Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)

Glen Cannon, a photographer who looks remarkably like Jimmy Stewart, inherits a castle from his recently-deceased 108-year-old uncle and, to please his fiance and model Liz, decides to live in it. Just one problem: the current tenants are 300-year-old vampires who really don't want to leave.

That sounds like as typical a horror plot as one can get. So Adamson spruces it up some and boy does he spruce. John Carradine is the butler who worships a made-up sacrifice-demanding moon god, Luna. Mango is the 'caretaker of the girls,' a hulking, mentally impaired, deformed giant charged with feeding (and apparently shaving the legs of and applying make-up to) the women kept chained in the dungeon for vampire nourishment. Johnny is a psychopath they've busted out of prison, who must kill during the full moon, or any time he feels like it.

I have to be honest: I was entertained. Al Adamson made a film that entertains me. It's witty, moves along at a decent pace, has quite a few excellent and amusing set-pieces, especially at the end. The battles with Mango and John Carradine are great, involving a whip, a ball-and-chain, an axe, a gun, fire, and a seaside cliff.

The characters are well-delineated enough to stand out as individuals, with the campy vampire couple especially stealing the scenes they're in. Somehow Adamson manages to find some fine-looking ladies to populate his film-world, too. Too bad they keep their clothes on.

Perhaps it's the present of co-director Jean Hewitt to which the film's quality is owned, but I can recommend this film for anyone with a taste for lightly tongue-in-cheek American Gothic. Of course, this is still Al Adamson, so don't expect either blood or Dracula--just the castle.