I'd like to apologize in advance for how crappy the quality of the images in this review will be, for the most part. There is a good-looking, cleaned up print of this movie, as I've seen some clips of it, and you will see some snapshots from those clips, but I could not, for the life of me, find a full version of that print to watch. I'm guessing you have to pay money to watch it but I'm not willing to go that far for this blog, no matter how much I enjoy doing it, especially if it's for a bad movie.
While traveling through the American West in the 1800's, a German couple, Franz and Eva Oster, are horrified to discover that their daughter, Lisa, was attacked by a vampire while they were camping out next to their covered wagon. The vampire, who happens to be the notorious Count Dracula, takes a stagecoach to the next town, which he shares with Mary Ann Bentley and her brother, James Underhill. Ms. Bentley and Underhill are traveling to the Double Bar B Ranch, which is run by Bentley's lovely 18-year old daughter, Betty. Dracula sees a photo of Betty and immediately becomes enamored with her beauty. When the coach stops at an inn for the night, Dracula kills a young Native American woman, part of a tribe that's passing through. This incurs their wrath and, the next day, they chase down the coach and murder everyone, including Bentley and Underhill. Following the massacre, Dracula assumes the identity of Underhill and heads to the town near the ranch to meet with Betty, who has never met her uncle in person. At the ranch, Betty's new foreman and beau is Billy Bonney, who happens to be the infamous outlaw, Billy the Kid, now trying to lead a respectable life. However, he constantly runs afoul of Dan Thorpe, the previous foreman, who's not too happy about losing his job, as well as Betty, to Billy. Dracula arrives in town, posing as Underhill, and Billy shows up to meet with him and his sister. News of the coach's attack arrives, as do several witnesses to it: the German family from before. Eva insists what happened was the work of a vampire but no one believes her. Billy heads to break the bad news to Betty while, that night, Dracula finishes off Lisa Oster before heading out to the ranch, where he meets his grief-stricken "niece." Billy becomes suspicious of him right from the start and when he hears of Lisa Oster's murder, Eva again tells him that it was a vampire and that said vampire is Underhill. Not sure what to think, Billy allows the Osters to come live and work at the ranch, with Eva determined to save Betty from Dracula's influence. Eventually, Billy learns that Underhill truly is a vampire and, what's worse, he intends to make Betty his mate.
Arriving at the Double Bar B Ranch, Dracula wastes no time in attempting to put Betty under his spell, using her belief that he's her uncle and the authority that comes with his disguise to prevent any interference from the suspicious Billy and the Osters, especially Eva, when they come to work at the ranch. Knowing that Eva is aware that he's a vampire, he often targets her, angrily admonishing her for entering his room when he gave instructions that no one should do so and yelling at her when she drops a plate in shock at one point. And when Dan Thorpe overhears Billy talking with the sheriff about how he may be an imposter and tells him of it, Dracula has Billy fired as ranch foreman, using his authority as Betty's "legal guardian" to overrule her actually being Billy's employer. He also orders Billy to be shot if he shows up on the property again and then orders the Osters to stay in the bunkhouse, advising them not to leave it, lest they risk being shot too. With no one left to protect Betty, he puts her under his spell and bites her for the first time. Returning to the ranch, Billy learns what has happened to Betty and takes her to the town doctor, while Dracula is preparing a type of bed for her in a nearby abandoned silver mine, as he plans to make her his vampire mate. Forcing Franz Oster to tell him what happened to Betty, and learning from the sheriff where she is while he has Billy in jail for shooting and killing Thorpe, Dracula takes Betty from the doctor, despite her attempt to stop him. Taking her to the mine, he prepares to complete her transformation, and has a brief confrontation with Billy, who finally stops him by knocking him to the ground and staking him through the heart with a scalpel.
I've been calling Carradine's character "Dracula" when in actuality, despite the movie's title and his personal history with the role, that name is never said once in the whole film. The Osters only refer to him as a nameless vampire, while everybody else calls him "Mr. Underhill" or, in Betty's case, "Uncle James," per his alibi, so they could have easily called this movie something like The Vampire Goes West. Obviously, they only used the Dracula name to get people's attention, particularly by combining it with Billy the Kid. And yet, the film's depiction of the character is more faithful to that of the original Bram Stoker novel than most other films. As he did in his previous performances as Dracula, Carradine has a mustache, something Dracula is described as having in the book, and his fairly old appearance (he was 60 at the time) fits with the notion in the book of his starting out as an old man and becoming progressively younger. He first becomes enamored with Betty when he sees a small picture of her, just as he does with Mina in the book, and he's able to walk around in the sunlight just fine. Most fittingly, there's no sympathy to be had with Dracula here, as he's just an evil creature who's feeding on the blood of innocent people and won't be satisfied until he's able to claim Betty as his mate.
