"A Story of Dracula The Wolfman and Frankenstein" 1975

I feel like somebody out there should be able to recognize this artist.

This is another non-music one, but instead of a fun party game record, this is fully a kids thing. Well, it’s intended to be that, it is pretty dark if you ask me. But it comes with a read-along comic book. It isn’t like the little 45 ones where they arbitrarily skip over whole scenes integral to the plot*; this seems to be a unique story. That’s right: one story involving all three classic monsters. And it is a RIDE!

It opens on a couple running from a pack of angry dogs in the woods. They meet a friendly guy who invites them back to his castle. Turns out the guy running is the recently deceased Dr. Frankenstein’s nephew, who was on the run with his fiancé from the same villagers that killed his uncle. The castle owner blackmails the nephew into making another monster. Once the monster is finished, it conveniently throws the nephew’s lover out a high window. She somehow survives, but is found by a giant wolf.

If you think she gets bitten here, you’re dead wrong. The wolf sniffs her, but moves on, leaving her to be found by gypsies and then enslaved to do all the Cinderella stuff around their camp. One night, the full moon comes out and she notices she suddenly has a pentagram on her palm. Turns out she is a werewolf herself (even though the title clearly says wolfMAN)!

This must have been the “Wolfman” Horace was thinking of.

Then after breaking free and killing another werewolf and some evil gypsies, she makes it back to the castle. She causes quite a stir obviously, and causes the blackmailer of the nephew from earlier to reveal that he is, you probably guessed, Dracula. I was taken by surprise at this “twist,” merely because they chose to portray him as blonde, probably ONLY to throw the reader off. Well played.

So the monster attacks Dracula who turns into a pretty cool half-man bat thing, bat and a battle Royale for the ages commences! And shit catches fire. Then Dracula and Frankenstein fall into the laboratory which blows the fuck up.

Nephew and Werewolf escape. She transforms and he says he knows a doctor who can help with her condition. I felt like the Dr. Was some sort of reference I was supposed to get. Is his uncle not dead? Is it a reference to Dr. Jekyll somehow?

I don’t know enough about these classic monsters to know exactly this is based on anything or just some one-off story by an un-credited wacko (no author or artist are listed as far as I can tell). I would like to know how the artist is though, other than Dracula being blond, some of the choices were cool: Frankenstein looks more like Bernie Wrightson’s version than the flat-topped classic, and the wolves and bat are pretty realistic looking for a 70s comic book. And the story-telling is pretty great for this sort of thing, except for one weird panel where nephew Frankenstein is conveniently in the bath so Dracula can kidnap his lover. It is a bonkers premise, but for what it does, it is pretty fun.

But, like, I don’t get the combo really? How did these three get so associated. I know they are part of the “Universal Monsters,” but how did that all come about? What a ragtag group of characters.

After listening to/reading this, I was pretty excited to sit down and watch The Monster Squad for the first time in 30 years. Honestly all I remember is that it was about some kids who are uniquely suited to fight the Universal Monsters because they have watched the movies a bunch. Of course I remember the part about the Wolfman’s “nards,” and that apparently only female virginity counts when it comes to affecting the supernatural.

I’m not even going to touch on the sexist homophobic stuff because I wouldn’t even know where to start. It’s from the 80s, and as uncomfortable as that kind of stuff is, I feel like I have to choose my battles or miss out on some otherwise some great stuff.

This however, was not one of those. I have no idea how this film enjoys the cult status that it does, except for nostalgia. When we were kids, other kids swearing and being pervy, and I guess kicking ass, was cool. But that is literally all it is besides some good costuming. I mean, they talk a lot about how these guys are super into the five classic Universal Monsters, but there is no substance. No exploration about the meaning of the origin of the creatures, or what they represent, or even a justification of their appearance in the real world. There is a line about the old man being a Holocaust survivor that is completely thrown away. He doesn’t even mention it when the kids are around, just for the audience’s benefit.

One of the kids does seem to be into slasher movies, but even that is written with disdain as the one he wants to see is a sequel with an impossibly high number. A better made movie might have tried to work in the idea of “classic” monsters having value over the interchangeable assembly scary stuff the 80s that became notoriously 80s. But it just isn’t there.

Somehow all of this superficiality is overlooked in 2019. Not everything deserves to come back. Even Jenna, who is almost a decade younger than hailed this as a classic after watching it just five years ago. She even recently got the shirt that the main kid wears, although that is more because of her reverence for Stephen King than this film.

This time through though, we both just kept looking at each other and apologizing, despite having both been excited about the rewatch. I mean I hate to shit on kids movies, and there are a ton of that I like or even LOVE, but this is just not good. I was at least hoping for fun, but it was just boring. This movie has no substance what so all. I mean “A Story of Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein” has so much more going for it plot and pacing-wise.

I’ll be back to music of Thursday if all goes as planned.

*find “The Hobbit” or “Star Wars” for particularly egregious examples of MAJOR plot points missing. I might do a post about those one day.