Guess What Happened To Count Dracula? (1971)

A totally weird and bizarre vampire flick. Its no good but it is worth at least one viewing just for the sake that it is so strange.

Angelica is visited by a vampire named Count Adrian. The vampire hypnotizes her and sinks his teeth into her neck. Angelica quickly falls for Adrian and its not long before she is invited to spend a night in his castle.

Withing the walls of Count Adrian's castle they practice satanic rituals, dance like voodoo maniacs, eat lizards and read tarot cards. There is a mongoloid vampire locked in a cell, there is also a Gorilla roaming about and Count Adrian has a pet tiger named Alucard. Not to be mistaken for the movie and for those of you that are a bit dim witted Alucard is nothing more then Dracula spelled backwards. Its pretty crazy to see these actors walking around with a giant fucking tiger and especially because the film is on a shoestring budget but this just add to the strange flavor that Guess What Happened To Count Dracula leaves in your mouth.

Despite the fact that this is a vampire movie it all comes off quite comedic but this is mainly due to the fact that the acting is so bad as is the writing. The actor who plays the role of Dracula or Count Adrian for that matter does his best Bela Lugosi impersonation which isn't so good. Okay in fact its quite bad. We learn that Count Adrian is from Romania and has fled to the United States to avoid the communists. "I Will return to my home country only after the communists have left". The sets are lit with red and green lighting which reminds me of a cross between a Dario Argento movie crossed with A Taste Of Blood. Of course leaning more towards A Taste Of Blood... Much more!

The director of Guess What Happened To Count Dracula would go on to do the awesome documentary Manson which would document Charlie and his family and their insane ideology. If only Manson had a pet tiger and some green lighting.

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) (1969)

Find a Dracula movie that is weirder then this one, I dare you! It amazes me how dumb people really are. If you have the patients to read anything anybody has ever said about this movie on IMDB.Com you would know what I mean. Apparently people have a hard time realizing that this movie is supposed to be funny.

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) is exploitation at its best. When the final cut was finished and test screened the film makers must have buried their heads in their hands knowing that they have failed. Sure people might see it at the local drive inn but they most certainly are not going to like it. What to do? Flush the audio track down the fucking toilet and redub the film. Mock it the whole way through and make the people laugh. Woody Allen was very successful three years earlier with Whats Up Tiger Lilly and I'm sure that's where the producers grabbed their inspiration from and subconsciously they might have even thrown a little more proof that Woody was the inspiration because the narrator gives Dracula a thick Jewish accent.

The redubed version, which is the only one available tells the story of a man who is under Dracula's hypnotic influence. Dracula places a curse on him and turns him into a werewolf named Jackal-Man. Jackal-Man's orders are to go out and bring Dracula women. Lots of women. Dracula (Dirty Old Man) is a sexploitation film disguised as a monster flick. It is filled to the brim with naked female flesh. Bare breasts, butts, big bush and even bigger 60's underwear is on display for the next 80 minutes. There are even scenes that were obviously filmed after the fact, which do not fit into the already disjointed film in any possible way. Jackal-Man does indeed bring women to Dracula where they are fondled and then killed by the horny vampire. Jackal-Man goes out and gets some action himself from time to time. He rapes women with all of his clothes on. It is quite the site to see... A giant rat like werewolf grabbing naked women and thrusting in a not so erotic fashion.

We also get a bit of gore as if this movie wasn't weird enough. We really needed a vampire, werewolf, sexploitation, comedy filled with gore didn't we?

The truth is that this movie is still a pretty rough sit even with the comedic audio track. Sure it has some very funny moments but it still drags along at a very evil pace.

For a better time with redubed horror flicks check out Revenge Of The Sun Demon. That one is funny as hell. The Hideous Sun Demon was a stand up monster flick on its own so you can't go wrong with that one. Still Dracula (Dirty Old Man) does hold a certain charm for all you demento's out there who collect totally bizarre novelty flicks. Its worth seeing at least once for its strangeness if nothing else.

