By GREG WOODS

(This is the second of a series of two artuicles examining the horror films of producer/director Al Adamson.  The first article, containing an overview of Adamson's film career, can be found here.)

Dracula Vs. Frankenstein (1971)

Adamson’s most famous picture is a cut and paste affair which began as a project entitled The Blood Seekers, featuring Anthony Eisley as Mike, who helps Judith (played by Regina Carroll) find her sister, who disappeared among the hippie community in Venice, California, despite the advise of the police inspector (Jim Davis) who tells her to leave the investigating to the police. This cut also featured veteran actors J. Carrol Naish (as Dr. Durea) and Lon Chaney Jr., as his mute assistant Groton. Durea runs a "house of horrors" funhouse along the boardwalk, which acts as a cover for his lab. Groton kills young women for his experiments in reviving the dead.

Then, in order to pad the film out, Dracula and The Frankenstein Monster were added. More exposition was added for Durea’s character. Now he is also the last surviving ancestor of Dr. Frankenstein’s lineage. Dracula provides him with the Frankenstein monster so that Durea can get revenge on the colleagues who discredited him.

Although Sherman has been very kind in defending Adamson’s films, he has nothing good to say about this picture, not least because it makes no sense. The movie isn’t incoherent, but one can sense the choppiness of it, as various storylines disappear, and new ones appear to help the picture trudge to its finish. To many, Dracula Vs. Frankenstein is one of the most miserable films ever made. However, this picture does have its fans. Indeed, it is a terrible movie, but it does have a creepy, lurid appeal, and rare moments of beauty.

Adamson and Sherman loved to populate their films with old actors, and no more did they receive damnation for it than here. For their final screen roles. J. Carrol Naish appears in a wheelchair (but that was more for his character, than any real-life ailment), and Lon Chaney Jr. appears haggard throughout. In fact, many moments throughout are padded relentlessly with extreme close-ups of his tired eyes. Because the actor had throat cancer and his voice was almost inaudible, all of Groton’s lines were cut. Thusly, Chaney ends up playing a dime-store version of his classic Lenny role in Of Mice And Men, doltishly nodding, and stumbling around.

The Adamson-Sherman enterprise was seemingly trying to create a miniature "classic Hollywood", albeit with contemporary exploitation formulae. Still, their hearts were in the right place. For this project, they hired William Lava to do the music (which I believe was comprised of unused bits from Creature From The Black Lagoon), beloved Famous Monsters Of Filmland publisher Forrest J. Ackerman makes a cameo, and they even found effects artist Ken Strickfaden, and his old lab equipment from Bride Of Frankenstein!

Alas, they couldn’t use Jack Pierce’s patented Frankenstein monster, so instead the makeup on John Bloom looks like a rotting Michelin Man. For Dracula, they cast a goateed, curly-haired man named Roger Engel, who was Independent-International’s financial consultant! To make the marquee a bit weirder, Engel’s name was changed to Zandor Vorkov. People who defend the Lugosi and Christopher Lee mantles have little good to say about Vorkov’s interpretation of Dracula. However, what Vorkov lacks in grace, he certainly makes up in presence, with the added effect of a post-dubbed echoed voice. For its day, this vampire seemed a logical interpretation for the hippie generation.

After another groovy Independent-International title sequence, we open on a graveyard scene in which Dracula unearths a casket. Gary Graver’s camera zooms in on the face of the Frankenstein monster inside the coffin. (The zoom shot is an oft-repeated device throughout, to make up for lack of mise en scene.) A girl walking along the boardwalk of Venice California, draped with lots of dry ice, gets attacked and decapitated. We then depart from these moments, done mostly in close-up, to a slightly more florid scene in Las Vegas, in which we get to see Regina Carroll (as Judith Fontaine) in the actress’ natural stomping grounds (after all, she did dance with Elvis in VIVA LAS VEGAS!). After doing a rubbery, post-synced number "Travel Light" (look fast for Al Adamson in the crowd), she gets a telegram stating that her sister is still missing. She travels to Venice to meet with the police officer Martin (Jim Davis), and despite his warning, she decides to handle things her own way.

