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| Just stare at this for 90 minutes. It's much more fulfilling. |
At the Oakmoor Cemetery, Count Dracula uncovers a crypt containing the body of the legendary Frankenstein monster, biting and killing a watchman who's unlucky enough to come across him; that same night, a young woman is beheaded by an axe-wielding killer near a seaside amusement park at Venice Beach. Meanwhile, Judith Fontaine, a Las Vegas showgirl, is searching for her sister, Joanie, who disappeared in that area. Sgt. Martin of the Missing Persons Bureau informs Judith that her sister chose to live with a group of hippies down by the beach, a common spot for druggies and those involved in white slavery, and advises her to leave the investigating to the police. At the amusement park, a teenage hippie couple, Samantha and Strange, go through the Creature Emporium, a sideshow dedicated to the bizarre and the macabre, run by the wheelchair-bound Dr. Durea. Little do they know that the show is only a front for a series of experiments Durea is conducting in his laboratory beneath the exhibit, as he plans to create a serum derived from the blood of women that were terrified before death, as their extreme fear energizes the blood on a molecular level. He gets specimens by having his mute, simple-minded assistant, Groton, go out and decapitate young women, after he injects him with a chemical that makes him violent and savage. After sending Groton out on one of his "errands," Durea is visited by Dracula, who knows that he's actually the last of the Frankenstein family and that his past led to him being discredited by the medical establishment, members of whom also caused the fire that led to his being crippled. Dracula offers to bring him the monster's corpse so he can revive it and exact revenge on those who destroyed his life, in exchange for the use of his serum, which he hopes will make him immune to the rays of the sun. At the same time, Judith continues her search for Joanie and ends up attracting the unwanted attention of Rico, the leader of a small biker gang. After Rico slips her some LSD at a club and she has a bad trip, she ends up at the home of Mike Howard, a hippie whose friends knew Joanie, as he did he. They agree to help Judith in her search, but they soon find themselves in danger from not only the bikers but also Durea, Groton, Dracula, and the recently-revived Frankenstein monster.
The film started out as a completely different type of horror movie, focusing mainly on the mad doctor and his grisly experiments, as well as on the motorcycle gang. But, after it was initially shot and edited together, Sam Sherman felt it was missing something significant and so, decided to add in Count Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, leading to a series of re-shoots and re-edits that ultimately forced two people to play the monster, a noticeably frailer J. Carrol Naish having to be brought back in for a couple of new scenes between him and Dracula, and the biker gang's part being downplayed to the point where their role is superfluous at best. That's also why the movie's story is so hard to follow and, as we'll see, some character motivations are not thoroughly explained at all.
Lon Chaney Jr.'s appearance here is just sad to see, both because of how awful he looks and also because, as this was his last film too (technically, he went on to make one more movie, The Female Bunch, another film by Al Adamson, but because of the re-shoots, Dracula vs. Frankenstein got released later), his role is a pretty thankless one. Groton is Durea's simple-minded assistant who has something of a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on: sometimes, he's a gentle giant, lovingly petting a small puppy (a callback to Chaney's star-making role of Lennie in Of Mice and Men) when he's not helping Durea set up his lab, and other times, usually after the doctor gives him an injection, he's a savage, axe-wielding maniac. The change between the two "forms" is very minute, save for Groton becoming sweaty and more disheveled when he's wild, as well as developing a real taste for carnage, and like Mr. Hyde, his more violent persona begins to come through even when he doesn't take his injection, forcing Durea at one point to give him some of the serum in order to stave off the change. Groton is one of several people whom Durea plans to help with his serum, along with himself and Grazbo, the dwarf who acts as a barker for his Creature Emporium, but none of them get to reap its benefits. After Grazbo's death, Groton is ordered by Durea to kill Mike and Judith and chases after the latter when she escapes. He chases her onto a rooftop but is shot by the police and falls to his death, after which his puppy finds and licks his body.
Everything about Dracula just sucks here. He looks ridiculous, for one thing, with that big head of hair and goatee making him come off like an ashen Frank Zappa with dark circles around his eyes, and Engel's acting is about as flat and monotone as you can get. No one could have made lines like, "And all those who would meddle in the destinies of Frankenstein and Dracula... will see an infernal bloodbath the likes of which has not swept the Earth before!", and, " I am known as the Count of Darkness, the Lord of the Manor of Corpathia," sound great, but this guy's lack of emotion makes them sound all the more cringe-inducing. They must have realized how awful he was because, no matter where he is, his voice always has this melodramatic, echoing sound to it. It was likely an attempt to give him more of a presence but it doesn't work at all. While he has classic vampire abilities like the ability to suddenly appear out of nowhere and hypnotic powers, his most notable power is due to his ring, from which fires lightning bolt-like beams that can cause objects and people to burst into flames. The effect used for this is quite laughable, as the image of him pointing with the ring freezes and the lightning is then animated on the image. Also, Dracula proves to be even stronger than the Frankenstein monster, as he wins their fight by tearing his arms and head off! All that, and yet, he's still vulnerable to the sun's rays.