The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988)

Wes Craven, where did you go wrong? By the time this movie came out it was already to late for writer/director Wes Craven. The good ole days of rape revenge and mongoloid cannibals in the mountains were a thing of the past. Now we are in the dreams and nightmares obsessed times for Mr. Craven where logic can be thrown out the window.

A Nightmare On Elm Street was creepy and original enough for the teenage horror hound version of myself but to many of Cravens films dabble in  supernatural events and or dream state nonsense from this point on.

Even when the director attempted to go back to making movies that made sense all he had to offer was Scream. Thanks a lot but you could keep it Wes.

This movie actually has a very unique plot and really could have been a good movie. Bill Pullman plays a scientist who comes to Haiti when he learns that voodoo priests are using a drug to create zombies. He wants to bring the drug back to America where they can possibly use it as an anesthetic in the medical field. Well lets just say its more magic then an actual drug and Pullman becomes the walking dead himself when he betrays a fascist dictator who also has his hands in voodoo. Yes you guessed it... The dictator controls our zombie in his dreams and things happen without any explanation, rhyme or reason. For instance someone can burst into flames and disappear in mid air but then come back and curse their enemy? What the shit!

The movie does have a couple of things in its favor. It offers up some penis violence (complte with nails driven into groinal area), a crazy hallucinogen drug that makes people do the unthinkable, some naked female flesh which may not be the most attractive scene in cinematic history but at least it is there. Last but certainly not least we get a decapitation which is pretty cool. The gore scenes make The Serpent And The Rainbow somewhat watchable but the movie is still a big hack-job and deserves more criticism the praise.

Schizo (1976)

Not to be mistaken for Nightmare In A Damaged Brain or the shit-ton of other movies that went under the brilliant exploitation title of Schizo. Nope, this one comes from British director Peter Walker. Walker is my favorite of all English directors mainly because his brand of horror was a bit more nasty then the Hammer Studios type stuff that was coming out of England at the time.

Responsible fro such trashy delights as Frightmare and House Of Whipchord, Peter Walker offers up another violent piece of horror. Its funny because Schizo plays more like an Italian Giallo with a black gloved psychopath on the lose. It has plot twists, a surprise ending and a bit of mystery going on. It is clearly different then the British horror that was going on at the time. I'm sure Mr. Walker was influenced by the work of Dario Argento or Mario Bava when he dished this slasher flick out.

This one starts off a little slow with cheep gags and cheesy scares but it makes up for it with some bare breasted women here and there. For those of you familiar with Peter Walkers The Flesh And Blood Show which I feel should have just been titled The Flesh Show due to the lack of blood, I can assure you that this one does not follow in the same footsteps. It gets more violent as the time runs on and before long throats are being slashed, achy-breaky skulls are smashed in with repeated blows from a metal mallet. Bodies are run over and mangled, sharp objects are shoved through eyeballs, faces are slashed, bodies are impaled and naked women are stabbed and hacked to shit. There is also a cool scene where a psychic is possessed and goes Bat-shit which reminded me a bit of Deep Red.

Check it out for schizo's and various sharp objects being put to good use.

The Howling VII : New Moon Rising (1995)

Suicide might be a better alternative. I first saw this piece of shit on Joe Bob Briggs Mosntervision when I was a teenager. It played right after The Howling III : The Marsupials which is far superior in camp value alone. The Howling franchise was never a very good one with the exception of the first film but The Howling 7 is by far the worst of the lot. It can barely be considered a movie. Shot on video with a cast that consists of no actors with the exception of one man who did a silent film when he was about 8 and then came back to do this movie when he was 80. I'm sure you can guess but the acting is horrendous. The whole movie takes place in a bar in bumble-fuck California and I'm pretty sure everyone in the movie are just regulars at this shit-hole bar. We get a bunch of useless chit-chat that tries to tie this flick into the rest of the series and nothing happens at all. We don't even get a werewolf until the last five seconds of the movie. Oh boy is it bad!

We have endless scenes of line dancing which Joe Bob refers to as "Line dancing from hell" then we get a bunch of shitty musical numbers and gratuitous drinking. The Howling 7 has to have one of the worst soundtracks of all time and watching these shit-necks play their awful songs is torture. However we do get a cool sing-along about drugs and a scene that has to be seen to be believed where these losers play the zippers on their pants as instruments. I'm not making this up!