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| I need a bathroom, stat! |
But, despite the more accurate than expected depiction of Dracula and Carradine's genuine performance, this movie, being what it is, manages to make him look silly and hard to take seriously at points. His hypnotic stare is laughable, with his big, bulging eyes and an inexplicable red lighting effect that shines on his face, as if he managed to start a forest fire with his stare. It's weird, too, because Carradine managed to look quite creepy when he did the stare in his earlier Dracula performances. Plus, as you might expect, the bat effects in this film are pretty bad. Despite their effectiveness in the original 1931 Dracula, it took a long time for fake bats in vampire movies to look even halfway decent and that's for films that had a decent budget. In this no-budget flick, they're lifeless props that are flown around on strings or are suspended in mid-air. I'll give them this, though: they manage to get a lot of wing movement out of these props in some shots but that doesn't make up for how crappy they look. Dracula has also always had the ability to suddenly appear and disappear in a ghostly manner but in this film, he'll literally not be there one second and then, boop, suddenly appear onscreen through a jump-cut, and vice versa. And during the final act, they try to make Dracula seem more animalistic and monstrous as he tries to get ahold of Betty in order to make her his mate by having him yell and snarl, but again, Carradine comes off as silly in those instances. The best one comes when, as Dracula is taking Betty away from the doctor, she uses a mirror to see that he is a vampire and he snarls, "Raaagh!", sounding like the Frankenstein monster (Carradine was one of the actors up for the role of the monster back in 1931, by the way), before he rushes out with Betty.
The Osters are a German family traveling through the American West who end up attracting Dracula's unwanted attention as soon as he arrives there. As they're camping out, Eva (Virginia Christine) is sure that she feels a vampire's presence when she hears the sound of a bat but her husband, Franz (Walter Janovitz), isn't convinced and implores her to go back to sleep. But then, their daughter, Lisa (Hannie Landman), is attacked by Dracula during the night, the only thing saving her from being completely drained of blood being the cross in her hand. Her parents find out that Eva was right when they wake up and see the marks on Lisa's neck, and they witness the attack on the stagecoach by the Native American tribe that Dracula orchestrated. They're picked up by another wagon-master and brought to the town near the ranch, continuously insisting that what happened was the work of a vampire. While staying at the town's saloon/hotel, the Osters are given the last room by none other than Dracula, only so he can slip in that night and finish off Lisa, who initially recognizes him when she sees him but is talked out of believing it. The next day, as they're grieving, Eva warns Billy that the vampire is actually the man claiming to be James Underhill and, while he initially tries to stop her from saying it out loud, Franz has to concur with her. He wants to run but Eva isn't having it, saying that they will stay and fight the vampire to make sure that what happened to Lisa doesn't happen to anyone else. They take up Billy's offer to stay at the ranch and once there, Eva does everything she can to protect Betty, lining her bedroom windows with wolfsbane in order to keep Dracula at bay. This does work, but Eva finds her attempts foiled when Betty decides she's had enough of their superstitions and orders her to stop. She also is berated by Dracula for her constant interference and, once he manages to get Billy out of his hair, he confines them to the bunkhouse, adding that they could be shot if they dared leave during the night. The next morning, Eva is despondent upon finding that she failed to keep Dracula from biting Betty and she has Billy rush her to the doctor. Finding Betty gone, Dracula forces Franz to tell him where she is but Franz only says that Billy took her away. But, he does find her and takes her to the mine where he intends to make her a vampire. Unfortunately, after all her talk of wanting to fight Dracula, Eva doesn't take part in the confrontation in the mine and is never seen again after Billy briefly talks with her, trying to figure out where Dracula took Betty.
