No one will ever mistake 1971's Dracula vs. Frankenstein for a horror classic. Directed by down-and-dirty low-budget filmmaker Al Adamson, the movie was a fly-by-night production featuring what may be the worst (or at least the most bizarre) versions of its title characters ever seen onscreen. Its threadbare production values are evident, while its direction and much of its cast decidedly lack polish. Yet the flick also featured the final onscreen appearance of Lon Chaney Jr., whose own career took off during the latter part of the original Universal Monsters era, making him one of the last classic horror stars of the '30s and '40s to keep working into the 1970s.
Dracula vs. Frankenstein originally began life under the titles Blood Freaks and The Blood Seekers. J. Carrol Naish — an Oscar-nominated veteran actor who appeared in the 1944 monster mash-up House of Frankenstein — stars as Dr. Durea, who sends his mute, hulking, simple-minded assistant Groton (Chaney) out to murder young women near the California amusement pier where they run a haunted house. The wheelchair-bound Durea hopes to perfect a serum from the women’s blood that will repair his crippled legs and Groton’s addled mind. There are also bikers around and a Las Vegas showgirl (Regina Carrol) looking for her missing sister.
