Downe and Out

SON OF DRACULA (1974)

CRAZE (1974)

"I can't live, if living is without you"; chums Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr in SON OF DRACULA, cinema's greatest musical travesty. Attempting to cash in on the success of Mel Brooks' YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, the film is also known as YOUNG DRACULA.

WRITTEN by TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS scribe Jennifer Jayne in the failed hope of casting David Bowie, Freddie Francis' rarely seen SON OF DRACULA - made by Apple Films and produced by Ringo Starr - begins in 1800's Transylvania, where Baron Frankenstein's dwarf assistant (Skip Martin) stakes The Prince of Darkness (Dan Meaden). Merlin the Magician (Starr) discovers that one of The Count's brides is pregnant and will give birth to a son in a hundred years. The offspring Count Downe (Harry Nilsson) is due to be crowned King of the Underworld in 70's London, but in the seventy-two hours beforehand he is vulnerable in deciding his future. Eventually he wants to become human in the name of love - especially that of Amber (Suzanna Leigh) - thanks to the help of the wheelchair-bound Van Helsing (Dennis Price), and despite the plotting of the immortal Baron (a barnstorming Freddie Jones).

Actually completed in 1972, Starr's excruciatingly dull vanity project failed to pick up any distribution. Realising that this comedy actually had no jokes - and hid behind Nilsson's musical numbers and message of love - the ex-Beatle turned to Graham Chapman to re-write and re-dub. However this version allegedly made even less sense, and has never been made public (SON OF DRACULA eventually was shown on a limited run in the States). The film is a pedestrian pantomime at best, with generous amounts of padding (Count Downe foils a completely random attack by a werewolf, for instance). Francis further laces the production with classic interpretations of monsters (Meaden's Dracula actually takes Nosferatu as a blueprint, and there are also appearances by Frankenstein's creature, the Mummy and even a Medusa and a Fu Manchu). In fact the only point of interest are the musicians on show, which includes John Bonham and Keith Moon exchanging drumming duties in Downe's band.

Jack Palance offers Julie Ege to Chuku in the delirious CRAZE.

Coming off this catastrophe, Francis' increasing distain of horror films and its fans made the director/cinematographer admit that his reliance on the zoom lens for CRAZE was due to a "lack of interest." But this Herman Cohen production is far from uninteresting, an exploitation fever-dream ripe with idol-driven mayhem and possibly the greatest array of starlets and seasoned character actors ever to grace a single British horror. Neal Mottram (a potent Jack Palance) is a psychotic antiques dealer who owns Chuku, a googly-eyed African fetish object he keeps in his basement. Mottram believes that by sacrifice to Chuku, the "love God" will reward him with wealth, and his victims include Helena (Julie Ege) who ends up in a furnace, and sex toy-loving Sally (Suzy Kendall in a horrendous curly black wig). As part of his unhinged quest Mottram even hatches an alibi plot, using ex-girlfriend Dolly (Diana Dors) to enable him to murder rich Aunt Nash (Dame Edith Evans); but with the police honing in (and a nod to PEEPING TOM), Neal is impaled on Chuku's trident.

CRAZE has a pathological hatred of women, a stance it shares with source novel Infernal Idol, a brisk 1967 Helmut Henry Hartmann pulp written as Henry Seymour ("she was that slightly seedy suburban housewife type who carried too much weight around the hips and spent too much of the housekeeping money on unsuccessful attempts to look glamorous.") But Francis' movie really goes for the throat, illustrated by Detective Sergeant Wall (Michael Jayston)'s comment on ditzy Dolly ("one would have to be pretty desperate to sail into that port.") Despite Mottram's literal lady-killing, there is a distinct homosexual yearning between the dealer and his younger live-in colleague Ronnie (Martin Potter). Mottram has apparently saved him from "sleeping in Hyde Park hustling old queens," but their domestic arrangement seems characteristically bitchy.

"A Living Hell That Time Forgot!"

THE LOST CONTINENT (1968)

Actress/singer/songwriter Dana Gillespie - playing Sarah - makes the biggest impression, thanks to her 44-26-37 assets. Gillespie had previously appeared in the striptease exploiter SECRETS OF A WINDMILL GIRL and Hammer's THE VENGEANCE OF SHE.  

AFTER Michael Carreras hastily made PREHISTORIC WOMEN in the wake of ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.'s worldwide success, he would also be responsible for this Hammer fantasy loosely based on Dennis Wheatley's 1938 novel Uncharted Seas. On his rusty tramp streamer Corita, Captain Lansen (Eric Porter) has a cargo of illegal explosives (ten tonnes of water-sensitive Phosphor B) and an array of motley passengers (including a deported ex-mistress of a Third World president (Hildegard Knef), a blackmailer (Benito Carruthers), an alcoholic pianist (Tony Beckley) and an exiled abortionist (Nigel Stock)). When the ship becomes stranded on the floating swamp of the Sargasso Sea, the travellers must face such terrors as man-eating seaweed and a stranded Spanish galleon complete with Grand Inquisitor (Eddie Powell) and boy king "El Supremo" (Daryl Read).

Featuring imaginative sets and water tanks specially constructed at Elstree, THE LOST CONTINENT is a fun but convoluted picture which drowns under its own hyperbole ("SEE BLOOD-BEASTS battling over female flesh! TORTURE PITS for forbidden lovers! SACRIFICE to giant jaw-snapping molluscs! HELPLESS BEAUTIES attacked by crazed-kelp-monsters!"). It's really three films in one, a "ship of fools" tale, an adventure yarn, and an unintentional monster movie parody that relishes its kaiju-like creatures and cleavage. Originally released in America shortened by eight minutes, this truncated version actually replaced the longer cut in British circulation; DVD releases have restored this largely inconsequential footage, but there is one delirious scene where resident blonde Unity (Suzanna Leigh) is called a "hellcat" and almost punched during sex.

Gillespie's extensive musical output has encompassed pop, folk, rock and latterly blues. After performing backing vocals on 'It Ain't Easy' from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, she recorded an album produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson in 1973, Weren't Born a Man.

The Lost World subgenre is a popular staple of pulp novels and cinematic spectacle. H.Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and the Hollow Earth work Symzonia; A Voyage of Discovery are often considered its printed paper springboard, exploring strange environments typically un-European. But THE LOST CONTINENT was a box office failure, released between Lost World picture peaks such as MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and the affection given to the Amicus/Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations of the 1970's. Indeed, 1968 was a sobering year for fantastic cinema, a time with little regard for such a dynamic but ultimately empty release.