I dont feel I fully understood what I was getting into with ‘Dracula (The Dirty old man)’ most writeups for it that I found were a little uncertain of what this film actually was, but when AGFA and Something Weird bought the film to bluray, a cross section of film folk I respect got very excited so I decided to take a punt, and im kind of glad I did.

Something I should probably mention up front, mainly because its a key reason as to why this film IS as liked and infamous as it is, is down to the films audio. Or rather lack there of. i’ve heard conflicting stories. With some saying they didnt record ANY audio for this production on set or location, and some people saying that they DID record audio for it, but that it was so awful in terms of the delivery and background noise, they were essentially FORCED to redo the entire audio scape in post production…and they didnt really know HOW to do that in post production. leading to an end result that sits somewhere between ‘Franky & His Pals’ and ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’

The plot follows Mike, some kind of real estate agent?…I assume? Who’s sent a mysterious message from an unknown seller who’s interested in purchasing and reopening a disused mineshaft in the middle of nowhere, and he’s called on Mike specifically to broker the deal. Mike heads out there, and on entering the mine he finds non other than the unliving, unbreathing lord of the undead Count Dracula!

Drack makes Mike an offer, either he’ll kill him outright, or he can be given the power to transform into a Jackyl man at night with superhuman powers, but less willpower than he has now. Where he’ll be tasked with bringing the count beautiful women for him to perv on and drain of blood, and in exchange any woman the count doesnt want. He’ll give to Mike to play with.

Mikes hesitent, but reluctantly accepts and the Count transforms him into the beast, rechristening this monster ‘Irving Jackylman’…and from there? we, basically enter a 40 minute loop of Mike taking a pretty girl out, transforming into Irving and then contacting Dracula who teleports them down into the mineshaft, where he fixes them to a cross, pervs on them for a bit and then drinks their blood. But as the film progresses Irving realises he’s not getting a particularly fair share, and plots to oust the pesky pervy Count once and for all!

And, quite honestly, what makes this film as entertaining as it is is purely down to the redubbing. The script itself is a SUPER high level plot of Dracula commanding a monster to bring him girls…thats the entire movie. But the redub (which feels largely improvised) adds an entirely comedic layer to the production that I feel wouldnt have been there in the original audio.

Dracula sounds like Jackie Mason for the majority of the runtime, and the whole thing is filled with bizarre and awkward improvised lines, line readings that only vaguely match whats ACTUALLY being said on screen, and more often than not. the actors ARNT even talking, they just decided to dub weird and silly improvs over the footage. While I wont personally go as far as to say its hilarious, its mesmorisingly captivating because, you have NO idea what these guys are going to say next and they DO genuinely come out with some funny stuff.

As a knock on to that though, it means there isnt really a whole lot to talk about from a script perspective, I feel like (clocking in at just over an hours runtime) it paces itself about as well as it could, the stark contrast of late 60s grimey, seedy and scratched to buggery film stock combined with the upbeat border ‘beavis and butthead’ style riffing on itself makes it feel refreshingly ahead of its time. and I had a ball just seeing where the film would go next! (It was also while watching this that I realised a couple of clips that were easter eggs on the ‘Monsters crash the Pyjama party’ dvd release were from this movie!’

Direction wise, as mentioned it feels uncannily like ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ super basic scene building with minimal to no effect work, shots are barely in focus 90% of the time honestly and a lot of it feels like it was set up for function over form. Its rough, im not going to lie. But it at least vaguely holds together like a movie should, and even though the plot is repetative, the combination of riffing in the ADR and that simplicity just makes it get funnier every time Irving kidnaps someone.

Cine wise? its a mess, composition is basic at best and largely unfocussed (both in construction AND in the sense its super blurry) scene building is overly basic and they hang on mids and mid close ups for WAY too long, there really wasnt enough B-roll to help flesh this thing out. This combined with an edit that is impricise and feels very much thrown together, rather than considered does make this a VERY messy piece of work. But! in some regards that does lean into the films favour, making some of the gags and riffs even funnier because of how abrupt the edits are.

As for the performances…well theres only really two characters worth talking about here Vince Kelley as Dracula and Billy Whitton as Mike/Irving. I have NO idea if they got the pair back to redub their voices or if they just found someone uncredited to do it instead. But their physical performances are absolutely dire. they give either nothing, or everything and there is no middle ground…its great. And smoothing over that roughness is some super silly dubbing, Its clear by the time they were redoing the audio that everyone had realised this was never going to be taken as a serious sexy horror movie. hell, even if the comedy was intended from the get go, I dont think anyone would have bought into the other elements. And the pair embrace that, delivering 2 memorable performances that are frankly as strange as the movie itself.

As for the soundtrack? I may be misremembering. But Im pretty sure, what we have here, is a single ONE HOUR improvised jazz backing track dubbing the whole movie. there may be the occasional pause here and there. But otherwise, if you dont like Jazz with a hint of early synth work. then your gonna have a real bad time here.

I was honestly expecting this film to be a bit more ‘Pornier’ than it was. and was VERY pleasently surprised to find out that it was actually much more silly and comedic than it was erotic. I can absolutely see why Something Weird Video had some involvement in preserving and saving this movie, equally I TOTALLY understand AGFA putting it out. its a big daft film, it never quite hits the BIG big laughs. But if you like rifftrax or MST3K, and have a particular softness for ‘Manos’ I think you’ll be very pleasently surprised. Reccomended.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-the-dirty-old-man/