FANTASIA OBSCURA: Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson in a Rock ‘n’ Roll Vampire Movie?
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, when you’re committed to a film, even though everyone’s talking at you, you can’t hear a word they’re saying, only the echoes of your mind…
Son of Dracula (1974)
Distributed by: Cinemation Industries
Directed by: Freddie Francis
For some of us, the trouble always starts when a few mates come over for a drink…
There was a certain amount of socializing among rock musicians in the early 1970s. Much like among the rest of us, such gatherings led to stories, more rounds, and plans to come together to drink again. With them, you would also get out of these appointments to drink plans to do other things together, often including doing session gigs on each other’s projects.
Which is as good as any explanation for this film…
Before the credits roll, we’re treated (for lack of a better word) to a scene that’s identified as taking place at Dracula’s castle in the 1880s, where we see Dracula (Dan Meaden) being hunted down, the camera giving us the POV of the vampire hunter, assisted by a dwarf in his employ (Skip Martin in his last film role).
After being assaulted with a scene that might make the surprised viewer have quick thoughts of Max Schreck getting offed by Tyrion Lannister, the film gets stranger as Dracula’s major domo calls in Merlin the Magician (Ringo Starr), who’s there to clean up the mess and insure that the loss of the King of the Underworld does not cause grave repercussions. There they find her coffin Countess Dracula (Pamela Conway in her last role) who they discover is with child. Merlin declares that everything will be all right, as the child will be of age to become the new King in 100 years.
Come 100 years later, which is technically the 1980s, though in their version of the future nothing’s changed except that they have the Chunnel 10 years early, but anyway… The child of Dracula (Harry Nilsson) has come of age, using the name Count Downe…
…okay, breathe; there, there…
…who makes his way to London after snacking on a gas station attendant and her boyfriend during a quick stop for petrol. He’s welcomed by Merlin before he goes out for a walk and does what all Creatures of the Night do when stalking the streets of London…
…invite himself to sit in with the band at a club…
Well, he must have some form of otherworldly power if he can get Peter Frampton and John Bonham to sit in on this band on short notice, right…?
In fact, Count Downe admits to his lackey Brian (David Balie) that given his druthers, he’d rather immerse himself in music. He makes this clear before taking to his coffin for the night by unwinding with a run at the piano:
It’s soon after this that he admits to Merlin, Doctor Frankenstein (Freddie Jones) and Professor Van Helsing (Dennis Price in his last role), that he’d rather renounce his birthright and stick to making music as a mortal. Part of what prompts him to want this is his falling for Van Helsing’s personal assistant, Amber (Suzanna Leigh), for whom he falls quickly for, for no apparent reason other than this script calls for a love interest.
Which we don’t get a lot of time to consider, as we get another taste of Count Downe’s love of music, this time with Keith Moon, Dr. John, and Klaus Voorman in on the set:
You can tell just watching the film where’s Downe’s passion lies, or at least assume it; the fact that Nilsson just sleep walks through the film, taking his mark and doing what the role requires, and only really seems alive when he’s performing music, demonstrates how little he has to bring as the lead for the film. It feels like he showed up and checked off the list of things vampires are supposed to do before wandering off: turn into a bat, check; mesmerize young lady, okay; show fangs and bite neck, yep, that’s that, and we’re good here.
Even the kindest interpretation, that his character is supposed to not want to be undead and just doesn’t care, can’t work here. With everyone else a much better actor, even Ringo (who also produced the pic for Apple Films), it’s too easy to spot how much his approach to the hero lacks bite.
It probably seemed like a good idea on paper, which was probably put together over drinks. Freddie Francis had done The Evil of Frankenstein and Hysteria for Hammer Films and should have been able to pull something together, especially as many in the rest of his cast had done such fare before. The only potential weak link other than the star would have to be the script from Jennifer Jayne (writing as “Jay Fairbank”), which ironically or not was the last writing she ever did for film. It’s interpretation of some well-known characters as Van Helsing and especially Merlin were, to put it mildly, “unique,” but even then a good producer could have brought in someone to help punch up the script, which puts a lot of the blame on Ringo for this. (The fact that at one point Ringo wanted to bring in Graham Chapman to do a new script to overdub the existing material with, a la What’s Up Tiger Lilly?, then just abandoned the idea altogether, speaks further of Ringo’s failures.)
If Ringo had done for Harry Nilsson what he did for Mark Boland with Born to Boogie, a documentary Ringo directed as well as produced, he might have had a film people would be willing to acknowledge. Instead, the film was like the eyes of Medusa (who shows up in the film for no reason, played by Nita Lorraine) in that everyone was afraid to look at them lest they meet a horrible fate. Its distribution was worse than spotty, going only to out-of-the-way venues and only ever getting one VHS release, which is again something the producer could have handled properly had he believed in the film.
There’s an account of how badly the producer stood by the film years after its release, as told by Steve Shorten, who works at the Fest for Beatles Fans (fka Beatlefest), which he recounts below:
I *THINK* it was one of the ’82 Fests – it’s been a long time – but, the way I recall it, Harry was showing Son of Dracula in the video room on the 2nd floor; apparently he had asked Ringo to send him over a copy. Memory is a funny thing but I also seem to recall that not only did that copy only turn out to be the first hours’ worth of the film but that it was an alternate edit or work print or some such. Bottom line: when the hour was up, Harry trooped the video room masses over to the piano area (which back in ’82 wouldn’t have been occupied 24/7 by itinerant “musicians”) where he told the rest of the story and played “Without You” for the assembled audience.
But could the film have been better remembered had it been given a little more care, like Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree? If nothing else, the music performances by some of the more notable names of 70s rock make this an interesting curio. And while Nilsson is no 
Christopher Lee, he’s not entirely inept either. The fact that there are people who are better actors than singers who have done more painful vampire depictions gives him something that he need not have been ashamed of.
It’s not like the film’s lead never should have gotten involved with haunting the nightlife. After all, he ultimately finds a place as a member of the Hollywood Vampires drinking society, going on legendary benders with Mickey Dolenz and John Lennon during his LA years, as well as Alice Cooper, who appropriated the name for his own current band.
Which is yet again a good example of the trouble you get when a few mates come over for a drink…
NEXT TIME: “One can never produce anything as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about.” – H. P. Lovecraft
