Dark Corners Reviews + Billy the Kid Vs Dracula

Baton the Kid vs Dracula

Cowboys, vampires, and the word 'versus' in the title are all familiar to the seasoned MSTie, but I don't recollect any of us always expected to observe all 3 in the aforementioned absolutely terrible movie. The movie in question too stars John Carradine from Cerise Zone Cuba and The Unearthly in one of the title roles.  Poor John Carradine.  He started out in the 30's in Les Miserables and The Grapes of Wrath, and ended up in the 80's in Ice Pirates and Frankenstein Island. A significant pct of his unabridged filmography would take been right at home on MST3K, and this is definitely not the last we'll exist seeing of him in the 'Episodes that Never Were' section.  Hell, with a new flavor looming I doubt we've even seen the final of him in the actual prove.

Earlier we even get the opening titles of the motion-picture show we've already been shown some terrible day-for-night and an fifty-fifty more hilariously immobile rubber bat than the ones in Samson vs the Vampire Women. Then the story starts properly, with a stagecoach on its way across the desert.  On board are banker James Underhill, his sis Marianne – and Count Dracula, who is the only 1 not back in the stagecoach when it is attacked by out-of-work stuntmen in "Indian" costumes the next day.  With the real Mr. Underhill dead, the Count then assumes his identity and heads into the boondocks of Wilkesville to take over the human'southward property, the Double Bar-B Ranch.  This is home to Mr. Underhill'due south lovely teenage niece Betty, who looks just ripe for vampire-bride-hood.

All the same, the Count has reckoned without the Osters, a couple of German-ish immigrants.  They know all about vampires, having already lost their daughter Lisa the same way.  He's reckoned without alcoholic town medic Henrietta Hull, who may non be an bodily md but has enough education to read, and in that location'southward a book almost vampires in her small library.  And most of all he'due south reckoned without Betty'south swain, Double Bar-B Ranch foreman William H. Bonnie.  Having escaped his date with the hangman, the former Billy the Kid has decided to go straight and lead a normal, crime-gratis life.  But with a vampire in town and his encompass on the verge of being blown, that life is about to become an awful lot more complicated.

At this point in the movie, between Billy showing off his shooting and Marianne's early mention of the local silver mine, I figured I knew exactly what the cease of the picture show would be.  And yous know what?  It was really kind of brilliant.  I hateful, who do you want on your side against the undead?  A man who'southward a damn good shot with a silver bullet, that'south who!

Boy, was I wrong.

Shockingly, in that location are actually a couple of half-decent performances in this movie, but they don't brand up for the residuum, who stink. Chuck Courtney as Billy the Child (what was information technology Joel e'er said? Never trust a man with 2 first names, especially if one is a woman'south?  Here we've got a double whammy – Chuck Courtney every bit Bill Bonnie!) plays his character meek and polite, and honestly comes across every bit kind of a wimp.  The only time he's halfway impressive is when he demonstrates his power to get on and off of a moving horse. For the rest of the film he just looks bored with everything that's happening, even when he'southward pulling a gun on a rival in the saloon.  The main affair I call back him doing is opening doors. Courtney had previously appeared as Billy the Kid in an episode of Buffalo Bill Jr, and I can only hope he put more than into it there.

Melinda Plowman as Betty (she was too in a couple episodes of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger) sounds like she ended up in this moving-picture show considering it was a shade more respectable than the G-rated porn ring from The Sinister Urge, and she and Courtney are both obviously older than the characters they're supposed to be playing (though twenty-five twelvemonth old Plowman is more believable every bit teenage Betty than Courtney, in his belatedly thirties merely looking older, is equally Baton the Kid).  Olive Carey equally the cantankerous medico is okay, just no more than that, in a part that could take been a lot more fun.  The actress playing Betty's mother rattles off her expository dialogue like she just wants to get her scene over with and get drink the humiliation abroad.  I feel kinda sorry for her, also: Marjorie Bennet was in Mary Poppins and fucking Sabrina. How did she end up in Baton the Kid vs Dracula?!

