Director: William Beaudine
Year: 1966
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Traveling through the American frontier, Count Dracula arrives in a small frontier town where he poses as an uncle to target a young woman to be his bride, and once the switch is discovered, her boyfriend sets off to find the vampire before he is able to make her his bride.
Review:
This one was entertaining enough to warrant a watch and had some good moments. One of the film's finer qualities is the fact that the main villain works as a threat since Dracula himself is a major plus. With his cadaverous frame creeping about in a black suit and stovepipe hat, outfitted with a black goatee and his hair slicked back with a Satanic look, this one manages to make the figure somewhat of a threat and does fittingly look the part. There's also a really great method of inspiring fear, where whenever he is set upon a victim, the camera closes in on his face, which is then illuminated with a hellish red glow. It also manages to pull off one common vampire theme in one fantastic scene, where the vampire's inability to cast a reflection in a mirror is pulled off in a simply spectacular sequence.
These all manage to give the central vampire figure some threat, and the slow-dawning revelation about its appearance at the ranch gives off a rather intriguing storyline throughout here. There's also the fact that there are big action scenes in the grandest Western style, which doesn't hurt this one much either, as the Indian's assault on the fleeing caravan is one of the film's big moments, a brief gunfight in the saloon is quite nice, while the finale in the underground mines has some great moments and a really unique method of defeating the count.
Along with the film's really nice pacing, this one wasn't all that bad at all, but there are still a few problems. The biggest issue is the fact that this one manages to mix the two genres in here, yet there's not a whole lot of either one in here. The Western setting is really only there for the beginning assault on the wagon and the setting at the ranch. This really could've been changed to any point in history with very little done to change the film.
The plot is not really interested in Dracula as a vampire either, as he is allowed to do very specific non-vampire activities, such as walk about in broad daylight without consequence, can be staked with non-wooden spears, and no blood is ever shown from his blood- drinking, leaving it quite hard to really get into without these commitments from either genre mixed in. It is certainly very cheap as well, with a rather bad bat-on-a-wire effect, and every time Dracula changes from a bat to a person, the bat flies behind something off-camera, and then he steps out. It's quite distracting and really helps to point out how there are no real transformations in the film. This one here wasn't all that bad.
Overview: ***/5
A little flawed but an acceptable enough western/vampire hybrid, this one has some likable enough factors to come across as the cheesy, cheap genre effort it is, as it's brought down by some expected elements. Those who are curious about it or who enjoy this type of approach will have the most to like here, while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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