31 Horrors Day 8: Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

There's a type of person that can look past a film's many shortcomings and enjoy completely flawed films for the slight glimmers that shine through the mess.  I am not one of those people.  Dracula VS Frankenstein screened last night at Alamo Drafthouse for Terror Tuesday.  Victoria, Don, Traci, and I all met up to check it out (as we do most Tuesdays).

According to our Terror Tuesday host Joseph Ziemba pointed out how director Al Adamson would normally direct films, and then his producer would take different parts of different films and edit them together.  This film was originally supposed to be a sequel to a motorcycle gang movie, but after production they edited in the Dracula and Frankenstein bits (which really added nothing but confusion).  Most of the scenes aren't horrible, but the way they are somewhat willy-nilly thrown together really hurts the movie.

The actor who played Dracula does a pretty great job of being oddly creepy, which helped me get through his scenes.  We find out his motivation for being involved during the last 10 minutes of the film, but before that we never really knew why he was hanging around.

The one saving grace this film had was Lon Chaney Jr. who died shortly after filming.  Originally Chaney had lines in the film, but when he arrived to set, throat cancer had stolen his voice so the role was changed to make his character a mute.  Chaney really steals the show, and is really the only thing that kept me from falling asleep.