yes, this post here is, as the title says look you see, about Dracula. not actually Dracula as such, but Dracula. well, a film that i watched - as indeed, sort of, did my (considerably) better half - which had a Dracula character in it. but it's somewhat quite fairly far removed from the notion of Dracula in the Bram Stoker sense.
whilst wandering the wastelands of what remains of the world wide web i stumbled upon a film title that sounded quite smart. that title was Dracula Blows His Cool. a quick investigation revealed that the film behind the title, or at the least a DVD of it, could be mine for an all in fee of £5.08. guess what happened.
indeed that is the DVD next to one of the most smart Christmas presents i got; a very handsome desk tidy made by the boys and my (considerably) better half. more on that later, or at some point in the future, though - for now your attention should be firmly, so to speak, on the DVD you also see in the picture. well, box of the DVD, but you know what i mean.
a search for Dracula Blows His Cool on IMDB suggests that the original German, for it is evidently a German film, title of the movie is Graf Dracula in Oberbayern. attempts to search for the movie on IMDB also suggest that people interested in this film are actually trying to find information on that whole new Space Battles film.
yes, as you can sort of see in the above, two of the four suggestions for searched on Dracula Blows His Cool are for people who are in all that Star Battles Episode VII film. i suspect they were not born at the time of the film i was looking for was made. bonus points, however, for IMDB suggesting that what i might be looking for instead is that new film in which him off of Titanic gets bummed off of a bear or something.
the technical specifications of the DVD i bought? a single layer DVD, with the film taking up about 3.49GB of the disc. quality wise it's not bad - the picture is OK, the sound leaves a lot to be desired. pretty much a case of a semi-decent VHS print being shoved on a disc and sold to the people.
here's a quick look at the DVD menu for you, but be warned, sensitive types - there are brief flashes of fragments of people in less clothes than the conventions of society prefer. it is, as we shall discuss later, very much one of them kind of films.
yes, there's a little bit more of that boss soundtrack coming up for you in a bit.
is there any sort of plot or general story for Dracula Blows His Cool? sort of. i mean, things happen in it that sort of connect and tell a tale, but there's no overriding story arc and there is most certainly little or no connection to anything what Bram Stoker did beyond the name of the title character.
Dracula is not the protagonist of the piece. well, he is, but isn't. the main character is Stan, apparently a great grandchild of Dracula (no, no explanation given), is living in a family castle and for a living takes some saucy pictures to sell for calendars and magazines. here he is in a later stage of the film, using an absolutely smart looking phone to make a call from the offices of Playboy, no less.
i at the least assume it was the office of Playboy, as there were loads of covers of that magazine of the wall in the office which he was in. well, one of the walls of the office.
to clarify that is the protagonist but isn't thing, the actor who plays Stan - Gianni Garko - also plays Dracula. except he isn't called Dracula; he's called Count Stanislaus. which sounds like a Game Of Thrones character and makes one wonder why Dracula appears in the title, but anyway.
back to the plot, and apparently taking saucy pictures does not pay as many bills as it could. Stan is looking into, along with an Italian business partner imaginatively named Mario, turning the family castle into a sort of disco and hotel thing. a lady in the village - Mrs Nutcracker or something - takes exception to this. in an effort to stop it happening, she steals a saucy item from the castle and plans to take it to the mayor, or if you like Bürgermeister, as evidence that the castle development must be stopped.
no, the gnome is not the saucy item - what that is and where it ends up, so to speak, are things i shall not reveal here in case you for some reason decide to watch the film and do not want spoilers.
indeed, the film is a comedy. i know there are those out there who believe the idea of a "German comedy" is like that of a "French war hero" - possible, but unlikely. in both cases this is unfair. well, at the least, Germans are renowned for their sense of humour, believe it or not. Germany, as a whole, has a healthy love of Monty Python, at the least. and i don't think David Hasselhoff sold all them records in the country for any reason beyond a joke gone too far.
any favourite characters of mine in the film? yes, Chubby. here he is, with a lady character whose name escapes me - i think she was another relative or if you like descendant off of Dracula, or whoever the vampire in the film is or is supposed to be.
Chubby is class. what a bloody shame that the conventions of the time did not allow it to be so that he could have been called Chunky instead, as that would have been even more ace. yes, that is a Superman t-shirt he has on, and yes, they are yellow strides he has on too.
why is Chubby, or if you like Chunky, a favourite? you will see in a bit. if you carry on reading, at the least. in the mean time, though, the sauce of the film for you.
that right there are some of the girls that Stan takes pictures of, running around in a disrobed state as, for a laugh, Chubby or if you like Chunky has stolen all of their threads and attire. and yes, the image was taken in Commodore 64 mode mostly for censorship purposes, as this is not that type of site or blog.
it is, i can only presume, because of the huge amount of nudity in the film that Dracula Blows His Cool has an 18 certificate. it's really rather tame - little or no violence beyond vampire bites, and even then the bites are tame, hardly seen things. English, or if you like British, film censors have always, always and always been very prudish and uptight - a bit of flesh and they are quick to slam an 18 on it. the high level of full frontal female nudity which features in this film means that the BBFC, who would order all piano legs to be covered if they had their way, must have been close to just banning it all together.
