Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969)

Movie Info

Lamest Dracula ever?

Glen Cannon (Gene Otis Shayne) and his fiancée Liz Arden (Jennifer Bishop) have just inherited a castle from his rich uncle.  The problem is that the castle already has an inhabitant in the Townsends (Alexander D’Arcy and Paula Raymond)…who happen to be vampires.  With fears that they are going to be evicted by Cannon, the Townsends, their butler George (John Carradine), a madman named Johnny (Robert Dix) who supplies them with blood, and their assistant Mango (Ray Young) must find a way out of the situation.  When Liz and Glen find the Townsends are hiding women in the basement for their food supply, they must try to get out of the castle alive.

Directed by Al Adamson and Jean Hewitt, Blood of Dracula’s Castle (sometimes known as Castle of Dracula or Dracula’s Castle) is a classic cult B-Movie late night horror film.  The film was distributed by Crown International Pictures and primarily shot around California.  The film is in the public domain and can often be found as part of multi-horror packs.

Mango likes Dracula!

Bad movies have a certain place for me.  They are the type of films that you can casually watch and generally don’t keep you riveted to the screen.  They are amusing in their low budget nature, they often try to get an anchor “star”, and their plots usually live up to their low quality of film.  Blood of Dracula’s Castle definitely fits these B-Movie parameters.

Despite being a “grindhouse” style of midnight movie, there is very little blood and no nudity in Blood of Dracula’s House.  The movie doesn’t seem to be able to decide if it is a horror movie or comedy.  The story has little direction and then adds in a weird moon cult to the vampire mythos it tries to set up.

That’s right…you should be scared. You’re caught in a bad movie!!!

The cast of the film is very typical of B-Movies.  The anchor actor would be John Carradine as the butler.  Gene Otis Shayne and Jennifer Bishop are weak as the leads, and Alexander D’Arcy and Paula Raymond are possibly the least threatening vampires of all time (and yes, D’Arcy is supposed to be Dracula).  Robert Dix is the suave killer who is moon obsessed, but his role doesn’t make much sense because two versions of the film exist…one where he’s a madman (the one I watched) and one where he’s an actual werewolf.  Dix seems a bit redundant also because the Townsends already have a butler and a henchman in the hilariously named Mango (Ray Young).

Mango is sad, Mango is dying!

The movie in general looks awful…chase scenes are anticlimactic and fight scenes possibly look worse.  The movie at least benefits from the nice location of Shea’s Castle in Lancaster, California as Falcon Rock, and I kind of like the opening scenes around the water park (the now closed Marineland in Los Angeles).

Don’t run out to find a copy of Blood of Dracula’s Castle, but if you get it in a pack, it is a fun one to check out.  You have to wonder how films like these were made and how the meager budget it probably had was spent since it looks the way it does…I just wish it fell into the “so-bad-it-is-good” category but it just misses the mark by a bit.