TEN LITTLE INDIANS (US - 1989) Directed by Alan Birkinshaw. Written by Jackson Hunsicker and Gerry O'Hara. Cast: Donald Pleasence, Brenda Vaccaro, Frank Stallone, Herbert Lom, Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister, Sarah Maur Thorp, Warren Berlinger, Yehuda Efroni, Neil McCarthy. (PG, 100 mins) Veteran producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009) already had two previous big-screen adaptations of Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None to his credit, with both 1965 and 1974 versions titled TEN LITTLE INDIANS, but only his 1989 version cites Christie's 1943 play Ten Little Indians as its basis. The difference is negligible, as the play had a more upbeat ending than the novel, but none of Towers' three versions stuck with the novel's bleak ending anyway. The 1989 version was the last and by far the least of Towers' takes on the material, with 1965 (directed by longtime David Lean assistant George Pollock) generally considered the best, though the 1974 (directed by Peter Collinson) has aged very well, and with its unique setting in a luxury Iranian hotel, its Bruno Nicolai score, and some surprisingly stylish murder sequences, it almost plays in retrospect like an Agatha Christie giallo. Despite Towers' obvious affinity for the material (he also scripted the 1965 and 1974 versions under his pseudonym "Peter Welbeck"), Rene Clair's 1945 version AND THEN THERE WERE NONE is still considered the definitive adaptation of this Christie work.
But this TEN LITTLE INDIANS, released by Cannon in November 1989 as they were transitioning into their life support years, is mostly lethargic and uninspired, blandly directed with little style or suspense by Alan Birkinshaw. A career D-lister who was usually brought in to clean up other people's messes, Birkinshaw replaced two fired directors on the 1984 killer Santa outing DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, and he handled extensive uncredited reshoots on Cannon's 1985 Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE when Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) was handed his walking papers after a disastrous Cannes screening. Birkinshaw's 1978 UK video nasty KILLER'S MOON has its admirers, but he never distinguished himself elsewhere. By 1989, he was finding steady employment with Towers, though TEN LITTLE INDIANS was the only one of their collaborations to make it into theaters: he also helmed two entries in the ill-advised Poesploitation craze of the era--THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH--both shot in 1989 but released straight-to-video in 1991.
Like a lot of Cannon productions from this period, TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 (like Birkinshaw's two Poesploitation movies, which were handled by Menahem Golan's post-Cannon outfit 21st Century) was shot in Towers' then-stomping grounds of apartheid-era South Africa, where production costs were low, and even though it was frowned upon by Hollywood, many actors who needed the work had to go where the work was, regardless of the ethical dilemmas inherent in such journeyman assignments (Michael Dudikoff expressed regret after shooting three Cannon films in South Africa, opting to sit out AMERICAN NINJA 3 and only returning for AMERICAN NINJA 4 after they agreed to move the production to Lesotho). Shooting in South Africa also allowed TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 to take advantage of its location for a safari setting, and the cast of mostly familiar faces corralled by Towers is a veritable Who's Who of "Apartheid? Never heard of it!" The set-up is the same: a group of strangers have been invited to a remote location--this time an African safari in the 1930s--by a mystery host named "U.N. Owen." They have no known ties to one another, aside from all of them having a secret known only by Owen: they're all directly or indirectly culpable for at least one death, and Owen is making them pay, exposing the skeletons in their closet and offing them one by one. In no particular order, there's rugged safari guide Capt. Lombard (Frank Stallone); Judge Wargrave (Donald Pleasence); dementia-addled General Romensky (Herbert Lom, also in the 1974 version, but in a different role); boozy actress Marion Marshall (Brenda Vaccaro); former governess Vera Claythorne (Sarah Maur Thorp); Dr. Werner (Yehuda Efroni); dashing Anthony Marston (Neil McCarthy); private eye Blore (Warren Berlinger), who's been hired sight unseen by Owen to keep an eye on everyone; and Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister), who claim to have won a contest to be on the safari under the stipulation that they play a recording of Owen listing the crimes of those he's gathered.
TEN LITTLE INDIANS opening in Toledo, OH on 1/5/1990
Christie's novel is pretty much the gold standard in classic mysteries, one that's so good that it's difficult to screw it up, but TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 is like lukewarm leftovers. The setting is unique in theory but doesn't make sense in execution, since they're at a small, cramped camp and it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that the killer can move about undetected in such a limited space. And of course, the more people are bumped off, the more the remaining survivors continue to split up instead of stick together. No one here is at their career pinnacle (well, except for maybe Maur Thorp, whose entire film career consisted of three Towers productions--this, EDGE OF SANITY, and RIVER OF DEATH--all released in 1989), but most of them seem to be acting with a sense of apathy rather than urgency. They're all suspects at one time or another and of the ensemble, Lom has a couple of Commissioner Dreyfus-esque harumphs and seems like the only one who brought his almost-A-game, but he's taken out fairly early. Vaccaro looks like a past Oscar-nominee who knows this is junk. Berlinger does a lot of Charles Durning/Brian Dennehy blustering but little else. Pleasence can always be relied upon to ham it up but he seems uncharacteristically bored and half-asleep (though the goofy grin on his face during a croquet scene is amusing). Smith does the same stink-eye squint that he perfected in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, PIECES, and however many others, but it just seems stale here. And Stallone is just terrible. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 has some beautiful exteriors when you get to see them, but this third time out for Towers just drags along and is of little interest to anyone but the most die-hard Cannon completists or Frank Stallone stalkers. Birkinshaw also worked with Pleasence on THE HOUSE OF USHER, and with Stallone, Vaccaro, and Lom on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and I'm surprised neither of those have surfaced on Blu-ray yet.
