Violence -- sexual or otherwise -- has long been cinema's favorite excuse for bare breasts. And these films supply all of the above, plus other pendulous globes!
[aka Beast with a Gun, etc.]
Oh, Helmut Berger. A cautionary tale of wasted talent, or an example of someone who got the most out of what was predestined to be a limited shelf life? A charismatic chameleon and a born star, or a passaround boy who lucked into the infatuated gaze of fawning directors?
Well, probably the former (in each case). Berger exudes magnetism and danger, like the proverbial caged tiger, and you can't fake that with clever cinematography. He must have been part of what made Visconti's The Damned so striking, though the present writer mostly remembers the Night of the Long Knives scenes.
Such a shame when bad things happen to...people.
Clearly the makers of Mad Dog -- aka Beast with a Gun, The Human Beast, Mad Dog Killer, or La belva col mitra if you want the original Italian -- knew Berger was their star attraction. So they give him just the kind of role in which he shines, as Nanni Vitali, an absolutely ruthless, sexually voracious criminal who escapes from prison and is hell-bent on revenge.
No doubt they had Berger at "ruthless", his forte.
And they give him plenty of screen time, including a protracted shot of his bare backside if you're into that sort of thing, and pretty much all the best lines. More than once it borders on camp, intentionally or not, as when a detective (seemingly) meets his end in a fiery crash:
"That was a nice sight! A well-done dick."
You don't say, Helmut Berger! You don't say.
That detective, one Commissioner Santini (Richard Harrison), has one thing going for him: dude is absolutely jacked. Unlike a lot of policeman protagonists, you get the feeling that this cop could literally overpower the villain. He's got muscles and brains, so what's not to like?
Well, as opposed to (for example) Dirty Harry, Santini is too much of a straight hero to get the good lines. I suppose you could count his Smash Mouth moment about 12 minutes in -- "Vitali's like a mad dog!" -- but that only works on a meta, presentist level.
Actually a bunch of Santini's dialogue hits very strangely in 2023, in that he'll be saying something fairly routine but finishes off with something that sounds like a low-karma Reddit post. See, for example, when he excoriates Vitali for his cowardice:
"You're a filthy hyena. And you have the courage of one. You're only brave as long as you've got that gun, so you can terrorize helpless females."
Oh, hey, I got a work call and have to go home early but it was great meeting you!
Or how about when he, uh, excoriates Vitali for his cowardice again?
"You're a coward. You think you're a genius but you're just a common killer. There's a whole race of people like you, Vitali!"
That's...that sure is a thing you just said, that was said, by you.
On the other hand, we cracked up when a perfectly reasonable request from his Kim Clijsters-looking hostage, Carla (Marina Giordana), got this nasty reply from Vitali:
"I'm thirsty."
"So have a drink, twat!"
Once again, the bad guy gets all the good lines.
Of course this also betrays the fundamentally mean-spirited attitude of Mad Dog. Sure, modern viewers aren't likely to be bothered by its violence -- a bit of which was trimmed out of the Mill Creek print, though the only significant cut we identified actually improves the movie.
(The guy was face-down in a puddle and looked dead as a doornail, so bringing him back to have him cry out in agony? Not a good idea.)
But the "sexy man rapes woman, kills mate to demonstrate alpha status, and may have induced Stockholm Syndrome with his mighty phallus" angle of the film is uncomfortable. Arguably Mad Dog tries to have its cake and eat it too, though we can't communicate how without spoilers, but it's clear the film wants us to think she was ambivalent.
A subtler and more provocative moment comes in the homoerotic subtext between Vitali and the young criminal he picks up (Alberto Squillante). The way Helmut Berger looks at this Bimbo -- no, really, the character's name is Bimbo -- is tough to pass off as merely a kind of paternal affection.
Perhaps Berger put a bit of his authentic self into the role, since it's hard to imagine "Act like you want to bang the delinquent someday" was in the script.
It's also refreshing that Vitali isn't a Criminal Minds-style genius or master karateka, but someone who gets by strictly on his looks, ruthlessness, and cunning. He fumbles an attempted hit on a witness, keeps getting cornered like a rat, and even fails to perform in one fight scene, when a botched swing has him missing the victim entirely: "Bruno! Punch him!" he shouts.
Playing it off was cheaper than a reshoot, I guess.