Watching any movie with Joe Bob Briggs is worth while so I recommend if you ever dare to watch this thing find a copy of the Monstervision version somewhere on the Internet. Otherwise stay as far away as possible.

Some of the other treats that this one has in store for you is gratuitous farting and the worlds laziest detective. When other character are trying to explain what is going on the detective usually says things like "Is this going to take long?" or "I would really like to hear this but I have had enough". Who the fuck wrote this shit?

You're gonna need a lot of booze to make it through this one!

8 1/2 (1963)

I'm going to have to watch about eight and a half trash films just to make up for this pretentious sit. 8 1/2 runs around two hours long which isn't necessarily a big problem if there is a lot going on but this one is typical of a Federico Fellini film in the sense that the visuals are nice but when it is all said and done there is very little that is memorable about the film.

La Bella Confusione was the original working title but yet again in a self indulgent act Fellini changes the title to 8 1/2 which was the number of films he directed to date. The film is as pretentious and self indulgent as the title. It plays somewhat like an autobiography for the highly praised art director.

The plot follows a director named Guido, who is getting ready to shoot his next film. Everyone is counting on him and smothering him for a little bit of information about the film. The actors, producers and camera men are all kept in the dark. The reason being... There is no film. So basically Fellini decided to make a movie about nothing. The director is surrounded by so called friends, business partners and the women he loves and betrays but he couldn't feel more confused. A large amount of the film is told through flash backs of his childhood oppressors and especially the women in his life. Still nothing makes it down on paper for the film.

Beautiful Gothic babe Barbara Steele who caught the worlds eye in Mario Bava's Black Sunday shows up as one of the many women in Guido's life. Barbara Steele always adds a few points to any film even if she is old and beaten and wheelchair bound in Caged Heat. Well she is young and lively in this one and as usual is nice to look at. Steele is just one of the many beautiful women in this movie. In one of the better scenes Guido goes into a fantasy day dream where he is surrounded by all the women he has known. They serve him and cater to his every need. I found this scene exceptionally humorous because it truly is every mans dream come true and Fellini is the only director I have ever known to capture this.

The other highlights of the film show a dancing sailor, a self afflicting gunshot to the head suicide scene, and an amazing opening sequence which shows a man stuck in a car jam. He kicks out his window and climbs to the roof of his car and he floats above all the cars in the traffic jam. He flies over the city and above the water at the beach. He has a rope tied to his foot and someone is holding the other end as if he were a kite. Then he falls down into the watter. The shot is to amazing for words. It has to be seen. How Fellini pulled it off in 1963 I'm not quite sure but it sure does make for eye candy. Now if there was somewhat more of an interesting plot and not long half hour intervals where nothing happens I might be a bigger fan of the film over all.

Cruising (1980)

1980 was one of the best years for movies made in New York City. So many edgy cult films would emerge from the big apple in this year. Cruising is one of those movies and its cult status is more then deserved. It is Al Pacino's most daring role and in my opinion Cruising is the best movie he has ever done. Scarface would come out three years later and while the budget may have gone up the guts have not.

Pacino plays an undercover cop who is looking for a killer in the gay S&M community. A real sicko who likes to slash up boys in black leather with a sharp kitchen knife. The bodies are piling up on the rivers of New York and its Pacino's job to find the guy. This means he has to dress in leather and hang around the seedy, dark underbelly of the sleazy gay clubs. The bodies keep dropping and the murder scenes are done in true slasher fashion, complete with suspense and gore but Pacino's character is changing. Something is happening inside of him and he can't control it. The violent and depraved S&M world is having a bigger impact on him then the murders themselves. We witness man on man bondage, orgies, enough leather to fill a British punk rock club, a anal fisting scene, drug use and prostitution.