MEAN MOTHER (US - 1973) Directed by Albert Victor (Al Adamson) and Leon Klimovsky. Written by Charles Johnson and Joy Garrison. Cast: Clifton Brown (Dobie Gray), Dennis Safren, Luciana Paluzzi, Lang Jeffries, Tracy King (Marilyn Joi), Bedi Moratti, Albert Cole, Al Richardson, Elizabeth Chauvet, Dick Poston, Irv Saunders, Barta Barri. (R, 87 mins) Throughout his prolific career in Z-grade schlock, Al Adamson was no stranger to stitching together pieces of his various finished or unfinished projects with newly-shot scenes to to create completely different movies. He managed to get two more films out of copious amounts of stock footage from 1965's PSYCHO A GO GO (1967's THE FIEND WITH THE ELECTRONIC BRAIN and 1972's BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR). He turned his unreleased 1968 spy movie THE FAKERS into the 1970 biker flick HELL'S BLOODY DEVILS, and transformed the biker-turned-mad doctor horror flick THE BLOOD SEEKERS, uncompleted and abandoned in 1969, into 1971's DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN by adding Dracula and Frankenstein. In the case of 1970's HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS, where astronauts visit a prehistoric planet to stop a vampirism epidemic on Earth (?!), he used tinted footage from a black-and-white Filipino caveman movie as well as dinosaur shots from 1940's ONE MILLION B.C. Adamson's Independent-International partner Sam Sherman acquired a 1971 Spanish/Italian thriller called RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, directed by Spanish journeyman and frequent Paul Naschy collaborator Leon Klimovsky (DR. JEKYLL VS. THE WEREWOLF, VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES). The story dealt with an American Vietnam War deserter (Dennis Safren) making his way to Rome and getting involved in jewelry smuggling and a kidnapping plot, but upon further review, Sherman didn't see much potential for it being a success at drive-ins and on the grindhouse circuit.
Original 1971 Spanish poster
for RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
His solution? Have Adamson cut about 45 minutes out of it, add new scenes and create an entirely new plot to turn it into a blaxploitation movie, with HAMMER and SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF screenwriter Charles Johnson helping concoct the new story. They also brought back Safren--a Sal Mineo clone whose short career other than RUN FOR YOUR LIFE was limited to three TV guest spots before vanishing into obscurity--to shoot some new scenes to tie into the old RUN FOR YOUR LIFE footage, though his hair is very noticeably longer and more shaggy in these new scenes. The new movie became 1973's MEAN MOTHER, a haphazardly-assembled hodgepodge that's nonsensical even by Al Adamson standards. The star of these new scenes that make up MEAN MOTHER is R&B singer Dobie Gray in his only acting role. Gray was already known for his 1964 hit "The 'In' Crowd," and he was still enjoying the biggest chart success of his career with his 1973 radio staple "Drift Away." He's credited as "Clifton Brown" in MEAN MOTHER, ostensibly because he wanted to keep his music and acting careers separate. Translation: Gray didn't want fans of "Drift Away" going to see MEAN MOTHER. Adamson did likewise, using the pseudonym "Albert Victor" (his first and middle names) and sharing directing credit with Klimovsky.
It opens with a hilariously inept fight sequence that doesn't really have anything to do with anything that follows, with Beauregard Jones (Gray) beating the shit out of some guys on an L.A. rooftop. Cut to RUN FOR YOUR LIFE footage, with Joe Scott (Safren) in Vietnam, getting into an argument with his lieutenant and being placed under arrest. He's being transported to base when enemy soldiers attack. He kills the enemy soldiers and is the only survivor. With his hair suddenly much longer, Joe is rescued by fellow deserter Beauregard, who announces his intention to go to Spain, advises Joe to flee to Italy, and off they go into their separate movies. In old footage, Joe meets mystery man Daniel (Lang Jeffries), who gets him into the smuggling game and introduces him to cocktail waitress Therese (Luciana Paluzzi), who agrees to help him find an apartment the next day. Meanwhile, in Spain (played mostly by a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles), an on-the-run Beauregard is discovered by some American criminals and gets into a brawl that's so unconvincingly executed that an extra sitting in a booth can be clearly seen laughing hysterically at Gray and the other actors (Gray may have been a terrific singer, but he's absolutely awful in these action scenes). The next time we see Joe in old footage, Therese is yelling at him about how he won't marry her and he fires back with "We've been through all this before!" Wait, didn't they just meet? Meanwhile, Beauregard is one step ahead of the syndicate, smuggling plates through Europe with his girlfriend Joy (Marilyn Joi, billed as "Tracy King") and eventually ending up in Rome, where he and Joe briefly reunite (Safren with shaggy hair), and just like wherever Beauregard was in Spain, Rome still looks a lot like the Hollywood Hills (the ruse isn't helped by Adamson failing to conceal the California license plates on the cars). Joe (Saffren with short hair) ends up trying to rescue a woman (Bedi Moratti) from some big event that has something to do with Daniel, and Beauregard and Joy try to elude syndicate guys who show up in Rome.
With scenes from RUN FOR YOUR LIFE seemingly edited in at random, MEAN MOTHER is a mind-bogglingly incoherent experience. Whole chunks of story from RUN FOR YOUR LIFE have been hacked away willy-nilly with zero thought given as to how what's left can work into the plot of MEAN MOTHER. Gray and Safren only have two actual scenes together--in "Vietnam" and in "Rome"--before Safren returns to his previous movie, already in progress. Adamson has so little interest in what's going on with Joe's side of the story that Safren eventually vanishes from MEAN MOTHER altogether, with Gray's Beauregard explaining him away with a shrugging "He gave himself up!" Even without knowing the backstory or if they somehow don't pick up on Safren's hair continuity, anyone watching MEAN MOTHER can immediately tell it's comprised of two separate movies just from the different look of the film stock on RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, and its Eurolounge score and post-synced dialogue juxtaposed with the more American look and live sound of the Gray footage, with is augmented with a standard funky blaxploitation soundtrack. MEAN MOTHER makes 87 minutes feel like an eternity, and even then, Adamson had to pad his end of the movie with nearly ten minutes of Joi seducing some syndicate doofus charged with babysitting her while the others track down Beauregard. "Drift Away" is a song everybody knows, but there's little wonder why Gray's acting career began and ended here, and Safren never acted onscreen again. He's awful in both shoots (he, Paluzzi, and Canadian actor Jeffries appear to be dubbing themselves in the RUN FOR YOUR LIFE scenes), and has this strange affect where he leans way too hard into the enunciation of his "T"s, leading to robotic line readings like "It doesn't maT-Ter," and "I've got thirT-Tee thousand." Best known as the lethal Fiona Volpe in 1965's THUNDERBALL, former Bond girl Paluzzi was lovely in every movie she ever made, but I'm willing to bet that to this day, 42 years retired from acting, she still has no idea she's in an Al Adamson blaxploitation movie called MEAN MOTHER.
