⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Dracula retired to rural India. I assume. I’ll be doing a whole bunch of assuming here. He’s not alone in his remote villa. Nope, he’s got a bevy of ghoulies along for the ride. There’s a man in a very cheap skeleton costume who is supposed to be an actual living skeleton. I assume. There’s a werewolf who is definitely the combination of a discarded bear costume, a flea-infested dog mask and some black gloves and there’s some vampire chickadees with fangs from the same discount shop that supplied the skeleton costume and werewolf mask and some homemade wings that were crafted from styrofoam cooler tops. There’s also another vampire lady named Lalu who has one of those cheap batwing tops and a bulbous mask that I think is what happens when your Frankenstein’s monster mask is left out in the sun too long under a bag of marshmallows and fuses together. So, Dracula is living the fucking dream. Into that dream walks a group of camping dopes with personal issues amongst each other which makes for a prime target for the menagerie of Halloween store rejects. Dracula maniacally laughs over stock footage of storms and lightning while shouting that he will not love because, and I quote, “Love is stupid.” Vampires wear miniskirts, attempts at humor fail miserably, the featured vampire slayings are the most pathetic ever caught on camera, fight choreography is somehow even worse, most scenes look like you’re viewing everything through the lens of untreated glaucoma, Dracula plans on creating an army of Draculas and (of course) one of the ladies in the group is the reincarnation of Dracula’s lost love. Even if it sounds like they are trying, there’s not really a story, it’s more-so just a showcase for costumes you can smell from the comfort of home, overacting tangoing with the inability to act and women who were willing to wear skimpy clothes. So… more heaven on earth than anyone should ever be granted. The anti-genius of Harinam Singh (who blessed the world with Shaitani Atma) is on gorgeous display in all its no-budget, complete ineptitude glory. Linear storytelling? Shots in focus? Sensical character motivations? What are you fucking stupid? Go look elsewhere. But if you like your Dracula’s dressed up as confused American civil war generals or maybe Australian cowboys (also confused) and your lady vampires struggling to balance as they “fly” through the air via the special effect of being dragged on a skateboard (I assume) out of camera view… do I have a treat for you. There’s so much wrong with this movie (basically every aspect of what any cinema browser would call professionalism) but it’s all the well-intentioned failures that make it so damn charming. My copy was the composite cut of the 98 theatrical release and the recut later release with English subtitles to boot; the issue is that (I assume) somebody attempted to clean up the audio and visual issues by using a very early stage AI program which renders features into a blobby mess for a lot the runtime. It also has some scenes repeat while dialogue from the actual scenes that are missing plays on, I felt it added to the lunatic charm but I am an idiot. The technical physical media issues didn’t bother me all that much because I had already seen an unsubtitled copy fairly recently but it may bother the more picky of trash connoisseurs. No, they are not the problem. I am definitely the problem. You’re not hallucinating, you’re just watching the stream of consciousness adaptation of Dracula from a very concussed madman rendered even more incompetent by someone who tried to “fix” the presentation of the final product by altering it with defunct technology they had no idea how to use. “Attack our visitors as female Draculas… for our society!”
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