Meanwhile, some crazy hippie character named Strange (played by future director Greydon Clark) and his groovy girlfriend Samantha go to check out Durea’s funhouse. Strange is one of the film’s many exaggerations of the hippie generation—decked out in hilarious white striped pants, a red shirt and a necklace with these huge teeth, this guy almost steals the film. In this scene, we also get to see diminutive veteran actor Angelo Rossito as Grazbo, the carnival barker. Inside the funhouse, the hippie duo are witness to wax figures depicting many historical atrocities. They also meet Dr. Durea and his assistant Groton. We get to hear the first of many of J. Carroll Naish’s far-out lines ("You must open your eyes to see!" / "Illusions seem real, otherwise they wouldn’t be illusions."), and we get to see first of the many zooms to Groton’s eyes. Having had their fill of this, Strange and his girlfriend wander back into the daylight, and he turns to her to say: "Wanna go to a protest tonight?" Hilarious!

We then see more of Durea and Groton, this time in the basement lab, which also has girls fastened to operating tables, and hooked up to strange devices. Groton hugs a puppy, in a sorry allusion to Chaney’s role in Of Mice And Men. Durea spouts more psychobabble like "Reality is the greatest illusion of all"—Naish is blatantly reading from cue cards. "We must kill more girls, Groton. We are scientists!" He gives his servant an injection, and then you know he is evil because his face has grey makeup and is illuminated by a hard key light.

Then Zandor Vorkov makes his grand entrance as Count Dracula, replete with a post-dubbed echo-y voice (and you know that voice wouldn’t echo in such a tiny, cramped lab). Dracula also has a cool ring which fires laser beams, which he demonstrates to the doctor to flaunt his power. It is here in which we learn that Durea is the last of the Frankenstein lineage. Also, the doctor had a crippling accident, and was discredited by his peers, Dracula can help Durea exact his revenge if…

The film’s cinematographer, Gary Graver, is smooching on the beach with Connie Nelson, as Groton shows up with his axe and dices them. Judith appears in a sleazy Venice nightclub playing a lot of groovy music. She asks for someone named Rico. The waiter with a big scar goes to tell Rico that she is looking for him, so he gives the waiter something to slip in her coffee. Rico is played by former song and dance star Russ Tamblyn, now making B movies by his pad in Venice California. His biker character in this movie is an in-joke for his immortal bike gang leader in Adamson’s previous chopper epic SATAN’S SADISTS. Judith drinks the coffee and spins out. This is cinema’s most minimalist drug trip sequence, with footage of bewildered patrons, Judith running on the beach, red-tinted dancers and cut-ins of her face while experiencing these hallucinations.

(Alas, we realize, Regina Carroll can sing and dance, but not act). Strange shows up with his girlfriend, this time he’s wearing some wild poncho, and Judith faints on him. Strange’s pal Mike (a 45 year-old Anthony Eisley trying to pass as 25), who wears a yellow turtleneck and another of those weird necklaces with all the teeth, carries Judith off. As always, Adamson shows us the dark side of the 60’s that we never saw in Beach Blanket Bingo. Instead of sock hops and hot rods, the world of Adamson is bikers, LSD, danger, and of course, the Manson family (who was partially involved in a couple of his films).

Meanwhile, Durea and Dracula begin experiments to bring the monster back to life. Dracula muses, "Tonight, Dr. Beaumont, you will meet an old friend." Famous Monsters editor Forrest J. Ackerman makes a cameo as Beaumont, one of Durea’s rivals, driving a car, in which Dracula suddenly appears, and instructs Beaumont to drive to a certain location. Once he gets out, the monster attacks him.

Judith wakes up in Mike’s pad and strolls out to the deck. Strange is on the beach, mentioning that a dead girl had washed up on shore ("It’s a real bummer."). Mike and Judith walk along the beach, and she tells him about her missing sister Joanie. He says she used to hang out by Durea’s funhouse. Judith and her new hippie friends go to meet Durea, who professes not to know her sister, even when shown a photograph of Joanie. As these people talk, shots of Dracula listening off to the sides are cut-in. It is amusing to note that the count is eavesdropping on a conversation, which was shot two years earlier.

