DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN - Lava, Lobue, Carroll - "Blood Freaks" (1971)

Tonight's feature is the definitive Masterpiece of Shit!! How can one movie have all the coolest elements imaginable, and still not deliver the goods? It's pretty hard to pinpoint, but I'm going to give you my humble opinion!! It's not director Al Adamson's fault, but I do suppose we could fault him for using his wife, Regina Carroll in one of the lead roles, because she is one of the weak links, along with Zandor Vorkov as the Dracula character, who just looks out of place the whole movie! Zandor's not convincing and the Frankenstein monster is not convincing, and the title is, "Dracula Vs. Frankenstein" so I'm thinking you might start to see where the problem lies!!!

Here's Al's wife in Las Vegas as the big headliner over The Doodletown Pipers! Regina Carrol wrote & performs the tune "I Travel Light" as Judith Fontain, with the help of Dart Anthony and Damon Loy, "The Show-offs"

But let's forget the negative element of the fact that the movie sucks, and get on with some information about all the cool people involved who couldn't save this movie to save their souls, even if they wanted to!

First up, even though our mentor, Forrest J. Ackerman was the technical advisor for this movie, it still doesn't come off right, so I'm thinking Forry must have been sick for the days when they shot the really bad stuff! He also had a fairly substantial role as Doctor Beaumont! Okay, that alone, should have thrown it in to the Oscar nominated department!!

Next up is Dungeon super fave, Anthony Eisley, this time decked out in hippie beads, and with his hair a good 1/4" longer than normal, as the intellectual hipster Mike Howard! At first, I thought he had stopped smoking, but it's not long before he's back at it again!!

How about Lon Chaney Jr. in his last film role ever? Okay, it's for sure not his best role ever, but the good natured Lon hangs in there!!

How about J. Carrol Naish in his last role ever? We've never really had a reason to talk about the great J. Carrol here before because he was born in 1896, and all of his monster movie appearances were in the 1940's, but what a bunch of classics they were! Now we're talking titles like "Calling Dr. Death," "The Monster Makers" and "House Of Frankenstein!"

Do you want me to stop? No Way! Here's Russ (The Boy With The Green Hair)Tamblyn as Rico! A mere 10 years earlier, Russ was one of the stars, dancing and singing his way though the amazing 10 Oscar winning film, "West Side Story!"

Ultimate cowboy hero, Jim Davis is the cop Sergeant Martin. Jim Davis was so classic, with that face, and that voice, and guess what, his career still hadn't peaked after like 9000 cowboy TV shows and movies, he still went on to do 77 episodes of "Dallas" from 1978 to 1981 as none other than the man, John Ross 'Jock' Ewing, Sr.

Although he worked in over 70 films in 60 years, including a stint as Shirley Temple's stunt double, the 2 foot 11 inch Angelo Rossitto had to run a newspaper stand to make ends meet!!!

Assistant cameraman, and cool scarheaded dude R. Michael Stringer worked with Orson Welles, and went on to be a Key player behind the scenes and a staple of Hollywood to this day!!

Rico and Scarhead drug Regina when she starts asking too many questions, and she flips out to some super cool music, a song written by J.D. Lobue called "Say The Word" that sounds amazingly like the 60's band "Pacific Gas & Electric" with Charlie Allen doing to vocals, but I don't really know who it is! The rest of the music throughout the film can be credited to William Lava!!

J.D. Lobue didn't write more notable music, but instead, went on to be a TV director! Pretty safe to say he knows his funk, he directed 9 episodes of "Soul Train" and was working steady up til not that long ago when he directed 15 episodes of "Dharma & Greg" in the late 90's and early 2000's!!!

And I'm absolutely sure, there are more stories to tell, but enough is enough, I'm stopping right here, and letting Regina scream her way outta here! Thanx Al!!!

The Frankenstein dummy, I mean monster, looks like it was created by the same people that came up with the "Cabbage Patch Dolls!!

I guess Drac didn't like my sentiments about him that much, because he completely fries our hero Anthony during this very sad moment near the end!!

It's another film readily available on Netflix! What are you waiting for?? Just get it!!!