So I was browsing through some old cult films that had made their way onto YouTube and came across this little gem from 1979.  I can't believe I made it this long without finding this film and making it a part of my collection here on Cultarama, because it truly deserves a coveted spot amongst the best of the best.  It boasts a faded star in Chuck Conners, who had wanted to reinvent himself and leave his square-jawed cowboy persona in the past.  A soon-to-be semi-famous, yet mostly topless star in Tanya Roberts, who for all her physical endowments and icy blue eyes cannot act her way out of a wet paper bag.  And a young professionally trained actress named Jocelyn Jones, who has gone on to be what many consider a film industry treasure and has taught some of the most accomplished actors out there, in addition to being a #1 bestselling author.  How she found her way into this freakshow of a movie is anyone's guess.

     It begins as your typical "omg, we have a flat tire, guess we'll have to stop at some desolate location and get murdered" setup with your average group of young and pretty victims.  Shortly before our new victims arrive, we get to see the bizarre murder of a previous victim who also picked the wrong roadside tourist attraction to attempt a call for help when dealing with a faulty car.  He enters a room and is confronted with laughing mannequins and poltergeist-like activity with bottles being thrown at him etc, until a flying pipe finally seals his fate.  Stephen King himself praised this terrifying opening scene in his nonfiction book about horror films Danse Macabre, and I definitely concur with Mr. King, it is truly intense and sets the tone for the next hour and twenty minutes.

     As our attractive visitors make it to Slausen's Lost Oasis roadside attraction, they neglect to notice a sign that says the attraction is closed to the public.  Despite this, when they arrive at The Lost Oasis they are greeted by Mr. Slausen who owns the place.  After being caught skinny dipping in a small lake on the property, the female members of the group (why is it always the women who skinny dip, are men in horror films not allowed to do this?) follow him into the attraction where he shows them his collection of animatronic mannequins and other nightmare fuel he's surrounded himself with.  He then pulls some dialogue straight out of Psycho by telling them that since the new highway has been built, no one comes to see his creepy collection.  Yeah, that's why.  When asked about the mansion behind the museum, he tells our young ladies that his brother Davy lives there and that he lives in the museum.  Eileen, the sassiest of the bunch, decides that Davy is the better choice of a helper than Mr. Slausen, being that he lives in a mansion and all, strikes out on her own and is therefore the first killed.  She is attacked by a combination killer that resembles the perfect marriage between Leatherface and Michael Myers with Carrie-like telekinetic abilities and finishes her off while all the mannequins laugh.

     We then have Becky, played by Tanya Roberts, going to look for her friend, making her the obvious second victim.  She finds Eileen but it appears she's been turned into a mannequin herself.  Hard to tell since the entire place is jam-packed with them.  Eileen turns around revealing her new plastic facade, scaring Becky in what is the worst jump scare reaction ever caught on film.  You'd think instead of leaping towards her, she just turned around and was like "Hey girl, killer or something around, might wanna head for the car". She gets caught and is taken to the cellar and tied up, where Jerry the only guy in the group is also tied up along with a girl who's evidently been captured and tortured for some time now and is just praying to hurry up and meet her maker, cuz she's over it.  "Plasterface" goes on about how he's Mr. Slausen's much more handsome brother, yet comes off completely gay about it.  The doll mask and blonde wig he's wearing don't help.  He's also evidently telekinetic and can move things.  

     Molly, the only girl left and the last surviving victim if there ever was one, escapes only to learn that Plasterface and Mr. Slausen are the same man with a split personality in yet another Psycho reference.  In addition to Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is invoked many times as well.  Both stories originate from the story of Ed Gein, and the similarities cannot be denied, only cheaply copied.  There's even a scene with Molly (the blonde) running through the woods yelling "Jerry!!" which is a scene taken verbatim from Texas Chainsaw.  Oh yeah, Becky gets killed with an ax, anyway...  

     Mr. Slausen has by now taken a keen liking to Molly and wants her to replace his dead bride.  Even though he confesses that he killed her and his own brother, cuz they were "whoring around" behind his back.  Personally, I wouldn't miss someone like that, but that's just me.  Mr. Slausen puts a doll face on Molly and smooches her pretty hard in what is a most uncomfortable scene before Jerry comes to the rescue.  But has he really?

     Molly cries out for Jerry to kill Mr. Slausen but he then gets his arm removed, then his head, etc, revealing that he too is another mannequin made to look alive by our telekinetic villain.  While Mr. Slausen is enjoying freaking Molly out to the fullest, she somehow dares to grab an ax and hit him in the neck, effectively killing him and all the laughing mannequins, who with their creepy oversized mouths, FINALLY shut the hell up.  The next morning we see Molly flying down the highway (guess she got the tire fixed, good for her) with all her mannequin friends in the backseat.  A look of fresh insanity on her face as her ratty blonde hair flaps in the cool breeze.

