DVD Artwork
There is nothing quite as cool as the monster mash. You may think that it is just a song but in fact it is a whole sub genre of classic horror films. Movies like House of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman presaged Freddy Vs. Jason by decades. It is a classic marketing idea. What is better than a Dracula movie or a Wolfman movie? Duh, a Dracula versus the Wolfman movie.
House of Dracula tells the tale of Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens, The Creeper), a genius doctor who is approached by Dracula (John Carradine, Evil Spawn) and the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr., The Wolfman) for cures to their respective diseases. Something that the good doctor is more than willing to oblige them.
With the aid of his hunchback assistant Dr. Edelman finds cures for both of them, but before Dracula can be cured he has to get blood like a junkie. He just can’t stop himself. The doctor catches him and tries for another session of blood transfusion which Dracula messes with. Sending the good doctor into a kind of Jeckel and Hyde frenzy, in which he decides to resurrect Frankenstein’s Monster. Did I not mention they found that earlier in the movie? My bad.
As with most monster mash movies the only real point are having all the monsters on the screen, it is fun and retarded all at the same time. But not the kind of retarded that make you want to kill Uwe Boll, you know what I mean. These are the kinds of films that you can really use to turn your kids onto horror with. There is nothing shocking or particularly scary and you have the chance to expose them to all of the Universal Monster stereotypes (or at least four of them) in one shot. Fun stuff.
This movie has it all, the Wolf Man and Dracula both dominate the screen. Dr. Edelman is one part benevolent do-gooder and one part mad scientist. The scene where the blood of Dracula begins to take it course on his system we watch as he devolves into a lunatic hallucinating about that havoc that he can have Frankenstein’s monster wreak on the local populace. There is a hunchbacked assistant and a beautiful vixen that will fall prey to the vampire. There are even torch and pitchfork wielding town’s people. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
This is also a part of the Dracula Legacy Edition DVD, and there isn’t much in the way of special features for this one. The transfer is fantastic though. It is really strange to me that they can get nearly flawless transfers of these sequels (which are sub-par compared to the original Dracula) but not for Dracula itself, that was kind of let down for me.
This is fun stuff nothing more, nothing less. Find a Saturday afternoon to sit with some friends or even with your family and check this one out. It is a dork fest but you will have a blast with it. If you don’t find it fun you have no soul.
