GEMSTONE
BETWEEN 1970 AND 1972, three movies were released in the U.S. under the same title: Dracula vs. Frankenstein. For whatever reason, no one had ever used such an obvious title before. Sadly, though, all three films are miserable, incoherent messes.
The most well-known of the three, Al Adamson's 1971 feature, tried to blend elements from the classic monster movies with hippie-era psychedelics. The plot didn't make much sense, it was dreary and ill-lit, and saddest of all, it represented the last screen appearances of both J. Carrol Naish and Lon Chaney Jr. (whose throat cancer prevented him from speaking any lines).
The less said about Jess Franco's 1972 effort, the better.
The first version of Dracula vs. Frankenstein to hit theaters, Tulio Demicheli's 1970 outing, was forgotten almost before it was released. Despite the title, Dracula vs. Frankenstein was actually the third in a series of four werewolf pictures written by and starring Paul Naschy, who had quite a reputation of his own as a gloriously prolific and incompetent film director.
The Spanish production starred Michael Rennie (the alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still) as, well, an alien from a doomed planet who has a plan. You might almost call it a Plan Nine. He and a small crew of fellow aliens scheme to resurrect the bodies of mankind's most feared monsters—Dracula, the werewolf, the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster—in an attempt to play on human superstition and then, um, take over the world.
No, it was never really clear how that was supposed to work. Never mind that the monsters in question were fictional. But none of that matters—the film was such a tangle of baffling edits, unexplained scene changes and confounding dialogue that following the "plot" to a logical resolution never really seemed to be an issue to the filmmakers.
The lighting is awful, the dubbing was far worse than what you'll find in most Italian cop movies and try as he might, Michael Rennie (a very gifted actor) cannot hide the deep sadness in his eyes. All in all, it's a pretty grim affair.
Gemstone—the company distributing this disc—is kind of a shady operation. They pick up public-domain films and tv shows, pack 'em up cheap and get them out there without worrying too much about cleaning up the print, let alone doing any restoration work. There were so many audio drop-outs in my print I wondered why they bothered at all. But I guess I bought a copy, didn't I?
Funny thing is, the box copy on the back lays out the entire plot from beginning to end. Maybe seeing that, some people out there who are smarter than me will realize they don't have to bother with sitting through the movie itself.