Cruising is filled to the brim with other cult icons from the time. Joe Spinell who gore hounds would remember best as the psychopath who scalps hookers in the 1980 slasher Maniac shows up as a perverted corrupt cop who likes to take in gay hustlers and show them his night stick. Spinell's partner is played by Mike Star who has 185 titles to his name to date. This was his first feature but he would go on to do big shitty Hollywood stuff like Dumb & Dumber but you could also enjoy him in The Last Dragon. Karen (The Wanderers) Allen plays Pacino's girlfriend and we also get Michael Beck who played Swan in The Warriors and many more. I also could have sworn I saw Abel Ferrara in here too although I may be wrong because he is not credited. With a cultified cast like that how can you go wrong. Oh and did I mention it was written and directed by William (The Exorcist) Firedkin???

Cruising plays a lot like George C. Scott's Hardcore mixed with elements of a slasher film. Its dark, gritty and mean but it sure does hold the attention. We get one very humorous scene which I'm sure was influenced by Hardcore where a big black man wearing nothing but boots, a cowboy hat and a jockstrap smacks Al Pacino around. This movie will make the average straight male stay home where it is nice and safe. It definitely gets into the mind and doesn't leave for a while. Check it out for bundles of fags in leather jackets and a psycho killer on the loose with a fetish for gay flesh. It also sports legendary punk band The Germs on the soundtrack which is also very cool.

Oh and don't forget to wear a rubber. This ones dirty!

Born Losers (1967)

The mid 60's was the height of Biker Exploitation Films and Born Losers is amongst the best of the lot. After the success of Roger Corman's Wild Angels in 66 a whole slue of these rough-rider movies would follow.

Directed and staring Tom (Billy Jack) Laughlin as the do-gooder Indian who takes revenge against a gang of violent bikers who call themselves the Born Losers.

This is the first time Laughlin would ever play Billy Jack and Born Losers is the best of the lot. The story is strong and so is the suspense and action. Born Losers almost plays like a western with many showdown type scenes between our vengeful Indian in the cowboy hat and the losers that he goes to war with.

About five minutes into the film we are treated to some violence when the Losers kick the shit out of a smart mouth college kid in a traffic jam. They beat the kid to a bloody pulp and everyone turns the blind eye. That is except for Billy Jack. Billy grabs his riffle and shoots one of the bike riding scumbags down. The gang is locked up and so is Billy Jack. The only problem is that Billy's sentence is much worse. "Think twice next time before you help someone". Once Billy Jack is released from jail the Losers decide to make his life a living hell. They fuck with him where ever he goes, they rob his house and steal his money but he doesn't decide to battle these bastards again until they rape a lone-rider babe in a white bikini on a motorcycle played by Elizabeth James (Dirty Mary Crazy Larry).

The bikini clad biker-babe is just one of the many rape victims of the gang. The same day they rape three teenie-boppers and it makes the news. When two of the Losers are identified and caught by the police the rest of the gang terrorize the rape victims and their family.

Well enough is enough! Billy Jack has some ass to kick and it all comes together in a big showdown at the gangs clubhouse. With tire irons swinging and guns-a-blazin.

This one offers up a mute with no tongue who screams in women's faces, a dirty son of a bitch named Crabs "What do ya say we all jump in a shower together", A vice president named Child Of Christ and a bunch of other memorable characters. Achy-breaky skulls are clobbered with tire irons, motorcylces burn. We get gun violence, knife violence, a strip-tease from an "over sexed teenager". Although we do get a little bit of bare flesh this thing could have only benefited from some more nudity but hey I couldn't ask for much more from a movie rated {PG}. If this thing was released today it would clearly be rated {R}.  Still Born Losers is amongst my favorite of all biker films. Its Death Wish meets Satan's Sadists. Oh and watch for the scene between Billy Jack and Elizabeth James in the resturaunt. We get some good continuity where Elizabeth starts to say her lines and stops. Then she picks it up again.

The Old Dark House (1932)

Another masterpiece from James Whale. This one blends horror and comedy perfectly. Its almost impossible to decipher which genre the film leans more towards.

This film would be released one year after Whale's classic Frankenstein and would once again star Boris Karloff as a monster. However this time around he wasn't compiled from parts of different corpses. Instead he is a drunken mongoloid. When he gets to drinkin violence is bound to break out. Considering his brute strength this is pretty scary. However Boris Karloff isn't the only danger in the house.

