Dracula Vs. Frankenstein (1970) + Jesse
James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966) + She Freak (1967/Cheezy Flicks DVDs)
Picture:
C-/C-/C Sound: C- Extras: C- Films: D/D/C
Sometimes
you have to look at a group of obscure films in a genre to show where the genre
was at a certain time or place. Take the
Horror genre for example. Its last great
golden period started in 1960 with Hitchcock’s Psycho and Powell’s Peeping
Tom as The Hammer Studios kicked into high gear. By the end of the decade, hundreds of
independent productions were being made, all with interesting results. To show this, we look at two of the worst
Horror films ever made and one that was intelligently ambitious.
Al
Adamson’s Dracula Vs. Frankenstein
(1970) is not only considered one of the worst films with either character, but
one of the worst films ever made, Lon Chaney Jr. does what is his final film
with B-movie survivor J. Carroll Naish and Anthony Eisley, but it is a flat
bore. In addition, The Monster looks
like they too a Gummy Bear face and squished it for an hour, while our vampire
count seems like a Frank Zappa fan with a bad accent who nobody told the party
was over to. That it got made goes to
show how much affection both characters had at this point. Too bad this film did not know what to do
with them.
William
Beaudine turns out a howler about as bad with Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s
Daughter (1966) showing the worst possible way to mix Horror and
Westerns. In this one, James (John
Lupton) escapes capture from yet another successful robbery, but instead of
taking up with a friendly home, forcing himself into a moral one or finding a
secret, private, empty space, he finds the castle
of Dr. Frankenstein’s surviving sibling.
From there, it gets worse, believe it or not, but at least The Monster
here is more convincing by default than the last outing. The Western would be dead in ten years.
Byron
Mabe’s She Freak (1967) wants to be
the MGM classic Freaks crossed with
a Twilight Zone episode as a small
town waitress becomes interested in a circus that comes to town, but little
does she know it will change her life forever.
The film has loose acting, a free-style narrative and some interesting
moments. I also liked the look of the
film, but its twist ending does not have the payoff it could have, yet I found
this somewhat atmospheric and at least ambitious. In addition, it tries to be intelligent in
smart, cinematic ways, so it deserves to be thought of as more than just
another silly genre work.
The full color 1.33 X 1 filmed image in all three
cases is from rough transfers and prints, but it is hard to tell if some of the
copies are the full frame shot or prints with the sides cut off. Freak
has the best color easily. The PCM 2.0
16/48 Mono in all cases is rough and even brittle, as is typical for these old
transfers and films, plus you can hear the limits of the low-budget
recording. Extras in all cases include
previews for other Cheezy Flicks releases and classic Intermission shorts,
while Dracula adds its original
trailer.
- Nicholas
Sheffo