After this fruitless encounter, Rico approaches the hippies and his biker pals. "I need a new chick today," is his way of wooing the fairer sex. Officer Martin shows up, and the bikers leave. He warns them of a maniac running loose on the beach. This is followed by what may be the most romantic scene in any Al Adamson film. Mike and Judith walk and talk on the beach, with cut-ins of seagulls flying. While some mushy hippie anthem "Only You and Me" plays on the soundtrack. This may not sound very tender, once you consider that the segment is padded with shots of birds looking for garbage, but Adamson’s films are always full of danger and deceit, that finding a moment like this where two people act so tenderly with each other is actually rewarding.

This of course, is soon undermined with a quick scene of Groton freaking out, requiring more shots from Durea, who refuses to help him. Then we’re back on the beach as Mike and Judith share post-coital cigarettes, and he tells Judith that perhaps he can force Durea into telling what happened. Meanwhile, in a lively day-for-night scene, the monster attacks a couple necking in a car. The cops show up, and get knocked out. The monster carries the girl away.

On the beach at night, Samantha is about to get raped by Rico and his gang, when Groton wipes them all out. Just after this moment, Mike thinks he saw someone go into a trapdoor. He and Judith barge into the sideshow, and Grazbo tells them that her sister is inside. True enough, Joanie is in suspended animation in some weird tube. Samantha is on the table. "You will be spiritually released by what will happen in the last few moments", Durea cackles.

Just then, Grazbo falls through the trap door on his own axe, Judith runs away, and Durea runs into Mike. A guillotine blade from the wax museum exhibit decapitates the doctor. Groton pursues Judith in under lit long shots,, which call attention to the fact that the whole film may have been made with just one light. Then Judith runs into Dracula, and he hypnotizes her. It is here where The Blood Seekers obviously ended, and therefore we get another climax or two with the added-on Dracula Vs. Frankenstein footage.

Judith gets tied up. And here, finally, after all this mayhem and psychobabble, we learn that Durea was making a serum, which would make its users invincible. Mike lights a flare to blind the Frankenstein monster, and he stumbles around while Mike unties Judith. Then in the film’s most bizarre moment a shot of Dracula becomes a cartoon still, as a laser beam shoots out of his ring at Mike. We see a little fire where Mike use to stand (Eisley was not available for the tacked-on shooting of Dracula Vs. Frankenstein). Judith faints. We almost do too, overwhelmed that this film dared to insert such a cheap effect.

Judith awakens in a scrubby shack, and Dracula is about to bite her neck, (the only time he acts like a vampire in the entire movie!) when the monster suddenly exhibits signs of humanity, and intervenes. Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster struggle, and then Dracula notices the sun is coming up. He runs through the bushes to get to his coffin on time, but is burned to a crisp instead. This whole scene exists merely to give some kind of support to the title that the filmmakers picked out—Judith could easily have been finished off long before the shack. At least the movie lived up to its title. This miserable footage (which looks like it was shot on Super 8) does have a primitive power however, as does the movie, either in spite or because of the lumbering editing, shabby lighting and plodding action.

At this point, we realize that Adamson’s films seem to be shaped by their cinematographers. It may be that the DOP sets the aesthetic approach to the movie because Al the director didn’t care, but the ferocious behavior that exists from film to film nonetheless highlight Adamson as the true personality of these works. Even so, Gary Graver’s camera, almost always relying on close-up in night scenes because of poor lighting conditions, lends this movie an uncomfortable atmosphere. By the same token, perhaps that hilarious cartoon moment where Eisley is killed is indicative of the movie.

Dracula Vs. Frankenstein is nothing if not an exaggerated cartoon. Despite its serious tone, and its creepy sweaty dirty characters, everything in this movie is played to the nth degree. From the ridiculous hippie clichés to the sleazy bikers, from the cackling mad scientist to the subhuman monsters, everything takes on a larger than life departure from the usual depiction of these characters. Because this film features old horror movie stars, and even uses some of the music and props from those classics of yesteryear, one might think that this is meant to be a tribute, but if anything, it seems more of a logical extension of those forms. The 60’s had no place for Victorian actors in capes. The hellish society depicted in this and all of Adamson’s films are the true evil—the good old monster movie is updated to a time of great turmoil, a time when the world is going out of control. No matter how much in poor taste this picture was made, especially in the casting of Lon Chaney Jr., one must admit that the filmmakers’ willingness to cross the line forces one to consider a great many things. This shabby monster movie thusly becomes a product of the society in which it is created—like the Frankenstein monster, it is busting at the seams.