After Boris Karloff stopped playing him in the classic Universal films, the Frankenstein monster was often relegated to being little more than a mindless brute, with none of the pathos Karloff had brought to him, and that's certainly true of him here. Like Dracula, he just sucks all around. After he's revived by Dr. Durea, he only has a couple of major scenes before the third act, as he's shown exacting Durea's revenge on Dr. Beaumont and attacking a teenage couple who are parked in the middle of nowhere, as well as tangling with a couple of cops who try to stop him from carrying that girl off. Following the deaths of Durea and Groton, the monster shows up to help Dracula in killing Judith for her blood, but when he goes after Mike, he gets blinded by a flare and mistakenly attacks Dracula, who continuously yells, "No, him! Him!" Though the distraction temporarily allows Mike and Judith to escape, Dracula manages to get the monster under control and, after Mike is killed, he helps the count take Judith to an abandoned church. But, while Dracula is preparing to turn Judith into a vampire, the monster takes a liking to her and attacks the count when he goes in for the bite. He forces Dracula outside into the woods and the two of them struggle out there, Dracula ultimately tearing him limb from limb, something you would more expect from the monster. Besides having virtually no point in the story, the monster's design is awful. Sometimes, his face looks like it's conceived through really bad makeup that vaguely resembles the classic Jack Pierce design, while other times it look like he's wearing a floppy burlap sack over his head, but either way, his face looks squashed and lumpy, and his hands, oddly, have something of a reptile feel to them, with black, talon-like claws. Because of the touch-and-go way in which the movie was made, the monster was ultimately played by two people. John Bloom, an accountant who was over seven-feet tall, played the monster for most of the film, but when they decided to change the ending and have the monster fight Dracula, they shot in New York instead of California, where they'd done everything else, and a new actor was required. Said man was Shelley Weiss, a friend of Roger Engel's, and he's billed as "the Creature" in the credits, while Bloom as credited as "the Monster," even though they both played the same character.
If you're at all interested in seeing Dracula vs. Frankenstein, you can now easily get a good-looking, HD print of it, as the film has been released on Blu-Ray; for a long time, those who were curious to seek it out were stuck with an awful-looking, grainy, washed-out print that was along the lines of public domain releases of films like Roger Corman's The Terror and you're still likely to come across that print if you go looking for the film online (that was the version I watched on YouTube). Besides just looking bad, that print compounds one of the movie's biggest technical failings, which is the cinematography. During scenes set in the daytime and in well-lit interiors, the cinematography is just so-so but, in scenes set in the dark, it can be nigh impossible to make out what's going on. It's not as intolerable as The Monsters of Terror, aka Assignment: Terror, the 1970 film that was released on video under the title of Dracula vs. Frankenstein, and it's okay when the actors themselves are lit in some of the actual nighttime scenes, but the darkness still tends to be a big problem, especially in scenes that were shot day-for-night, as the screen's blue tint, combined with the shadow effects, really obscure what's being shown. As you can see, even with the HD-transfer, those scenes still leave a lot to be desired for. You could forgive it somewhat, since the movie was made for peanuts and for Al Adamson not exactly being the best director ever, but could they have at least had the decency to have Dracula and Frankenstein's monster fight in a well-lit place? The movie's very title promises you a fight between those two monsters, it doesn't happen until the very end of the movie, and when it finally does, it takes place in a dark patch of woods where you can just barely make out the two of them swaying around and grappling with each other until Dracula starts tearing the monster apart. Obviously, because of Dracula, they couldn't have them fighting in broad daylight, but they could have at least kept light on them while having them fight at night, like they did during their little scuffle when the monster is temporarily blinded and confused, or, as James Rolfe suggested, have them stay in the church, which was lit by all those candles. The scene does look a lot better in the HD-print but, my point is that it should have been made with more care from the beginning.
As if the dark cinematography wasn't bad enough, the big scenes involving the monsters, whether it be their climactic fight or when they kill their victims, are further marred by the camera often getting all up close on the action, rather than letting it play out in wide shots or, at least, keeping the camera just far enough back to where you can see everything. For instance, when the Frankenstein monster attacks a teenage couple in a car, there are shots of him grabbing them and tossing the guy down to the ground that are right up on the actors, and it looks like complete crap. In addition, during the fight between the monsters at the end, there are numerous times where they come right at the camera, to the point where it gets right into their faces (look at this one image; it looks like the monster is about to French-kiss you), and then grapple and struggle with each other in very close shots. As you saw up above, even the wide-shots in that scene are sometimes hard to make out, so these full-on close-ups really come out worse for the wear. Weirdly, they knew well enough to shoot the fairly well-lit brief struggle between Dracula and the monster on the rooftop in a manner where you could see it, but they didn't seem to get that they should take the same route for the final battle.
Given the low-budget, it's no surprise that the film's art direction is far from lavish. Most of it was filmed in actual locations, like the boardwalk, the carnival (you get plenty of big wide shots of that), the scenes on the beach, and the abandoned church during the climax, but some of it was done on some sound-stages, like the interior of the Creature Emporium, Dr. Durea's laboratory, and the Oakmoor Cemetery at the beginning. In addition, the rooftop scenes were shot on the actual rooftop of that studio. While the cemetery set is passable, given the fact that it actually was a set, the interior of the Creature Emporium is pretty blah, as it's just a series of big, black corridors, where the exhibits and Durea himself emerge from the darkness, and the same goes for his main laboratory, which is a rather small room that can be accessed by a lift, a large door, or through a trapdoor in the floor, and is full of beakers and test-tubes, gurneys, and standing containers, akin to see-through coffins, where he keeps his successful experimental subjects. In the scenes where he first speaks with Count Dracula and when he resurrects the Frankenstein monster, it's revealed that he has another lab, this one filled with electrical equipment that he uses to accomplish his task. There is a real classic vibe to this lab, in how it's rundown and filled with cobwebs initially and then, how it's supplied with all of the stuff you associate with the story of Frankenstein. In fact, a lot of that equipment were the very props used in many of the original Universal films, provided by the very man who had designed them, Ken Strickfaden. Knowing that is cool and it does help to give the film a bit of a feeling of verisimilitude, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still very poorly-made.