John Carradine, notwithstanding, seems to have thought that no matter how stupid the movie he may as well put some effort in, and he's honestly peachy.  The fact that he'd played Dracula twice before (in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula) probably helped. His Count can turn from mannerly to chilling on a dime, and manages to acquit himself adequately well fifty-fifty when his dialogue is awful.  "There there, in that location there there," he says to Betty every bit she grieves over her mother's decease – and even that doesn't audio completely horrible.  Indeed, he sounds entirely too into the creepy pedophilic nature of Dracula'due south lust for Betty, and seems to actually be playing up the pseudo-incest angle of her believing him to be her uncle.  His performance elevates the fabric from gross-but-silly to most the visceral level an thought like that deserves.  He even comes close to saving the pic's weird habit of shining a carmine light on his confront during his particularly evil moments… the expression he uses when this happens makes him wait downright demonic.

The 2d-best actor in the moving-picture show, or at least the 2nd-most-entertaining, is Virginia Christie (Jesus, she was in Judgment at Nuremburg! This cast has a pedigree!) as Frau Oster.  There's a scene in which she and her husband attempt to outdo each other in outrageous German language accents as they talk over how to take revenge on the vampire, while Billy just stands there looking similar he's at the earth's most awkward family reunion. I laughed out loud watching information technology.  Later, Frau Oster tries to bond with Betty and this scene is actually not bad at all.  The Osters have just lost their girl, and Betty her mother, and then them reaching out to each other every bit surrogates seems natural and Christie does a practiced task communicating her character's concern.  Besides bad Plowman was also in the scene.

(In the same scene, Frau Oster places a plant in Betty'southward window to ward off the vampire.  She calls it wolfsbane, merely when we see it later as Betty shows it to Billy, it is definitely not.  As about as I can tell, it's actually the Chinese Lantern institute, Physalis alkekengi. Wolfsbane, which includes over 250 species of Aconitum, has alpine spikes of Snapdragon-similar regal flowers.  What mystifies me well-nigh the exchange is that actual wolfsbane ought to be way easier to find than Chinese Lanterns.  My guess is that since they clearly didn't accept the coin to purchase a plant, they just used the weirdest looking thing in the director'south wife'south blossom garden.)

What I found myself thinking near while watching Billy the Kid vs Dracula is that every bit stupid as information technology sounds, this is an idea that could have worked.  I've seen movies with premises at to the lowest degree this giddy that did just fine.  Consider Milky way Quest, or any superhero motion picture y'all care to name… they're considerately ridiculous and yet when they're handled right they make for wonderful escapist amusement.Baton the Kid vs Dracula was never going to be Oscar material, merely it didn't have to suck.  The timeline can exist fabricated to work: Billy the Kid died in 1881, around the time Bram Stoker began toying with the thought for Dracula.  The idea of two such disparate genres as Western and Gothic Horror coming together is inherently agreeable.  Once the plot gets started it really moves along fairly smoothly, as Dracula takes over Betty'south life step past step and methodically rids himself of everyone who might stop him doing exactly equally he likes.  The music is nothing to write dwelling house about but information technology does its job.  John Carradine'due south Dracula standing at that place looking annoyed while cowboys ineffectually shoot at him is hilarious.

The thing that kills the pic is how obvious it is that nobody, with the exceptions of Carradine and maybe Christie, actually gave a shit.  Most of the actors in this had long careers – they could human activity, they merely didn't carp hither considering they were in a picture show chosen Baton the Kid vs Dracula and figured it wasn't worth the attempt.  Director William Beaudine (who also directed another Episode that Never Was, The Ape-Man) was well-known for rarely doing more than one accept of a scene in society to save both time and flick, so he never tried to make them do ameliorate.  The movie looks awful, with very little effort made to differentiate between twenty-four hour period and night scenes, and costumes that look like people from the 60'southward dressed up as cowboys rather than anything legitimately 19^th century.  The effects are terrible, from the stupid rubber bat to the photograph of Betty existence carried past nothing, mounted in a frame to make it await similar a mirror.

As bad movies go, Billy the Kid vs Dracula is fairly agreeable but information technology actually could have been so much more if the people making it had simply cared.  I would really be interested in seeing a remake of this one – and such a thing isn't at all across the bounds of possibility.  Hollywood loves remakes and loves premises that can exist summed up in 1 judgement.Billy the Kid vs Dracula seems like simply the kind of thing they'd exist into.  And as a bonus, a remake might exist able to properly sort out the ending, because every bit it stands I can just imagine that 5 minutes later the sheriff caught upwards with Billy and took him dorsum into custody again.  He'southward still got a murder to stand trial for, after all, and now the whole damn town knows he'southward Billy the Child.  Are we supposed to believe everybody just forgot most it?

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Source: https://mst3kproject.tumblr.com/post/150038471350/billy-the-kid-vs-dracula-cowboys-vampires-and

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