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (US - 1977) No director credited (Geza von Radvanyi, Al Adamson). No writer credited (Fred Denger, Geza von Radvanyi, Al Adamson). Cast: John Kitzmiller, Herbert Lom, Olive Moorefield, Mary Ann Jenson, Prentiss Moulden, Erwin Fuller, Jean Clark, Biff Yeager, J.C. Welles, Chuck Welles, Vincent Isaac, Marilyn Joi, O.W. Fischer, Gertraud Mittermayr, Catana Cayetano, Charles Fawcett, Vilma Degischer, Thomas Fritsch, Bibi Jelinek, Harold Bradley, Aziz Saad, George Goodman. (R, 98 mins) Speaking of Bond actors utterly oblivious to their presence in an Al Adamson movie, John Kitzmiller probably would've been shocked to find himself starring in the director's 1977 version of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, especially since he died in 1965. Best known as Quarrel, the islander who helps 007 get to Crab Key in 1962's DR. NO, Kitzmiller was born in Battle Creek, MI in 1913 and joined the US Army after graduating with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Michigan. He was stationed in Italy during WWII and just stayed there when the war ended. He fell into acting after a chance encounter with a young Carlo Ponti, which led to him becoming a regular presence in postwar Italian neo-realist films, including one of the lead roles in Federico Fellini's 1950 directing debut VARIETY LIGHTS. He worked all over Europe, even winning the Best Actor award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival for the Yugoslavian war drama VALLEY OF PEACE. It didn't lead to bigger and better roles--being a black actor in Europe, Kitzmiller found his options were limited, so he usually ended up playing a variety of soldiers, servants, or jazz musicians, and as time went on, he fell into depression and alcoholism. But in 1964, he landed the starring role in UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, a prestigious, three-hour West German/French/Italian/Yugoslavian adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's legendary 1852 novel. As Uncle Tom, Kitzmiller headed an international cast that included Herbert Lom as Simon Legree, German-based American singer Olive Moorefield as Cassy, and other respected European actors like O.W. Fischer, Mylene Demongeot, Eleonora Rossi Drago, Charles Fawcett, and Juliette Greco. It was directed by Hungarian filmmaker Geza von Radvanyi, best known for the 1958 version of MADCHEN IN UNIFORM. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN won acclaim in Europe when it premiered in West Germany in April 1965, but it still didn't provide a career bump for Kitzmiller: the actor died two months before the film's release, succumbing to cirrhosis of the liver at just 51.
Poster for the 1965 German version
The German-language UNCLE TOM'S CABIN was a tough sell in the US, where it wouldn't appear until 1969, when distributor/showman Kroger Babb released a version cut by nearly an hour and dubbed in English (Lom's voice isn't heard in the shorter US cut, though he is speaking German in the original version). It wasn't a hit, but Babb kept it in circulation, even re-releasing it in 1975 as CASSY. In 1976, a financially-strapped Babb sold his 1969 re-edit of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN to Adamson and Sam Sherman's Independent-International and, as usual, Sherman had a brilliant idea: relaunch the film to capitalize on the phenomenal success of the TV miniseries ROOTS, and to make it even more marketable, have Adamson spice it up with some salacious sex and violence to pull in the MANDINGO and DRUM crowd. Adamson cut about 40 minutes out of the already-shortened 1969 re-edit, and added a new subplot about a Legree slave named Napoleon. In the original 1965 film, Napoleon (Aziz Saad) escapes by jumping off a steamship and swimming away but is killed by an alligator. In Adamson's version, Napoleon manages to make it to land, where he's suddenly played by a different actor (Prentiss Moulden) and finds refuge at a nearly abandoned plantation where young spinster Melissa (Mary Ann Jenson) is all by her lonesome and very horny. Of course, she seduces Napoleon, allowing Adamson to give us a couple of prolonged, grinding sex scenes. Fearing his presence would put Melissa in jeopardy, Napoleon leaves her but is caught by three Legree goons (among them Adamson regular Biff Yeager), who proceed to strip him, gang-rape him (why not rip off DELIVERANCE while we're at it?), tie him to a tree, and pour boiling tar all over him until he dies.
Adamson cuts back to the 1965 scenes, but the story has been so chopped up, so many actors have been cut entirely (Rossi Drago, Demongeot, and Greco are nowhere to be seen in Adamson's version), and so many characters and relationships obliterated by hacking away entire sequences at random that there's no narrative to speak of whatsoever. But really, that's not why Sherman had Adamson restructure von Radvanyi's film anyway. Adamson semi-regular and MEAN MOTHER addition Marilyn Joi (best known as Cleopatra Schwartz in KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE) is on-hand at the beginning as a slave's daughter who tries to run away and gets raped by one of Legree's men, who taunts her father with "Hey, boy! I'm gonna fuck your daughter!" Those same three Legree guys in the new footage also fear contracting a venereal disease from raping Napoleon, but one quips "Can't be any worse than what we got from that sheep!," a line that one can only assume was in Beecher Stowe's first rough draft. They also wind up castrated by the first rape victim's father and two other slaves as the movie comes to an abrupt end, completely abandoning the characters who are actually in UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Adamson's new footage is trashy and tasteless, and the Napoleon/Melissa sex scenes are barely above stag-quality in production value and execution. Also, having none of the technical crew credited (no director, no writers, etc), along with the use of "Albert Victor" on MEAN MOTHER really begs the question "How utterly disreputable must a movie be for Al Fucking Adamson to leave his name off of it?"
John Kitzmiller (1913-1965)
The added skin doesn't quite gel with the rest of the film which, despite the sloppy dubbing overseen by Babb, is clearly a prestige project that had some money and effort put into it. The 1977 composite released by Independent-International, included in Severin's epic 14-disc, 32-film Adamson box set on the same disc as the aforementioned MEAN MOTHER (because physical media is dead), actually played in theaters and at drive-ins across America (and they re-released this cut again in 1979 under the unlikely title WHITE TRASH WOMAN), so it's possible Herbert Lom, then enjoying a bit of a career upswing thanks to his exemplary work as twitchy Inspector Clouseau foil Dreyfus in the rebooted PINK PANTHER franchise, knew he somehow ended up in a crummy Al Adamson movie. Poor John Kitzmiller definitely did not, and he never would've imagined starring in a sleazy, grindhouse T&A revamp of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 12 years after his death, let alone WHITE TRASH WOMAN two years after that.