They may be badly conceived but still, I won't deny that it is interesting to see these two classic monsters in a sleazy, violent exploitation movie involving teenagers. In fact, it could be seen as something of a bridge between where the genre started and where it was going at the time, as you have Dracula and the Frankenstein monster doing their thing with relatively little bloodshed (Dracula only bites one person and very little blood is seen on the bite marks, while the monster just chokes people out and throws them to the ground), but then, at the same time, you have Groton going out and murdering teenagers with an axe for Dr. Durea's experiments, as well as a scene where a woman comes very close to being gang-raped. It's like if you toned down The Last House on the Left, made it schlockier, and put Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in it. What's more, it's also interesting to see them placed in a film that's very much of the late 60's, early 70's, with elements of the time like hippies, bikers, LSD, and such. It doesn't make the movie any better, mind you, but does help it to stand out a little bit, kind of like Hammer's Dracula A.D. 1972: not one of the better of their Dracula series at all but the setting of early 70's London, as much as Christopher Lee may have disliked it, made it a bit distinctive.
Despite its PG-rating, the film has a fair amount of gore and violence in it, including the severed heads of Joanie at the beginning and Dr. Durea after his run-in with the guillotine (the latter of those effects looks quite good, though the actual severing of Durea's head uses a dummy one that's very fake, even though they try to hide it with quick editing), the aftermath of Groton's massacre of Samantha and Rico's gang, Grazbo falling face-first on an axe's blade, and the severed arms and head of the Frankenstein monster during his battle with Dracula. There's also a bit of sexual content and nudity to be found here, like some partial shots of the women's nude breasts when Durea uses them in his experiments, including a look at Samantha's nipple when she's lying on the gurney in the lab, as well as the intended gang-rape that's foiled by Groton. As far as other makeup effects go, aside from the gore and the already-discussed bad designs of both of the monsters, they attempted to go for a disintegration effect when Dracula is exposed to the sun at the end of the movie and is slowly destroyed by it. The film cuts back and forth between shots of the sun and him lying on the ground and, every time, he's more and more decrepit-looking, his hair turning gray and his skin becoming more crusty and decayed. As you can see from these screenshots the effect is fair enough but it's been done so much better in other movies, both before as well as after this one. Plus, it's severely harmed by how, when Judith walks out of the church and sees what's left of Dracula, his head looks like it turned into a small pile of leaves and twigs!
The film also tries for some optical and matting effects and, given the budget, you can guess how well they come out. I already mentioned how bad the effect of Dracula's laser ring is but just as laughable is what it looks like when he fries Mike with it near the end. Again, the image freezes when the electrical bolt touches Mike (in this instance, though, they did manage to put the animation into moving imagery) and he's then replaced with a cartoonish, fiery silhouette of a human body, though the switch is not an instant one, as you can see still see a little bit of Anthony Eisley behind the effect before he's completely matted out by a red blob that appears around the silhouette; after a couple of cutaways, you then see an actual, burning figure on the ground next to Judith. Some other matting effects are attempted during the scene where Durea revives the Frankenstein monster, such as that of lightning on the horizon and the image of a comet, which is meant to supply the energy necessary to full revive the monster, streaking across the sky when Dracula looks out the window. The former effect is okay, if a little suspect, since only the left-side of the horizon is flashing with the lightning and the matte lines are as plain as the nose on your face, but the "comet" looks like something you'd see in an old-fashioned arcade game, as it's literally nothing but a flickering dot traveling across the screen. Again, the movie was made for almost nothing, so you shouldn't rag on the effects too much, but it feels like they got a little too ambitious for their budget.
Instances of bad acting and severe lack of technical prowess aside, the biggest reason why Dracula vs. Frankenstein fails is because it's just flat-out boring. It's only 90 minutes long but it feels like an eternity because of how it meanders around, focusing on things that are unimportant. For instance, after we see Joanie get decapitated at the beginning, the film cuts to our introduction to Judith, who's performing on stage in Las Vegas (let the little montage of the city before you actually see Judith set a precedent for some stuff you see later on), singing her song, I Travel Light, about how she supposedly doesn't take much with her but the two guys who are on stage with her beg to differ. It's not as egregious as some of the other scenes in the film and, fortunately, Regina Carrol had a pretty good singing voice, but you see the entire performance, with no cutaways to anything else, and you're thinking, "Can we get on with the story?" Similar things happen later on, after she meets Mike Howard. In-between when they head out to walk along the beach and when you actually see them doing so, you see random shots of people surfing and playing in the shallows for about twenty seconds. That may not be long at all but usually, establishing cutaways like that are only onscreen for three-to-five seconds, making it feel like, in this instance, they had some B-roll footage they didn't want to waste and just put it all in there. However, the worst instance of this comes after Sgt. Martin drives off Rico and his gang, as the film transitions into this montage of Judith and Mike walking along the beach again, with cutaways to the waves, seabirds milling around on the shore, and a seagull flapping up into the air and flying about before landing back down on the ground, all while this really sappy love song called Here and Now plays on the soundtrack. It doesn't end there, as we then see the two of them sitting together on the beach and kiss for the first time, and following the scene where Dr. Durea is forced to give Groton some of the serum to stave off his changing into his savage form again, we see that Judith and Mike are still lazing about on the beach. All of this is meant to show how close they're becoming but, as much as I like Mike, his romance with Judith isn't one I particularly care about, and that musical montage stops the movie dead in its tracks.
