Dracula the Dirty Old Man / Guess What Happened to Count Dracula

Rating:
Summary: A Bit of ...
Review: "Dracula the Dirty Old Man", which is probably the worst film I've seen since "Saving Private Ryan", gets only 1 star. A lame looking vampire who can turn himself into a rubber bat stuck on the end of a stick lures a reporter to his cave and magically turns him into a werewolf (a cheap rubber mask that looks more like a rat than a wolf). He then sends the wererat out to kidnap women. The same basic sequence gets repeated several times: the wererat locates a woman, kills any boyfriend who gets in the way, then before he can even perform his duties, the vampire just teleports the woman to his cave, leaving the viewer to wonder why he went to the trouble of creating a wererat in the first place. The vampire then molests and kills his newest female aquisition. Repeat 3 or 4 times, until the vampire gets interested in the reporter's girlfriend. This leads to a fight between the two.

The filmmakers obviously realized how terrible the film was, so they badly dubbed all but two brief scenes with "comic" dialogue in phoney accents. So now instead of just being boring, the film becomes truly offensive, treating such subjects as rape as humourous. Not worth the few chuckles you get from the bad f/x. This film deserves to become lost.

The short extras are just boring and unfunny.

The 4 stars is for "Guess What Happened...". Filmed largely at the famous Magic Castle, this early 1970s wonder is about Dracula after he's transformed himself into a swinging geek called "Count Adrian" in order to escape the communists, and now runs a theme restaurant in LA with some kooky sidekicks. He's actually the good guy in this, and the villain is his new love's ex-boyfriend, an egomaniacal TV actor ("You can't defeat me! I have my own TV series!"). The battle between Count Adrian and another vampire with very bad facial skin for supreme control of the restaurant is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, although I think its supposed to be one of the film's more serious moments.

So only one good film and a few decent trailers on this one. Just try to pretend "Dirty Old Man" isn't on the same disc.

Rating:
Summary: I worked with Christopher Lee... You're no Christopher Lee
Review: So we pop in Dracula the Dirty Old Man, hoping for nothing more than your basic ball of cheese: Bad accents, stupid plotlines, cheap sets, you get the drill. At first blush, all appears normal: Our 'head vampire' looks more like Jim Rome with a nylon wig from the seasonal aisle of Walgreen's, women are conveniently disrobing in front of their windows, and the location scout takes full advantage of Dad's office lobby and Mom's backyard.

But after 15 minutes or so -- depending on how slow you are on the uptake -- you start to sense "something weird" going on. Sure, you expect the plot to be loopy, and so it makes sense for the narrator to ramble a bit. But when our voice-over man starts to sound like he's taking a page from Crow T Robot ("I gingerly closed the car door... Whoops! I just caught two people in the act, sorry guys!"), you just have to ask -- que pasa??

Here's the deal: As is the case with many lower-than-low-budget flops, the sound on DDOM was rendered useless during the making of the film. (Possible causes include excessive wind noise, flubbed lines, or a potent curse invoked by the gods of good taste.) Natch, all the dialogue has to be dubbed in after the fact. Typically, this process creates your basic Godzilla lip-reading misadventures, along with some leaden Doris Wishman-style line readings. But DDOM is anything but your typical film.

You see, for reasons known only to director William Edwards, co-producer Clifton Bowen, and select members of the Trilateral Commission, the filmmakers decided to scrap whatever existing dialogue they had and opt for deranged self-parody. I'm guessing they took a look at the less-than-imposing polyester "bat" (at least I think it's supposed to be a bat) and realized the finished results weren't going to impress anyone either way.

As a result, your Alucard ("Dracula spelled backwards," the credits helpfully point out) delivers all his lines in the manner of a down-on-his-luck Jackie Mason. "Oy, vaddami gonn do, I gotta bite dis neck ova hea, ay, vell, it's a livink," that kind of thing. Adding to the goofiness quotient is the fact that our number-one neck biter here looks no more Jewish than he does Vampiric -- he's played by some guy named Vince Kelly who apparently never worked again. The casting couch giveth, and the casting couch taketh away...

Equally odd are the ramblings from "Irving Jackalman," the reporter whom Alucard somehow turns into a sex-crazed werewolf. (Vampire, werewolf, same difference, right? I'm surprised the Mummy didn't put in an appearance.) Typical is his dramatic transformation outside a drive-in concession stand, where we see him bend over in apparent pain at the lycanthropic process. That's right, we've all been there. But do we hear him growl and howl in inhuman agony? Nope -- we get to hear him complain that his dinner was off!