Rounding out the supporting cast is Pete (Richard Reeves), the saloon-keeper who proves to be something of a pal to Billy, offering him a room at the place after he's fired from the ranch and calling Thorpe out on his crap. When Thorpe pulls a gun on Billy in order to force him out of town, Pete comments, "You're mighty brave with that gun in your hand. Put it back in the holster and let's see you outdraw Billy." After Billy kills Thorpe, Pete tells the sheriff that it was self-defense but, regardless, the sheriff has to take him in, as he must stand trial. Said sheriff, Griffin (Roy Barcroft), is depicted as a likable enough guy, one who's just doing his job when he takes Billy in for the shooting. Of course, he doesn't believe at all in vampires, and he finds it hard to believe that Billy is starting to believe in them when he asks him if he thinks there's a possibility that the man claiming to be James Underhill could be an imposter, despite having his identification. When he has Billy in custody, Dracula appears at the station, demanding to know where Betty is, and Griffin, unaware of the danger, tells him she's at the doctor's. He later refuses to listen when Dr. Hull tries to tell him that Underhill really is a vampire and when he won't let Billy loose to save Betty, Hull forces him to do so by tossing Billy his gun and making him let him out at gunpoint. Griffin and Hull follow after Billy and, arriving at the ranch's mine, he sees firsthand that Underhill is actually Dracula when he tries to save Betty by shooting at him, only for his bullets to have no effect. That's when Billy manages to actually do the vampire in.
Though they only appear at the beginning, Marry Ann Bentley (Marjorie Bennett) and the real James Underhill (William Forrest), do manage to leave a bit of an impression. Ms. Bentley is a rather talkative old woman with a bad heart, who has decided to join her daughter in looking after their ranch. She's the reason why Dracula becomes obsessed with Betty, as she describes how she's young and beautiful and then shows him her picture. Moreover, he tells Dracula of the abandoned silver mine, where he eventually tries to turn Betty into a vampire. Underhill, a banker from Boston, is, on the other hand, much quieter and you get the sense that he isn't too thrilled about being forced to move out west. Like many during this period, he's also prejudiced against Native Americans; when Dracula fails to show up at the stagecoach when it leaves the next day, he believes that his disappearance was their doing. Also along for the ride is Joe Flake (George Cisar), a jolly whiskey salesman who tries to ply his trade at every opportunity, including to the Native Americans when they arrive at the inn (he's advised against it, though), and he's all too happy to take a swig of it himself. All three of them are killed when the coach gets attacked following Dracula's feeding on a Native American woman at the inn.
It's a shame that I didn't have greater access to the really good-looking print of the movie, aside from a few scenes on YouTube, because it's infinitely more pleasing to the eye than the more common, utterly crappy-looking version that looks as if there were some sort of film over the camera lens. To drive home the point, here's a comparison of the two versions: both of these first two images are of a shot of the stagecoach traveling through the woods after it's picked up Dracula, only the one up top is from the version I, and most other people, could easily access, while the lower one is from the really nice-looking, remastered version. Quite a difference, isn't it? When you see it in such good quality, you can tell that the cinematography, while nothing spectacular, is fair enough, given how the filmmakers had virtually no money to work with, and isn't as incompetent as the more low-rent version would have you believe. That's especially true of the exterior nighttime scenes (thankfully, they aren't many of those), which were clearly done through the day-for-night process. In the cleaned up print, they look fine, but in the more common version, they're so dark and murky that you almost can't tell what's going on. It's not as hard to make out as the intolerable VHS release of Assignment Terror, that movie which was retitled Dracula vs. Frankenstein for said release, but, as you can see, it's still pretty bad.
Both this film and Jessie James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter were shot at just two different locations: the Corriganville Movie Ranch and at the Producers Studios in Los Angeles. The former, owned by stuntman Ray "Crash" Corrigan, was used by hundreds and hundreds of movies and TV shows over the years, often those of the western genre, and served as the source of all the exterior footage, including both the Double Bar B Ranch and the small nearby town. The latter was likely a standing western set they had there that was known as "Silvertown" and, despite its small size, it managed to make this film look like it had far more money than it did. The other exteriors shot at the ranch gave the film's outdoor scenes a rather picturesque quality, although said quality is lost in the crappy-looking version. The Producer Studios were no doubt where the interior sets were filmed, such as the inside of the ranch-house, the saloon and its rented rooms, the jailhouse, the doctor's office, and the inside of the abandoned mine. None of these sets are at all impressive or really memorable but they serve their purpose well-enough, even if the story taking place amongst them isn't much to write home about.
