ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN (1973) & ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA (1974)

Halloween Month rolls along here at Balladeer’s Blog with a look at two notoriously bad horror movies which use Andy Warhol’s name despite him not really having anything to do with them and credit Antonio Margheriti as the director even though Paul Morrissey wrote and directed them.

Sophia Loren’s husband Carlo Ponti co-produced both films. 

ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN (1973) – Also known as Flesh for Frankenstein, this 3-D monstrosity and its sister film, Andy Warhol’s Dracula (aka Blood for Dracula) used to be among the most well-known “So Bad They’re Good” movies. Oddly, they fell pretty much off the radar long ago, but get rediscovered every so often and enjoy a brief surge in notoriety from successive generations of horror fans. 

The making of these two grossout movies, which were filmed back-to-back in Italy, would make a better movie than both of them combined in my opinion. Criminal charges, false screen credits and much more behind the scenes lore would help put such a flick up there with Ed Wood and The Disaster Artist.

These two movies are also like 1970s time capsules, too. Recently relaxed standards for what could be shown on the big screen yielded a LOT of cheap films that were clearly made just to see how much gory violence and kinky titillation the creative teams could get away with.

Attaching Andy Warhol’s name to this pair of Paul Morrissey flicks helped appeal to pretentious Warhol fans and gave some critics the excuse to read deeper meanings into the sophomoric productions. Suddenly, awkward grossout scenes, idiotic dialogue and non-existent scares were being interpreted as “deconstructions of the Universal monster movies” or as “director/writer Paul Morrissey skewering the very countercultural sex revolutionaries that were among his biggest fans …”

Sheesh! At least purely mercenary splatter film legends like Herschell Gordon Lewis never pretended that their flicks were anything but cash-grabs that piled on the blood and gore.

Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Andy Warhol’s Dracula deserve my usual warnings to horror fans who really hate extreme violence and bizarre sex. Don’t go below the “Continue reading” line or you’ll probably regret it. These films are mild compared to Headless or Father’s Day or others I’ve reviewed, but are stomach-turning nonetheless.

So, let’s dive into two of the strangest Dracula and Frankenstein pairings this side of Blacula and Blackenstein.

Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein presented a descendant (Udo Kier) of the original Dr. Frankenstein patching together sliced-up sections of dead bodies to try creating a servile race of beings which will mindlessly obey him and selected fellow aristocrats. Meanwhile, his wife (and sister) Baroness Katrin Von Frankenstein (Monique van Vooren) is not getting the sexual attention she needs, so she takes on a burly stable boy named Nicholas (Joe Dallesandro) as a stud.   

Dr. Frankenstein, after several gory failures, decides to give up trying to mass-produce his race of intellectually stunted peasants and simply create a male and female pair who can serve as a horrific Adam and Eve. Their mating is intended to set in motion the spawning of multiple generations of the baron’s less-than-master race.

As the movie goes on, Katrin gets regular satisfaction from Nicholas, and Dr. Frankenstein gets satisfaction by indulging his scarring, incision and stitches fetishes in some very gross – but never scary – scenes. The Baron even goes so far as to hump a removed gall bladder and to penetrate some of the open surgical wounds of the Bride he is creating for his male monster.

Nicholas grows disgusted with Katrin’s snobbery and sexual selfishness and becomes a threat to Dr. Frankenstein’s plans when he starts snooping around the laboratory. The rejected Baroness informs her husband what Nicholas is up to and he incapacitates the studly stable hand to use as a living guinea pig.

To reward Katrin for warning him about Nicholas, the Baron gives his earlier male monster to her for her own sex toy, but the massive strength of the creature winds up killing her during sex. Dr. Frankenstein’s creepy assistant Otto (Arno Juerging), meanwhile, tries wound-humping the Bride of the Monster in imitation of his employer, only to thrust too vigorously and rip open her innards, thus killing her.

Frankenstein is furious over this and Otto gets killed. The Baron orders his man-monster to slay the bound and helpless Nicholas, but the monster’s head and brain came from an old friend of his in life. Enough of the friend’s mind remains that he rejects killing Nicholas and instead gorily murders Dr. Frankenstein.

The monster then decides he is better off dead and disembowels himself. For the fiendish finale, the two young, in-bred Frankenstein children, Erik and Monica, who have heretofore hovered on the outskirts of the action like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (make that ANDY WARHOL’S Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), enter the lab.

The crazed children regard the bloody, gory aftermath of the night’s events, then pick up some of their dead father’s surgical tools and close in on the bound Nicholas to subject him to God knows what kind of unspeakable torture. The End.

ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA (1974) – This sequel, aka Blood for Dracula, makes its forerunner seem like a cinematic masterpiece. The padding is even more dull, the grossout scenes are even more forced and gratuitous, and its idiotic premise seems like it SHOULD come from a comedy, but none of the movie is funny.

In 1920s Transylvania, Count Dracula (Udo Kier) still lives, and is retconned as needing to feed on the blood of virgins and virgins alone in order to survive. He has exhausted the local supply of virgins and his strength begins to diminish to fatal levels, since he vomits the blood of non-virgins.

And yes, the various vomiting scenes are used just for grossout bits of business throughout the movie. Dracula’s faithful servant Anton (Arno Juerging) convinces the Count to move to Italy, hoping that some of the small religious communities in the country will provide enough virginal victims to keep Drac going. 

At first, the ladies of Italy seem decidedly UN-virginal, too, prompting more vomiting on the part of Count Dracula. Soon, Anton and the Count meet the Marchese di Fiore (THE Vittorio de Sica), a formerly wealthy landowner whose estate is falling into disrepair.

Because of Dracula’s transferred wealth, the Marchese agrees to marry off one of his daughters to the Count, and Drac covertly sets about sampling their blood after dark. Two of the daughters, Rubinia (Stefania Casini) and Saphiria (Dominique Darel) turn out to be regular sex partners of the estate’s handyman Mario (Joe Dallesandro), making their blood an emetic to Dracula.

The oldest di Fiore daughter, Esmeralda (Milena Vukotic), is a virgin but is considered too old for marriage, but the youngest, Perla (Silvia Dionisio), is a virgin and is young enough to be slated as the Count’s bride.

Mario eventually realizes that, though he cannot drain their blood, Dracula has used his vampire powers to enslave Rubinia and Saphiria. He investigates further and, learning that the Count needs the blood of virgins, Mario “heroically” deflowers Perla (at left) to thwart Drac’s plans to victimize her.

Before Mario can treat the eldest daughter Esmeralda to some sex, Dracula feeds on her enough to restore himself to full strength and to have Esmeralda stand at his side against those who would kill him.

For the blood-soaked finale, Anton and the suspicious wife of the traveling Marchese kill off each other, and Mario manages to kill Dracula and Esmeralda. So, Joe Dallesandro’s heroic character survives this time around. But then again, as Mario, he admires the up-and-coming fascist party in 1920s Italy, so that makes him pretty far from a good guy. 

Andy Warhol’s Dracula was embarrassingly half-assed compared to the Frankenstein adaptation of the previous year. Not nearly as gory (until the end) and forced to substitute vomiting for the scar and wound fetishism of the previous film just to have some grossout material.

And speaking of half-assed, Andy Warhol himself once summed up his total contribution to these two horror flicks by saying that, while not involved creatively, “I go to the parties.” And thus is film history made.