The plot? Our two antiheroes "meet cute," round up some women, sex 'em up in a cave, rest for a spell on a furniture pad from U-Haul, and then let petty jealousy come between them, prompting a fight to the death. The lone survivor turns to the most-recent victim of the rampage and engages in an equally improbable Bat Cave Booty Call. That's right, it's a remake of Sabrina.

The other entry on this too-fine DVD, Guess What Ever Happened to Baby Jane Dracula (or whatever), features a less-than-imposing 98-pound weakling 'Count Adrian,' apparently played by a busboy on his night off from the Olive Garden. The film also features bad lighting, a Dracula theme restaurant, a caged gorilla, a heroine bogged down by her four-foot wig, a fifth Monkee who sells his soul to the devil, a guy who looks like Matthew McConaughey's dad, and an improbable voodoo/Santeria/lizard-eating ceremony straight from the ravings of David Icke. You do the math.

Rating:
Summary: I worked with Christopher Lee... You're no Christopher Lee
Review: So we pop in Dracula the Dirty Old Man, hoping for nothing more than your basic ball of cheese: Bad accents, stupid plotlines, cheap sets, you get the drill. At first blush, all appears normal: Our `head vampire' looks more like Jim Rome with a nylon wig from the seasonal aisle of Walgreen's, women are conveniently disrobing in front of their windows, and the location scout takes full advantage of Dad's office lobby and Mom's backyard.

But after 15 minutes or so -- depending on how slow you are on the uptake -- you start to sense "something weird" going on. Sure, you expect the plot to be loopy, and so it makes sense for the narrator to ramble a bit. But when our voice-over man starts to sound like he's taking a page from Crow T Robot ("I gingerly closed the car door... Whoops! I just caught two people in the act, sorry guys!"), you just have to ask -- que pasa??

Here's the deal: As is the case with many lower-than-low-budget flops, the sound on DDOM was rendered useless during the making of the film. (Possible causes include excessive wind noise, flubbed lines, or a potent curse invoked by the gods of good taste.) Natch, all the dialogue has to be dubbed in after the fact. Typically, this process creates your basic Godzilla lip-reading misadventures, along with some leaden Doris Wishman-style line readings. But DDOM is anything but your typical film.

You see, for reasons known only to director William Edwards, co-producer Clifton Bowen, and select members of the Trilateral Commission, the filmmakers decided to scrap whatever existing dialogue they had and opt for deranged self-parody. I'm guessing they took a look at the less-than-imposing polyester "bat" (at least I think it's supposed to be a bat) and realized the finished results weren't going to impress anyone either way.

As a result, your Alucard ("Dracula spelled backwards," the credits helpfully point out) delivers all his lines in the manner of a down-on-his-luck Jackie Mason. "Oy, vaddami gonn do, I gotta bite dis neck ova hea, ay, vell, it's a livink," that kind of thing. Adding to the goofiness quotient is the fact that our number-one neck biter here looks no more Jewish than he does Vampiric -- he's played by some guy named Vince Kelly who apparently never worked again. The casting couch giveth, and the casting couch taketh away...

Equally odd are the ramblings from "Irving Jackalman," the reporter whom Alucard somehow turns into a sex-crazed werewolf. (Vampire, werewolf, same difference, right? I'm surprised the Mummy didn't put in an appearance.) Typical is his dramatic transformation outside a drive-in concession stand, where we see him bend over in apparent pain at the lycanthropic process. That's right, we've all been there. But do we hear him growl and howl in inhuman agony? Nope -- we get to hear him complain that his dinner was off!

The plot? Our two antiheroes "meet cute," round up some women, sex `em up in a cave, rest for a spell on a furniture pad from U-Haul, and then let petty jealousy come between them, prompting a fight to the death. The lone survivor turns to the most-recent victim of the rampage and engages in an equally improbable Bat Cave Booty Call. That's right, it's a remake of Sabrina.

The other entry on this too-fine DVD, Guess What Ever Happened to Baby Jane Dracula (or whatever), features a less-than-imposing 98-pound weakling `Count Adrian,' apparently played by a busboy on his night off from the Olive Garden. The film also features bad lighting, a Dracula theme restaurant, a caged gorilla, a heroine bogged down by her four-foot wig, a fifth Monkee who sells his soul to the devil, a guy who looks like Matthew McConaughey's dad, and an improbable voodoo/Santeria/lizard-eating ceremony straight from the ravings of David Icke. You do the math.