DOCTOR DRACULA (1978) * ½

Producer Sam Sherman got a hold of the softcore skin flick Lucifer’s Women and hired cult director Al Adamson to take all the sex out and put in a bunch of new scenes. The new scenes feature members of his usual stock players such as John Carradine and Regina Carrol.  Because of that, it’s a lot more tolerable than Lucifer’s Women, which was filled with a lot of bad acting. 

The central premise of Lucifer’s Women is still there, but Adamson shoehorns a vampire subplot in there.  The narrative was already pretty jumbled to begin with.  The movie already has hypnotism, reincarnation, and Satanists in it.  It’s a small miracle that the new scenes are much more entertaining than the old footage.

If you’re a fan of Adamson, this should go down smooth enough.  I’ll admit, he’s not one of the most competent filmmakers out there, but he does a better-than-expected job at blending the new footage with the old.  It helps that they got Larry Hankin back for the new scenes, so the transitions between the old and new footage is hard to spot in some scenes.

Although most of the movie is bad, the scene where Dracula has sex in a coffin is kinkier and more inventive than anything in the X-Rated Lucifer’s Women.  Adamson also wisely dropped the Paul Thomas subplot, which allows the film to run much smoother.  You still have to sit through those long scenes from Lucifer’s Women though, and let me tell you, they’re twice as hard to get through the second time around.

It’s not all bad though.  I liked it when Carradine name-dropped Elvis in a list of Satanic messengers.  While the new stuff isn’t great, the scenes of Svengali holding seances and Dracula stalking his victims are more entertaining and atmospheric than the stuff the other director came up with.  However, the ending is really dumb and is about as stupid as anything found in Lucifer’s Women.  In fact, it was probably a Two Star movie until the shitty ending brought things to an abrupt halt.

AKA:  Lucifer’s Women.  AKA:  Svengali.