When five people are caught in a horrible storm which comes complete with flooding and a mountain top avalanche, they are forced to seek shelter in The Old Dark House. They are not exactly welcomed but they are greeted in to warm up by the fire and get something to eat. While mongoloid Boris Karloff "Tips the bottle" in the kitchen a deaf woman throws mean comments around at our guests "your pretty clothes will rot and so will your pretty flesh" and her brother who most would remember as Dr. Pretorious in Bride Of Frankenstein doesn't hide his feelings of fear and contempt for the old dark house. He is also an atheist who mocks god during dinner. You gotta love how James Whale manages to throw in his anti religious views into 1930's cinema.

The stranded guests start to believe that the house is cursed when they find an old decaying man who is locked in a room towards the top of the house. The old man warns them of the dangers within the house and tells them to beware of Saul, a madman who lives in the house. Well Saul does in fact exist and he chases the guests around with knives and sets fire to the house.

Some how this morbid tale is filled with jokes and comedic characters. The comedy is never over the top and it is done just right. Its sure to get a chuckle out of you.

In the following year James Whale would continue his routine of horror with a sense of humor with The Invisible Man but unlike his Universal monster flicks The Old Dark House is still somewhat of an unseen movie. I think it is one of those movies that film makers love and even more love to pay homage to but unfortunately as far as the general public goes this movie doesn't get the notoriety that it deserves.

Thunderbolt (1995)

This Jackie Chan flick blends Kung Fu shenanigans with road racing action. Chan plays a auto mechanic who is forced into street racing with criminals after his little sister is abducted by the bad guys. The plot is weak and of course silly and since this isn't really my genre of preference I had a hard time staying focused. There were some expected cool and very dangerous stunts on display and some of the fight scenes were pretty bad-ass. One in particular shows Jackie Chan going ape-shit against his enemies with a sledge hammer but I would have to say the best scene involves chan being trapped in a metal storage room which is lifted by bulldozers. He is thrown about and any normal human being would have been a broken, mangled and or dead. Chan of course pulls through for the big race and kicks everyones ass. We also get a group of hot Asian cheerleaders in white cotton panties. Nice!

The Howling III : The Marsupials (1987)

Oh The Marsupials. This Australian sequel to the classic werewolf epic The Howling really takes the series in a new direction or maybe no direction for that matter. Scenes from The Howling III can be seen in Not Quite Hollywood : The Wild Untold Story Of Ozploitation a documentary that shows the history of Australian exploitation cinema and how strange and far out the movies really were.

The Howling III is no exception to the rule. It is wacky as hell. The truth is I probably would hate this movie if it didn't hold a teenage charm for me. I first saw this thing on Joe Bob Briggs Monstervision. It was cheesy back then for me but Joe Bob has a way of making any movie more watchable.

The fact that this thing comes from Australia and sports Marsupial werewolves is enough camp value to make the movie interesting to say the least. Throw in some really awful actors, an incoherent and disjointed plot, some really bad special effects and a cheesy movie within the movie and you get a pretty memorable flick... kinda!

They say nuns run in packs... or is that wolves... Either way we get a group of werewolf nuns. A giant wolfman explodes by close range rocket launcher, we get the crazy 80's latex face bubbles in a transformation scene and a weirdo Alfred Hitchcock wanna be character. In one of the movies best moments we get a werewolf skeleton who rips a man to shreds. Why a werewolf skeleton? Why Marsupial-Werewolves for that matter? Don't ask why. Just sit back and enjoy this nonsensical mess for what it is.

The director is responsible for other Ozploitive delights such as The Beast Within, Mad Dog Morgan, and he was also to blame for The Howling II : Stirba - Werewolf Bitch. With the exception of the Sybil Danning gratuitous titty shots I think I prefer the Marsupials sequel.

Its a weird one!

The Adult Version Of Jekyll And Hyde (1972)

All the tasteless motivation was here to make a great sexploitation film but somewhere along the line this one falls short.

