Virgin Vampires With Full Moons

The Devil’s Wedding Night (aka, The Devil’s Crypt, Full Moon of the Virgins, Il Plenilunio delle Vergini/Italy, 1973) isn’t nearly as lip-smacking as it sounds. In fact, the Devil doesn’t even show up to his own happiest day. (Who can blame him? His brides/victims won’t sign a pre-nup.) But you don’t need him when you have a clothes-hating, female vampire bathing in human blood squeezings, likely for its moisturizing properties.

Two handsome brothers are twin archaeologists. One likes to gamble and make smooch happen with chicks. One wants to find the invaluable Ring of the Nibelung (it has mind-moisturizing properties), said to be in Castle Dracula in Transylvania, high up in the Carpathian Ski Mountains. Since this in the early 1900s and there is no Uber or Lyft to get him there, he has to ride his horse. (He never tips the pony or gives it a good rating, the jerk.)

Once at the castle, handsome twin #2 knocks on the door and tells the emotionless gal he’s an architect and wants to study the castle’s feng shui. While wandering around like a snoopy guest opening up underwear drawers and medicine cabinets, he hears a shrieking sound and sees moving shadows. It’s here he meets Countess Dracula, who invites him to stay for dinner and dessert, if you get my drift. Turns out, he’s the main course, but not before a little rub-a-dub.

While this shameful action is going on, his brother is hot on the trail, rushing to bring him a protective amulet to ward away evil. Ironic, since the fabled jewelry is said to have been fashioned by Pazuzu, King of the Demons. (I would’ve thought P would be more into Gothic cabinetry than homemade jewelry.)

As it so happens, tonight is the full moon of the virgins, wherein five as yet undefiled young gals from the nearby village fall under the ring’s spell, and they all walk to the castle at midnight, where in Countess Dracula extracts their blood and slathers it all over herself, likely for its moisturizing properties.

There’s a lot of running around the castle holding lit candles since the psychedelic, rainless lightning storm raging outside must’ve knocked out the power. Handsome twin brother #1 eventually stumbles across his brother entombed in a stone coffin and beats down a bald male vampire with sick thick eyebrows to rescue him.

The virgins show up, the countess turns into a giant bat, the handsome brother chops off her hand, snags the ring, gives his brother an economic, in-ground burial after serving up a stake well done.

So even as “meh” as this all is, stick around for the double twist ending. It will make you believe in the power of jewelry.

Ghosts, The Future, Rib-Eye Steaks

Was eating a steak at my fav restaurant (JaK’s Grill) the other day (the “K” is supposed to be capitalized) and wondered between forking my face with savory chunks of rib-eye if Dracula ever ate a steak. Sure he’s eaten lots of stakes, but you’d think after hundreds of years of having those rammed into his gut hole, he’d wanna mix it up a bit. I suggest JaK’s top sirloin and work your way up to the 36 oz. Prime Delmonico (only $50 smackers). You have to wait a little longer to get it as it requires more cooking time, though. So if you’re Dracula or one of his minions, best not to order it before sunrise.

And yes, I do think about vampires when eating dinner. Helps take my mind off the bill. That said, here’s some potentially flavorful upcoming horror/sci-fi.

A GHOST STORY (July 17, 2017)
“In this singular exploration of legacy, love, loss, and the enormity of existence, a recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to try and reconnect with his bereft wife.”

Dude, your widowed wife is gonna freak that you cut holes in her freshly laundered, lightweight cotton percale flat sheets. (Fitted sheets make for a very dumb looking poltergeist.) Try something else because you’re a ghost, dang it. Your forever job is to scare the sheet out of everybody.

VALERIAN (July 21, 2017)
“In the 28th century, special operatives Valerian and Laureline maintain order throughout the universe for the government of the human territories. Under orders from their commander, the duo embark on a mission to Alpha, an intergalactic city where diverse species share their technology and resources for the betterment of all. The ever-expanding metropolis is also home to sinister forces that jeopardize the future of mankind.”

Yeesh — YET ANOTHER teen sci-fi movie. This one stars that chick with the uni-brow. Maybe future technology could fix that for her.

ESCAPE FROM CANNIBAL FARM (2017)
“In the British countryside, the Harver family head out on an idyllic summer camping trip where they can bury past tensions and enjoy some family bonding. But when their camp is sabotaged by an unseen intruder in the night, they head to the nearby creepy old farm desperate for help, where vengeful farmer Hunt Hansen and his hideously deformed son aren’t farming animals. Caged and waiting for their limbs to be severed, cooked and eaten one at a time, the Harver family must overcome their differences and unite in order to escape alive.”

Gotta say, nifty title. It tells you everything you need to know going in. Curious as to why cannibal horror movies seem to arrive with, say, the regularity of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of all horror’s sub-genres, you’d think people eating people wouldn’t be on the top of anyone’s menu. Guess the popularity of zombies have made cannibalism more mouth-watering. Okay, I’ll stop.

