Dracula vs. Frankenstein feels like the most Independent-International movie there is. I have no other way to explain why this movie seems like it came from another reality. It has Dr. Durea (J. Carrol Naish, in his last film), the last descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, killing women with his assistant Groton (Lon Chaney Jr., in his next-to-last movie) to try to concoct an elixir that will fix his legs and his henchman’s simple brain. They’re visited by Dracula (Zandor Vorkov, really Raphael Peter Engel, given that name by Forrest J. Ackerman and someone who once ran record stores; according to this interview in Fangoria, he’s wearing a rental cape that was once used by Bela Lugosi) who wants them to finish their cocktail so that it can allow him to walk in the daytime which he feels will make him finally able to take over the world.

The doctor and his assistant decide to set up their lab — using the Kenneth Strickfaden equipment from the Universal films — in a haunted house known as the Creature Emporium. They keep killing women while Dracula is sent after the man who put the doctor in a wheelchair, Beaumont (Forrest J. Ackerman). A biker named Rico (Russ Tamblyn) gets involved, and Dracula gets his blood hot over a showgirl by the name of Judith Fontaine (Regina Carroll).

I nearly forgot! Dracula also has the corpse of the Frankenstein Monster, which he took from Oakmoor Cemetery. He’s played by both John Bloom and Shelley Weiss. The goal is to bring that creature back to life as well. Graydon Clark is in here as The Strange, a hippie leader, and of course, the kids all drop acid.

Judith also learns that the doctor has kept her sister Joanie (Maria Lease) and her friend Samantha (Anne Morrell) nude and trapped between life and death. He’s using a special enzyme in their plasma that comes from the fear before death to create his magical elixir so that he can heal his leg, fix his quiet friend and help Dracula. His hypothesis is that if Judith watches Mike (Anthony Eisley), a hippie who has fallen for her and she for him, die, then the enzyme in her blood will be strong enough to complete his work. He sends Grazbo the dwarf (Angelo Rossitto) and Groton after them, but the little guy falls through a trapdoor and onto an axe, Groton gets shot by the cops, and he himself falls onto a guillotine, which cuts his head off.

But oh, Mike, you aren’t safe. Dracula attempts to take Judith, and when our hero tries to save her, the vampire blasts him with his ring and turns him into ashes. Now, the fanged Frank Zappa lookalike tries to drink her blood in a desecrated church, but the Frankenstein Monster falls in love, too and fights Dracula. This sounds like the kind of story an elementary student would make up in class when they should be studying, and that’s why I love it. Dracula rips off the creature’s arms and head, but gets burned by the sunlight.

Lon Chaney Jr. was in bad shape during this, lying down between takes and barely able to speak, as he could be heard. He would speak to Adamson’s father and say things like, “You and I are the only two left. They’re all gone. I want to die now. There’s nothing left for me; I just want to die.”

What makes me love this even more is the theory that this was a sequel to Satan’s Sadists, with Russ Tamblyn and the other bikers from that film coming back. Sam Sherman decided to turn it into a horror film and much of the biker footage was cut as a result. Not all of the biker footage could be cut, which is why Tamblyn and his biker gang wander in and out of the movie.

This movie has one of my favorite lines of all time, as Dracula hypnotizes Forrest and takes him to his doom. He gives him directions as he speaks, and I wonder, why doesn’t he just have him drive, as he’s already taken over his will? He says, “I am known as the Count of Darkness, the Lord of the Manor of Carpathia. Turn here.”

If any film earned being a video nasty, it would be this one, a movie that has a man who was abused as a child growing up to be a serial killer obsessed with burning people alive. There is no one to root for or cheer for, only mayhem, malice and murder.

In short, the kind of movie that Gene Siskel would have a conniption over.

When Donald (Dan Grimaldi, a math professor who also played Philly and Patsy Parisi on The Sopranos) was a kid, his mother would use a stove to burn the evil out of him. Now fully grown, he seeks out women that remind him of her and kills them with a flamethrower in relentlessly graphic detail.

While the killer tries to confess his sins, he can’t stop. Even a simple double date ends with him smashing a candle over a woman’s head. And get this, it even has an ending very similar to Maniac, another movie that offers no easy answers or way out.