     The trivia for this film was abundant, but I'll only highlight the better ones.  The score, which the director hated but used anyway because it cost an entire 1/6 of the film's total budget, was done by the composer who scored Carrie only a few years prior.  Being that it's about a telekinetic misfit I guess is just a coinkinkidink.  Horror scream queen Linnea Quigly makes a brief cameo as a mannequin, but being that they all look the same, I still have no idea which one was her.  Chuck Conners insisted on using his kids' names in the credits for the actor who played Davy because no one wanted to give away the twist ending.  All in all, I thought it was a great film.  It had its flaws like every movie but the goofs were actually rather rare.  The premise of the telekinetically controlled mannequins and dolls was a great touch when creating a film experience destined to give people nightmares for years.  Yours truly included, I hate dolls.

     So, we come to that age-old decision, is it camp, classic, and basically does it fit into the archetype cult film status that we've all come to know and love.  Usually, big-budget films that were very popular and did well in the theater don't necessarily fit under a cult classic label, but some stories actually do it quite well. Dracula is a little different in that it's one of the few multilayered posts I've done, something that takes up a whole universe and has a mythos to it.  Many horror movies with all their remakes, sequels, prequels, miniseries, and alternate storylines also have that air of existing within its own universe, much like the earlier movies by John Waters starring Divine had their own connected universe as well.  Similar.   

     Anyway, I had just finished the Bram Stoker original novel and fondly remembered the fancy remake starring Winona Ryler and Gary Oldman, but how long had it been since I saw the original 1931 Tod Browning film version of Dracula with the vampire legend himself Bela Lugosi?  So I gave it a rewatch and I guess you could say it was classy, but only by the standards of the time, otherwise it was quite campy.  Movies in general were still relatively new and campy crap was always gonna sneak in there somewhere.  From the cheap bats on strings to armadillos being used at Castle Dracula instead of rats (in Transylvania, seriously?).   Having seen Bela in his most revered and prized lifetime role (in death too, he was buried in his Dracula costume and cape), it's not a far cry to see him drifting into cheap Ed Wood films.  Even though we loved them for their absurdity, it was sad to know that it was mostly because of Bela's heroin addiction which had caused him to have to work well past retirement age while being in terrible health as the only real reason that he starred in them.  Bela's Dracula/overlord role in Ed's Glen or Glenda, a movie that couldn't decide whether to be a horror movie or a serious attempt at explaining transexualism, is totally a treasure to behold.  And for all his efforts to try and provide his idol and friend a job, Ed Wood tried his very best, too bad it always came out has his very worst.  Even though Bela's acting isn't all that great in Dracula, it was just such a sexy role that I think most people really didn't care and it propelled him into super stardon, at least for a short while.  When stars fall on hard times, some turn to drugs and alcohol, some turn to doing porn or Ed Wood films.  Bela kinda did both...but with a completely alluring Hungarian accent.

     Bela carried his own without a doubt, but when it came to acting Renfield stole the show.  I mean that laugh was creepiness personified.  The rest of the cast faded into the background.  For as much a part as she plays in the book, I always expect the character of Lucy Westenra to be as over-the-top girlie girl as possible and for Mina Harker to be the quintessential woman of virtue, but the 1931 film missed these two character opportunities by a mile.  The rest...meh.  I much more enjoyed the culty camp factor, which was plentiful.

     In the 1992 remake, both the original movie and the book were merged pretty seamlessly into a whole new film with the exception of one huge change.  The secret romance between Mina Harker and Count Dracula.  It may not have been anywhere in the book or original movie, but it made for a much more interesting love story, albeit an atypical one, but still had tremendous merit and made for some delicious dialogue and quotes that will live on in infamy.  "I've crossed oceans of time to find you". You so crazy you coulda jus called.  Personally, I really liked the remake and it's new plot twist.  Something about turning Mina from a goody two shoes into a vampire slut cheating on her husband was much more appealing, especially since Jonathan Harker was a bit of a real estate bore anyway.  The cinematography and costumes were well worth the overall effort, which I believe took away several awards for each.  

     Overall, I think the book was a bit simplistic, but it had a unique tone to it throughout.  It's separated into three basic parts.  Jonathan Harker's initial experience with Count Dracula in Transylvania, the death and resurrection of Lucy Westenra, and the final showdown between Jonathan Harker, Professor Van Helsing (plus a few extra henchmen) and Count Dracula.  The ending is rather anticlimactic and the characters are a little one sided, but the imagery and symbolism are what make it a classic among classics.  The baptism of blood sequence in the book where Mina drinks the spurting blood of Count Dracula, then bitches about how unclean she feels afterwards even though she seemed to enjoy it, just screams of regretted fellatio.  And then of course in the days of HIV, the whole taboo of unclean blood received through a form of sexual pleasure takes on a brand new symbolism.  It's metaphoric horror themes like these that make a classic endurable throughout the ages, and Dracula is one of the best.  Campy, classy, and very cult, on many levels, both in writing and in film.