Crew
Director/Screenplay – Jesus Franco, Photography – Jose Climent, Music – Bruno Nicolai & Daniel Whitte, Special Effects – Manuel Baquero. Production Company – C. Fenix Films/Comptoir Francais du Film.
Cast
Dennis Price (Dr Karl von Frankenstein), Howard Vernon (Count Dracula), Mary Francis (Maria), Fernando Bilbao (The Monster), Alberto Dalbes (Dr Jonathan Seward), Britt Nichols (Female Vampire), Genevieve Delpir (Amira the Gypsy), Luis Bar Boo (Morpho)
Plot
Dr Karl von Frankenstein resurrects his monster. He uses the monster to abduct a girl to drain her blood so that he can revive Count Dracula. He then keeps Dracula a prisoner in his castle.
Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein came out at a period when there were three competing films with variations on the same title that pitted Dracula against Frankenstein. Also around this same time was Paul Naschy’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1970) and Al Adamson’s Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971), both of which are regarded as fairly bad films. Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein did nothing to improve this. If anything, this demonstrates how popular the revivals of Dracula and Frankenstein by Hammer Films from the late 1950s throughout the 1960s and 70s were.
Jesus or Jess Franco (1930-2013) is considered the world’s most prolific director. Between 1957 and 2013, Franco directed some 199 films. Many of these exist under a labyrinth of alternate titles and different cuts. Franco’s most prolific heyday were during the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. During this period, he was producing easily six to eight films per year. His output covered a great many different genres from thrillers, spy films and science-fiction but most of all horror and erotica/pornography. Franco’s films have attained a certain cult following for their arty pretentions, although just as many of them are cheaply made. (A full list of Jess Franco’s other genre films is at the bottom of the page).
Jess Franco was mostly known for his horror and softcore work. He had dabbled in both the Frankenstein and Dracula film – most notedly, he made an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel with Count Dracula (1970) where he managed to inveigle no less than Christopher Lee to star. Franco subsequently went on to make several softcore Dracula and Frankenstein films with The Daughter of Dracula (1972), The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein (1972) and Lust for Frankenstein (1998). That said, Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein is not one of Franco’s erotic works, although the dvd print I was watching ran to 78 minutes, which is seven minutes less than the film’s listed runtime of 85 minutes. I have no information on what the discrepancy represents, although as far as I can tell there seems no nudity or sexual content that has been cut out (making this surprisingly one of the few of Jess Franco’s chaste and clothed films).
Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein is a frustrating film. Certainly, of all three of the Dracula vs Frankenstein films, it has a director who has the most artistic ambition and could have emerged more promisingly than these other outings. However, it is as though Franco was working without a script and shooting whatever he felt like on a particular day. In fact, there is barely any dialogue in almost the first half of the film. And the proceedings have such a meandering vagueness to them that it is hard to work out what is going on.
Much of Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein takes place without anything really happening – Dracula and the Frankenstein monster are revived but then wander about without much ever happening. There is a Dr Seward but he never seems involved in the action. There are cuts back to a girl who gets the vampire bite and another vampire girl running around. A girl is abducted and her blood drained to revive Dracula, who is then made into the prisoner of the title. There are people skulking around the castle and a gypsy woman who reads tarot cards and delivers a prediction. But these scenes just drag out without direction and little that discernibly coheres into anything resembling a plot. I am sure there is script out there that could have formed all of this into something dramatic, but it is not this one.
Jess Franco’s other films are:– The Awful Dr Orloff (1962), The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus (1962), The Secret of Dr Orloff (1964), Attack of the Robots (1966), The Diabolical Dr Z/Miss Death (1966), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), Necronomicon/Succubus (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), Justine (1969), Kiss Me Monster (1969), 99 Women (1969), Sadisterotica/Red Lips (1969), The Girl from Rio (1969), Venus in Furs/Paroxysmus (1969), The Bloody Judge/Night of the Blood Monster (1970), Count Dracula (1970), Eugenie/Philosophy in the Boudoir (1970), Nightmares Come at Night (1970), Vampyros Lesbos (1970), She Killed in Ecstasy (1971), The Corpse Packs His Bags (1972), The Daughter of Dracula (1972), The Demons (1972), Doctor Mabuse (1972), The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein (1972), The Silence of the Tomb (1972), The Bare-Breasted Countess/Erotikill/Female Vampire (1973), The Erotic Adventures of Maciste in Atlantis (1973), The Obscene Mirror/The Other Side of the Mirror (1973), The Sinister Eyes of Dr Orloff (1973), A Virgin Among the Living Dead/Christina, Princess of Eroticism (1973), Lorna the Exorcist (1974), Night of the Assassins/Night of the Skull (1974), The Perverse Countess (1974), Eugenie (1975), Doriana Grey (1976), Jack the Ripper (1976), Sexy Sisters/Satanic Sisters (1976), Greta the Mad Butcher/Wanda the Wicked Warden/Ilsa: Absolute Power (1977), Call of the Blonde Goddess/Voodoo Passion (1977), Wicked Women (1977), Demoniac/Exorcism/The Ripper of Notre Dame (1979), Man Hunter/The Devil Hunter (1980), White Cannibal Queen (1980), Bloody Moon (1981), Oasis of the Zombies (1981), Revenge of the House of Usher (1982), Grave of the Living Dead (1983), The Treasure of the White Goddess (1983), The Sinister Dr Orloff (1984), Mansion of the Living Dead (1985), Faceless (1987), The Killer Barbies (1996), Lust for Frankenstein (1998), Marie-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula in 8 Legs to Love You (1998), Tender Flesh (1998), Vampire Blues (1999), Vampire Junction (2001), Incubus (2002), Killer Barbies vs Dracula (2002), Snakewoman (2005), Paula-Paula (2010), Al Pereira vs the Alligator Ladies (2012), Crypt of the Condemned (2012) and Revenge of the Alligator Ladies (2013).
Trailer here