Al Adamson's revamp of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
opening in Toledo, OH on 3/11/1977
DORIAN GRAY aka THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY (Italy/West Germany - 1970) Directed by Massimo Dallamano. Written by Marcello Coscia and Massimo Dallamano. Cast: Helmut Berger, Richard Todd, Herbert Lom, Marie Liljedahl, Margaret Lee, Maria Rohm, Beryl Cunningham, Isa Miranda, Eleonora Rossi Drago, Renato Romano, Stewart Black, Giancarlo Badessi, Bobby Rhodes. (Unrated, 101 mins) Calling itself "a modern allegory based on the work of Oscar Wilde," DORIAN GRAY is an adaptation of Wilde's scandalous 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, updated to the mod, swinging London of its present day 1970. The shift to a then-contemporary setting seems gimmicky, especially with its protagonist becoming a cover-boy centerfold in a gay nudie mag and seen in some garish outfits that Austin Powers wouldn't be caught dead in, but more importantly, it helps allow the film to go to places forbidden in the era of the prestigious 1945 version from MGM. Produced by the well-traveled Harry Alan Towers, who never found a public domain source novel he didn't love, the film is explicit and exploitative, but it's also surprisingly faithful to both Wilde's novel and the 1945 film, and with its supporting cast comprised largely of Towers stock company regulars, it feels very much like a high-end, Towers-produced Jess Franco film of the era, such as VENUS IN FURS, COUNT DRACULA, or THE BLOODY JUDGE. But it's directed by Massimo Dallamano, a veteran cinematographer (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE) who would soon cement his place in Eurocult history with the 1972 giallo/krimi hybrid WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? Dallamano is a much more disciplined filmmaker than Franco, and while he doesn't shy away from numerous gratuitous sex scenes, they're handled with a certain degree of eroticism that avoids the inevitable erratically-focused crotch-zooms that Franco would've offered.
DORIAN GRAY was also a showcase for Helmut Berger in the title role, fresh off his star-making turn in Luchino Visconti's controversial, X-rated 1969 film THE DAMNED. Openly bisexual and known for his many conquests and indulgent playboy lifestyle, Berger was involved with the 35-years-older Visconti from 1964 until the director's death in 1976, and while he starred in several other Visconti films like 1973's LUDWIG and 1974's CONVERSATION PIECE, his influence was apparent and his presence felt even when he wasn't in one, such as 1971's DEATH IN VENICE, where Dirk Bogarde's aging composer grows obsessed with the "stunning beauty" of a 14-year-old boy. As he got older, Visconti's films exhibited a fixation on the beauty of youth and the inevitable decay brought by age. Like Visconti, DORIAN GRAY is obsessed with Berger, the camera lingering all over him, its infatuation with him rivaled only by the salivating attention paid to him by every character, female and male, throwing themselves at Dorian. Wilde's novel wasn't exactly subtle in its homoeroticism, and the subtext may have been there between the lines in 1945, but DORIAN GRAY, while not shying away from gratuitous female nudity, fully embraces the gay aspects of Wilde. Presumably, some of the more salacious material was toned down for AIP's US release, which was cut from 101 minutes to 93, but considering the time of its production, the homosexual element of DORIAN GRAY, even with more implied than actually shown, was unusual territory for Towers. The veteran producer obviously saw some of Berger's work with Visconti and, along with Dallamano, co-opted those recurring themes into a film that's still "exploitation" at the end of the day, but nevertheless a bit more classy than what Towers was making with Franco at the time.
Dorian starts out as just a good-looking, 21-year-old Londoner with a penchant for velvet scarves and tight jeans, introduced posing for a portrait painted by his artist friend Basil Hallward (Richard Todd), an older man clearly nursing an unspoken attraction.The finished work haunts Dorian, who says aloud that he'd sell his soul to maintain the perfect vision of beauty captured on the canvas. Dorian falls hard for virginal actress Sybil Vane (Marie Liljedahl, from Franco's EUGENIE: THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION), but is inspired to explore his wild side after a chance meeting where Basil introduces him to wealthy art enthusiast, nobleman, and all-around perv Sir Henry Wotton (Herbert Lom) and his nymphomaniac sister Gwendolyn (Margaret Lee). The hedonistic siblings are both instantly infatuated with Dorian, persistent in persuading him to ditch Sybil, even openly mocking her limited acting abilities when Dorian drags them all to see her performance of Romeo and Juliet at a tiny, sparsely-attended theater. Sir Henry convinces Dorian to indulge in every whim and desire while he's young, before time turns him into "an old and hideous puppet" reflecting on his long-gone days of carefree youth. Dorian takes Sir Henry's advice and runs with it, bedding both Gwendolyn and elderly society matron Mrs. Ruxton (Isa Miranda) before a fight with Sybil ends their relationship. He plans on reconciling until Sir Henry almost joyously informs him that Sybil was so distraught over Dorian leaving her that she committed suicide. Sir Henry consoles his grieving young friend with these comforting words of sympathy like a devil on his shoulder: "Everything is yours. Take it. Enjoy it."
And boy, does he. And with every debauched, perverse transgression--diving into S&M with Gwendolyn and sleeping with wealthy Esther Clouston (Eleonora Rossi Drago) before encouraging them to explore one another; a leering seduction by Sir Henry, who joins Dorian in the shower and lathers him up after helpfully picking up the young man's dropped bar of soap; seducing the new bride (Towers' wife Maria Rohm) of his friend Alan (Renato Romano) and forcing her to fellate him; and cruising the marina for men and picking up a stranger (DEMONS' Bobby Rhodes!) in a public restroom--Basil's portrait of Dorian, hidden in Dorian's attic, ages and grows more grotesque, reflecting both the years and the moral corruption and self-absorbed decadence that he's adopted as a lifestyle. The years go by, and as Sir Henry, Basil, and everyone age, Dorian looks the same and hasn't changed. This ultimately leads to murder, blackmail, and revenge, as Sybil's brother James (Stewart Black) enters the picture, following Dorian on his nightly prowls of houses of ill repute in the red-light district (including a gay bar subtly named "The Black Cock," where Dorian's a regular known by the patrons as "Sir Galahad"), sworn to avenge his sister's suicide after she was cruelly dumped many years ago.
