70's American Horror Part Ninety-Four

GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO COUNT DRACULA?
(1971)
Dir - Laurence Merrick
Overall: WOOF

Many Z-grade exploitation movies have been described as "comedies" possibly in an attempt to excuse their nonsensical ineptitude and the baffling, counter-culture nonsense that is Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? falls into such a lot.  The only thing hilarious about it is that it was allegedly a gay porno called Does Dracula Really Suck?, (Dracula and the Boys), in its original form, though accounts vary as to the authenticity of such a claim.  In any event, writer/director Laurence Merrick only made three films before his death in 1977 and this was the second of them.  A movie that has all of the snooze-inducing boredom found in unprofessional filmmaking, it concerns an undead asshole doing a bad Béla Lugosi impression who owns a nightclub, has a pet tiger, a gorilla, some kind of deformed servant, and various vampire ladies at his disposal before he sets his sights on a particular gal who he spends about seventy minutes of this seventy-seven minute crud rock making mindless small talk with.  The color schemes are tacky and there are strange moments scattered about, but this is an embarrassing mess that dips its toes into Manos: The Hands of Fate terrain without being nearly as riotous.

SO EVIL, MY SISTER
(1974)
Dir - Reginald Le Borg
Overall: MEH

The final film from director Reginald Le Borg, So Evil, My Sister, (Psycho Sisters, The Sibling), is a sloppily plotted psychological thriller of sorts, spearheaded by Golden Era scream queen Faith Domergue and later era scream queen Susan Strasberg.  These leading ladies play a pair of siblings who each prove to be pulling a con on the other involving Strasberg's money and dead husband.  There is also an overly-chipper douchebag who cannot read the room, a dim-witted handyman who scares everyone, somebody in a stupid rubber mask who is also scaring everyone, and cops that are surveying the goings-on at the sister's beach house for reasons that eventually reveal themselves.  Most of the characters act like dumb-dumb doo-doo heads and the plot twist is a combination of "Huh?", laughably stupid, and lame.  Allegedly, Le Borg's initial cut was even more drab than the finished product, with producers adding in an opening car chase and a vehicular explosion.  These moments as well as some random nightmare sequences jive awkwardly with the humdrum story, but at least such desperate attempts to give the movie some pizazz are appreciated.  Otherwise, this is mundane stuff.

 

THE LAST DINOSAUR
(1977)
Dir - Alexander Grasshoff/Tsugunobu Kotani
Overall: MEH

Japanese studio Tsuburaya Productions and America's Rankin/Bass Productions collaborated on three  tokusatsu films and the first of them was The Last Dinosaur, (Kyokutei Tankensen Pōrābōra).  It has the ridiculous premise of a billionaire big game hunter traveling to the polar caps in order to kill a twenty-to-forty foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex with a riffle; a Tyrannosaurus rex which somehow lives there within a tropical climate.  This is not even the most implausible aspect of the film though since it also finds a way to let the bulbous and screaming curmudgeon Richard Boone make-out with blonde bombshell Joan Van Ark.  Sticking with good ole fashioned suitmation and model work, the special effects seem laughably out of touch considering that this was released the same year as Star Wars.  Boone is hilariously annoying and gruff, but one could hardly blame him for what dribble he has to work with.  The film is a snooze-fest long before all of the characters get marooned for several months and make merry by killing animals and fending off the primitive natives.  People yelling, random horn blares on the soundtrack, and embarrassing shots of stuntmen in rubber dinosaur suits make for some unintended giggles, but that still leaves over ninety-minutes of sluggish crud to sit through.