PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Once again I venture into the dusty depths of "movies-so-bad-they're-just-bad" with the idea of saying something pithy about degrees of rottenness.
NOCTURNA was one of two star vehicles for Nai Bonet, a dancer/singer of French-Vietnamese extraction. Neither movie did well and Bonet gave up acting. But unlike the second movie, a gangster-melodrama, NOCTURNA's use of vampire-tropes put it more or less on the radar of horror fans-- that, and the fact that the budget allowed for the casting of familiar faces John Carradine and Yvonne DeCarlo.
The movie has some comic bits, but is primarily a soppy romance. When the long-lived Count Dracula (Carradine) is forced to convert his castle into a "Hotel Transylvania," his granddaughter Nocturna (Bonet) seeks to modernize the castle for current customers. The young-looking vampiress (actually about 300 years old) hires a disco group to entertain at the hotel, and she meets one of the performers, Jimmy. She falls in love and runs away with the singer to America. The affronted Count follows, and Nocturna appeals for help to another vampire, Jugula (DeCarlo), who knew Dracula back in the day. The longer Nocturna remains in love with Jimmy, the more quickly she'll lose her vampire nature and become a mortal woman-- a fate Dracula wishes to prevent.
I can't say that this story of first love held my interest much, but at least the script picks one simplistic idea and sticks with it. Bonet's acting talent doesn't equal her beauty, but she's not so much wooden, as some reviews state, as one-dimensional. Once she's in love, that mood defines her whole character-- with the exception of one moment when her grandpa sends a servitor to abduct her, and she gives him an offscreen mauling. The script is low-energy and low on conflict-- eventually Jugula just talks Drac into, shall we say, "dying and let living." But DeCarlo and Carradine bring some oomph to their stereotypical roles, even though I have to admit that at its best the film is never funny.
That said, the Belgian "comedy" MAMA DRACULA has no idea what it wants to be. I hypothesize that its director/co-writer might've seen THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS or ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA and said, "I can do that." Somehow the producers roped Louise Fletcher into the title role-- possibly because the project offered her a starring-role-- and off they went.
The Warhol-attributed flick is a probable influence because the writer of the script repeatedly borrows the earlier film's penchant for having characters pronounce "virgins" as "wer-gins." The narrative begins with eccentric and mousy scientist Professor Van Bloed, who's working on a project to create artificial blood. Somehow news of his experiment reaches the ears of modern-day vampire Countess Dracula, and she summons Van Bloed to her Hungarian castle. The countess, who calls herself Elizabeth once and is clearly based on the historical Erzebeth Bathory, doesn't bother going around fanging necks. Instead, like her real-life model, she has her twin sons-- who unlike "Mama" often appear with full-fang action-- kidnap young women so that Elizabeth can bathe in blood, thus keeping herself young. However, in this modern era virgins are in short supply (another borrowing from WARHOL'S), so the countess hopes Van Bloed's process can help her.
So where's the conflict? Well, there's almost none to speak of. Van Bloed is a ninny who doesn't comprehend the reality of vampirism, and so when he tells the twins that he needs lots of real blood for his synthesis experiments, he never realizes that the vamps are going to start preying on local village girls. (Somehow the alleged shortage of "wer-gins" never interferes with the twins' quest.) While the vamps are hunting, a goofy old vampire hunter and his young female companion come to town. The script gets nothing out of the hunter except to show that he wouldn't know a vampire if one bit him.
The young woman Nancy-- not sure if she's a daughter, niece, or secretary-- becomes a little more consequential because the vampires kidnap her too. Van Bloed sees her at the castle and falls for her, but she doesn't reciprocate. In fact-- and I guess this lame wrapup counts as being slightly original-- she falls for both twins and marries them both. I don't think the professor ever finishes his experiment, though he ends up hanging around the castle like a funny uncle of some sort.
There are a handful of topless scenes, but not enough to allay the dullness. Fletcher's not called upon to do anything but sit around looking stately while her sons do all the heavy lifting. The actors playing the sons are lively but again, not funny.
For all of these reasons, MAMA DRACULA's only accomplishment is to make NOCTURNA look good by comparison.
No comments:
Post a Comment