For a sleazy Harry Alan Towers production, DORIAN GRAY is well-made and surprisingly engrossing, though it does bungle the time element. If we're to assume 1970 as a starting or ending point, with the passing of 20 years being a key element, then the characters here were either wearing hip-hugging bell-bottoms in 1950 or were still wearing hilariously dated mod, shagadelic clothing in "the future" of 1990. There's also an interesting but under-explored layer added to the story with Liljedahl playing a different character later in the film, instantly reminding Dorian of the dead Sybil, a development that owes more to Italian horror than Oscar Wilde. Better handled is a framing device involving a bloody murder where the identity of the victim is initially unclear but gives the film somewhat of a giallo vibe, not surprising given Dallamano's interest in the subgenre. Its scenes of sexuality go far but are tastefully handled, though an insane montage of Dorian's conquests on a yacht excursion, accompanied by some Edda dell'Orso-esque "La-la-la-la-la..." Eurolounge vocals, is a gift that never stops giving. DORIAN GRAY played US grindhouses and drive-ins in the fall of 1970 and well into 1971, and was in regular rotation on late-night TV in a version that had to be cut to shreds. It was released on Blu-ray and DVD by Raro in 2011 but was quickly recalled due to some technical glitches and re-released even though the transfer left much to be desired. In late 2018, Raro quietly unveiled a brand-new Blu-ray edition of DORIAN GRAY (because physical media is dead) with a new and much-improved transfer, under its European title THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY, and it's unquestionably the best it's ever looked, helping make the case that this is a forgotten gem worthy of rediscovery.
DORIAN GRAY opening in Toledo, OH on 6/2/1971, on an unlikely
drive-in double bill with AIP's G-rated WUTHERING HEIGHTS.
THE SECT aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER
(Italy - 1991; US release 1992) Directed by Michele Soavi. Written by Dario Argento, Giovanni Romoli and Michele Soavi. Cast: Kelly Curtis, Herbert Lom, Tomas Arana, Maria Angela Giordano, Michel Adatte, Carla Cassola, Angelina Maria Boeck, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Niels Gullov, Donald O'Brien, Yasmine Ussani. (Unrated, 117 mins) The second and final collaboration between director Michele Soavi and producer/co-writer Dario Argento (following 1989's THE CHURCH), THE SECT is finally out on Blu-ray in the US, where it's fallen into relative obscurity over the last quarter century since its VHS release as THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER. There was talk that Anchor Bay was planning to release THE SECT during the big Eurocult DVD explosion around 2000 or so, but it never materialized, possibly due to expensive music rights clearance issues with the prominent inclusion of America's "A Horse With No Name" over the opening credits and into the first scene. A visionary filmmaker with an eclectic group of mentors--he was an actor and a regular assistant to both Argento and Lucio Fulci, and he found an unexpected fan in Terry Gilliam, who saw his 1987 film STAGEFRIGHT at a European film festival and hired him to handle second unit on THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN--Soavi's films from 1987 to 1994 constitute the last gasp of greatness from the golden age of Italian horror. Things had been on the decline for years, with aging directors moving to TV, Fulci ailing and effectively retired, and Argento beginning the long, slow descent into mediocrity that's ongoing to this day. Soavi was supposed to be the savior of Italian horror, but its fate was sealed long before the health problems of Soavi's young son, born with a rare liver disease that he wasn't expected to beat, prompted the director to put his career on hold indefinitely following his 1994 masterpiece DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE, aka CEMETERY MAN, which is more or less the end of an era. By the time Soavi's son beat the odds and bounced back from what was considered a terminal illness, Italian horror was over aside from the occasional Argento disappointment, and Soavi found a home on Italian TV, where he remains a busy and in-demand hired gun to this day.
THE SECT is absolutely brilliant on a technical level. There's inspired visual flourishes and fluid and often tricky camera work that makes it a dazzling and colorful film to look at, but the script feels like a patchwork hodgepodge of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE WICKER MAN, with recycled Argento elements (particularly INFERNO, with its secret gateway to Hell and a murderous evil arising during lunar eclipse) and Soavi foreshadowing some DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE motifs to come, most notably a briefly reanimated corpse and the changing appearance of tiny figures in a snow globe on the heroine's bedside table. The film opens in southern California in 1970, when a group of free-spirited hippies are slaughtered by members of a cult ostensibly led by the very Charles Manson-like Damon (Tomas Arana), who quotes Rolling Stones lyrics and is revealed to be a middleman who answers to a wealthy, unseen figure in the back of a nearby parked limo who tells him to wait patiently, that his time will come, and it "may be years down the road." Cut to Frankfurt, Germany in 1991, as a young woman has her heart cut out by a deranged man (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), who is cornered by police in a train station and insists "They made me do it!" before grabbing a gun and blowing his brains out. A shabbily-dressed old man (the legendary Herbert Lom) is nearly run over by schoolteacher Miriam Kreisl (Kelly Curtis), who takes him to her house to get some rest. He dies the next morning after going through a door and finding a hidden basement beneath the house with a deep well with very blue water, leaving behind a shroud with his face outlined on it. Numerous other bizarre occurrences take place around Miriam: the mother of one of her students vanishes; her colleague Kathryn (Mariangela Giordano of BURIAL GROUND) is attacked by the shroud when it gets caught in a wind gust and promptly starts to behave in a possessed manner before being stabbed to death and coming back to life in the hospital; strange ribbon-like turquoise strands start appearing in Miriam's tap water; she finds a creepy woman wandering around in the basement; and she starts getting messages on her answering machine from the dead man, who is revealed to be Moebius Kelly, the leader of the Satanic cult and the man in the limo in the 1970 prologue. His plan is, of course, to use the innocent--and presumably virginal--Miriam as the vessel to deliver Satan reborn, as she faces the terrifying realization that almost everyone in her life--present and past--is part of a conspiracy to ensure that this happens.