Brain Of Blood (1971)

After making a lot of dough with Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, Sherman and Adamson went over to Hemisphere Films for a one-shot deal in helping out Sam’s old boss Kane Lynn, who needed a horror movie for the upcoming season. Hot on the success of Lynn’s imports of the Filipino Blood Island series, thus came Brain Of Blood, which is always attributed to those pictures but in truth, it exists on its own level. For starters, contrary to popular belief, this film was not shot in the Philippines.

The filmmakers never left LA. This makes even more sense, once we see the opening shot of the exotic land of Kalid—it looks like a postcard! Of all of the films mentioned in this piece, perhaps this has the most interesting cast. Kent Taylor headlines the movie, with Grant Williams of The Incredible Shrinking Man, Reed Hadley from the days of serials, and the filmmakers carried over some Dracula Vs. Frankenstein stars: Regina Carroll (of course), John Bloom, Angelo Rossito, and… Zandor Vorkov!

After the panoramic view of a postcard, we open in a huge bedroom (perhaps Brain Of Blood is the Adamson picture which breathes), where Amir the ruler of Kalid (Reed Hadley) lies on his deathbed. With the help of his American confidante Tracey Wilson (Regina Carroll) and his trusty assistant Mohammed (Vorkov!), his brain is to be removed from his useless body, so that he can still rule this nation. Dig Mohammed’s line: "Without him, this country would struggle for years in stagnant futilism!" They secretly ship his body to the lab of Dr. Trenton (good old Kent Taylor), who extracts the brain, while he sends his assistant Gor out to collect a suitable body, which will house Amir’s brain.

Cut to an elongated scene, in which Adamson details the minutiae of a burglar sneaking up a fire escape, opening a window to an apartment, and then hiding in the closet when the female occupant arrives. She comes in and passes out cold, not from the burglar, but from the sight of Gor, yet another of Adamson’s misshapen lab assistants, who is inexplicably also in the same room. Poor John Bloom gets to add another thankless role to his resume as another pathetic ogre, this time wearing what looks like a slipped-off skinhead wig on one side of his face. Anyway, at first glance of the creature, the burglar dashes out the window, slips and falls to his death. Apparently Gor was scooping out the burglar to use as a host body for Amir.

Meanwhile at the lab, Trenton lets out another cry for more blood to his diminutive assistant, Dorro, and he goes downstairs to his dungeon, in which he keeps girls shackled from which to extract blood.

The film then splinters into various threads, as Mohammed and his cohort Bob (Grant Williams) are driving, and are bumped off the road by an unknown assailant. This is one of the most spastic scenes in the film, with relentless flash cutting and blurs to perhaps make up for lack of footage, however it catches your attention. The car explodes and Mohammed is killed, Bob escapes with his life. Then we see Bloom without makeup, standing around a car with a couple of rednecks. The drunken yahoos get into a fight, and Bloom gets battery acid from a car poured onto his face. We then learn this scene is a flashback, which explains Gor’s disfigurement, and his allegiance to Trenton after this mishap.

Bob picks Tracey up and tells her about the attempt on his life. The guy who actually did the deed is talking to Dr. Trenton on a payphone, and then Bob spots the man, and a chase ensues. Bob actually loses the man after a pretty good fight on a rooftop, and as the man makes his way to his car, we cut to a shot of Dorro cackling in the bushes. The man gets in the car and it suddenly explodes! All of these threads explore the film’s theme of deceit, as Trenton is attempting to rub out Amir’s guard and those who help him do it.

One of the dungeon girls, Katherine (Vicki Volante!) manages to break free of her shackles and wanders around the basement. Bob and Tracey go to Trenton’s lab; Amir wakes up to find that he is in Gor’s body! Trenton explains that this was necessary until they found a more suitable body in which to house Amir’s brains. Alas, Amir / Gor goes berserk and a fight ensues. This is rather well done, considering. For once an Al Adamson production has a track laid down, to follow all of the mayhem in the lab, instead of some sloppy handheld stuff. Gor / Amir escapes, and after the fracas, Bob encounters Katherine in the dungeon, and they too set off.

