Vampires, vampires, vampires. Lately all you hear about is Vampires. All this negative fury over the “Twilight” films has taken away from the reasons we love those crazy fanged coffin dwellers in the first place. If you’re an over 18 horror fan, it’s considered part of your birthright to sound off against poor ole Edward and his broody clan. We hear it every day in every horror media outlet, “blah, blabbedy, blah, blah, ‘Twilight’ sucks, it’s the worst thing to ever happen in the history of horror, blabedy, blah blah”. To me its like we’ve all become cranky senior citizens who are screaming at the top at our lungs for those damn emo teenagers to “get the hell off our lawns” while they snicker at us from behind the bushes, waiting to set that poop filled paper bag on fire.
“Twilight” is an easy target for our venom. It’s over soapy, it’s melodramatic, it’s told from the perspective of a REALLY selfish and unsympathetic teenage girl, and it’s got, in my opinion, the worst written dialogue in the history of literature, but in all honesty, it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’d watch any “Twilight” movie 24 hours straight rather then subject myself to one more viewing of “Big Momma’s House”, and they’ve made THREE of those f’n things.
Now, I’ve already gone on record on saying that I believe that this whole “Twilight” thing could be spun in a positive light by introducing Team Edward and Team Jacob to some of the great vamp and wolfie classics of the genre, so I’m going to take this opportunity to do just that.
“In Some Cases, the Title Literally Says It All!!”
Ah the seventies!! The DECADE of the vampire, Sir Christopher Lee was still suckin down on the townsfolk as the quintessential Dracula in Hammer Films ongoing series which was at the height of it’s popularity in the 1970’s, Ingrid Pitt was the premier female blood sucker in a separate kind of series of female vamp films from the House Of Horror, there were even crazy things like “Dracula: The Dirty Old Man”, “Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires”, “Blacula”, heck even Drac’s Doberman Pincer Zoltan got his own movie. So if you complain about the volume of vamp flicks today, you should have seen the all the free love those fanged fiends got back in the 70’s! It was during this craze in the year of our lord 1970 that the great AIP Studios unleashed one of the gems of this subgenre, a little film called “Count Yorga Vampire”.
After some appropriately creepy narration about the nature of myths, “Count Yorga” abruptly begins in the midst of a heated séance. Three groovy swingin’ 70’s couples (including one of cinema’s great “that guy’s” Michael Murphy) have engaged the services of the Count to contact one of the girl’s recently deceased mother (who just happened to be ole Yorgi’s gal pal imagine that??). Needless to say poop gets real and soon after the spiritual spookiness, one of the couples kindly offers the Count/Medium, and his Dracula cape a ride home back to his giant gothic castle right in the middle of Los Angeles (property taxes must be a BITCH!!), and are introduced to his gnarly Harvey Dented man servant who doesn’t talk much, but looks VERY rapey.
However, on the way out the Samaritan’s bitchin’ red Mystery Machine becomes trapped in what can only be described as “Mega Mud From Hell” from which apparently, there is no escape. So they do what every normal human being stuck in a pool of mystically summoned evil mud would do, light some candles, pull up the PBR’s and get groovy baby, yeah!! (I apologize, but Austin Powers references still topical…right??). But their post coital bliss is ruined when Yorgi, out of the blue, totally c*ck block’s and coldcocks our hero, power flinging him from his van and then proceeds to dine on his poor defenseless girlfriend. I think we’d all agree that why these old school type villains never just kill the hero after knocking them unconconcious is one of the great mysteries of life, up there with Stonehenge , and the whereabouts of master thespian Steve Guttenberg.
“This is what you get when you offer caped strangers a ride home!!”
Due to an extreme case of needing to keep the plot going, our turtlenecked troubadour remembers nothing about the previous night’s events, and the mud has conveniently dried up so they depart for a seemingly happy existence. However, all is not well in the City of Angels Garfield
“Cat, the other, other, OTHER white meat”
And, in another startling twist, he ACTUALLY calls the police TWICE!! But they dismiss him as nutball, so he and our heroes are forced to do combat with Yorgi, first in a game of wits, kind of like an all night slumber party, to see if they can keep the good Count occupied until daylight to prove his vampirism (first time I’ve ever seen this tactic used, conversation as a literal weapon), and when all else fails, they do themselves a Cushing and break some FREAKIN chairs, use utensils to make crucifix’s and finally good old fashioned fire to ward off the undead, kind of like the vampire killer version Home Depot!! Will our heroes defeat The Count and save their life partners from an eternity of bad hair days, and tanlessness?? You’ll have to see to find out.
Man, I LOVE these seventies vampire films. Especially those that take place in the 21st century, because to me what’s done so well in these films is the merging of the old culture of vampire lore with modern sensibilities, which being made in the seventies make them into a kind of groovy time capsule. So what you get is the gothic horror mixed in with increasingly cynical modern times, fabulously dated hairstyles and clothes, and that to me makes magic. Like when in the film the count has one of his chicks turn off the hero’s alarm clock so he doesn’t wake up until after dark, that’s freakin GENIUS!! Man That Yorgi thinks of EVERYTHING!! Dracula never had to deal with mechanical waking devices, so nicely done Mr. Yorga.
This being a low budget affair, we have to accept that a few things are going to have to be sacrificed for our amusement mostly. First this film looks BAD, it’s definitely got that grimy 70’s feel, but there really isn’t a single imaginative shot in this whole film. And as good as DVD restoration is you can’t make up for a film stock that looks like fly paper. Secondly, again still very amusing, it’s blatantly obvious that was no money in the production budget for exterior sync sound so we have several scenes of our characters walking about LA just like they walked out of an American dubbed Shaw Brothers film. And thirdly, I won’t even talk about the special effects or lack thereof because, no, this flick lives and dies by one person and one person only.
“Be sure to stick around for Yorgi’s version of ‘If I Were A Rich Man”, eat your heart out Topol’”
Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you the great ROBERT QUARRY. This dude oozes vampy charisma all over the faces of most of those seventies vamps. In fact, in my humble but admittedly sometimes misguided opinion, Quarry’s Yorga is only second to Lee as the best Vampire of the seventies. Quarry’s performance is intensely low key, sophisticated, and most of all oddly sexy, which is astounding considering his old age and flab. Quarry needs to be on target to make this flick work, and he takes all the greatest hits from Lugosi and Lee and also makes the performance his own, which is no small feat considering the sheer volume of vamp performances of the period. When I found out that Yorga was supposed to take on Vincent Price’s Dr. Phibes in a supposed AIP team up film, I wept and wished that I could Marty McFly back to Nicholson and Arkoff and offer them my first born child and some blood for the greenlight, but sadly, no jigawatts were available.
In closing, I’d highly recommend grabbing your nearest available tween/teen, and instead of trying to convince them of the horrible abominations that the Twilight films are, try this as an opener. “Hey you young person, those ‘Twilight’ films sure are dope and or rad, I have something that you might think is equally dope and or rad that is also involving vampires!! Why don’t you try watching this!!” 9 out of 10 tweenagers and teenagers have been clinically proven to laugh out loud quite hysterically then say “S*crew you old man/woman, I’m not down with your conformist old timey films, this ancient vampire’s hair isn’t disheveled in any way and he doesn’t have stubble of any kind!! So don’t tread on me bruh!!” But if you can reach that one, poor lonely horror nerd, who longs to be different from the crowd, you know the one like you, in the back of the class not paying attention and reading old Steven King novels, who won’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend until they’re in their late teens, early twenties. You would have done the genre and the human race in general a great public service. And for this we thank you.