Oh, and the print looks good enough, but very occasionally something gets cropped to comic effect, like this entrance:
Anyway, Mad Dog has multiple plot holes -- the one at the beginning, involving an unloaded gun, is comically obvious -- and a nasty streak. Even with lines like "I'll be in town...making hamburger out of the motherfucker!", is Helmut Berger enough to carry this one?
It depends on what you want from your hour-and-a-half of entertainment. It was probably bracing in 1977, but hard to predict people's reaction now. Maybe it's got a bit of the "too much of this, not enough of that" syndrome.
Quentin Tarantino seems to like it, prominently featuring the film in Jackie Brown. As for whatever Berger thought, he seems to have given it his all. Or makes us think he did.
[aka The Satanic Rites of Dracula]
Grade: D
Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride relies upon the premise that a bunch of high-ranking British muckety-mucks are in a secret society engaging in unspeakable, depraved acts with vulnerable persons. I mean, how gullible did Jimmy Carreras think we are, to toss a vile notion like that at us?
This wasn't quite Christopher Lee's last appearance as Dracula -- there's a horror comedy (shudder) yet to come -- but it's his last with Hammer. To be honest, the only other time we've seen Lee don the cape was in Jess Franco's Dracula (which we're not reviewing, as we'd have nothing interesting to say), so we don't have lots of context for his work as the Count.
This time around, his charisma is undiminished, his accent silly, and he just doesn't get all that much to do.
Meanwhile Peter Cushing is Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing -- one of the many fictional descendants of that fearless vampire hunter, who take to the job like an orphaned beaver that instinctively builds dams. (And they do!)
No marginal old man, Van Helsing holds his own and plays his part -- despite repeatedly engaging in the vice of announcing what you're about to do instead of just doing it. And he even shows off some pendulous globes!
So why is Drac back? Just to frolic with mid-tier extras whose agents convince them going topless will help their careers?
No, he wants to kill everybody with a new strain of bubonic plague that kills "within seconds". Septicemic plague can take less than a day (once symptoms present), but the modern vampire is in a hurry!
If anything Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride seems to think that evil for its own sake is enough of a motivator. Van Helsing tells us it can be "more addictive and more potent than heroin, I assure you, and the end result is just as fatal". Paging Dinky Hocker.
And we get a speech from one Professor Kelsey to that effect -- someone who was apparently "awarded the Nobel Prize for science and humanity" (er, sure), yet now has thrown his lot in with the infernal:
"Evil rules, you know. It really does. Evil and violence are the only two measures that really hold any power."
As we get older, and see more things happen, the temptation to reply "Well...you're not wrong!" grows stronger.
In any event Dracula has two persecutors, as he's also harried (indirectly) by Inspector Murray (Michael Coles), a specialist from Scotland Yard.
Inspector Murray also has the hots for Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica (Joanna Lumley), for whom we do not have the hots.
Coles has one of those creepy old-young faces (like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones), a big part of which is the way his haircut inspires cognitive dissonance (also like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones).
(Not to mention the guy mentioned in red above: seriously, how could the world not twig Jimmy "Jim'll Fix It" Savile as a creep? That weird-haired burly man-child gave us the jibblies the first time we saw him.)
On the other hand, Coles is very good at projecting that "boxer who just took a hard hit to the end but is going to keep on fighting" thing, which is a lot more convincing than the usual impervious action-hero crap.
...speaking of which, Van Helsing (the elder and handsomer one) gets shot in the head, yet they don't bother to explain his immediate recovery or why he's not dead. Would one line about "Somehow, it ricocheted off my skull" really go amiss?
Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride is pretty phoned-in, more so as it goes on. The first 30 minutes or so are moderately entertaining but before long, the plot and pacing are in danger of falling below "Sega CD FMV game" standards. It relies too heavily on people doing stupid things, and needed more pulchritude to keep its audience too titillated to notice its flaws.
(Our understanding is that we're not missing any significant footage vs. the original release under the Satanic Rites of Dracula title, but we could be wrong. Correct us if we are, since a "Well, actually" comment would at least indicate that someone's reading!)
But is it watchable? Sure, it's watchable: what movie with T and/or A isn't, one might ask? (Some entries hence, you'll get an answer to that, courtesy of Ed Wood.)
And some of those action scenes get pretty funny at 4x speed, which is how you play them back if you're reviewing a movie a couple years after you first watched it. As one does.
Obviously, we haven't been able to post much lately. That happens sometimes -- but far be it from us to allow 2023 to pass without an entry.
Perhaps this will mark a renaissance at the Umbrellahead Review, as we catch up on our backlog and start going steady again? We look forward to that day!
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