Doctor Dracula is a weird, wonderful mess of a movie. Yes, it's terribly edited, poorly paced, badly acted, and barely lit. But still... The movie came into being when Al adamsontook another not very well known movie, titled Lucifer's Women, shot some new footage that he added in and renamed in Docto Dracula. Released almost a decade after the movie it scavenged from, the most notable thing about the new footage is the addition of John Carradine. And this story of the making of the movie explains a lot about the movie, as it is a mishmash of different ideas.
There is a psychiatrist who is actually a vampire (he is called Dracula in an opening scene but the name isn't brought up again). The daughter of a woman he killed begins seeing him for treatment. He shows her her mother, but it's unclear of her mother is now one of the living dead or if the whole thing was an illusion to trixk her. She is also introduced to a Satanic coven who try to help her using a form of possession. This coven consists of members who are "reincarnations" of powerful mystics whose souls have taken over the bodies of the members. One of them is the legendary mesmerist Svengali.
Svengali finds a dancer that he falls in love with, but unfortunately for the couple the coven need her for a human sacrifice ritual to cement their powers and continued existence. So there is an internal struggle for Svengali, as well as the external struggle with the vampire who is part of the coven but openly seems to despise them, especially Svengali. With so much plot happening it seems wild that the movie often moves at a snail's pace. Editing together the footage from the old movie with the new footage often feels disjointed, and there are many times when people say or do things that make little sense in the context of the movie.
This may sound awful, and it is but in the very best way. The movie is trying to do so much that you have to admire its audacity. The IMDB synopsis doesn't even attempt to untangle the plot, describing it in such a way that it would seem to be about a different movie entirely. There is no nudity and little gore or violence, which is unexpected given the general aesthetic of the film. It's also very poorly made. It's main virtue is the big swings it takes in the areas of story telling. There is also the occasional flash of clever dialogue, like Svengali saying to the Dancer Trilby, who he is trying to seduce "To be swept of her feet by the look in a man's eyes, is that a young girl's fantasy?", to which Trilby replies "No, that's an old man's fantasy". It's almost enough to make you forgive the moments when John Carradine obviously forgets his lines in the middle of saying them. This is exactly the kind of movie that I think deserves a remake, one with wild ideas that were very poorly executed. Now I'm very curious to find and watch Lucifer's Women to see how it compares.
Comments
Post a Comment