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| I Was a Teenage Frankenstein / Blood of Dracula; November, 1957 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 28 2017, 09:18 PM (284 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Jan 28 2017, 09:18 PM Post #1 |
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![]() I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957) Dir. Herbert L. Strock American-International Pictures 74 min. / B&W / 1.66:1 Blood of Dracula (1957) Dir. Herbert L. Strock American-International Pictures 68 min. / B&W / 1.66:1 More fun with 1950s teenagers and monsters, amongst our two favorite things about the '50s. As Sam Arkoff told the story in his autobiography, the owner of the Majestic theatre in Dallas, a showplace venue, felt as though he had been paying the majors too much for the A pictures he'd been renting, and came to AIP with an offer just before Labor Day, 1957: "Get me a double-feature of monster movies and I'll play 'em on Thanksgiving weekend, my biggest weekend of the year." So far, all they had was the obvious title to follow up I Was a Teenage Werewolf, but what th' heck: a prestigious theatre is a prestigious theatre, and so they just ZIPPED through the production of THESE babies. The result falls short of the Werewolf and Saucer Men double feature, but it's so deliriously daffy, and delivers the promised monster goods, we've always loved both these pictures, particularly the vampire one, which is pretty much a simple remake of the werewolf epic from earlier that year. We start with the Frankenstein picture, though: Dr. Whit Bissell is back, playing the British(!) grandson of Dr. Frankenstein and up to the family's old tricks. He wants a Monster that he can control, though, so he decides to build a teenager, because, as we all know, teenagers are... um... easy to control. Well, anyway, courtesy of a fatal car crash at the foot of his driveway (how's THAT for serendipity?) he's got the mangled teenager he needs, and a cut-cut here and a saw-saw there and a few stitches and spare body parts and VOILA, he's got Gary Conway with a face like a popped pimple. Dr. Bissell also has a lovely fiance, Phyllis Coates(!), and why she's (a) involved with Dr. Bissell, and (b) in this movie, I've never figured out. Oh, and he's also got an alligator in the pool under his lab, which figures greatly in what happens to him at the end of the picture, and I could go on and on (I almost always do) but by now you surely have a strong grasp of how wonderful this film is to somebody like me. Million-dollar Dialog: Dr. Frankenstein, regarding said mangled teenager: “Tell, me what condition is he in?” Brilliant Research Assistant: “Dead.” Dr. Frankenstein: “I know THAT. That’s the way a LAYMAN would describe it.” For the first (but not the last) time, AIP filmed the climactic sequence in color so that we could all enjoy the pimple guy gettin' his, but good, in full... well, full something. In any case, this is one of the best-remembered and best-loved of all the AIP monster movies, and between the bloody body parts, hideously deformed creature, sexy lady in her negligee (monster victim #1) and the alligator in the basement, well, it deserves to be. Conway would be back next year for a sequel, so don't go 'way. After all this excitement (and a quick trip to the snack bar) we were back for a 1953 Paramount cartoon called Crazytown. It was a real odd one; in sort of a precursor to the Bizarro planet (look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about, or - in best Bizarro tradition - look it up if you DO know what I'm talkin' about), everything is topsy-turvy there: the stork brings parents to the babies, horses ride jockeys, that sort of thing. Cute. Then we saw the trailer for next week's million-dollar movie, The Monolith Monsters (WOW!) before the next show started, another favorite that should've been called I Was a Teenage Vampire but wasn't. Widowed daddy marries floozy and dumps his teenage daughter in a boarding school (yeah, THAT old story) where the young girl becomes the victim of a misguided experiment by the school's nutty-as-a-Payday-bar science teacher, who uses an ancient Carpathian amulet to turn the girl into a blood-sucking fiend with a widow's peak, Groucho eyebrows, dark rings around her eyes, and teeth that would make Bugs Bunny blush. The loony science professor is trying to prove to the male species (who laugh at her, can you believe it?) that the most horrifying weapon is within each of us, so they'll stop creating those nuclear things and go read a good book or something. Meanwhile, Our Rabbit-Toothed Heroine also has to put up with the menace of the Birds of Paradise, a gang of she-wolves (she kills a few of 'em to keep 'em honest) and with some teenage boys on a panty raid and... well, you get the picture. Another four-star winner from our friends at AIP. Sandra Harrison is the young Vampiress and she's earnest enough in the picture; Louise Lewis is the nutty professor, Richard Devon (The Undead) is a cop, Thomas B. Henry is the dad (you don't recognize the name, but he's in every single sci-fi or horror movie of the 1950s, you'd recognize him, trust me) and somebody named Jerry Blaine plays "Tab", who sings a song (while the girls do a synchronized dance with sofa cushions, you REALLY have to see this picture) and then gets murdered (in that order). Million-dollar Dialog: The professor explains she can control will power through her amulet. Girl: "Like master and slave?" Prof: "No, like brain and arm." The leader of the she-cats, after the panty raid, ordering her girls to clean up the room: "The Birds of Paradise are noisy, but neat!" And the professor, giving one of her lectures: "Power, especially the power to kill, is never pretty." Amen, lady. Blood of Dracula was released on DVD in England (you're welcome) and here in the U.S. it was doubled with How to Make a Monster, out of print now but available, I'm sure. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein has never been on DVD. Dammit. |
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6:32 AM Jul 11