It's a tough call, but THE SECT might be the straight-up strangest work in Argento's entire filmography. If it feels like it's pieces of several scripts stitched together, that's because it was. Soavi incorporated parts of a still-unfilmed script he wrote in the '80s titled THE WELL, while Argento is said to have had the biggest input in the 1970 prologue. While this wasn't a Steven Spielberg/Tobe Hooper, POLTERGEIST situation, Argento's paw prints are all over both THE SECT and THE CHURCH. As was the case with Lamberto Bava's two DEMONS films, producer/co-writer Argento was a constant presence on the set (look at any behind-the-scenes photo from DEMONS and Bava is standing there listening while Argento is pointing and appearing to give instructions), and it's been documented that Soavi was slightly frustrated by Argento's insistence on being involved in every aspect of THE CHURCH. Argento toned down the control-freak act and backed off Soavi a bit during the production of THE SECT, but his involvement is felt throughout, mostly from a recycling of ideas and images from INFERNO and, to a lesser extent, SUSPIRIA, so much so that one could arguably view THE SECT as an unofficial spinoff of the "Three Mothers" saga. Other bits obviously conceived by Soavi either foreshadow DELLAMORTE (the snow globe, the corpse of Kathryn coming back to life and attacking Miriam, the mythic elements of death and rebirth) or reference THE CHURCH, most notably the idea of a demonic sect operating in a secret underground location of a building that's a portal to hell (see also SUSPIRIA, INFERNO). It's very deliberately paced and even a tad overlong at just under two hours, and there's some moments that just don't work: the shroud attacking Kathryn is unintentionally hilarious; the constantly-invoked rabbit motif is overdone, especially the part where Miriam's apparently sect-controlled pet bunny watches TV and uses the remote control, resulting in a bunny reaction shot when it sees a magician (Soavi) pulling a rabbit out of a hat on a TV show; and a late-film sexual assault of Miriam by a demonic stork that crawls out of the basement well probably read a lot better on the page than it looks on the screen.
THE SECT is a flawed jumble of a film whose story is frequently an unwieldy mess, but it's so well-made and carefully crafted on a visual level, and so bizarre if looked at as a nightmarish fever dream that its lofty ambitions carry the weight and help it hit more often than it misses. The script really could've used one more draft and a final polish to tighten the plot a bit, but it mostly works. Lom, in what's probably his last great role, commands the screen as Moebius, and Arana makes the most of his limited screen time, with one memorable shot of the stoned Damon glaring into the camera as Soavi dissolves to a blazing sunset that's one of the most effective images of the filmmaker's career. Curtis, the eldest daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, is fine as the naive and almost childlike Miriam. Soavi settled on the actress after his first choice, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4 and 5 star Lisa Wilcox, turned him down when she found out she was pregnant. Curtis, two years older than Jamie Lee, never found the level of fame and success enjoyed by her younger sister, but she never really vigorously pursued it either. She worked as a stockbroker after graduating from college in the late '70s and into the early '80s before giving acting a shot when Jamie Lee got her a tiny part as one of Dan Aykroyd's former fiancee's friends in 1983's TRADING PLACES (she's wearing the blue headband in this clip). Other than THE SECT, her only starring role in a feature film was in an obscure 1987 German comedy called MAGIC STICKS. She had a few guest spots on TV shows like THE EQUALIZER, HUNTER, and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, but her most prominent role after THE SECT was as a regular on the 1996-99 UPN series THE SENTINEL, which she left after the first season. Curtis' last acting credit was a guest spot on a 1999 episode of JUDGING AMY, and from then on, she's been credited on several of her sister's films as her personal assistant.
TEN LITTLE INDIANS (Italy/West Germany/France/Spain - 1974) Directed by Peter Collinson. Written by Peter Welbeck (Harry Alan Towers). Cast: Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Richard Attenborough, Charles Aznavour, Stephane Audran, Gert Frobe, Herbert Lom, Maria Rohm, Adolfo Celi, Alberto de Mendoza, voice of Orson Welles. (PG, 98 mins) The second of three Harry Alan Towers adaptations of both Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None and her subsequent 1943 stage version, 1974's TEN LITTLE INDIANS has just resurfaced after decades of obscurity courtesy of Scorpion Releasing, and it's one of the more pleasantly surprising Blu-ray resurrections of the year. Like the 1965 and 1989 versions also produced by Towers, TLI '74 jettisons the bleak ending of Christie's novel in favor of the more relatively crowd-pleasing finale, and features an all-star cast of familiar faces being picked off one by one at an isolated location after a mysterious, unseen figure calling himself "U.N. Owen" (voiced here by Orson Welles) gathers them together and accuses each of a past crime they've successfully buried until now. The 1965 version, written by Towers under his screenwriting pseudonym "Peter Welbeck," was a box office success and Towers decided to remake it using the same script in 1974 after Paramount announced Sidney Lumet's glossy, star-powered MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, which gathered an amazing group of stars in support of Albert Finney as legendary detective Hercule Poirot. In response, Towers, one of the masters of the international co-production (TLI '74 was a deal brokered with Italian, German, French, and Spanish production companies), assembled a roster of the biggest names he could buy (and his wife Maria Rohm) in a cast headed by Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer that also boasted two iconic former Bond villains (GOLDFINGER's Gert Frobe and THUNDERBALL's Adolfo Celi), and beat ORIENT EXPRESS to European screens by two months in September 1974. As was the case with productions involving so many different countries, variant versions with were prepared for each market, with the Spanish version adding a prologue showing the characters at the airport as well as a subplot featuring Spanish actress Teresa Gimpera and Italian actor Rik Battaglia. The prologue as well as the subplot were cut from Avco Embassy's belated US release in April 1975 (the version on the Scorpion Blu-ray), though Gimpera and Battaglia inexplicably remain listed in the opening credits.
Towers (1920-2009) was known as an exploitation huckster and there's certainly no disputing that reputation, especially in the late '80 when he partnered with Cannon and produced a slew of films in apartheid-era South Africa for Golan-Globus and others (including the 1989 TEN LITTLE INDIANS as well as several late '80s B-movies with Reed, including SKELETON COAST, DRAGONARD, GOR, CAPTIVE RAGE, and THE HOUSE OF USHER). He later allied himself with some shady investors from the Russian mob on a pair of dire, simultaneously-shot Harry Palmer throwback thrillers (1995's BULLET TO BEIJING and 1996's MIDNIGHT IN ST. PETERSBURG) that left star Michael Caine in such a depressed state that he was seriously ready to give up acting altogether. In an amusing Towers anecdote recounted in his second memoir One Lucky Bastard, Roger Moore tells of frequent Towers star Herbert Lom (who's in both the 1974 and 1989 versions of TEN LITTLE INDIANS) declining an offer to appear in the two Russia-lensed Harry Palmer movies with Caine. According to Moore, Lom said Towers tried to woo him with the promise of an "exciting" chance to film in areas where no film crews had gone before. Towers was evasive about the exact location and Lom, probably knowing Towers all too well, kept pressing him and had to repeatedly ask "Well, where is it?" before Towers finally, hesitantly replied "Um...Chernobyl." In the early 2000s, in the profitable world of DTV, Towers was one of the first producers to set up shop in Eastern Europe and exploit the cost-cutting advantages of shooting in Romania and Bulgaria, practices that are still used to this day and provide homes-away-from-home for the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, and former movie star Steven Seagal.