Another of the film's overlong sequences is also its most bizarre: the bad trip that Judith has when she's slipped some LSD at the club. The whole thing is surreal enough to begin with, the setting being this murky, seedy dive, with graffiti on the walls that says stuff like POT and SOCIETY SUCKS (Sam Sherman has said the shot of it was removed from TV airings, though I'm more surprised that thing actually got shown on TV), hippies and people in the usual 70's fashion dancing around and clearly getting high themselves, and Judith being waited on and eventually drugged by this guy with a stitched up scar across his forehead, but then, things get downright crazy. Judith takes a sip of the drugged drink, we get a random cutaway to a protest going on elsewhere, and then, she starts to feel the effects of the drug, grabbing her head and rolling her body around in place. As she trips out, the film cuts away to bizarre images, like this rapidly flickering lighting display, a woman in a weird, netting outfit hanging upside down, a high-angle shot of a woman, whom I think is supposed to be Judith, lying sprawled out on a red, round bed, wearing a see-through, fishnet outfit, and a shot of a woman in pink running across the beach (I'm not sure but I think that's also meant to be Judith). While these images, as well as one of a pair of hands in white gloves touching a woman's legs on a ladder, flash through her mind, Judith stumbles around the club and gets pushed around and laughed at by all the assholes in there, until Strange and Samantha come in, see what's going on, and help her out of the place. After that was over, I didn't know what to think. It's almost as dumbfounding as that scene in Godzilla vs. Hedorah where this one guy is so high that he starts hallucinating that all of the people in the club he's in, which itself is far more bizarre-looking than the one here, have fish-heads, or a story that a real guy told me about him hallucinating that cockroaches were dive-bombing him while he was on acid. Maybe it's because I don't do drugs but usually, whenever I see this stuff in a movie, I'm left wondering what the point of it is. At least Yoshimitsu Banno knew to keep the trippy nature of that bar scene in Hedorah to less than a minute and, what's more, it helped add to that film's bizarre, overall nature, but here, this is another scene that, yet again, stops this already unbearable movie dead for a couple of minutes. It would have been much simpler to merely show her reeling from the drug's effects and not waste so much time on the crazy crap she's seeing.
After having to contend with all of these overlong, unimportant scenes, it gets to the point where even scenes that do have a point and actually involve the monsters feel like they're going on and on. For instance, the scene where Dr. Durea and Dracula revive the Frankenstein monster, a rather crucial one, devotes so much time to glory shots of the equipment, the crackling and zapping sounds it emits, the brewing storm, and the comet that's needed to supply the necessary power, that it takes an eternity for the monster to finally resurrect and even when he finally does revive, it has no impact at all. The third act is especially bad about this, as the scenes under the pier, the confrontation in the Creature Emporium, the chase across the rooftop, and Judith and Mike dealing with Dracula and the monster have no excitement to them and, by this point, you're likely going to find yourself wishing that the movie would just end. And as I've said, because of how this movie was made, with different elements being added and others being parred down as they went along, it often feels like a couple of different stories keep interrupting the main one concerning Judith's search for her sister and Durea's experiments and sadly, that includes the stuff with the monsters. Even after Frankenstein's monster is revived and Durea uses him to get revenge on Dr. Beaumont, he's still going on with the experiments he was conducting before, even using the monster to do some of the work Groton had been doing up to that point. Dracula mentions other people who discredited him, so you'd think Durea would get side-tracked with wanting to take revenge on them as well, but once Beaumont's dead, Durea seems to be satisfied and goes about his business. I guess it's scientific dedication. Also, like I said, Dracula's motivation for helping Durea is not revealed until the movie is almost over, so up until then, you're wondering why he's even there. Finally, once Durea, Groton, and Grazbo are all dead, it feels like the movie should be over, but because we still have to wrap up Dracula and the monster, we have this tacked-on climax where Dracula first intends to use Judith's blood to make himself immune to the sun, then wants to make her his vampire bride, and the monster becomes infatuated with her and decides to fight Dracula to the death over her. This movie's plot is all over the place and it's miserable to sit through as a result.
The film starts with a surprisingly well-done, memorable opening credit sequence, designed by Bob Lebar, the visual effects artist, complete with images of flashing lightning, the innards of lab equipment, and images of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in various colors, mostly red and bright pink. Many of the latter images are taken from the fight at the end but there are also animated depictions of Dracula using his laser ring, actual shots of circuit boards and Dracula's ring, and the editing and music give off the impression that this movie may be a decent monster flick, though those illusions are about to go out the window. Following that, the movie truly begins at the Oakmoor Cemetery, on a night that's lit up by the full moon, and a panning shot reveals Count Dracula, as he removes the lid from a coffin. A cutaway reveals that the body inside is the chained, comatose figure of Frankenstein's monster, which Dracula prepares to remove. However, he's soon got company, as a watchman wanders into the cemetery and, knowing that someone else is there, moves on though it until he illuminates Dracula with his flashlight. Dracula looks up and quickly lunges at the man, grabbing him and forcing him down to the ground. Once he's through, there are two small, bloody marks on the man's neck, with blood also dripping from Dracula's fangs. Elsewhere, at the seaside amusement park and boardwalk in Venice Beach, Joanie Fontaine is shown walking down to the misty beach below the pier. Walking underneath it, she's clearly uncomfortable and seems to think she's being followed, as she keeps looking behind her. It's soon revealed that she has good reason to be watching her back, as she turns around at one point and an axe is shown being raised. Joanie screams but, with one swipe, her severed head hits the sand, her still open eyes staring upwards.
