Elvira's Movie Macabre - Count Dracula's Great Love & Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks
A Review by Nick Peron
While Elvira is a cultural icon, and being a child of the 80's, and considering my love of b-movies and all the encompass, you'd figure I would have had prior exposure to Elvira's Movie Macabre years ago. But you may be shocked to know that up until a few weeks ago, I had a vague idea of what made the character Elvira famous.
Granted, I knew who the character was, it's kind of hard to miss the busty gothic, me-generation answer to Vampira
I think the main reason I've been more or less clueless, is because I live in Canada. We may have socialized health care, but when it comes to popular American syndicated television, well we kind of missed the cultural mark. Growing up as a kid in the 80's, cable TV was pretty new and even then there wasn't a whole lot you could get. If you wanted to see some of that prime American programming, you had to be one of those lucky kids who's parents could afford a satellite dish (and in those days my friend you didn't have those cute little Star-Choice satellite dishes, you had these huge behemoths that'd crush every bone in your body if it fell on you and would have to reposition itself in order to connect to the right TV satellite)
So a lot of great slices of American pop-culture went unnoticed up north of the boarder, and Elvira's syndicated late night movie show Movie Macabre was one of them. Even to this day this is mostly the case as well, even in the digital age where most interesting programs are only available on satellite or specialty cable channels. Up here in Canada, you have to deal with pale Canadian equivalents of TV networks like Comedy Central (here we have the Comedy Network), the Sci-Fi Network (How does the SPACE channel grab you?), or even the Cartoon Network (Up here we have Teletoon.... Yeah it was pioneered by French people, deal with it.) heck up until a few years ago, if you wanted to watch music television you'd have to watch the Canadian Much Music, before they made a CANADIAN version of MTV. Most of these stations were created because in Canada we have what's called the CRTC (The Canadian Radio and Television Commission) which insures that a certain percentage of all radio and TV content is Canadian made... even if it's just the commercials... Yeah... I know... However, we probably have the worlds only state run TV station that is unbiased, and will usually write damning reports about the government rather than praise it, so nyah :P
I just got totally off topic there, you don't want to read about Canadian television, you want to read about Elvira. So let me get back on track so we can all get this crazy review past us and get on with our lives, hrm?
Recently Shout! Factory Entertainment began releasing episodes of Elvira's Movie Macabre on DVD, most of the more recent releases feature two episodes of the show, and the movies that were featured on said episode, completely uncut. I'm not sure if they were aired this way, having watched a few of these movies, I find it hard to see how they could have aired these movies uncut without half of the movies being edited out of airing.
The DVD's themselves give the option to watch the movie in question either with, or without the Elvira segments, which strikes me as a bit pointless consider all the function probably does just skips the chapters with Elvira on them. Speaking of chapters, that's one thing that bothered me about these DVD's it's that they don't have any chapter selection screens. What a piss off. So if you can't make it through the movie in one go, and you don't have a resume function on your DVD player, you're going to have to press the next chapter button a LOT to get where you're looking.
The Elvira segments appear to have suffered from some video degrading, which might not have been able to be fixed. Keep in mind that Elvira was a syndicated TV show from the 80's, the TV studio where they made the show might not have been using the best recording devices at that time. However, the episodes are still very watchable, and the degrading of the film quality would only piss off the most anal people, and if you have a problem with the Elvira segments quality then you probably aren't going to like the quality of the movies.
Depending on your perspective, the quality of the movies might be a good or bad thing. This is because the people of Shout! Factory managed to secure copies of original film reels of the movies in question. So what you have is a DVD mastering of a film reel as is. They're scratched up, jumpy, and poor third string drive-in quality. And for those kids who are too young to know what the heck I'm talking about, remember Grindhouse
I love the quality of the movies, I have this infatuation with movies that are all beat up and scratchy. But stop and think about it for a minute why the hell would anybody in their right mind put these things through a digital restoration process? They would lose all that drive-in charm.
But enough about talking about the releases on a general basis, let's talk about the Dracula's Great Love & Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks two-pack that I watched recently.
