Twilight Dinner (1998) Trailer

"What made you literally eat her pussy?"

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The Difference Between Vampire Movies from the 70s and 80s

I think I've noticed some subtle differences between vampire movies from the 1970s and 1980s.  As a comparison, I'm posting a video from one of my favorite Hammer Horror vampire movies from the 1970s, Twins of Evil (because Peter Cushing's performance is outstanding and the Collinson twins are so goddamn hot), and also one from Joel Shumacher's The Lost Boys (1987).  So let me know if these differences are really there or if I'm just imagining things.

If you'd like, you can even watch Twins of Evil at the YouTube Grindhouse Theatre; a new feature here on Beasts in Human Skin where you can see exploitation and cult films in their entirety for free because somebody said, "Hey!  Fuck you copyright restrictions!" and posted them on YouTube.  I'll continue to add new ones as I find them.




 First, here's Twins of Evil (1971):



And now The Lost Boys (1987):

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

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Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (1978): Man's Best Friend is Now Man's Worst Fiend...

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula

When I first started watching Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, also known as Dracula's Dog, I was thinking that it was probably aimed at kids, and that it would be perfect to show before a camping trip or during a sleepover or something.  Nope.  If I had seen this movie when I was a kid I would have peed the bed for weeks.  Not that I ever peed my bed... except those two nights where I dreamed that I was relieving myself in a flower bed in the back yard but was actually soiling my Jedi pajamas.  But my mommy said I was growing too fast for my bladder to keep up!  Stop mocking me!

This tale begins when Romanian soldiers - or maybe they're Russian - discover an underground crypt while blasting the ground for some reason.  Resulting tremors knock one of the coffins to the ground from the tomb wall, and one of the soldiers pulls a wooden stake out of the covered corpse that was in the broken coffin.  Zoltan is unleashed!  He springs from his coffin, kills the soldier and releases one of Dracula's undead servants, Veidt Schmidt, from another sarcophagus.  Together they set off for America to find Dracula's last heir to make him into a vampire and begin the undead family anew.

"I said, roll over!"

Back in California, this heir Michael Drake is on a camping trip with his family, two German Shepherds and a litter of puppies.  Zoltan and Veidt Schmidt duke it out with Michael Drake and his dogs in the California wilderness.  Dogs get turned into vampires, throats are bitten, people and dogs die.  That's pretty much it.

If you think this movie sounds like crap, you're mostly right. It was actually better than I thought it was going to be, but that's not saying a whole lot because I had very, very low expectations.  Even so, I can't really recommend Zoltan, Hound of Dracula because it sucked... I made a pun.  But whatever, watch it if you want to.  You never listen to me anyway!

Violence Rating: 3 out of 5
Booby Rating: 0.5 out of 5?  I think I saw some cleavage somewhere.

Here's the movie in three minutes and twenty seconds.  It's all you need to see.

The Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman (1971)

The Blood Flows Like Vintage Wine

The Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman

I watched this film many years ago and quite enjoyed it but the quality of the VHS copy was so horrible that it detracted from the movie.  The Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman is the original English title for this film but I recommend you track down a copy of the "recently" released DVD called Werewolf Shadow if you want the best version of this movie.  It's the same film but uncut, in widescreen and remastered by Anchor Bay.  Now onto the film.

The Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman has a Hammer Horror feel to it and a werewolf that looks straight out of a Universal Pictures monster movie.  I like both of these things.

Our story begins as two doctors remove silver bullets from the body of a man during an autopsy while dismissing local werewolf legends as superstition.  The corpse returns to the land of the living once the silver is extracted, and escapes.  Later, two lovely young ladies are driving through the countryside to examine the tomb of an alleged vampire countess when they realize that they are lost and almost out of gas.  Luckily a local man, Daninsky, is nearby and invites them to his estate until his hired help can drive them to the distant village for gas in a day or two.  Once at the estate, the two girls are molested and/or physically assaulted by the man's psychotic sister.  But whatever, back to the main plot.

"I've seen the Samburu do this on the National Geographic channel."

Daninsky and the two girls hike to the tomb of the vampire countess and accidentally awaken her from her undead slumber when one of the girls cuts herself and drips blood into the mouth of the corpse.  The Countess soon gets to work draining the blood from the girls after they return to the estate and tries to turn them into undead bloodsuckers like herself.  However, Daninsky and one of the girls have fallen in love and he will do anything to protect her from "Satan's favorite mistress."  Oh, and I forgot to mention that he's the werewolf.