Amir / Gor is going around killing people along the countryside, as Bob and Tracey give chase. This dreary film does have some diverting action scenes to keep it moving, so we don’t think about it too hard. We finally learn that Trenton wants to run Trenton’s country, and he will restore Amir’s brain to a proper body in exchange for power. Finally, we end with Amir addressing the people of his country via a news camera, and he suspiciously looks like Reed Hadley. However, once we see a scar on his hand, we see that Amir is actually in Bob’s body. The leader of Kalid assures his people that he was merely in seclusion these past few weeks in order to make plans to ensure that Kalid will be a better country. Behind him, we see Amir’s board of directors… among them, Dr. Trenton.

This scene is quite clever, thusly ending on the ultimate act of deception, in which a world leader is telling a big lie to his public. Remember, Watergate was not too far away. But it’s not over yet. Adamson’s films are customarily padded with blurs, jagged compositions and jump cuts, yet these seeming bloopers actually compliment the frenetic nature of the films. All of this is put into practice with the absolutely wild ending, which makes a decoupage of explosions, shots of bloody brains, and other mayhem we just saw in the movie, married with whip pans and blurs to create a sequence which is totally out of control.

It’s as if Adamson stepped into a screening of Kenneth Anger’s Invocation Of My Demon Brother, a collage short, which is certainly one of the most apocalyptic films ever made, and said, "My God that’s it!" Adamsons’ movies seldom if ever end on a happy note, yet this silly film ends with a true bang—it is perhaps the most upsetting climax in all of his works. Again, the true monsters Adamson’s are human, and now that we’ve disposed of the juvenile misshapen creatures, this fantastic ending shows that the worst is yet to come.

Brain Of Blood is a lovely contradiction of a movie—a dime-store plot that evolves into a chilling display of evil, which is all too real. It is a thriller with relentlessly drawn-out scenes, yet surprises with its sweaty action sequences. This silly plot is once again given credibility by washed-up actors who give it some respectability. All of the sloppy footage is shown to enhance the haywire world it depicts. And no film with Zandor Vorkov can be all bad—his supporting role in this movie give a notion that Roger Engel could have had an interesting career in character parts. Alas, this was his last film role to date. Ah, Zandor—where are you now?

Nurse Sherri (1977)

Throughout the 1970’s, Adamson kept busy making Blaxploitation pictures (of which The Dynamite Brothers is probably the best) and lightheaded sex romps (like the hit film Naughty Stewardesses). He did do a couple of films with fantasy elements--the futuristic Cinderella 2000, and the rock-bottom Blaxploitation epic The Kill Factor which has a James Bond-ish plot of a freeze bomb (am I the only one who likes this crazy movie?) However, his return to the horror genre was this rather well made cash-in of Carrie. Although not as lurid as his earlier pictures, Brain Of Blood is perhaps his most character-driven, as his game cast of lesser-known actors do their best to fill out the slight story.

Although this is the rare horror movie in which the director didn’t have to make a cut and paste job, Brain Of Blood still lives up to the good old days of exploitation, as it was simultaneously released with several titles to make more money… among them, Beyond The Living and Black Voodoo. This film is often thought to be a late entry in the Blaxploitation market, but it isn’t really, despite the latter alternative title. Although the gorgeous African-American actress Marilyn Joi (a fixture in Adamson’s mid-70’s output) is in the cast, hers is a supporting role, and the chief protagonist is white.

We open on cult worship, taking place in the desert, lead by the crazed Reanhauer (Bill Roy), who sacrifices a young boy, only so he can resurrect him from the dead and demonstrate his power. Although this scene is often shot in long takes, with about half a dozen people attending the ceremony, it is precisely this benign approach, which gives this sequence its power. That such a display of evil is filmed so casually is actually quite effective—we are in a society, which blindly accepts acts of sin. And that this moment is populated with everyday people demonstrates that evil can manifest in anyone. However, Reanhauer collapses and he is rushed to the hospital. Alas, the cult leader dies on the operating table. We snicker to ourselves that the man couldn’t resurrect himself, but we’d be wrong—it is a horror movie, right folks?