This is also a definite disco slasher. A truly mean spirited blast of sheer degeneracy — and therefore everything wonderful about the slasher form — Don’t Go In the House has songs like “Boogie Lightning,” “Dancin’ Close to You,” “Straight Ahead” and “Late Night Surrender” playing in between moments of women being set ablaze and a mother rotting somewhere in a house that has an impossibly huge torture chamber in the basement.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy the blu ray from Severin.

Dr. Death (John Considine) is a thousand-year-old magician who can transfer souls from one body to another. He keeps himself alive by jumping from one body to the next, and oh yeah — he has acid blood. I mean, sure, I’m down with that.

Sadly, this never got a sequel, as that was the plan. The main story is about Fred Saunders (Barry Coe), whose wife has just died and promised to return from the other side. After discovering that each spiritualist is a carny liar, he meets Doctor Death, who truly can bring the dead back from the grave. Of course, he’s also an absolute maniac.

One of the film’s financiers was Barry Gordy, who got to direct a scene. It’s also the last screen appearance of Moe Howard and has horror host Larry “Seymour” Vincent as a killer.

Consider this a 1973 TV movie that played theaters and drive-ins. It’s low budget, but groovy as it gets. I want to live in the world of this movie so badly. I really wish they’d made ten of these movies. “Enter that body!” says Doctor Death. Sure, whatever you want.

Dillinger, Bonnie, Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Ma Barker are the Doberman Gang, six Dobermans who join the gang of Eddie Newton (Byron Mabe), Sammy (Simmy Bow), June (Julie Parrish) and former Air Force dog trainer Barney Greer (Hal Reed). Oh yes — there’s also a bulldog named J. Edgar.

Eddie and June have been a couple, but she soon sees that he could throw her away at any time. She starts getting close to Barney, who soon learns that this is a criminal plan to train these dogs. He’s told that he’ll be killed if he tries to get away, so he works with them in the hopes that he can save the dogs and June. But he soon has second thoughts when he learns that the dogs will be killed.

Good boys. J. Edgar gets them to run off with the money. The bad news is that one of the dogs was hit by a car, and I could have done without that part. Except that in the sequel, The Daring Dobermans, that dog is fine. Whew.

There are also two more movies in the series, The Amazing Dobermans and Alex and the Doberman Gang.

I didn’t have to worry so much, as this was the first movie to have the “No Animals Were Harmed” onscreen credit from the American Humane Association.

This was directed by Byron Ross Chudnow and written by Louis Garfinkle, who also wrote I Bury the Living, Face of Fire, The Hellbenders, Little Cigars and The Deer Hunter—yeah, I know, wow—and Frank Ray Perilli, who wrote Mansion of the Doomed, the Michael Pataki adult Cinderella, End of the World, Dracula’s Dog, the adult Fairy Tales, Laserblast, The Best of Sex and Violence and co-wrote Alligator with John Sayles.

Dimension Pictures played this as a double feature with The Twilight People. I love that!

Image from Mike’s Take On the Movies.

Directed by Lee Frost, who wrote the script with Wed Bishop, this starts with Tom Eldridge (Mark Miller) running into trouble with the law, thanks to running moonshine. The law being Sheriff Marsh (Christopher George!) and Deputy Frank (Bishop), who screws up and shoots the man and as a result, his daughters Dixie (Jane Anne Johnstone) and Patsy (Kathy McHaley) lose the farm to banker Charlie White (R.G. Armstrong). And there’s also crime boss Dade McCrutchen (Stanley Adams) to deal with. Luckily, they know Mack (Warren Oates), a racer who can help them get the revenge they need.

Somehow, Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley were never in a film before or after this, which surprises me. They’re pretty good in it and actually own most of the film, as Oates is in it for like ten minutes. And if you’re looking for that secret Steve McQueen cameo, good luck. He has a motorcycle helmet on. Supposedly, he hadn’t been in a movie for some time, was bored and showed up to be in the dirt bike racing scene.

The soundtrack — Duane Eddy played on it — and the stunts are the reason to watch this one. It’s very proto-Dukes of Hazzard as the girls play Robin Hood, stealing from the crooks to give to the poor. There’s also a crook getting blown up real good while on the toilet, which is something I’d like to see more of.