TONIGHT SHE COMES (2017)
“After a girl goes missing, two of her friends and a mysterious set of strangers find themselves drawn to the cabin in the woods where she disappeared. They will laugh, they will drink, they will kiss, they will make love, and THEY MUST ALL DIE.”

Thanks, hack Hollywood press release writer — don’t need to see the movie now that you’ve just given it all away. Then again, we’ve all been watching this movie for decades. I should start watching same plot films like these with my eyes closed.

Turkish Dracula

1953’s Drakula İstanbul’da — painstakingly translated to Dracula in Istanbul, paints the Prince of Darkness in humorless hues. (Actually, the movie is in black and white, but Dracula was/is a pretty colorful guy.) This Turkish Dracula is balding, has crayon tip fangs pointing opposite directions, and is only interested in real estate deals and juicing your neck.

Drakula İstanbul’da is a re-vamping (heh) of the 1928 novel Kazıklı Voyvoda (Impaler Voivode). And that book was a near photocopied translation of Bram Stoker’s novel that brought Dracula into the mainstream. Only difference is the Mina character is a stripper (um, I mean “showgirl”) and Dracula boot lick Renfield is nowhere to be found. (He’s probably in some basement eating the life force of bugs.)

Drakula is hungry and his feeding techniques look more like he’s leaning in to tell you a bawdy joke rather than a perforation. His target is two young ladies, one of whom has a mysterious secret: sleepwalking. Scary, but assured it’ll go away once she’s married. (Heard that doesn’t work with uncontrollable flatulence.)

Drakula is hunted down in a long and boring process (the only chills would be if you watched this in the Antarctica with the windows open), and dispatched with a medium rare stake through the heart as applied with a rock. Time to take down the anti-Drakula decorations — all garlic must go. “But I use it to cook with,” says Mina, who protests she won’t be able to make her eggplant recipe without it. (No person in their right mind would eat that crap anyway, so better to just move on to mac ’n cheese and give up this eggplant madness and schemes.)

Dracula isn’t the only intellectual property grave Istanbul has robbed. Superman, Flash Gordon, Zorro, Captain America, Batman, Tarzan, Satan and Spider-Man (as a green-suited criminal) have all been given a Turkish bath, and look like they were dressed in clothes their moms made them. Final note: You haven’t any idea of what Istanbul is all about until you’ve seen Turkish Batman cavort with ladies of burlesque.

P.S. For some prime hardcore Turkish horror action, check out Baskin (2015), wherein four cops enter the foyer of Hell when they happen upon a Black Mass in an abandoned building. Hope you have a strong stomach. Otherwise it’s recycled eggplant time.

Thong vs. Wrong

In The Witch’s Curse (1963), an Italian fantasy horror sword ’n sorcery thong fest, a freshly-married couple arrives in a Scottish village (where no one has an accent) and everyone believes the woman of them to be the reincarnation of a 500 year-old witch. So burn they must.

But wait, isn’t that Hercul…uh, no, guess not. It’s Maciste, a man of strong man in a thong. He’ll tell us what to do. He half-ass rescues the couple and in order to get to the bottom of this witch B.S., he goes to a cursed tree, pushes it over, revealing a well-lit hole that leads to…HELL. What the heck – another adventure.

Descending into the Earth’s alimentary canal, Maciste (what a metro name) battles a Sasquatch Wild Boar Man, who gets in a few slobber-knockers. Then he runs into another Hercul…uh, a strong man in a thong, whose chained up with a vulture eating/pecking his guts. That doesn’t stop him from carrying on a conversation with Maciste, though. Maciste also takes on a lion, a giant ogre, a cyclops and a herd of charging Texas Longhorns (!) before forcing the witch to lift her curse.

Meanwhile, the married couple on the Earth’ surface are being burned at the stake. Can Maciste get there before this campfire banquet reaches its charcoal-y conclusion? Is there a way to possibly make it rain on the fire but not everyone else? Will Maciste ride off into the sunset on a horse that’s clearly not his? If you can’t figure out the answers to these burning questions, I hereby curse you for 500 years.

Drac is Back

The Return of Dracula (1958) is neither. You read me correctly – this IMPOSTER is NOT Dracula (he doesn’t even have pointy teeth, for neck’s sake), and he doesn’t do anything that would make you think he was a vampire other than have an aversion to sunlight, no reflection and a weirdo foreign accent.

Furthering the rant, this thing was released to theaters as The Fantastic Disappearing Man. That makes more sense as he’s more of a walk-on character than the sucker of souls.

This stake fake killed a man (off screen) on a train who was traveling from Czechoslovakia to California to visit a lady cousin with a distractingly perky young teen daughter and assumed the victim’s identity. Belak Gordal (aka, artificial Dracula), is welcomed into the cousin’s home and lies his way through family history and is given free room and board. I’ll say this for Belak – he’s got míče.