Dr. Jekyll steps into a junk shop with his bride to be. He notices a book on a shelf and quickly rushes his girl out of the store like a true weirdo. Latter that night he stops back at the junk shop and kills the owner and runs off with the book. With a private dick hot on his trail Dr. Jekyll reads the book and puts together a concoction that will transform him into a sexy big breasted blond. Naturally the first thing to do is masturbate and secondly go on a murdering and rape filled rampage. In one of the best scenes the female version of Dr. Jekyll or Hyde if you will... hooks up with a violent sailor. Does this make him gay? Anyway I guess the sex wasn't all that good or maybe the Dr. knew he couldn't live down the fact that he fucked a man because Mrs. Hyde chops off the mans willy with a pocket knife.

Speaking of male nudity The Adult Version Of Jekyll And Hyde comes complete with what might be the worlds smallest penis in 70's cinema. Yep our main character bares it all and when I say all well, lets just except it for what it is. To make up for this pornstar Rene Bond does a lot of fucking and I suppose that makes the film a bit easier to sit through. She treats us to shower scenes, lesbian scenes and basically any other excuse she can find to take off her clothes.

This one comes complete with strangulation, violent roughie style whipping scenes, a fire poker to the vagina, achy breaky skulls are smashed in with blunt objects, suicide window-leaping in true Reefer Madness fashion, castration and plenty of male and female naked bodies.

Only for the true roughie/sexploitation audience. Very slow but trashy enough to keep the attention of demento's!

Asylum Of Satan (1972)

I remember the first time seeing this loony-bin, devil worshipping cult flick. I was with a bunch of drunken friends and everybody in the room hated it. That is everyone except for me of course. I have always loved asylum movies even though this one barely fits into that category. Now I realize why I liked this one so much. The reason being that it was directed by the great William Girdler.

Girdler has a way of making some very unpolished and many times inadequate films but for some reason his work always appeals to me. Even movies like Day Of The Animals which most would consider unwatchable, seems to drag me in and hold my attention.

I like everything I have seen from the director. Sheba Baby, The awesome blaxploitaion exorcist rip Abby and of course 3 On A Meathook. William Girdler is an important name in the exploitation world as far as I am concerned and while he may not have a body of work as big as Herschell Gordon Lewis : The Godfather Of Gore or David F. Friedmen his brand of art still needs to be seen. I always relate William Girdler to Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Just Before Dawn, Blue Sunshine) as far as the feel that their films give off and the fact that they just haven't done as many movies as they should have.

Asylum Of Satan is in fact William Girdler's first film and I think it has much more replay value then some of his later stuff like Day Of The Animals.

A woman wakes up in an Asylum. The last thing she remembers was falling asleep at general hospital and now here she is. The asylum is filled with weirdo's, cripples, mutes and a blind woman who some might remember from 3 On A Meathook. The doctor is a weird controlling kook and his right hand man... I mean woman... well his nurse seems to be a man in drag. Nobody will let our main character know why she is being held in the asylum but she starts to put things together when she sees "patients" in white cloaks praying to Satan, hence the brilliant exploitation title Asylum Of Satan.

And speaking of Satan, This movie is one of the few in the genre where Satan is actually present. That's right guys, we actually have the privilege of seeing the devil first hand in Asylum Of Satan.

The film is of course filled with plot holes and it all could have been resolved easily if there was a character with half a brain in their head but lucky for us its not a very long movie. It clocks in at 80 minutes which really is the perfect runtime for a movie like this. If they cut out the filler which comes in the form of driving scenes I suppose the film would have fell somewhere around 70 minutes which is borderline to short. During the 80 min. of Satan-action we are treated to a grizzly severed head, death by poisonous gas, death by spiders which will remind you more of This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse rather then Lucio Fulci's gory-as-hell The Beyond. We also have a weird monster roaming about the asylum. We see a man fall to his death and my personal favorite scene shows a woman in a pool who meets her fate by killer snakes. The snakes bite into the woman's face (complete with gore) and it really makes for a creepy scene. All these murders are of course sacrificial rituals in the name of Satan and when the devil appears lets just say he is not very happy.

This one is for the real exploitation-freaks. Quentin Tarrantino "Grindhouse" kids should stay away. P.S. the grain is real, Yuck!