oh yeah, the plot. Dracula, or whatever, and his partner, Olivia, live in the basement in coffins. their houseboy, Boris, usually gets them blood what he has stolen off of a bloodbank, with weirdly the mayor seeming to be the chief donor. anyway, Boris keeps spilling the blood before they get to have it. in this respect Dracula, or whatever, and Olivia are actually thus quite keen on the whole nightclub / hotel thing, as it means they can have access to blood from guests that Boris cannot drop.
a look at the actor who plays Stan instead playing Dracula, along with the imaginatively named Mario? sure.
was there any particular or major highlights for me in the film? what, you mean other than the copious and most splendid levels of nudies? why, yes. one of the actors, a character who seems to go around with Mrs Cockbreaker or whatever she was called, looks a lot like John Beck. here, have a gander.
who is John Beck? oh, you fickle and forgetful people. he was in the original Rollerball with Sonny off of Godfather, and he was drafted in to be Pam's primary love interest in Dallas when Patrick Duffy quit playing Bobby for a bit.
one of the main reasons that i pursued watching Dracula Blows His Cool to the end - other than to justify the £5.08 i had shelled out for it and the nudies - was to see if this was in fact the real John Beck. i couldn't work out if it was, and for some reason the film was bereft of end credits.
speaking of credits, there was an interesting decision made in that regard, but here you go - a snippet of the celebrated "disco sequence" out of Dracula Blows His Cool and again my apologies if you click on the video and see a bit more flesh than you can handle.
smart that soundtrack is. as far as i can work out the soundtrack for the film was never released, although it does not really matter as my (considerably) better half says that i cannot buy it if it does exist. the closest i can find is this track which says it is off of the film.
back to credits. the screenplay is credited to Grünbach and Rosenthal. i quite like the way that they just use their surnames. i like to imagine that they wrote the script, right, and said "well, people say Kubrick and know exactly which Kubrick you are talking about. we have just written a script as good as he would have done, so let us just use our last names too".
back to Chubby, or Chunky, and sort of back to the plot. for some reason Stan, Mario and a few others think that making the castle into a disco / hotel would go better if there were not vampires wandering around in it. to this end Chubby, or if like me you prefer Chunky, appoints himself Chief Vampire Slayer.
yeah, that's garlic he has around his neck, and indeed a cross on his back. he also has some wooden stakes on him, presumably to smack through the heart of the vampires. the flask does not contain holy water, though - that's vodka for his nerves as he goes off to kill them.
my first thought when i saw Chubby / Chunky in this outfit was "f*** The Frog Brothers, man". you either get that reference or you don't; but if you don't i assure you it is worth investigating. Chunky's efforts at being Chief Vampire Slayer are not all they could be, but again let me leave you to watch the film. although lots of this post, in particular the next few bits, are pretty much spoileriffic, i guess.
as it turns out, it is just as well that Chunky fails in his efforts. guest apparently really, really like the idea of getting bitten off of a vampire. to this end, Dracula or whatever gets to bite the ladies, whilst his partner, Olivia i think, bites the gentry. although there is a bit of a curveball in German comedy when a flamboyant gay gentleman of the homosexual variety checks in and expresses a wish for a gent bite.
this goes along quite well for a bit, but eventually Olivia and Dracula or whatever get a bit bored of it. they elect to return to Transylvania, with no reason ever being given that i noticed as to why they left, but leave the means in place for vampires to still service the guests, so to speak.
yes, the above picture is included purely because i had got too busy taking images of Chunky that i forgot to include one of Olivia earlier.
the answer is perhaps not so straightforward. once upon a time, i suppose as a start to an answer, it was very difficult to make a film - it was an expensive and lengthy process. to go through it to deliver something which was effectively tosh is, to me, exciting.
there's also the chance that by watching something like this you find one of those "so bad it's good" films.
alas, in respect of the above, i am not at all convinced that Dracula Blows His Cool is either actually a decent film or meets the criteria for consideration as a film that is "so bad it is good". yes, i was entertained by it, but that was more from the stack of nudies in it, and my adding commentary about The Frog Brothers and, indeed, bit part actors who looked a lot like bit part actors out of Dallas. nothing in the film beyond all of the lovely, wonderful nudies - not even Chunky, alas - proved to be all that brilliant or engaging in itself.
would i recommend this film? difficult to say, really. i would imagine that Dracula purists, such as my (considerably) better half, would not like it. people who really, really like nudies in films can probably find more of it than is on offer here in other films on the net. enthusiasts about German nudie comedies of the early 80s have probably already seen it. for anyone else, then, that happens to stumble on the title and gets as curious as i did, yeah, go for it, but hopefully you can find it for cheaper than i did. but no, in answer to the obvious question, the soundtrack does not get better than the snippets featured.
hope this has been of some use to someone somewhere!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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