Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey, 1974)

Udo Kier in Blood for Dracula

Cast: Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Arno Jürging, Vittorio De Sica, Maxime McKendry, Milena Vukotic, Dominique Darel, Stefania Casini, Silvia Dionisio. Screenplay: Paul Morrissey. Cinematography: Luigi Kuveiller. Production design: Enrico Job. Film editing: Jed Johnson, Franca Silvi. Music: Claudio Gizzi. 

The great Vittorio De Sica had a career that extended from the sublime -- directing Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Umberto D. (1954), acting in Madame De ... (Max Ophus, 1953) -- to the ridiculous -- appearing in Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula. De Sica plays the Marchese Di Fiore, an Italian aristocrat in financial straits who lives in a decaying mansion with his wife (Maxime McKendry) and four daughters. He has been forced to dismiss all of his servants except one, the surly Mario Balato (Joe Dallesandro), a Marxist who eagerly anticipates a revolution like the one that has just taken place in Russia. Di Fiore's only hope is to marry off one of his daughters to a wealthy suitor. The oldest, Esmeralda (Milena Vukotic), and the youngest, Perla (Silivia Dionisio), are considered not suitable, but the two middle girls, Saphiria (Dominique Darel) and Rubinia (Stefania Casini) are prime marriage material. So who should arrive in their village but a well-to-do Romanian count named Dracula (Udo Kier). In this version of the Dracula story, the count can drink only the blood of virgins. The villagers back in Romania have gotten wise to this fact, and no women go near his castle. So he figures that the Italians, being devout Roman Catholics, will have seen to it that virginity prevails, so he journeys there with his assistant, Anton (Arno Jürging), in search of a bride. He's delighted to learn of Di Fiore's marriageable daughters, so he makes a play for the girls, only to discover that neither is a virgin -- Mario has seen to that. Sampling his would-be brides makes the count violently ill, giving Kier an opportunity to go over the top in portraying Dracula's reaction. The film is about what you'd expect if you've seen its companion piece, Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973): a good deal of nudity on the part of the actresses and Dallesandro, some bloody deaths, a lot of barely acceptable acting, and a wide variety of accents: Italian, German, French, British, and Brooklyn. De Sica, who wrote his own dialogue, makes his character one of the saving graces of the movie, along with cinematography, settings, and a score that are better than it deserves.    

Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey, 1973)

Joe Dallesandro and Dalila Di Lazzaro in Flesh for Frankenstein

Cast: Joe Dallesandro, Monique van Vooren, Udo Kier, Arno Jürging, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Srdjan Zelenovic, Nicoletta Elmi, Marco Liofredi, Liù Bosisio. Screenplay: Paul Morrissey. Cinematography: Luigi Kuveiller. Production design: Enrico Job. Film editing: Jed Johnson, Franco Silvi. Music: Claudio Gizzi. 

Silly, kinky, campy, bloody, sometimes scary, often very funny, and altogether ridiculous, Flesh for Frankenstein is also known as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein. Warhol's contribution to the film was his name and very little else, except for his association with director Paul Morrissey and star Joe Dallesandro. The idea for the film has been traced back to Roman Polanski, who suggested to Morrissey that he make a Frankenstein movie in 3-D. The backing for the proposal came from producer Carlo Ponti, with the result that the facilities at Cinecittà in Rome and Italian film technicians like cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, production designer Enrico Job, composer Claudio Gizzi, and special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi became available. The result looks better than it has any right to. It features Udo Kier in one of his first journeys over the top, playing the mad scientist baron, who is trying to breed a new master race. He has his female creature (Dalila Di Lazzaro) and the torso of the male in storage as the film begins, and is searching for a Serbian peasant with the right nose, or as he calls it, nasum -- the baron likes to drop in a little Latin to impress his assistant, Otto (Arno Jürging). He finds it on Sacha (Srdjan Zelenovic, an otherwise unknown actor), who has the misfortune to go with his friend Nicholas (Dallesandro) to a brothel. On their way home afterward, they're waylaid by the baron and Otto; Nicholas is knocked out and Sacha is beheaded. Unfortunately, Sacha wants to be a monk, possibly because, as we see, he's more attracted to Nicholas than to the women in the brothel. So despite having his head sewn to the male creature's torso, he's a failure when the baron tries to breed him with the female. Meanwhile, Nicholas has been hired as a servant by the baroness (Monique van Vooren), who wants him to serve at table but mostly to have sex with her. The baron, who is also her brother, has lost interest in sex some time after the birth of their two children. Nicholas recognizes Sacha when the baron presents his creatures at dinner, so with the help of the children, who have been spying on everything in the castle, he finds his way to the laboratory where everybody in the household eventually winds up in a scene that has more corpses than the last act of Hamlet. Let it be said about Flesh for Frankenstein that it's almost never boring.