Frost also made The Thing With Two Heads, Witchcraft ’70 (U.S. version), The Black Gestapo, Love Camp 7, Hot Spur and so many more wonderful films. He also wrote Race with the Devil.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Dirkie DeVries is eight years old and played by Wynand Uys, credited as Dirkie Hayes; he’s the son of director, writer, and producer Jamie Uys, who also directed The Gods Must Be Crazy. As he flies over the Kalahari Desert with his Uncle Pete (Pieter Hauptfleisch), the old dude has a heart attack, stranding Dickie and his small dog (Lolly, played by Lady Frolic Of Belvedale) in the middle of nowhere, with his father Anton (Jamie Uys) searching for him.

If you love dogs, this is a harrowing movie, as that little Cairn Terrier is supposedly eaten, has rocks thrown at it, fights hyenas, and so much more. It lives, barely, as does Dickie. But not for any lack of trying by the actor’s own father!

This could have been released as early as 1969, under the title Dirkie Lost in the Desert in South Africa. This is a cruel movie to make children watch, one that seemingly has nature and foreign cultures at war with kids. If I had seen it when I was small, I would have nightmares to this day.

As for young Wynaad, he had to film all of this twice, as they made both an English and Afrikaans version. He never acted again. I can only imagine how he felt about his dad, but since then, he has worked in adventure travel and as a pilot in the Kruger Park region of South Africa.

You can download this movie from the Internet Archive.

The trailer for this movie claims that it’s “a movie that tells it like it is about blacks. The beautiful blacks. The evil blacks.”

It’s also a movie that’s preaching to its audience about ending the drugs and violence in black communities to the point that it moves from blacksploitation to Godsploitation. It starts with Chris Townes (Renny Roker and yes, he is related to Al) going shithouse in a room full of glass vases and getting sent to a psychiatric ward where he screams at people. When he gets out, he has to deal with the worst white people ever at work and back home with his landlord. Maybe he can get with Mindy (Marie O’Henry), a social worker who he has a crush on. Well, when he drives her home, his maniacal skills behind the wheel show her that yes, Chris is a dangerous human being to be avoided.

Chris needs to get with Mindy, so he decides to start being nice to the wheelchair-bound Little Joe (Danny Martin) to prove how nice a guy he is. But then it is revealed that Mindy is married, and Chris uses Little Joe to meet her friend Kim (Kandi Keath) because this movie flies through character, and at the same time, black on black crime is out of control to the point that it appears in this movie and is moralized over more than a day of Fox News.

But you know, I kind of love this as it ends with Chris looking directly at us, the audience, and demanding that a million black men march on Washington 18 years before that happened. And then this title comes up:

The tagline for this movie was “Our streets… nightmares! Our neighborhoods… execution chambers! Look what we’re doing to ourselves!” 

Director and writer Horace Jackson had some talent. Sure, this movie is all over the place, but there’s a scene where criminals beat up Mindy that is really artistic. And sadly, it could still be made today and be completely relevant. You could watch this and laugh at how silly and earnest it is, or you could look at it as a filmmaker using all of the tools that he had to get out a message that he believed in.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’ve been obsessed with the trailer and artwork for this movie for years. Throw in the fact that it has ’70s teen idol Leif Garrett amongst its cast of pint-sized psychopaths, and it seems like a recipe for my kind of movie insanity. However, I just never found the time to sit down and watch it. With so many movies on our shelves and streaming online, my to watch list is constantly bulging with films all screaming to be enjoyed.

Five children have survived a van accident on a snowy road, and unbeknownst to everyone they encounter for the rest of the film, they were on their way to a mental institution for criminally insane young folks. They make their way to the secluded mountain home of Papa Doc, awealthyh businessman, who has all manner of guests staying with him, like his sex-starved wife Lovely (Carolyn Stellar, who beyond being Leif Garrett and Dawn Lynn’s mother, would go on to design the costumes for the 1978’s utterly brutal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band), his daughter and her boyfriend, plus Dr. Harvey Beckman (Sorrell Booke, Boss Hogg from TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard) and his wife, Ruth (Shelley Morrison, Rosario from TV’s Will and Grace). Oh yeah, there’s also the dim-witted handyman, Ralph (original screenwriter John Durren).