Weird things start happening around the hospital. At first this setting is treated like a place to shoot one of Adamson’s sexploitation epics of the mid-70s, as we see the very friendly nurse Beth service a man who had a penile operation. Ah, the days of promiscuity… However, Nurse Sherri (Jill Jacobson) is "invaded" by a cartoonish ectoplasmic blob, resulting in a freaky montage with lava lamp effects and psychedelic shots of Sherri nude. Tara (Marilyn Joi) befriends her patient, former football player Marcus Washington (Prentiss Moulder) now blind. He tells her of the weird feelings he’s getting with Sherri in the room. We also learn that Washington has also dabbled in the occult. In some creepy moments, which work because they are so plain, Nurse Sherri repeatedly visits Reanhauer’s gravesite, in a trancelike state, still wearing her nurse uniform.

A man named Stevens (J.C. Wells) hears voices in his apartment, (this scene is complimented with loads of Theremin music), and he goes to the hospital to see Dr. Peter (Geoffery Land) to ask where Reanhauer’s body was buried (I guess he didn’t see the notice in the paper). Stevens persists, even by chasing Peter’s car, trying to run it off the road, as Reanhauer’s apparition appears in his car. Naturally he tries to shoot at it, and ends up crashing himself.

Meanwhile, Sherri’s behavior gets even more irrational. She walks in on Tara in the dressing room, entering covered with blood. She talks to Peter in another voice. Also, she visits Dr. Nelson (who unsuccessfully tried to revive Reanhauer), who is now retired and wearing these fancy cowboy duds (an in-joke nod to Denver Dixon?). Sherri ends the rendezvous by putting a pitchfork through his back. She stabs Dr. Pratt, who was also involved in the operation, and goes to stab Washington too, but his voodoo bracelet stops her.

Stevens breaks into the hospital and steals the file on Reanhauer, exhumes the man’s body and attempts to take it to an incinerator, but is killed by Reanhauer’s apparition. Washington tells the staff about voodoo- knowledge which he acquired from his grandmother. Tara and Beth thusly decide to go and decapitate the body of Reanhauer. It is here where Marilyn Joi utters the film’s best line. Still a true blue skeptic, at the gravesite, she mutters, "The only ghost I believe in is Casper."

Peter goes to see Sherri--he is about to get hacked up, but just in the nick of time, when Reanhauer’s body is destroyed, the nurse is lifted from her murderous trance. Most films would end here—however, because this is after all an Adamson movie, another thread of pessimism is in order. Peter and a psychiatrist discuss that although Sherri was in a trance all while committing the murders, no one in the world would believe she was not culpable in her crimes. The film fades out with a shot of Sherri in a straitjacket.

Although Nurse Sherri is a slight film on paper –it mostly exists to show body count and the odd bare skin- it works because it is so slight. The cast does its best with the script, and is given the chance to fill scenes with shades of character. The picture feels old fashioned with its use of bombastic music and a Theremin (which was used to accentuate many a cheap chiller in the 1950’s), plus the liberal use of psychedelic dream sequences featuring a blood-drenched Sherri somnabulistically walking through the fragmented images, seem right out of the swinging 60’s.

This works best as a mood piece, and even its quietest moments are creepy. Once again, Adamson has brought age-old horror conventions to the modern age. It seems fitting that during an age when everyone and their dog was undergoing psychoanalysis, the film ends in a sanitarium, and the true harbinger of evil is not some big demon creature, but a cunning businessman who talks of opening a storefront and getting money out of rich people.

Doctor Dracula (1981)

Finally, Adamson’s last horror film, Doctor Dracula, is another of his customary cut and paste jobs, and sadly, it is the worst of the films covered here. Yes, it’s even worse than Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, and all the others! The source for this film was a picture made in the 1970’s named Lucifer’s Women, directed by Paul Aratow. Al Adamson was hired to shoot additional footage, featuring regulars John Carradine, Regina Carroll, plus veteran cowboy star Donald "Red" Barry. I am uncertain if Lucifer’s Women was ever shown intact, let alone released. The soft, blotchy 1970’s footage clashes considerably with the slicker 1980 segments.

The doctor in the title is actually not Dracula at all, but the famous hypnotist Svengali (Larry Hankin). However there is a faint allusion to vampirism in the opening, which is Regina Carrol’s only scene. The camera takes the POV of the vampire, sneaking up on her. She turns around. "Oh it’s you…you can’t stay." He bites her neck and leaves.