Following Judith Fontaine's introduction at Las Vegas and her meeting with Sgt. Martin, we're then introduced to Strange and Samantha when they decide to take in Dr. Durea's Creature Emporium. After buying their ticket from Grazbo, he leads them into the attraction, talking about how everything they're about to witness is true and has happened at one point or another. They're first shown a display of a naked, bruised and bloodied women being held in the arms of another with really sharp teeth, and after Grazbo tells them that there's more to come, he departs, laughing, as Samantha and Strange are surprised to see the image of a gorilla popping up from behind a fake bush, with a woman in its arms. Both of them are models as well, but the light then illuminates a large man wearing a freakish mask, snarling and jumping around in a cage. That's when Durea himself appears, assuring them that what they're seeing is only an illusion, and when the lights come on completely, he motions for the man in the cage to come out of it, which he does. He removes the mask, revealing Groton, who's breathing and smiling at them. Durea assures them that Groton is harmless, but adds that with that mask on, the whole world would turn against him. He also says that he has the exhibit unattended because he feels life should be experienced with a "natural spontaneity," without any restraints, before pointing their attention to a display guillotine, which severs a dummy head that falls into a basket in front of it. He also shows them the figure of a hanged woman, one wearing a bandana and an eye-patch. The couple then walks out of the place and prepare to head on to protest going on that night.
After the exhibit has closed, Durea takes a lift down to his laboratory and wheels himself into it, where Groton is waiting, holding a puppy in his arms. With Groton having everything prepared for him, Durea wheels over to a gurney where a body is covered with a sheet, talking about how people want to see illusions and that they don't realize, "Human blood is the essence from which future 'illusions' may be created." He removes the sheet to reveal Joanie's body, her head reattached, and clips away a small wrapping around the neck, revealing a healing scar where her head was severed previously. Durea goes on about his theory and how he's sure he's the first person to combine the horror of a decapitation with the rejuvenation of a living human body, saying that if Joanie were not drugged, she could walk away as though nothing had happened. Telling Groton that he needs more specimens, he indicates that he must once again go through a type of change. Groton puts his puppy away in a small cage and, putting Joanie's body in a large, standing container, next to one that already holds a human specimen, he hands Durea a black bag before lying down on the gurney himself. Durea takes out a syringe full of a green chemical and injects Groton in the arm with it. The image gets blurry for a little bit, as Groton writhes around on the gurney, and when it clears, he's now much wild-looking and disheveled, his hair a matted mess. Jumping off the gurney, he puts a jacket on and removes an axe nearby. Durea throws a lever that opens a trapdoor in the floor and also lowers a ladder down it, which Groton uses to climb down. While Groton is prowling around the beach, searching for victims, Durea, while wheeling through his exhibit, finds an unexpected guest waiting for him: Count Dracula. Alluding to his desire to talk with him, Durea asks him to come into the light to do so and the vampire follows him through a cobweb-covered door, which he opens to reveal another laboratory, this one clearly having not been used for years. Dracula then reveals that he knows Durea is really the last living member of the family of Frankenstein, and Durea, in turn, tells Dracula that he knows exactly who he is as well. Dropping all pretenses, Dracula tells Durea that he knows all about his history and that he can give him the body of the Frankenstein monster to revive so he can have revenge on those who discredited him. He shows off the power of his ring to make it clear that Durea best not try to go against him and then tells him to prepare his laboratory for the monster's arrival.
While Durea is making his literal deal with the devil, out on the beach, a young couple, Bob and Laura, is making out or, at least, Bob is trying to make out, but Laura is a little bit tense. Bob's frustrated when she suddenly starts looking around them, saying that she hears something that she heard earlier, describing it as, "Like a huge dog prowling the beach." Bob pulls her back in his embrace and starts kissing her again, when a cutaway reveals that what's she's hearing is Groton's raspy breathing as he searches the beach for victims. Laura tells Bob that she doesn't want to stay out there any longer but he starts to complain about how earlier, she said she wanted to go somewhere they could be alone and now, he blew a dollar on gas for nothing. Little does he know his gripes have caught Groton's attention and he starts zeroing in on them. As he gets closer, breathing heavily, Bob now hears him and Laura tries to get him to come away with her. But, when she stands up and turns around, she screams when she sees Groton, who immediately comes down on her with his axe. No sooner has he killed her than he does the same to Bob, smiling at his handiwork afterward.
Following Judith's bad trip and her subsequent rescue by Samantha and Strange, we cut back to Durea's lab, which is now full of crackling electrical equipment and is also housing the Frankenstein monster. Dracula watches as Durea prepares everything, electricity sparking and crackling all throughout the lab and the monster's face slightly moving from the sensations he's feeling from being hooked up to the equipment. As a storm brews on the horizon, Dracula tells Durea that the comet which originally created the electrical power that brought the monster to life will return soon and that they must work quickly. Durea continues tinkering with the controls and we get another montage of the various parts of the equipment activating, before Dracula looks out the window behind him and sees the comet passing through the sky. Its presence causes the electricity to crackle louder than ever and Dracula, telling Durea that the comet has returned, walks back over to where the monster lies. He reacts more to the energy until he finally awakens and sits up slightly, looking around the room, before laying his head back. He then is completely resurrected, and as he sits up again, groaning, Durea declares, "Dr. Beaumont, tonight you shall meet an old friend." The film then cuts to the hospital, where Beaumont steps into his car and drives down the street for home. However, he barely gets anywhere before he's surprised to turn and see Dracula suddenly sitting in the passenger seat. Beaumont asks him who he is but Dracula responds, "Keep driving. I will tell you where." Beaumont, again, asks Dracula who he is and he says, "I am known as the Count of Darkness, the Lord of the Manor of Corpathia," before telling Beaumont to make a turn. When he does, he sees the monster standing out in the street, waiting for him. He stops and Dracula orders him to get out of the car. Reluctantly, he does, and the monster lumbers towards him, as Dracula comments, "An old friend of yours, eh, doctor? Frankenstein and I have made some improvements." He laughs as the monster grabs Beaumont and holds him in place as he chokes him, the doctor struggling in his grasp, and it doesn't take long before there's a loud crack and Beaumont collapses to the ground (at one point, John Bloom's sleeve gets rolled up in the struggle and you can see his normal, flesh-colored arm leading up to the fake hand he's wearing).
