John Carradine had a long career, and appeared in many great movies. He seldom starred in them, however. Twenty years after a few memorable turns as Count Dracula, he reprised the role. Even better, he was the film’s star. Sadly, though, it’s not a great movie. There are no winners after the title match of Billy the Kid vs Dracula.
Ken Begg is the proprietor of Jabootu: The Bad Movie Dimension.
#1 by ronald on June 1, 2015 - 9:52 am
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Less to be nitpicky than to be helpful to fellow readers, the actual book title is “The Very Witching Time of Night.” If you type “In the Witching Hour of the Night” into Amazon.com the results aren’t encouraging. 😉
#2 by Ken Begg on June 1, 2015 - 7:55 pm
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Fie on you, sir! Petty nitpicking will never be welcome at *my* website!
[Seriously, though, thanks for the correction.]
#3 by Alaric on June 2, 2015 - 8:21 pm
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Just a few things:
“Eva is played by Virginia Kristine, a genre pro from back in the day when she played the reincarnated Princess Ananka in Universal’s The Mummy’s Hand. ”
Virginia Christine played Princess Ananka in The Mummy’s Curse, not The Mummy’s Hand (which didn’t have a resurrected Princess Ananka in it). In fact, she has the single best scene in the film (her resurrection sequence) all to herself.
“He’s probably struck by her exact resemblance to the Land O Lakes Butter maiden. Or maybe he’s hoping she’ll do the “butter trick.””
True story- I learned the Land O Lakes butter trick as a kid from my mother, who learned it from a defrocked monk. My mother is, in current parlance, awesome. (Or is that still current?)
“the murderous Billy was generally required far more whitewashing than other Western icons like Jesse James or Wyatt Earp.”
Uh, the real Jesse James was a horrible, horrible person, though it’s true that the ballad had already done most of the whitewashing long before Hollywood got its hands on him.
#4 by lyzard on June 5, 2015 - 6:44 pm
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Though it is not without its cringe-worthy aspects, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter is a LOT more fun than this, yes. Still, I would have thought that the presence of JC in this and the complete absence of anything resembling a “star” in JJmFD would have made this more likely for DVD release. Weird.
#5 by RogerBW on June 8, 2015 - 5:39 am
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Pre-Dracula, vampire folklore in the USA would probably be the preserve of those weird eastern European immigrants. Of whom there were no trivial numbers, of course.
The mirror thing is interesting. As far as I can see, in the original stories it’s “the vampire cannot stand the sight of his own corrupt image”; then later it mutates into “he doesn’t have a reflection”.
It’s hard to control someone’s mind if you can’t find it.
By the way, Ken, I can’t do Disqus, so as regards your DVD warning: this was standard wording in the UK for many years (may still be), because the copyright monopolists could charge much higher fees for “public exhibition” than for “home viewing”, and wanted to squeeze every possible debatable activity into the former.