Then we see Svengali, who is a tall, bearded, weird-looking dude who looks like he use to play bongos for Alice Cooper’s Medicine Ball Caravan. He is in a magic show, performing the time-honored act of sawing a girl in half. Suddenly something goes wrong—the audience shrieks. But then we see the audience in sleep mode—everyone awakens to see that the girl is fine after all—it was all an illusion. Throughout this mildly interesting sequence, cut-ins of Carradine reacting to the off-screen show are used liberally. In fact, he never shares a shot with Svengali.

The 74-year-old actor goes on about demonology in between segments of Svengali practicing his occult on the unwitting. Stephanie (Susan McIver) approaches Svengali about getting her in ouch with her late mother, and he uses the séance as an excuse to control her mind to do his evil bidding. There is also a Trilby in this Svengali story, and a cult worshipper named Sir Steven (Norman Pierce) wants her for his ceremony.

For the most part, this psychological film is dreary and very hard to follow… even after sitting through it twice. Truthfully, this picture is more of a Paul Aratow picture than an Adamson vehicle. Little of the director’s primal tone as at work here. We mostly see a tuxedoed Carradine being cut into the earlier movie, and it doesn’t help. It is interesting to note that many of the characters within think they’re someone else—they often have two identities, but this makes the muddled picture even more confused.

Doctor Dracula ends not with a bang but a whimper, even though there is an explosion. This is also the sorry fate of the career of Al Adamson.

*          *          * 

Even in the early 1980’s, Doctor Dracula seems like work from another time, vainly trying to fit into a market, which had changed considerably in only a few years. A lot of filmmakers who were prolific in the silver age of the drive-in suddenly made movies fewer and further between. As the major studios began buying up drive-ins, thusly squeezing out the independents—further marginalizing their already marginal market. Alas, Al Adamson only made two more films in the 1980’s--the obscure fantasy Carnival Magic, and Lost, which was a family film of all things!

With the money made from his films, he invested in real estate, and Al Adamson ended up being a rather rich man. He also spent this time caring for his lovely wife Ms. Carrol, who would die of cancer in 1992. Retroactively, it seems fitting that in an age when there became a renewed interest in Grade Z movies, that Adamson was thinking of making a comeback to the film business—this time he wanted to make something he deemed respectable; this would be the picture for which he wanted people to remember him. However, in a sickening twist of fate, this was not to be.

In 1995, Al Adamson was murdered by his contractor, and his body was encased in concrete in a hot tub in the director’s basement. It is a plot that is along the lines of ghoulish acts in his own films. In the past ten years, unfathomable things have happened to preserve the names of our Grade-Z heroes. Having a Hollywood movie made about Ed Wood is one thing, yet seeing a hardcover book about Andy Milligan is something else entirely.

Today, there is really no last frontier of cinema left to discover. Adamson’s name too, has been resurrected. In the early 1990’s David Konow began putting together his book Schlock-o-Rama, even with Adamson’s participation, until the filmmaker’s own murder added an uncomfortable layer to the story. Today, Al Adamson’s name is been upheld further with his films being released on DVD, all with informative, generous full-length audio tracks by Sam Sherman who is relighting the mantle for his friend. It is ironic that even in death, Al Adamson is being remembered for the films he despised.

Now as then, the genre films of Al Adamson divide many viewers. People either love or hate them for the same reasons—their over-the-top depictions of a world gone crazy, cinematic landscapes filled with dread and violence. His horror films are even more demanding in that they were often assembled from various source materials. But either camp cannot refute the fact that the works of Al Adamson were truly unique. Their unconventional techniques and strong tones forced one to consider non-mainstream ways of telling a story, and alternate ways of seeing a world around us which is not always told in more audience-friendly fare.

Yes, in most cases, the horror films of Al Adamson truly are horrible—but that’s what horror should be, shouldn’t it?

Thanks, Greg.  Perhaps the word "awful" better applies to practically all of Adamson's films--truly, none of them are even fair movies in the traditional sense.  But they do have a kind of whacked-out energy to them, and the lack of talent and care in making them does tend to bring a realism and immediacy to what we're seeing on the screen...perhaps that's what "gets" people about the film work of this otherwise rather pedestrian producer and director.  Whatever it is, there is no doubt that the fright films of Al Adamson will continue to be a "guilty pleasure" for many.

Article copyright © Greg Woods. We wish to thank Greg Krieger and his Al Adamson Horror Films Celebration Site for contributing original artwork to this article.

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