Being of the horror, fantasy and SF bent from an early age (Wait. Reads that back. Yeah), in my teens in the mid to late '90s some of my designs for life and ideals for living were Stephen Jones' very useful and worthwhile tomes such as The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide (i never did get round to getting the Frankenstein edition for some reason... ah, well) - thoroughly well researched books with a plethora of stills, lobby cards and posters that were cornucopiae (i don't even know if that makes sense as a plural, but i'm going with it) of knowledge about some pretty damn obscure movies. Even by my standards. One of the things that my hormonal young self really enjoyed about these books was that Jones fulfilled his remit to the letter, covering any and all films that contained even the faintest whiff of supernatural elements. Including pornography.
So my eyes were opened to a strange and eerie twilit world that covered everything from softcore Jean Rollin-directed Sapphic stuff like Rape of the Vampire and Lips of Blood to niche fetish flicks such as Wolfen Tickle (which apparently consists of Japanese porn star and bondage queen Saki St Jermaine being tied up and... tickled by a man dressed as a lycanthrope. For an hour. "In Furry Color". Well, i'm intrigued, even two decades on) to early examples of the porn parody subgenre such as Dracula Sucks and Leena Meets Frankenstein. What part of me could possibly resist the very concept of a take-off of Charles T Barton's 1948 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein that switched out the vintage vaudevillians performing their routines for pneumatic nymphettes performing in a rather different way? Certainly not the part of me that became slightly tumescent just at the very thought that such a film could exist. I mean, the only thing that could possibly make that monster mash more seminal would be the addition of the actual fluid itself!
Our welcome to this Gothic pleasuredome begins with the stock trope of a car breaking down in the vicinity of an Old Dark House - a familiar scene-opener from everything from James Whale's 1932 classic The Old Dark House to Leon Klimovsky's 1971 lycanthrope on female vampire action Werewolf Shadow to Jim Sharman's 1975 camptastic fun fest The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This broken-down passion wagon contains our pair (or, rather two pairs) of damsels soon to get out of dis dress Leena (credited "as Herself") and Nicole London, who quickly set the tone for the movie as they head for the mysterious castle with such deathless bons mots as the following:
"I could really do with a bite."
"Who knows, maybe they'll be really nice and have us for dinner!"
Yup. But then, what does one really want from a film whose credits include" Boom Operator: Mike Shadowe"? I mean, i think that's pretty funny. I have been drinking, though.
After our stranded starlets have been bid
It's worth noting at this point that the movie, so far, has all been filmed in black and white, giving it the air of a '50s b-movie at least, if not the classic '30s Universal look that the director may have been reaching for. Well, i say 'filmed', but being an early 1990s US porn movie, it's shot on NTSC videotape, which never looks too great. It's passable in monochrome, but the film's gag of switching to full colour for the sex scenes mean that, oddly, they're probably the most skippable bits of the film if one wants to avoid feeling like glaucoma is setting in. And i was always told that watching porn could make you go blind...
We're then introduced to the agitated Mr Larry Abbott (another genre stalwart familiar from '90s video grot: Tony Tedeschi), who tries to warn the ladies away from not only the clutches of the Count but to stay away from him too with baleful wolfbane full moon mutterings. Yep, this our stand in Wolf Man. Quite why they didn't go all out and call him Larry Talbot i have no idea, unless Universal's copyright was still in effect. Clearly Bram Stoker's wasn't. Anyway, i suppose his new surname is a nice nod to Bud Abbott. Larry quickly succumbs to his penchant for carnivorous lunar activities and transforms (could they really not afford to make up his neck as well as his face? Or at least hide the obvious strap that holds the chin-fur to his face? No? Ah, well), but is discovered and becalmed by gypsy girl Annette (Tina Tyler) who's dressed in a dirndl (i approve) in a nice callback to Lon Chaney's Larry's dalliance with Elena Verdugo's Ilonka in 1944's House of Frankenstein. Annette manages to calm the slavering beast by tickling his belly like a dog ("Now turn back into a man - i don't want to have to take another flea bath!"). She seems quite happy with Larry's lupine labia lapping when he goes face first into the fish, though.
There follows an awkward dinner/banquet scene wherein Leena and Nicole are introduced to the Count's alluring vampire brides Paige Carlson, Brittany O' Connell and Madison Stone (as head bride - in oh so many ways - Betty, with her amazing tongue piercings), and the conversation is somewhat strained by gags involving a play on 'steak'/'stake' and "No need to get cross". This leads us to the Bacchanalian spectacle of the uninhibited Leena romping with all three vamp ladies, which is nice. Dracula also takes the time to explain that he doesn't own the castle outright:
"It is a timeshare situation. Dr Jekyll gets it every other week.. Jekyll is very tidy, but inevitably Hyde shows up and trashes the place!" Having shared University accommodation with an overly rowdy drunk, i can but empathise with Ol' Nosferatu himself on this point. We then get a scene straight out of the old Warner Bros cartoon shorts - both the famous Bugs vs Daffy "Wabbit season!" "Duck season!" scene from Rabbit Fire as well as the Bunny's encounter with Count Bloodcount in Transylvania-65000 come to mind - as Drac's attempts to show off his power of shapeshifting into various animal forms are confused by Leena's rapid fire demands of "Bat! No, wolf! No, bat! No, wolf!" and he finds himself transformed into a small puppy. Which at least leads to the line "Dracula is currently drinking out of the toilet". How many films can say that?
We then get the arrival onto our mis en scene of amateur vampire slayer Steve Van Helsing (Randy Spears), a somewhat bumbling yet enthusiastic vanquisher of the powers of darkness on his very first case. He's also a complete himbo (is that still a word?) and very easily confused, replying to Nicole's "We've got a thing to take care of" with "But my father destroyed the Thing three years ago!"
Steve is here to foil the Count's plan to summon the totality of all of the Dark Forces to decimate the world, and this bumbling scion of the Van Helsing clan isn't happy about it: "Vampires, werewolves, zombies, Elvis impersonators, talk show hosts!" Truly a litany of evil. Steve knows that, in addition to keeping a captive Wolf Man, Drac also has the Frankenstein Monster (John Dough, in what can only be described as a very cheap approximation of the classic Kaloff flat head 'n' neck bolts look) prisoner, chained in a dungeon. To distract him, Steve dresses Nicole as the Bride, complete with frosted hair, a small facial scar and an extremely diaphanous gown. Which, obviously does the trick. Leena in turn, takes it upon herself to distract the Count until sunrise, like Ellen/Lucy in Nosferatu. Only with more explicit sex, including such desperately romantic dialogue as "Bite my clit!" and "Pound me, Count!" (Dracula is wearing white boxer shorts decorated with red hearts, by the way. Not very Goth chic.)
The satiated vampire of course disintegrates when Leena opens the bedroom curtains and lets the sunlight come streaming into his life, then turns to the camera with a "Whoops!" I mean, it's a classic method of dispatching the Un-Dead, of course. And Peter Cushing never did it wearing only a thong. And so we come to an end with the girls continuing their vacation, and asking Steve if he wishes to tag along.
"Sure. Where you going?"
"Some place lush and warm and tropical," enthuses Leena. "I've never been there, but i've heard it's nice/, have you ever heard of... the Black Lagoon?"
Cue look to camera. END.
So, there we are. Can i, in all honesty, recommend this movie to anyone? Well, it's obviously not a cinematic classic or anything but it's the kind of film where you know exactly what you're getting and it does it reasonably well. Look, do you like monster movies? Do you like porn? There you go then. Sorted.
(Blow)Job's a good 'un.
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