This is another tough call.  I liked this film but I'm not so sure others will.  The pacing is often slow and the effects are dated.  I guess if you are a fan of old school monster movies or like the style and atmosphere of Hammer horror films, you'll probably like The Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman as well.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 3 out of 5

 
Rent The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman from GreenCine.com

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

Hammer Horror! Dragon Thrills! The First Kung Fu Horror Spectacular!

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

We shall end Hammer Horror week with the grindhousiest of the Hammer films; the last of the nine Hammer Dracula movies; the movie so excellent that Christopher Lee turned it down after reading the script... 

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, of course, is not just another Gothic vampire yarn.  It has kung-fu!  It also has nine different titles and some of you may know it as the edited North American version, The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula.  Hammer Film Productions teamed up with the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong to capitalize on the popularity of the kung-fu films of the early 1970s.  So now the dreaded bloodthirsty creatures are no longer lurking in some dank Transylvanian castle or crypt, they are duking it out in China.

There isn't much of a plot and there doesn't have to be because it has kung-fu dammit!  Dracula rises from the grave after being summoned by a Chinese disciple.  He takes the form of this Asian guy and travels to China to help six vampire brothers who are distressed at losing the seventh member of their gang.  Meanwhile, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is teaching a university class in China to a group of skeptics who ridicule him for suggesting that vampires are real.  One student does believe him because he and his 

"Shawty wanna l-l-lick me like a lollipop."

brothers and one sister are vampire hunters.  They need Van Helsing's expertise to eradicate the golden vampire minions from their town where these monsters are draining the blood of the local maidens.  The brothers and their sister team up with Van Helsing, his widower son and a wealthy European debutante to confront the six Chinese vampires and the Count Dracula himself... with kung-fu!

I really like this film.  It has Dracula, kung-fu and topless Chinese girls.  What's not to like?  Who cares if some the characters are wooden and irrelevant or that Dracula isn't frightening or really even necessary to the plot.  Somehow it all works for me, but my standards are pretty low.

Here is the trailer for The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires but I must warn you, because of the topless Chinese girls, it's NSFW.

Dracula A.D. 1972: The Count is Back, with an Eye for London's Hotpants... and a Taste for Everything

Dracula A.D. 1972

I will trade blows with any man who tells me that Bela Lugosi was a better Dracula than Christopher Lee.  Ok, maybe not.  But I will argue vehemently and shake my fist.  This is not Lee's best Dracula film, not by a very, very long shot but the campiness of Dracula A.D. 1972 makes it a fun ride.

The strangest element of these later Hammer films is the acting.  Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are simply too damn good for these films.  I'm used to ludicrous story lines and cheesy special effects but usually a similar level of acting prowess accompanies these elements - but  not so with these Hammer films.  Lee and Cushing are great once again in Dracula A.D. 1972.

The film begins in 1872 with a frantic fight scene on a speeding coach between Count Dracula and Dr. Van Helsing.  The coach crashes, Dracula is impaled on a wooden spoke and both he and Van Helsing die as result of the crash.  A follower of The Count arrives at the scene, collects his ashy remains and buries them at a church near Van Helsing's grave.  One hundred years later a bored group of counterculture youths - led by guy who looks strikingly like Dracula's disciple from one hundred years before - decide to practice some good ole fashioned black magic to entertain themselves at the church where Dracula was buried.  But their leader has more sinister motives than just shits 'n giggles.  He performs a blood ritual and calls forth Dracula from the grave which was totally not groovy with the others.

"Get a haircut, hippie."

It just so happens that the buxom blonde in this black magic party is a descendant of Dr. Van Helsing and has a grandfather who is an expert in the occult and looks exactly like the Van Helsing who died one hundred years before.  He figures everything out and goes hunting for the resurrected Dracula and his minions.

If you're looking for the best of the Hammer Dracula films, this isn't it.  I'd recommend something like Horror of Dracula from 1958 as the best of the bunch.  However, if you're looking for a slightly campy and dated vampire tale with beautiful sets and solid acting, check out Dracula A.D. 1972.  It's worth watching.

Twins of Evil: Which is the Virgin? Which is the Vampire?

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