Waste of time

Instant Favorite.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a Dracula sequel and if it does not scary you no movie will. Dracula and his wife live into modern times. This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. It is very intense movie. Alexander D'Arcy was great has Dracula. He real know how to be scary. He was a great actor. John Carradine was a great actor. Paula Raymond was great actress. This movie is not has scary has Dracula (1931). Dracula (1992) is also scarier. But still it came close to being has scary. This is one of the scarier movie from 1969. See it. Gene Otis Shayne is a great actor. This is scarier then The Exorcist and that is not an easy thing to do.

I am fond of Z-movies, including some by Al Adamson, but BLOOD OF Dracula'S CASTLE is not one of my favorites. As always, it is a great pleasure to watch (and listen to) John Carradine and some of the dialogs by other cast are also fun, but, overall, the movie is not very interesting. To begin with, it is somewhat lame for a 1969 release: yes, there are girls chained up in a dungeon, but they are not even very scantily clad; Dracula THE DIRTY OLD MEN for example had more exploitative imagery to offer. One noteworthy moment in this regard is a scene where two rats appear near the bare feet of the chained up girls and give the actresses apparently real unease. So is another scene where Robert Dix fondles a chained up girl with his knife! Dix is actually pretty good, I mean very believable, as a polished psycho. His relatively straight and high caliber acting contrasts with the camp humor of Alex D'Arcy as Dracula. Hey, I realize that the more I write about it, the movie may sound more interesting. Hmm.. Maybe the reason the movie is lame lies in the fact that it is actually a production from a few years back, possibly 1966 as the date on an on screen telegram indicates. I mean it was made before the Code was abolished (1968). A piece of disturbing film history: Co-producer Rex Carlton (who also wrote the script) had apparently invested in the movie by taking loans from the mob. When the producers couldn't pay the lab bill, a distributor bought the movie from the lab and Carlton committed suicide as this meant he couldn't pay back the mob.

Like many of the movies I've been writing reviews for, Blood of Dracula's Castle is part of a twelve movie boxed set from Mill Creek, a company that deals in very cheap (and sometimes public domain) films. The transfer isn't great. In fact, when I first started watching this, the screen was so completely covered with green lines (from wear) that it reminded me of The Matrix. Personally, though, I believe this adds to the aesthetic of the movie; something about the apparent age of the film makes it that much more enjoyable to watch.In some ways, this movie reminds me a bit of a 60's version of The Addams Family, as it features a sophisticated, middle-aged couple that lives in a rented castle and are quite open about their vampirism (or their being "the living dead," to be grammatically correct). In addition to a standard manservant (George, played by the great John Carradine), they also keep around an orange-skinned feral guy named Mango around, who roams the surrounding wilderness, hunting and capturing the bikini-clad young women who, for some reason, seem to be in abundant supply in this area. The young hotties are collected and contained in a dungeon, where they are harvested for their blood. Occasionally the charming vampire couple also let Mango have one of the babes for his own purposes, which are thankfully never shown or fully described. They also have a younger friend, Johnny, who is an open and quite charming serial killer who goes nuts when the moon is full.Enter into the picture a young couple, the incredibly condescending Glen and his fiancé Liz. They enter the scene because Glen has inherited the castle from some relative, and the two stumble around in a manner not unlike Scooby-Doo and the gang, slowly discovering the danger that surrounds them. It's actually very cute, in a campy sort of way. The dialog between the spooky castle residents and the innocent young couple is so corny, it could have been penned by Ed Wood himself.Okay, so the whole premise of this flick doesn't make a lick of sense. And the print the DVD was made from is terrible. And the crazy man-beast that everyone keeps talking about is named after a tropical fruit which does, of course, prevent him from ever being taken as a serious threat to anyone. It doesn't matter. What matters is this is good, cheesy fun for the whole family, if your whole family is plenty drunk.

Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)** (out of 4) Let me start off by saying the horror dork inside of me almost shed a tear when I received this screener and realized that this Al Adamson film was included. Back when I was around ten or so I had the pleasure of my dad buying me Adamson's Blood of Ghastly Horror and Dracula vs. Frankenstein, both which lived up to their reputation of being among the worst films ever made. However, they fell into that "so bad they're good" category so I set out to locate this flick. After five years of searching I finally found a copy at a mom and pop store and they took pity on me and gave me the tape for free. Went on, put it in the VCR, the film started and smoke came from my VCR, which was eating my tape. My young heart was broken but I kept on until nearly ten years later when the postman dropped this disc off at my house.Okay, enough dork talk and on to the movie….A young couple inherits an old castle and to their shock they soon learn that Count Dracula and his wife are living there. With the assistance of a hunchback and caretaker (John Carradine), the Count and his wife keep the basement full of women so that the blood supply is never low. The young couple wants them out of the castle but Dracula will do whatever it takes to remain there even if it means making the new couple partners.After a while I soon realized that Blood of Dracula's Castle is to Al Adamson what Jail Bait was to Ed Wood and that is the director's best made film, which means we aren't going to get as many laughs that we might expect. I was also disappointed to see John Carradine wasn't making a return to Dracula but even with that the film is campy enough to enjoy on many levels but just don't expect the goodness of say Dracula vs. Frankenstein.The biggest flaw with the film is that Dracula and his wife just aren't very interesting and they're overshadowed by Carradine, the hunchback assistant and the werewolf, who never actually transforms. Perhaps Adamson was wanting to make a straight and serious film and while doing that, this one here comes off a bit boring and never reaches its potential of becoming an outrageously funny film. The silly music score and wooden acting brings some charm and minor laughs as done Carradine who chews up the scenery like he always does. But again, what in the hell was Adamson thinking not using the great as Dracula? It's also interesting to note that the cinematographer was Laszlo Kovacs who would later go on to do Easy Rider, Targets, Paper Moon, Shampoo and more recently doing a couple Sandra Bullock films.