Soon, the power is out, the phones are cut, and the kids are killing people left and right. Little actor and budding crossdresser David (Garrett), army lover Brian, Susan the pyro, Moe (Dawn Lynn, who played Dawna in the Walking Tall films) with her plush fish and usage of piranha, and last but not least, albino nun Sister Hannah will find their way into your heart, then cut it out and show it to you. Imagine The Bad Seed times five, with none of the great story or acting.

This movie is also known as Peopletoys, Tantrums and The Horrible House on the Hill. Of course, that last title has a Last House on the Left ripoff poster to go along with the similar title.

Devil Times Five was distributed by Jerry Gross’ Cinemation Industries, which also brought Son of Dracula, Teenage Mother (“She’s nine months of trouble!”), The Black Six and Idaho Transfer to audiences that had to be absolutely bewildered by their level of pure strangeness.

Original director Sean MacGregor was fired from the production after his footage was unusable, and David Sheldon finished the film (you can tell that they switched interior locations because there’s no continuity in the backgrounds). By the time those reshoots happened, Leif Garrett had cut his hair, so he wears a wig that you can easily point out several times.

Even stranger, MacGregor was in a psychiatric ward after leaving this movie and was also dating Gail Smale, who played Sister Hannah. That last bit doesn’t seem all that interesting until you realize that she was underage and was given a nun costume and rose-colored glasses to hide the fact that she was so young and a legitimate albino.

Seriously — how crazy is a movie where Leif Garrett watches as his real-life mom is nude and being murdered by carnivorous fish in the bathtub? This must have been a strange thing for people to watch, as Garrett was already well-known as Oscar’s son on TV’s The Odd Couple, and his sister was on My Three Sons.

If you’re looking for a movie where children annihilate adults, that isn’t The Children, Village of the Damned or Who Can Kill a Child?, then I guess you should watch Devil Times Five. Actually, I kid. This is a goofy little film that is pretty much the horror version of Home Alone. I enjoyed it, but you know, I also have no taste whatsoever.

Supposedly, The Devil’s Wedding Night (AKA Full Moon of the Virgins) was all Mark Damon’s idea. After being in House of Usher, Damon had moved to Italy and appeared in movies like Black Sabbath and Johnny Yuma.

Perhaps this idea was the start of his producing career, which was more successful than his acting job. Damon was planning on selling the movie an American production company. Luigi Batzella (Nude for Satan, The Beast In Heat) was picked to direct, but most people believe that Joe D’Amato stepped in and finished the film.

I’m a firm believer in this theory because there’s a moment near the end of this movie where an otherworldly Countess Dolingen De Vries rises from a bathtub of blood and fog and writhes near nude on the screen and somehow going beyond the confines of the screen to destroy my mind. I generally try my best not to turn reviews of movies with atrractive women into male gaze spectacles, but Rosalba Neri is absoutely iconic in this moment, a perfect scene that is never discussed nearly enough.

There’s also a magic vampire ring of the Nibelungen, which is gigantic costume jewelery and therefore better than any Hollywood baubles, village girls with sacred amulets of Pazuzu (yes, really), five virgins getting sacrificed all at once in an express line of bloodletting magic, three different twist endings in a row, tripped out Dr. Who looking tunnel moments, D’Amato billing himself as Michael Holloway and going absolutely wlld capturing every inch of womanly curves and an incredible setting, the Castello Piccolomini Balsorano, the same place Lady Frankenstein, Bloody Pit of Horror, Crypt of the Vampire, The Lickerish Quartet, The Blade Master, Sister Emanuelle, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance, The Reincarnation of Isabel, Farfallon, Pensiero d’amore, Lady Barbara, 7 Golden Women Against Two 07: Treasure Hunt, C’è un fantasma nel mio letto, Baby Love and Put Your Devil Into My Hell were all shot at.

Plus, Xiro Papas, the monster of Frankenstein 80, plays a vampiric giant.

If you’re a fan of the harder side of Hammer, then allow this female vampire to obsess you as well.