Despite his well-documented penchant for ruses and chicanery, Tower$ had a knack for drawing big names to dubious projects and his 1967-1970 partnership with Jess Franco yielded some of the cult Spanish director's most ambitious and professional-looking work (1969's JUSTINE and VENUS IN FURS and 1970's COUNT DRACULA and THE BLOODY JUDGE being the standouts). Towers was capable of backing some fairly lavish, respectable productions like 1965's THE FACE OF FU MANCHU and its first two sequels and the 1965 version of TEN LITTLE INDIANS, directed by longtime David Lean assistant George Pollock, has an air of class to it, with a fine cast headed by Hugh O'Brian and doomed GOLDFINGER Bond girl Shirley Eaton, and Christopher Lee providing the voice of U.N. Owen. There's also a classier-than-usual--for Towers--aura surrounding the 1974 TEN LITTLE INDIANS as well. Directed by British filmmaker Peter Collinson (THE ITALIAN JOB, OPEN SEASON), TLI '74 benefits greatly from Towers' securing one of the most unusual and striking locations he could find: the Shah Abbas Hotel in Isfahan, Iran, just a few years prior to the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution against the Shah. An isolated location is key to any adaptation of And Then There Were None, but the Shah Abbas (now known as the Abbasi Hotel, and not exactly located in the middle of nowhere; the desolate exteriors around the hotel were actually shot in the desert of Almeria, Spain, showcased prominently in many a spaghetti western), a luxury hotel built over 300 years ago, becomes a character itself as Collinson has the camera prowl the ornate and seemingly endless hallways and expansive lobbies and lounge areas and one of the most memorable movie staircases you'll ever see. It's almost like a Middle East Overlook Hotel (the cast and crew actually stayed at the Shah Abbas as the production more or less took over the hotel for the shoot), and while it frequently comes close to achieving that same feeling of tension and isolation in THE SHINING, it could've been even better had Garrett Brown's Steadicam been available in 1974.
A shot of the staircase from the film
A recent photo of the staircase from the Abbasi Hotel web site
Stylistically, TLI '74 is very much a product of its time, with Collinson staging the murders in a very giallo-style fashion, often taking full advantage of every bit of the widescreen frame. Two murders in particular--Elsa (Rohm) and General Salve (Celi)--are staged with an almost Dario Argento-like, logic-be-damned panache, with Salve's even foreshadowing the brutal stabbing death presented by Argento as a shadow on the wall in the opening scene of the following year's DEEP RED. Indeed, if Argento or Sergio Martino ever made a 1970s Agatha Christie adaptation, it would probably look a lot like what Collinson accomplished with TEN LITTLE INDIANS. The story yields little surprises if you've seen any other of Towers' takes on the project or Rene Clair's 1945 classic AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, but TLI '74 stands out with its stylish murders, a persistent, throbbing score by longtime Ennio Morricone associate Bruno Nicolai, and the visually stunning Shah Abbas Hotel, an expansive location that gives its ten victims nowhere to hide, yet still feels claustrophobic amidst its vastness. Even if you're familiar with the story, this well-crafted take on TEN LITTLE INDIANS is beautifully shot by cinematographer Fernando Arribas (DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT, DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, COMIN' AT YA) and is a neglected and forgotten gem that's worthy of rediscovery. If you're intrigued by the idea of Agatha Christie gone giallo, you'll find this to be the best and most interesting version of Towers' three takes on the story.
COUNT DRACULA (Italy/Spain/West Germany - 1970) Directed by Jess Franco. Written by Augusto Finocchi. Cast: Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, Maria Rohm, Fred Williams, Soledad Miranda, Jack Taylor, Paul Muller, Franco Castellani, Jesus Puente, Jeannine Mestre, Emma Cohen, Jess Franco, Colette Giacobine. (Unrated, 97 mins)
He seems more at peace with it now, but for many years, Sir Christopher Lee openly despised his reputation as a horror icon, specifically his inextricable link with Dracula. Right on the heels of playing Frankenstein's monster in Hammer Films' THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957, 36-year-old Lee had his breakout role in the studio's HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), and while Dracula films only make up a tiny percentage of the now 92-year-old actor's nearly 300 credits over a storied and versatile career that's still trucking along in its eighth decade, it's indeed Dracula that will always be the first thing that comes to mind upon hearing the name "Christopher Lee." After HORROR OF DRACULA established Lee as a bona fide horror star, it didn't take long for him to spoof that image in the 1959 Italian comedy UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, but he didn't actually reprise his Dracula role in Hammer's official series until 1965's DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS. That was followed by 1968's DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE and two films in 1970: TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA and SCARS OF DRACULA. Lee was growing disillusioned with Hammer's Dracula films and the writers' refusal to stick to Bram Stoker's novel, instead concocting what Lee thought were absurd ideas that had nothing to do with Stoker's vision of the character. After resurrecting Dracula in mod, swinging London with 1972's DRACULA A.D. 1972 and 1973's THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, which had Dracula masquerading as a wealthy real estate mogul attempting to unleash a deadly virus upon the world, Lee reached his breaking point. By this time, he was openly bashing Hammer and the DRACULA films to the press and when Hammer announced a co-production deal with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers for THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES, which would pit Dracula against a team of Bruce Lee-inspired kung-fu fighters, Lee refused to have anything to do with it and was replaced by a bland and ineffective John Forbes-Robertson. The film was eventually released in the US as THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, and marked the end of Hammer's DRACULA series.
Before his frustration reached critical mass, Lee did enjoy spoofing his Dracula image in cameos in the Peter Sellers-Ringo Starr film THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (1969) and in the Sammy Davis Jr-Peter Lawford post-Rat Pack comedy ONE MORE TIME (1970), the latter at the personal request of horror aficionado and Lee superfan Davis. Even after his acrimonious departure from Hammer's series, Lee would play Dracula one last time in the 1976 French comedy DRACULA AND SON, directed by Eduardo Molinaro, who would go on to make the 1978 smash LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. In addition to appearing in two Hammer DRACULAs in 1970, Lee also made a Dracula film outside of the studio, almost as an open act of rebellion. Lee had done several films with producer Harry Alan Towers and Spanish exploitation legend Jess Franco in the preceding few years, including five FU MANCHU films (Franco directed the final two) as well as the softcore porn outing EUGENIE: THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970), a film in which Lee has maintained the racier elements were added after his scenes were shot. Lee was upset with Franco and Towers, but when they offered him a chance to star in a Dracula adaptation with the promise to remain faithful to Stoker's novel, the disgruntled actor couldn't resist.