Count Dracula's Great Love:
From what I can gather, this movie is one of probably a billion gothic-vampire b-movies that were made in Italy, horribly dubbed into English and imported into North America.
The plot follows some travelers who are passing through Transylvania and end up having their buggy crap out near an old insane asylum that has been bought by a rich eccentric. Taking his hospitality, the travelers (mostly big breasted women) are unaware that is guy is really Count Dracula, who has been reborn through his daughter and is seeking a virgin woman so that he can resurrect his daughter so that she can recreate Dracula again the next time he dies.
I think that's what they were trying to get across, as I mentioned above this movie is so poorly translated, it doesn't make any sense. But if you were to take it literally, you have to wonder what sort of fucked up person came up with the plot about Dracula's daughter giving birth to her father, but hey, whatever works for you wanting-to-cheat-death-through-an-immortal-curse types.
Anyway, the movie itself is a lesson in patience as characters wander around and reiterate the major plot points of the film over and over, as each member of the cast is either killed or turned into vampires. The film consists almost exclusively of scenes in Victorian era bedrooms with topless women. So if you like mellon heavy women constantly sleeping naked and getting bitten by vampires, then this movie is for you.
For the rest of us, well prepared to be bored out of your mind, because the movie has not much more than that. But hey, keep your eyes open for the following highlights of the movie:
- The name of the production company that made this film is called "Anus Films", and they proudly display that title during the opening credits. I'm sure there is a language barrier thing there, but still it's funny.
- There is an awesome scene at the beginning of the movie where a guy gets an axe to the head and tumbles by the stairs. The film makers probably thought this scene was awesome also, as they looped it over and over during the opening credits.
Oh.. and that's about it... Yeah.. The only cool parts at the beginning, the rest of the movie just peters out right about there, and in the end Dracula ends up killing himself because he's in love with some girl and doesn't want to sacrifice her so that his daughter can be resurrected or whatever.... Yeah. The pay off doesn't make watching the whole movie all that worth it.
So let's skip onto our next feature:
Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks:
Which is a pretty good title, too bad it's probably the only exciting part of this whole movie. The movie features Count Frankenstein (Yeah, count instead of doctor) who for some reason lives in some town that is plagued by a savage cave man, whom he captures and takes back to his lab to experiment on. He also employs a bunch of men who rob graves for his experiments, one of whom is a perverted midget that likes to feel up dead bodies and peep on women changing.
If things weren't bad enough, the people in town are getting suspicious of what's going on, what with all the grave thefts, and the Count's daughter, fiance and colleagues have come over for a visit! What's a mad scientist to do? I mean, how can you properly experiment on a caveman when you've got unexpected visits from the family?
Well, if that weren't enough, the other aides of Count Frankenstein really don't like their midget co-worker, and so have him thrown out of the castle, where he finds yet another cave man. Deciding this new caveman needs a friend, he travels back to the castle to free the other caveman from the lab, who goes on a murder spree, killing just about everyone until the final moment when he is brought to the other caveman and the two fight themselves into a pit of fire and burn to death.
Leaving the audience to wonder "What the fuck was all this about?" This movie is one of those surreal movies, I mean Dr. Frankenstein, cavemen and midgets? What the hell kind of drugs were these filmmakers on when they made this movie?
And that about concludes my summaries of these movies... They're awful, and in some points downright boring to watch. But that's the point right? They're supposed to be bad, and while they can be tedious and boring at parts, they do have their moments of unintentional hilarity. At least at one point or another during any of these movies you could find yourself laughing your ass off or shaking you're head wondering if you saw or heard what you thought you did.
These are pure exploitation b-movies at their greatest, and I would recommend these DVD releases to anyone who likes very shitty movies. On top of that, they're hosted by Elvira, who if you don't find funny, is at least a pleasant visual distraction. This isn't the only release, as of the time of this writing there are presently 12 episode of Elvira's Movie Macabre on DVD (in addition to the ones above: Gamera, Super Monster, They Came From Beyond Space