This movie has long been put on numerous lists of the absolute worst ever made, with everybody who's seen it sharing John Carradine's low opinion of it, but I've personally watched movies that were much harder for me to sit through. I still agree that it's not a good movie at all but, aside from a few instances I've already mentioned, it's also not an enjoyably bad one, nor one that's so awful that I rue the day I ever saw it. It's another example of a movie that's bad simply because there just isn't much to it. Being so bare bones, with virtually no budget, they couldn't afford much of any special effects, save for those awkward sudden appearances of Dracula and his laughable-looking bat form (although, they were able to pull off one that I'll get into later), and there's certainly no blood or violence that's on the level of what Hammer was doing around the same time, so I have little to make fun of in that department. The sequences where Dracula stalks and attacks his victims have no atmosphere or creep factor to them whatsoever (and as you can tell, they're often hard to see in the really crappy-looking version). All they consist of is Dracula showing up, gives off his silly-looking hypnotic stare, bites his victim, and then leaves. The movie opens with such a scene, where Dracula stalks the Osters as they camp outside of their wagon. After Eva wakes up with a start, fearing that a vampire is nearby, Franz makes her go back to sleep, but not before she puts her crucifix in Lisa's hand. Later, Dracula flies down to the campsite as a bat, turns into his human form, and entrances Lisa when she wakes up. But, he doesn't get to suck much blood before he sees the crucifix in her hand and the sight of it drives him away, causing him to do his disappearing act. The moment where he goes for the young Native American woman is more of the same, only this time with Dracula disappearing in front of her before the scene suddenly fades to black and we only learn of her death the next day. The scene with the Osters at the saloon/inn has Franz sitting in the hall outside the room where Eva and Lisa are sleeping, when Dracula appears outside the window in bat form, tapping against the glass before suddenly appearing in the room (why does he need to became a bat if he can basically teleport?). Once inside, he moves in on Lisa, again entrances her before she can warn her parents, and completely drains her of blood, her moans awakening her parents, only to find her dead. Dracula initially has trouble entering Betty Bentley's bedroom, thanks to the wolfsbane Eva lines her window with, but he has no trouble getting in after he's gotten rid of Billy and had the Osters moved to the bunkhouse. Once in there, he puts her under his spell, telling her his intentions, and bites her.
You'd hope that, being a western as well as a horror film, you'd also get some good old-fashioned wild west action but, because of the budget, nothing is done that's all that impressive. In fact, the biggest scale sequence is when the Native American tribe discovers the young woman from before has been killed and they chase after the stagecoach when it leaves. You get to see a decent-sized crowd of them riding on horseback, chasing after the coach, and shooting at it with both bullets and arrows, while those driving the coach fire back, but the scene also ends abruptly and after the fade to black, you see the aftermath of the attack. When Billy and Betty are first introduced, the former shows off his shooting skills when he shoots at a can that she throws up into the air as he's riding on a horse and manages to put every one of his bullets into it. He then tries to get her to do it but when he throws the can into the air, she isn't able to hit it and he promptly takes the gun back and shoots it again. There's a confrontation between Billy and Dan Thorpe in the saloon early on, when Thorpe remarks that Billy may lose his job when Betty's uncle takes over the ranch, adding, "It might be tougher to fool a man than that batty old dame," and this is after the news of the attack on the coach. Billy punches Thorpe to the floor and then pulls his gun on him when he sees him trying to go for his own. He tells him that they'll have it out soon enough. This is something of a prelude to a fight the two of them get into a few days later, when Billy admonishes Thorpe for getting rid of the body of a lamb they found dead without his permission and threatens to fire him if he tries to start trouble between him and Underhill. Thorpe punches Billy to the ground, Billy comes back with a couple of pairs of punches that land Thorpe on the ground, and it looks Billy has it won. But then, Thorpe trips him to the ground, gaining the upper-hand, and virtually curb-stomps, leaving him dead out on the ground. Just to add insult to injury, Thorpe kicks Billy's hat away as he leads his horse into the ranch. And following Dracula banishing Billy from the ranch, Thorpe shows up at the saloon, telling him that he's been ordered to run him out of town. He pulls a gun on him, but when Pete distracts him, Billy manages to knock him to the floor by shoving a table into him, and the two of them exchange shots, Billy using the overturned table as cover and shooting out a lantern to give him more of an advantage. He then manages to shoot and kill Thorpe.