The next day, after Judith awakens at Mike Howard's home and learns that he knew Joanie, the two of them, along with Strange and Samantha, go to Durea's Creature Emporium. Walking inside, instead of being led by Grazbo, they hear a recording of Durea's voice, welcoming them to the emporium and telling them to follow his voice to the first display. As they walk through the dark, they're unaware that Dracula is watching them from somewhere within the depths of the place. The voice leads them to the guillotine display from before and gives them a brief history lesson on it before the dummy head falls into the basket in front of it again. Just when Judith is beginning to think that the whole exhibit is mechanical and there is no actual Durea, he appears from the darkness. She then asks him about Joanie, adding how she's now missing, having been last seen on the beach near the exhibit. Durea clearly knows what this could mean, when Judith pulls out a picture of Joanie and hands it to him. Durea lifts up his glasses to get a better look at it but, despite his obvious shocked expression, he denies having known Joanie and hands back the picture. He insists that so many people visit his emporium that their faces tend to blend together, though he does say that she can leave the picture at the box-office and that he will contact Judith if he sees her. Judith is startled by a sudden yell and turns to see the mechanical gorilla holding the woman in its arms. Once Durea is gone, Judith mentions how he was clearly lying when he said he'd never seen Joanie before. Deciding they've have enough for now, they head out of the exhibit. Outside, however, they run into trouble when Samantha and Strange are goofing around and the former is confronted by Rico and his biker gang in the next alley. She tells him that she's no longer part of the gang but Rico tells her that no one leaves them and tells her to come with him, when Strange walks up to make sure she's okay. Rico's two goons take the opportunity to get off their bikes and grab him from other side, with one ripping off the chain he's wearing. But then, a police car shows up and Rico figures they'd best get out, but warns Samantha, "Okay, baby, you wanted it this way. But next time... well, you'll see." The three of them ride off, as Sgt. Martin steps out of the car. He and Judith talk again, and when the subject of Durea comes up, Martin again tells her to leave the investigation of Joanie's disappearance to him. Before he gets back in his car and drives away, he also tells her to stay away from beaches, as there's a killer on the loose.
Following that overlong montage of Judith and Mike walking and talking on the beach, we cut back to Durea's lab, as he extracts some of Joanie's blood, while Groton watches from nearby, again playing with his puppy, though he seems to be fretting about something. He quickly puts the puppy in his little cage, as Durea talks about how the experiments will soon bare fruit and that Groton's cure is coming, but adds that he must be the one to take the completed serum in order to free himself from the wheelchair. Groton then starts to breathe heavily, and when Durea turns to look at him, he sees that he's writhing around and is beginning to change into his more savage form, even though he hasn't had a shot in the past 24 hours. Wheeling up to him, as he continues to go through the change, Durea says that he can't work with him when he's like this and that he's being forced to give him some of the serum. With no other options, Durea injects Groton in the arm and he immediately calms down, getting down on the floor. Durea admonishes him for this and tells him that he won't help him in this way again. With Groton incapacitated, Durea is forced to send the monster out to collect another specimen, which he finds when he comes across a couple parked in their car, making out. Appearing outside the driver's side window, he looks inside and they're so focused on their make-out session that they don't know he's there until he rips the door right off the car. He pulls the guy out and tosses him to the ground, before reaching in, grabbing and pulling the girl out, and then picking her up. Her boyfriend runs at the monster from behind but gets easily shoved back, hitting the back of the car before collapsing. A passing police car comes upon the scene as the monster is making off with the girl and the two officers stop the car and jump out to confront him. Running up to him with their guns drawn, they order him to drop the girl. He actually complies but then lunges at them, prompting them to open fire. Of course, the bullets do nothing to stop him, and when one of the officers runs out and then rushes at the monster to hit him with the butt of his pistol, he gets grabbed and easily tossed aside. The other cop runs at him but he grabs and shoved down as well, and when his partner tries it again, he gets the same treatment. With both of them out cold, the monster picks the girl back up and makes off with her.
Out on the beach, Judith is wandering around near the boardwalk, when she gets spooked by Mike putting his hand on the shoulder (that happens so often in horror movies; you'd think people would know that's not the best thing to do to someone who doesn't know you're there). Explaining that she got tired of waiting for him to come back to where she was waiting, she joins him in investigating the underside of the pier. Reaching the spot that's underneath the Creature Emporium, Mike finds a chain that's hanging down from a panel on the underside that looks different from all the others. He guess that it's a trapdoor but Judith makes him come away before he can investigate further. They find a spot and discuss what Durea could possibly be up to, as well as what the trapdoor might be used for, while elsewhere on the beach, Samantha is sitting by herself, eating, when she's confronted by Rico and his goons again. Knowing that she's in trouble when he again tells her that no one ever leaves him, she runs for it and his goons chase her, with him following behind. After a short cat-and-mouse game under the boardwalk, where Samantha runs, hides, and is found by one of Rico's men, there comes a point where she's cornered by all three of them. She begs for Rico to stop, grabbing his shirt and falling down to her knees, holding onto his leg, but he knees her down on the ground. The goons grab both of her arms and hold her down, Rico then sitting on and straddling her. Telling Samantha that they just beat Strange senseless, he and the others prepare to have their way with her, Rico ripping open the neck of her shirt. But, that's when Groton appears behind them and, after they see him, he quickly makes mincemeat of all of them, including Samantha. His axe covered with blood, he reaches down and picks up Samantha's body.