To put it in era-appropriate terms, Lee making COUNT DRACULA in 1970 is akin to Sean Connery making a 007 film for a rival studio while still starring in the official Bond series. Shot in Barcelona, COUNT DRACULA is a low-key affair with a script (credited to Augusto Finocchi in the print on Dark Sky's DVD, though Franco and Towers worked on it, and the US ads gave sole writing credit to Towers, under his screenwriting pseudonym "Peter Welbeck") that takes whole chunks of dialogue directly from Stoker's novel. Dracula is even introduced as an old man who gets progressively younger as the film proceeds and he gets a fresh supply of new blood from his victims. Intending to sell his decaying residence, an aged Dracula is visited at his castle by young lawyer Jonathan Harker (German actor Fred Williams). Dracula promptly puts the bite on Harker, who escapes from the castle and is transported back to a sanitarium in London, where he's treated by Dr. Seward (Paul Muller). His situation attracts the attention of clinic head Dr. Van Helsing (Herbert Lom) as a spry and younger-looking Dracula has followed Harker back to London to buy a neighboring castle so he can stalk and vampirize his fiancee Mina (Towers' wife Maria Rohm) and her friend Lucy (Franco muse Soledad Miranda). Dracula has also established a psychic hold on crazed asylum inmate Renfield (Klaus Kinski), who lost his mind after his family had a fateful encounter with the vampire years earlier.
While staying generally faithful to Stoker in spirit, COUNT DRACULA takes some liberties in its execution, especially in the way it takes elements of the book's Van Helsing's backstory and transfers them over to Renfield. The film is very slowly-paced and, like most Franco efforts, budget-deprived. Many of the sets look like they belong in a high school play, with some interiors appearing ready to topple over at any second. At times, the cheap, sparse look of Dracula's castle adds to the sense of gloomy despair looming over the elderly vampire (a happy accident I'm sure, given Franco's track record). Elsewhere, dangling rubber bats are laughably phony-looking, the camera occasionally doesn't seem to be pointed in the right direction, and the day-for-night work is atrocious, with one scene taking place at night when it's obvious it was shot in the middle of a bright, sunny day. Lee underplays it for the most part, but you can see his commitment, especially in one epic monologue to Harker early on that's delivered directly into the camera in a way that only Lee can. Lee absolutely nails this long sequence ("This was a Dracula indeed!") and it ranks with the finest acting of his career.
Franco did some of his most professional work during his years with Towers, a veteran exploitation huckster who was great at corralling money to lure name actors who maybe weren't at their pinnacle of their career (like a visibly drunk Jack Palance in Franco's 1969 De Sade chronicle JUSTINE) or were just cool with whatever as long as the check cleared (Lee and Lom, the latter having just appeared in Franco's sleazy 1969 women-in-prison classic 99 WOMEN and would continue slumming in Eurotrash until Blake Edwards rescued him to reprise his role as the perpetually-flustered Dreyfus when he restarted the PINK PANTHER franchise in 1975). Towers managed to get Lee, Lom, and Kinski together for COUNT DRACULA, but the three headliners are never seen together and were never on the set with one another. Franco leaves a lot of the plot's heavy lifting to Harker and Lucy's fiance Quincy Morris (played by American expat and Franco regular Jack Taylor), while Lee, Lom, and Kinski only worked on the film for a few days each. Dracula and Van Helsing's sole scene together is shot in a way that makes it quite apparent Lee and Lom were not there at the same time. It's worth noting that there is the possibility that Dracula and Van Helsing were meant to interact more than they do--Lom was a last-minute replacement after Vincent Price backed out just before shooting began. Perhaps his hasty casting and limited availability necessitated changes, which may explain why Van Helsing doesn't even take part in the final ambush of Dracula, instead sending Harker and Morris to deal with it after suffering a stroke from which he's apparently recovered two scenes later. Kinski's Renfield never leaves his asylum cell, where he makes funny noises, smears food on the walls, and eats flies, which may have just been Franco filming Kinski's lunch break. As an actor, Kinski only interacts with Muller, Franco Castellani (as an abusive guard) and, for one scene, Rohm, who's said that Kinski initially refused to appear in a Dracula movie and Towers had to convince him that his scenes were for another project. According to legend (and Rohm, who perhaps embellishes somewhat but it's still amusing and, considering Kinski's volatile personality, quite plausible) when Renfield attempts to choke Mina, Kinski had his hands around her neck and whispered "Maria, I think that husband of yours has me in a fucking Dracula film." Interestingly, Kinski would star in two Dracula adaptation years later, with Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE (1979) and its unofficial sequel, NOSFERATU IN VENICE (1988).
Even with its flaws and cut corners, COUNT DRACULA is an unusually ambitious project for Franco and Towers, and one that makes a good pairing with the same year's THE BLOODY JUDGE, released in the US in 1972 as the misleading NIGHT OF THE BLOOD MONSTER (it would be 1973 before COUNT DRACULA managed to find a US distributor). THE BLOODY JUDGE is obviously inspired by Michael Reeves' WITCHFINDER GENERAL, itself ripped off in 1969 with the West German tongue-ripper MARK OF THE DEVIL, starring (wait for it) Herbert Lom, but like COUNT DRACULA, it features one of Lee's best performances as puritanical Judge Jeffreys, yet another in a long line of impotent, sexually-frustrated witchfinders taking their penile inadequacy issues out on accused witches and assorted wenches, harlots, and other undesirables of dubious moral standing. Both films catch Franco just before 27-year-old Soledad Miranda's tragic death in a car accident would, for better or worse, completely alter the course of his career. Franco could hold his own as a journeyman gun-for-hire, but he was starting to explore his auteur impulses, which usually meant plotless fever dreams and constant crotch-zooms, an artistic shift that would reach its apex when he met his next muse and eventual life partner Lina Romay. There's a fine line between auteur and perv, and as Franco aged into the emeritus raconteur phase of his career in the years before his death in 2013, his work was reconsidered as that of a legitimate trail-blazer and cinematic genius. I'm not entirely onboard with that--there's some interesting films there in his post-Towers dive into horror erotica, but a large chunk of it is clearly the work of an often sloppy filmmaker who just had a fond appreciation for naked women. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