The climax, as I mentioned earlier, is very lackluster. After preparing a coffin for her in the abandoned silver mine, Dracula comes back to the ranch house to find that Betty is gone. He forces Franz Oster to tell him what he became of her but all he's told is that Billy took Betty away. He storms out and later finds out where Betty is from Sheriff Griffin, who's jailed Billy for killing Thorpe. Dracula appears at Dr. Hull's office and though she tries to stop him, he effortlessly pushes the doctor aside and scoops Betty up in his arms. While he's doing so, Hull uses the vampire mirror test on him and she sees that he's casting no reflection in it. That's where we get the one decent effect in the whole movie, where you see Betty seemingly floating in mid-air in the mirror's reflection and it's more impressive when you see it in the back of the shot while Dracula is standing in the foreground, his back to the camera. Dracula lets out his enraged snarl at this and rushes out of the building, much to Hull's shock. She tries to tell Griffin about what's going on but he doesn't buy it at all, so she then takes his gun and tosses it to Billy in his cell. With a gun trained on him, this forces Griffin to let him out and he heads out to save Betty, ignoring Hull's advice to take a scalpel to use to impale Dracula through the heart. He takes Griffin's horse and the sheriff, after getting another gun out of his desk, chases after him, Hull tagging along, much to his chagrin. While Dracula rides Betty out to the mine, Billy rushes to the ranch, followed by Griffin and Hull. Arriving there, he learns from Eva that Dracula didn't return with her and, remembering that he inspected the mine earlier, figures that's where he must be. He rides out there, as Dracula leads the entranced Betty into the mine's depths, where he has a bed-like slab waiting for her. He puts her to sleep, when Billy arrives and ventures into the mine. Dracula ducks out of sight when Billy enters the chamber and, when he tries to wake her, the Count tells him that Betty is his. Billy draws his gun and fires but his bullets do nothing, and Dracula moves in on him, puts him in a choke-hold, tossing him against the wall at one point, and then tangles with him until Billy loses consciousness and he drops his body to the floor (the whole time, John Carradine is doing more of that Frankenstein-like grunting and growling).
He tries to get back to finishing his business with Betty, only for Griffin and Hull to show up. Griffin pulls his gun and tells Dracula to stop but the vampire tells him that his bullets can't hurt him, nor will they be able to hurt Betty once he's finished. Griffin fires on Dracula but he gets the same result that Billy got a moment ago. Regaining consciousness, Billy joins them after Griffin has used up all of his ammo and this is when he manages to take out Dracula rather easily. As good as Carradine's performance here is, it doesn't change the fact that Dracula goes out like a total wimp. Billy grabs Griffin's gun, throws it, and hits Dracula in the face, knocking him to the ground. Yeah, bullets don't work, but getting clocked in the face with a gun does the job. Hull hands Billy the scalpel and, while Dracula is on the ground, Billy uses a rock to drive it through his heart. While he does this, the movie feels obligated to randomly show a bat flying out of the cave (look near the center of the third image's lower section in order to see it), hover in the air, and then suddenly fall to the ground, dead. I have no idea what the point of that was. If it was meant to be a simple fake-out or had some deeper meaning to it, like it being Dracula's released soul, it falls flat on its face either way. In any case, once Dracula's dead, his body turns into a skeleton (a simple lap-dissolve), the spell is broken, Betty awakens, and Billy walks out of the mine while holding her; we can assume the two of them lived happily ever after. Big deal, right?
The music was composed by Raoul Kraushaar, a French-born composer who'd done music for Hollywood studio films in the 40's and 50's but, by the 60's, had mostly been relegated to doing music for television shows and low-budget movies such as this (he also did the music for Jessie James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter). Like the film itself, the score is unremarkable. Save for a weird, otherworldly theme for the scenes where Dracula claims his victims, a repetitive chase theme for the when the stagecoach is pursued, and some sappy, cheerful western music for some of the scenes between Billy and Betty, nothing about it is particularly memorable, with the music that plays during the climax being completely bland and not at all exciting. All I'll say is that it sounds exactly like what you'd expect to hear if you bought this on an old, public domain VHS.
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