A Dwarf. An Arab. A hulking, horrendously scarred, child-like simpleton. A mad doctor. Regina Carroll. Women chained in dungeons. Hideously graphic brain operations. Sound like your cup of tea?
Take a look at Al Adamson's "Brain of blood" then, Sahib.
It took me ages to find this one, and then it was under another title, "The creature's revenge", from MoviesUnlimited - take a look at the links section if you want to see for yourself - but I'd read a lot about it. Mainly negative, by the way.
But, when I finally got a hold of it, it fit all the criteria you could want for an Adamson film. It's not as insanely delirious as Dracula versus Frankenstein - it lacks the ludicrous speeches, the mad cramming of genre elements, but hey, there's only one "Drac versus Frank."
In some ways, it's more of a "serious" film than DVF, with somewhat of a political message to be found in there, somewhere. People are exploited, people die, for monetary and political gain. Regina plays a more subdued, mercenary character, though not exceptionally more skillfully. Even Zandor Vorkov turns up again as "Mohammed" - surprise surprise, the Arab. Kent Taylor also makes an appearance as the Mad Doctor - but really, he doesn't sustain the level of weirdness of J. Carroll Naish as Dr. Durea. John Bloom as the disfigured giant doesn't have to do much other than say "mine" a lot - I guess it's hard to deliver a virtuoso performance under three inches of latex and goo.
To finish up, not the wild ride of DVF, but hey, what could be? "Brain of blood" has something to offer fans of bad cinema. The copy I viewed had a sort of yellow look throughout, I wasn't sure if that was the state of the original or the copy. Anyway, three drops for this one!
© Tony Parsons 2000.