Rachel, the hot young daughter, is smitten with their guest. Probably because she’s easily impressed by foreign accents. But Belak (that name sounds so fake) disappears during the day, sleeping in a coffin in a nearby abandoned mining cave. When he does come out at night he preys on local Rachel’s “time to take her to DisneyLand™” sick friend and doing what nature was gonna do anyway.

All of this is just treading water as there is no depiction of neck ripping and/or the sucking of neck drippings. Tim, Rachel’s boyfriend (who seems to be more of a chauffeur for her constant to and fros, follows his bewitched honey to the cave where Belak was waiting to some serious G-rated stuff to/on her. He heroes up just enough to have the tedious action end with Drac/Belak falling into a mine hole and landing nicely on a protruding wooden stick thing.

A potential note of interest: The Return of Dracula is filmed in belak and white (heh), but for one brief second, a scene showing bloody red blood is flashed. That trick was also used at the end of War of the Colossal Beast (1958) when the grayscale’d monster grabbed high-voltage power lines and lit himself up in day-glo life-ending color.P.S. Don’t grab high-voltage power lines.

A Circus Full of Vampires

In Vampire Circus (1972), the caged panthers are people and the people are vampires. But not the monkeys. The monkeys are just plain monkeys. Too bad – monkey vampires would be pretty cool, I think.

But there’s a reason the entertaining Circus of the Night came to the plague-infested Austrian village of Stetl during the 19th Century. It was to exact revenge on the jittery townsfolk who, fifteen years earlier, assassinated Count Mitterhaus to death. The Count didn’t count on the villagers having enough strudel to serve him up a nice juicy stake for sucking the youth juice out the town’s kids and rubbing the bare boobies of both married and unmarried lady folk.

Turns out Mitterhaus has a cousin Emil who is the featured attraction in the aforementioned traveling circus. Before he chokes on the stake, he instructs his naked lady friend to find Emil to bring him back to life. Oh, and he manages to curse the village with the aforementioned plague because he’s kind of a dick.

Too prevent the germs from germinating the Germans, a blockade keeps the villagers from sneezing their way out of town. Yet somehow the circus gets in and the fun begins. First night of the show Emil – in panther form – transforms from animal to human. This mesmerizes the groin of the Bürgermeister’s young virginal daughter, who gives it up smooth to Emil in the panther cage after the show. And he didn’t even have to loosen her up with some sweet and refreshing Steinlager™.

The villagers are sucked on by the circus performers, who can even turn into bats, which I felt was pretty neat. But the goal from the get go was to resurrect Mitterhaus and his need to bleed those uppity townies.

There are six boobies, two of which are painted green with tiger stripes. Lots of neck chewing with blood so red, it would make ketchup jealous. Then there’s some head chopping, because vampires occasionally deserve that kind of treatment. As cool as that all is, monkey vampires would’ve really taken this thing all the way to the Big Top.

There Is Only One Vampire

While there was a diaper-smudging scary vampire movie that came 15 years prior (Les Vampires/1915), Dracula, made in 1931, is the gold bar standard for ALL vampire movies since. And they did it without blood, fangs, a movie soundtrack or the Internet. All it took was an awesome story, spooky ass atmosphere, a few rubber bats, and Bela Lugosi’s famous arching eyebrows, which McDonald’s ultimately stole for their logo. True that.

Renfield works as a leasor for Count Dracula, and travels overseas with some papers for Carfax Abbey, his new rental digs in bloody, bustling London. Once in town, Drac steps out for a bite, then off to a symphony (regarded as a metal concert back in those days.)

Dracula needs Renfield to do minion bidding for him, so he unleashes the now-famous Drac stare-down, the evil equivalent of a Clint Eastwood cowboy squint. (Squint Eastwood. Heh.) This turns Renfield into a minimum wage employee who eats company bugs.

And here’s where a second star is born. Renfield’s maniacal stare and ultra-creepy smirking laugh STILL freaks one out to this day. No one since has managed to goon people out the way he did. You should know the rest of the story from here.

Dracula sucks on Mina, the movie’s hot chick, although Drac’s three vamp brides back at the castle are creatures with some nice features. Now Mina has permanent crampy “woman” problems.

Van Helsing, a guy holding a doctorate in doctoring, discovers Dracula’s vampire tendencies, and along with Mina’s boyfriend Johnathan Harker (cool name, even cooler suit) track Drac back to the coffin and…chop, chop, fizz, fizz.

Curiously, this classic ended abruptly, with Van Helsing serving up Dracula a nice stake dinner, while Johnathan and Mina walk slowly up the stairs in grief relief. Van Helsing opts to stick (sorry) around. (I bet you anything he was gonna steal Dracula’s wallet.)

To revisit the legacy of the modern day (OK, that sounds odd) vampire is pretty dang cool. So, like, I command thee to watch it.