DRACULA (THE DIRTY OLD MAN) (1969)
I am in awe of this movie.
The plot: Count Alucard (“Dracula” spelled backwards, as the opening credits tell us lest we not get the joke) lives in a cave in Southern California. The narrator calls it “The Land of Blue Mountains.” Or as he puts it, “As I looked beyond the beautiful hills, I saw a panorama of beautiful hills.” Anyway, Alucard (Vince Kelley) hypnotizes reporter Mike Waters (Billy Whitton) into obeying his every whim. He also renames Waters “Irving Jackalman,” for whatever reason, and commands him to bring hot young women to the cave so that Alucard can have his way with them. Also for some reason, now that he is under Alucard's spell, Jeykllman transforms into a moth-eaten werewolf-looking thing.
When Jackalman delivers young women to the vampire's cave, Alucard strips them naked, ties them up, and sucks their blood. This being a skin flick, of course, he does not suck it from their necks, but from their not-inconsiderable breasts. So yes, there's lots and lots of female nudity in this film. And its treatment of women must have appeared extreme even by the pre-feminist standards of 1969.
Alucard meets his end when he inadvertently falls asleep in his casket with his hand hanging out. This seemingly exposes him to the sun, thus killing him and of all but one of his female victims. (Never mind that he's in a cave where no sun gets in.) It also turns Irving Jackalman back into Mike Waters. The lone surviving woman happens to be his girlfriend, with whom he has sex in the cave while a bat watches from above.
This film had me laughing out loud, and for all the right reasons. On a purely technical level, it's even worse than MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE. However, I firmly believe its ineptitude was 100% intentional, that the filmmakers were trying to create a campy soft-core porn film. In that regard, DRACULA (The Dirty Old Man) succeeds magnificently.
How else to explain that Alucard's accent is less Karloffian and more Elderly Jewish New Yorker; that he constantly points out the film's low-budget look (“I've got to get a new interior decorator”); that for entire scenes, characters speak to each other without moving their lips; that on at least two occasions, Alucard's beard is crooked; that a co-worker of Mike's sounds like a low-budget Ed Norton (the “Honeymooners” guy, not the film actor); that the sound effect of a bat squeaking is clearly a rubber squeeze toy; that the “bat” into which Alucard transforms looks suspiciously like a hand shadow…. You get the idea.
Assuming your party guests are all of age, DRACULA (The Dirty Old Man) is an ideal candidate for a Bad Film Night. Its 68 minutes will leave you both shaking your head and laughing your ass off.