A sudden, awkward cut takes us back to Judith and Mike, the latter of whom hears something he describes as sounding like a chain unwinding; a brief cutaway shows Groton climbing up through the trapdoor while carrying Samantha's body. Thinking he knows what the sound is, Mike goes to check it out and tells Judith to stay there but, literally just three seconds later, she catches up with him, saying, "I just couldn't stay there by myself anymore." (What a wimp.) Anyway, they reach the spot they were before and Mike says he's sure he saw a glimpse of somebody pulling themselves up through the trapdoor. Looking down at the sand, he finds a locket that he knows belongs to Samantha, confirming his worst fears, and he sees he's going to get in there and find her, no matter what. Running up top, he easily gets around Grazbo when he tries to force him to buy a ticket, prompting the dwarf to yell at him about pushing him around and says that once he's normal-sized, he'll take care of him. Judith then comes running in and Grazbo is about to stop her as well, but then tells her that Mike is waiting for her inside. He allows her passage and once she's inside, he laughs evilly before running in after her. Inside the exhibit, Mike confronts Durea, telling her that he wants to see what he's hiding down below. He chases after Durea but loses him in the dark and is then joined by Judith. Durea takes the lift down to his lab and Mike and Judith find their own way down there, through a creaking, wooden door that Mike ensures stays open with a bottle he finds on the floor. Walking down the walkway to the room's center, unaware that Grazbo is following them, Judith sees Joanie standing in one of the large containers, nude and apparently alive, but in a trance-like state. Durea assures Judith that her sister is alive and well and tells Mike that he wants them to understand why they've been chosen to be a part of his experiments. Groton then comes through the door and Durea, who was earlier speaking over an intercom, enters the lab himself and removes a sheet from a gurney, revealing Samantha's nude body beneath it. Mike runs to inspect her and, again, Durea insists that she's well. He also says that, because of the terror she experienced from the slaughter of Rico's gang, her blood has the necessary components to complete his serum. As Grazbo walks down into the room and grabs an axe behind them, Durea tells the pair he plans to kill one of them in order to gather the blood from the other, who will be horrified at seeing their lover murdered in front of them, adding that it will mean a new life for his friends.
Groton charges at them and picks up a wooden bench, preparing to lob at Mike, while Grazbo mocks Mike from nearby, saying he probably doesn't feel so big now. Mike comes at Groton and gets sent tumbling backwards against the wall. However, he accidentally hits the switch for the trapdoor, which Grazbo happens to be standing on. It opens beneath him and he drops his axe down on the ground below. He grabs onto one of the ladder's rungs and tries to grab something else to support himself, but the only thing near him is the cage with Groton's puppy in it, which he sends tumbling down through the trapdoor. The puppy manages to get out of the cage after it hits the ground and Grazbo then loses his grip and falls, landing on the axe with his face (the impact of it is really soft and unconvincing). Seeing this, Durea tells Groton to kill Judith and Mike for this. Mike tells Judith to get out and get help and she runs through the door. Groton tries to bash the bench over Mike but he manages to dodge it, while Groton ends up yanking some cables out of the ceiling and they get tangled around him. Durea then tells Groton to get after Judith and he starts chasing her up the stairs, while Durea gets a gun out of his desk and starts shooting at Mike, as he attempts to flee the lab. Taking cover amongst the counters full of test-tubes and bottles, Mike grabs a bottle and tosses it to the side, distracting Durea and allowing him to run for the stairs. However, Durea manages to shoot him in the right shoulder, causing him to momentarily fall back before he manages to stumble out the door. While Durea takes his lift up to the exhibit, and Groton chases Judith into a nearby building outside, Strange has arrived with Sgt. Thomas and a couple of officers. Figuring that Samantha is probably at the Creature Emporium, as that's where they found the bodies of Rico's gang, Thomas is leading them there. In the emporium, Mike hides to the side of one of the exhibits, when Durea wheels into the place himself. As he approaches, Mike tries to hide himself completely behind the display but Durea sees him and fires at him, only to run out of bullet. He drops the gun in frustration and is apparently so flustered that, when he wheels away, he crashes into the side of the guillotine and ends up underneath the blade, which comes down and decapitates him.
Judith climbs up onto a rooftop, with Groton climbing up after her. As he's chasing her across the roof, Strange spots Judith from the ground and points him out to Sgt. Martin. Martin tells one of his men to find a way up there, as they head through the gate they were trying to get through. They walk forward a little bit when they see Groton chasing after Judith and Martin points with his gun and fires. Hit, Groton falls over the edge of the roof to his death, and when Martin and Strange approach, they see that his puppy has come up and is licking his face. Though Groton is dead, Judith is far from safe, as Dracula appears, grabs her shoulders, and uses his hypnotic powers on her, in a very trippy bit where the image of his face becomes superimposed over hers. Once he has her, he tells her, "I'm afraid your quest for knowledge must end tonight. Your interference is going to prove very costly to you." He then has her walk up two sets of stairs and, when she reaches a guardrail up top, he ties her hands to it with a rope that he finds. Down on the street, Mike searches a police car for a weapon but finds nothing more than a flare. Up on the roof, Dracula brings Judith out of her trance and, when she sees that she's bound to the railing, he tells her that her fear will energize her blood's molecular structure. She then screams at the sight of the Frankenstein monster shambling down some nearby steps. Seeing this, Mike rushes to find a way up there, coming across another flight of stairs. Seeing him, Dracula steps up to the top of stairs and tells Mike that this is the end for him, before going into a monologue that finally explains why he helped Durea in his experiments, adding that he'll still get what he needs of the serum from Judith, which is complete invincibility and the means to take over the world with an army of indestructible vampires. As the monster continues shambling down the stairs, Dracula points at Mike, indicating his target, when he lights his flare and shoves it into the monster's face when he gets close enough. Blinded and confused, the monster stumbles towards Dracula, who tells him to get after Mike. The two of them struggle with each other, giving Mike the chance to jump the railing and reach and untie Judith. They head down the stairs, when Dracula, after grappling with the monster, finally gets him back under control. Seeing that Mike and Judith are escaping, Dracula fires his ring and hits Mike, instantly reducing him to a smoldering corpse on the ground. Horrified at the sight of this, Judith faints.
