"I am Elaina, the wife of Count Dracula, and the film you are about to see took place a very short time ago."
"Do you like vampires? Do you like grainy '70s porn loops?"
Perhaps these are not questions that other people ask themselves on a regular basis, but at least for me the answer is an assured yes - all these Jean Rollin and Jess Franco DVDs aren't just for decoration, you know. But it turns out that taking the obvious sex and death metaphor inherent to the vampire legend (both le petit and le grand morts irrevocably intertwined) was not the sole province of those European masters of the macabre: in the faraway US of A Ray Dennis Steckler was crafting his own answer in the form of The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire. Yes, the pseudonymous 'Cash Flagg' himself of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964) and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966) infamy had within the scant space of a few years found himself directing hardcore filth. Such a falling off was there. Or was there?
"Dracula decides to make love, not war."
Under one of his more common noms de plume, Sven Christian, Steckler helmed this 50-minute slice of filmic eternity in '71, a couple of years before such delights as 1974's The Sexorcist or 1981's Debbie Does Las Vegas. Also here is the then Mrs Steckler, Carolyn Brandt (Cee Cee Beaumont herself from Rat Pfink), though sadly she isn't participating in the mucky stuff but is relegated to the sidelines spouting gnomic and impenetrable (fnarr!) gibberish as the Bride of Dracula. The Count himself is played by Shock Theater television horror host Jim Parker aka 'the Vegas Vampire', who spends much of his screen time mugging at the camera and making extravagant Bela Lugosi-style hand movements. The Count and his hunchbacked servant (a performer going under the great name of 'Rock Heinrich') are in the midst of a masterplan which entails sending out three vampiric hookers to harvest "the blood of the innocent" for Dracula - but not before commanding the trio to engage in some girl-on-girl orgy action for his devilish delectation, and the hunchback getting involved. There's something about watching a crooked-spined henchman gurning gleefully in the throes of fellatio from a disinterested-looking naked vampire girl that's a strange combination of intriguing and disengaging. I haven't been simultaneously pulled in and pushed away so much this side of a Hitchcockian zoom. But kudos to Mr Heinrich on managing to distractingly overact whilst getting his cock hitched.
"You most immediately bend over - forward and backward - all of you, your entire parts... of your body... MAKE LOVE! LOVE!! LOVE!!! Yes: do it! Do it! Enjoy!"
Meanwhile, a pipe-smoking Professor Van Helsing who resembles a Lucio Fulci cameo as a middle-management level businessman is visiting the home of his favourite pupil the barbigerous Bill (who continually refers to him as "Professor Van Hersing" for reasons known only to the great archons of the beyond), along with Bill's blonde beehive sporting and vapid girlfriend Janet. Bill has summoned the Prof via a letter expressing his concern over his late sister Camille, who perished in a car accident before her body went mysteriously missing from the mortuary. This piques the vampire slayer's interest, and he links this incident to the recent cases of bodies found in local motels drained of all their blood.
"You know, i'm thinking that, uh... maybe Dracula went to the mortuary, and cursed Camille's non-living corpse with a taint of vampirism. And if this IS the work of Dracula, then wherever he is we must find him. And we must destroy him."
And so Dracula dispatches his three ladies of the night (what music they make - wait, what?) with a command of "I want you to fill this vial with blood. Vile blood!" to sexily exsanguinate some suckers. We follow two of them as they pick up a john each and take them back to respective sleazy motel rooms to engage in some hairy pre-waxing '70s style sleaze. The film grain and aspect ratio lend a level of nostalgic grime that quite entrancingly enhances the mood as the ladies engage in their sucking 'n' fucking, plus a spot of flagellation - girl on boy for a change, and man were that guy's buttocks redder than a baboon's by the end! - before "finishing off" in a manner familiar to anyone who's seen Lina Romay in Female Vampire (Jess Franco, 1973). If Steckler's intention was to make the male members of the audience wince as his actresses chowed down on male members wearing joke shop vampire fangs, then he's just played right into my fetishes.
"Dracula is groovy."
It was at this point that i'd given up wondering what had become of the third vampiress, and just assumed that her scenes had got lost in the editing or something. Oh me of little faith. The plot strands dovetail masterfully when Janet decides she's had enough of Bill and Van Helsing's interminable conversation and goes for a piss, only to find herself under attack from the rogue vampire in the bathroom - upon which happenstance the two fools rush in and Bill emits a flat and monotone "Oh my God, it's my sister Carmille". Clearly the shock of the situation has robbed the poor man of both his capacity to express emotional feeling, and the knowledge of his sister's actual name.
"Run, Dracula, run!!"
This pair of brave vampire hunters, after destroying Camille/Carmille/Carmilla/Mircalla, locate Dracula's hideout and attempt to destroy the Count and his other underlings. Dracula flees the scene, only to find both himself and the hunchback (who performs a baffling but impressive flip whilst the run across wasteland in slow motion) in the rays of the rising sun 'neath which the Count disintegrates laving only his cape behind in a powerful and moving sequence of which F. W. Murnau would be proud. This opus ends with a shot of a tearful angry hunchback clutching his departed master's cloak and flipping the bird to the blazing and uncaring sun. Magnificent.
I knew i'd enjoy this film from the second the opening credits included 'Art Direction by De Sade', to be honest.
Nice and sleazy does it. Does it every time.
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