a rack of raincoats. Can you say red herring? Karen decides she wants to leave because the camera equipment keeps shocking her and because "This place reeks of death and negative vibrations!" Since everything they shoot is being ruined by strange interference patterns anyway, Eric finally stops whining about his class and decides they can finally go. But, uh oh, someone has cut up the wires in his truck. Good thing Karen's ex-boyfriend Scott (David Elliott) stops by just in time to... uh... well, basically do nothing. Everyone just stays at the hotel to get attacked by the raincoat killer.

Basically what we have here is an extremely thin storyline being drawn out by any means necessary. The whole "town of psychics" premise proves to be perfunctory, why the entire town would cover up the Packard killing makes absolutely no sense and the idea that Karen's powers somehow put images of the crime on the videos is poorly developed. The film ineptly fumbles around with multiple "suspects" and just like many slasher and giallo films resorts to making the culprit an underdeveloped side character we know (nor care) nothing about. Everyone is constantly bickering and there's probably about twenty minutes worth of footage of people sitting in front of TV sets in the dark rewinding tapes and watching the same footage over and over again. The dialogue and most of the performances are awful. After Scott gets his throat cut and lies bleeding to death, his buddies start screaming at him for not carrying his keys in his pocket and only having half a tank of gas in his car (?!) The lead male might look good (probably the sole reason he was cast), but he's one the worst actors you'll ever see. There's very little blood and even the few sex scenes are botched by bad lighting and the refusal to really show anything.

This is one of those rare instances where I cannot come up with a single redeeming quality; it's slow and poorly made, exploitation elements are almost nonexistent and it's not even unintentionally funny. If you take a shot of whiskey every time they show a wind chime you might be able to get through it.

★