In the next scene, Dracula is leading the monster, who's carrying Judith, to an abandoned church in the middle of the woods. They head inside, the monster placing Judith on a chair in the center of the church, while Dracula begins lighting all the candles in the place. As the sun slowly begins to rise outside, Dracula binds Judith to the chair, tying her hands behind her head, while the monster is clearly beginning to feel something for her. Illuminating his coffin with a candle, Dracula tells Judith that it, "Awaits your becoming immortal in its embrace." The monster, meanwhile, moves closer to Judith, continuing to look at her face, and also touches some strands of her hair, as well as the ropes that bind her. Feeling his touch, Judith starts to come to. Dracula then approaches as she awakens fully and struggles against her ropes, as well as shouts at the sight of the monster. Telling her, "Now, you will join me in the world of the living dead," Dracula leans in to bite her, when the monster grabs his shoulder, motioning for him to stop. The two of them glare at each other for a second and Dracula goes in for the bite again but the monster grabs him and shoves him back. They stand off, when the monster lurches towards Dracula, forcing him to the door in the back and grabbing at him. Judith keeps struggling to get free, as the two monsters struggle, their arms wrenching each other. The monster pulls Dracula's ring off his finger, much to his shock and then anger, and he's promptly cornered against the door. The monster lunges at him but he dodges it, causing the monster to knock the right side of the door off its hinges. He chases Dracula outside, while Judith, her hands now bloody, is still trying to free herself.
The sun is still rising, as Frankenstein's monster chases Dracula into the woods, knocking a couple of small, thin trees over as he goes. Finally, the two of them face off and the monster lunges towards Dracula, grabbing him by the shoulders and grunting loudly as he wrenches him around. Dracula eventually manages to shove him off, knocking against the trunk of a tree, but the monster remains undeterred and comes back at him, grappling with him some more, only for Dracula to fling him to the ground. Dracula now realizes that the sun is rising but the monster grabs him again. He tells him to stop, warning him, "Stop, or I'll destroy you piece by piece, as Dr. Frankenstein created you!" To prove his point, he rips off the monster's left arm and throws it the ground, the monster grunting and snarling in pain and anger. He stumbles back, grabbing at the bloody stump where his arm used to be, but comes at Dracula and grabs his shoulder with his remaining arm. Predictably, Dracula grabs his arm and tears it off as well. Flailing around with no arms and roaring, the monster stumbles and falls to his knees in front of Dracula, who grabs his neck, wrenches his head back and forth, and rips it off. Victorious, he looks at the head and throws it to the ground, looking over the rest of the monster's mutilated body (as you can tell, even in the best quality possible, this fight is just not worth waiting almost 90 minutes for). But then, he sees that the sun has almost risen completely and rushes through the woods, back to the church and his coffin. As fast as he goes, he starts to weaken from the sun and falls to the ground at one point. Pulling himself back up, he stumbles towards the edge of the woods and tries to go for the church's door but falls to the ground again. He futilely tries to crawl across the ground to the opening but looks back to see the sun's rays beating down on him, the sound of a rooster crowing emphasizing that he's too late. Flipping over on his back, Dracula slowly ages as he's exposed more and more to the sun before he gives out completely. By the time the day has officially begun, Dracula has been mummified. In the church, Judith manages to free herself from the ropes and heads for the door, when she sees Dracula's ring on the floor. Picking it up, she walks outside and sees that he's disintegrated completely, his head now a compost heap. Looking at his remains, images of all that's happened (including stuff that she didn't witness) flash through her head and she drops Dracula's ring on the ground next to his empty suit before leaving.
The film's original music was composed by William Lava, who was most well-known for doing the music for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons produced in the 1960's, as well as for some of the Pink Panther shorts. While I've never been too crazy about the music he did for the former, especially for those late era Road Runner cartoons because of how repetitive it is, the music he did for Dracula vs. Frankenstein, surprisingly, isn't half bad. The main theme, which you hear in all its glory during the credits, is memorably bouncy and crazy-sounding, feeling very much in the style of the music scores that were often heard in 1950's monster and horror films. Most of the music he did for the film's more fast-paced sequences are in that same mold and work really well, even if the music he did for the dramatic, soft, and "moody" scenes come off as either generic or very much of the time. During the third act, the movie begins to rely mostly on cues and themes written for 50's monster movies, like Creature from the Black Lagoon and such, which sound like someone is playing them on a tape recorder and they're echoing through the sets. If you're a fan of those movies, then you will likely get a kick out of hearing those themes and they do work pretty well with the visuals, but like James Rolfe said, they inevitably remind you of what you're not watching, which is not a good thing to do in a movie as bad as this. As for the actual songs featured in the movie, I don't mind Regina Carrol's number, I Travel Light, or the song, Say the Word, that's playing in the club where Judith has her bad acid trip, but I would prefer never to hear Here and Now ever again if I can help it.
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