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

Girls of Grindhouse: Barbara Bouchet

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Tokugawa Onna Keizu (1968)

Tokugawa Onna Keizu

Tokugawa Onna Keizu marks the beginning of Teruo Ishii's turn towards the depraved Japanese genre known as pinky violence or bad girl action films, a genre he is recognized as having created.  This film has lots of the pinky but hardly any violence.  His next film Tokugawa Onna Keibatsu-shi, also known as The Joy of Torture, is really where graphic violence is married to gratuitous nudity and the pinky violence genre becomes established.

The shogun is a bit of a pervert.  He wants to find a woman who will love him for who he is and not because he's the shogun but he has trouble finding one.  After witnessing a mole on the inner left thigh of one of the girls in his harem, he becomes obsessed with having her.  The other girls become jealous and threatened by the shogun's affections towards this birthmarked girl because she could produce a male heir and therefore become his favorite.  They hold her down and burn the mole off.  He loses interest in the whole mole thing.

Next, after watching a topless sumo competition amongst the harem girls he becomes enamored with the small but adorable winner played by Yukie Kagawa.  She teaches him some bedroom judo but, after talking in her sleep, the shogun learns she once slept with a monk and he becomes enraged.  She kills herself by biting off her tongue.

"I pooted."

A noble woman staying at his residence is spotted peeing in the bushes and he falls for her.  Eventually she gets pregnant but the shogun isn't sure if the child is his or was fathered by one of his daimyo.  He doesn't know whether to discard her like the other lovers or accept the unborn child and mother into his family.  After forcing himself on several other women, he does some soul searching and realizes that he has been kind of a dick.

Because this is a Teruo Ishii film, it isn't just about the shogun getting it on with his harem girls.  It has depth and makes you reflect on the human condition, about what is important in life, about personal duty and honor.  Tokugawa Onna Keizu can be slow at times and is definitely lacking in violence but it's a beautiful movie and I recommend seeing it.  It will make you think about stuff, and stuff.

Violence Rating:  1 out of 5
Booby Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Here is the shogun wrestling with his demons:

A Little Bit Country

I just felt like sharing this short video of Florinda Bolkan getting her ass handed to her in Don't Torture a Duckling.  Have a pleasant evening!

Nostalgia

Yesterday I revealed that I had spent a significant amount of my childhood in my parents' video store mesmerized by the gruesome artwork of the movie covers and posters.  This is the one that fascinated me the most.  For some reason I spent more time trying to draw the cover of The Return of the Living Dead than any other movie that we had at the store.  Maybe it was because these weren't just zombies, they were punk rock zombies!  Years later I finally got to see it and it's a damn good zombie movie.  I'll have to review it one of these days.

Have a great weekend everybody!  I'll try to post a review of an obscure Japanese film later today.

April Fool's Day (1986): Don't Let the Joke Be On You!

April Fool's Day

When I was a kid my parents owned a video store.  Remember those?  During the summers I would work there retrieving the video tapes from the back room for the customers up front.  Of course I was never allowed to watch any movies that I feature on this blog but I was always fascinated by the artwork on the covers of the movies, so much so that I would try to draw them from memory when I got home.  This is one of the covers that I remember looking at a lot and I'm not sure why.  Maybe it was the noose or the knife or the douchbaggery in the background.

Over spring break, a group of 1980s cliches visit a wealthy friend, Muffy St. John,  who lives in an old mansion on a secluded island.  The group includes some pranksters who continually frighten the rest of the party with elaborate gags before yelling April fools!  Muffy herself is the biggest of the pranksters and has set up funny little jokes throughout the mansion.

"What do you mean Journey is breaking up?"

Once on the island, things begin to take a grisly turn.  Items are found in the rooms where the guests are staying which reveal dark secrets about their pasts.  Then people start to go missing.  Bodies begin to surface and severed heads and are found in the well.  Logically, the remaining group freaks out and they begin to accuse each other of the killings.  It's then discovered that Muffy has an insane twin sister, Buffy, who lives somewhere on the island.  The Muffy that they've been interacting with may actually be the maniacal Buffy who is out to kill them all.  Then there's knives and running and such.  You know how slasher movies work.

This is one of the later American slasher films and they do change things up a little to keep it from being stale.  It has one of the biggest twist endings that I can recall in 1980s horror - I'll give you a hint, the final body count is zero - but what is most unique about April Fool's Day is the limited amount of violence and gore, and complete lack of nudity.  Still, it's a fine little slasher comedy.

Violence Rating:  3 out of 5
Booby Rating:  1 out of 5