Official PoCo Muse Film Critic Jeff Schultz revisits Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, The Return of Count Yorga, and What’s the Matter with Helen? for his October 2021 Review.
What’s the matter with Helen? To be fair, we all have idiosyncrasies that most people will find peculiar. Mine could be eating Fruit Loops as a grown man or that I never wear open-toed shoes in public. Mystery writer Agatha Christie had the idiosyncrasy of eating apple slices in the bathtub as she thought of murder plots. Helen’s quirks are a little darker as the audience at the Premiere Theatre on Halloween night 1971 discovered at the end of her movie. She was in the backyard murdering the rabbits.
As much as I was intrigued to discover “What’s the Matter with Helen?”, I admit to being underwhelmed by the horror films listed in the Premier’s lineup for 1971. When movie fans think of the 1970s and horror, they see golden visions of Sissy Spacek burning down the gymnasium using only her mind, pea soup firing from Linda Blair’s mouth, a giant shark devouring beachgoers, Jamie Lee Curtis being chased by the boogeyman, and Sigourney Weaver getting up close with a drooly alien. Rarely do they think of Shelley Winters as Helen turning the white bunnies into pink bunnies. That’s because 1971 was still years away from the classics that we watch every Halloween. Films like “What’s the Matter with Helen?” were still piggybacking on the success of 1962’s “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,” usually with a former A-list movie actress and film titles containing a name and question mark. Other examples are “Who Slew Auntie Roo?” and “What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?”, each about as unremarkable as the other.
Meanwhile, the legacy of Universal Studio’s classic monsters was, unlike its many characters, still alive and well. Toy shops throughout the 1960s and into the 70s regularly kept stock of books, trading cards, records, comic books, games and figurines revolving around Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster and Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. Although occasionally rereleased in theaters like the Premier, most of the older monster movies were shown through syndication on TV. A newer brand of films exhibited in theaters took many of the elements from the Universal series and introduced new ones that could not get past the censors before -- technicolor for blood to flow red and largely exposed neck lines on young maidens (to the preference of vampires, I suppose). Hammer Film Productions, which got its start producing adaptations of BBC radio series, quickly took the reins on the horror genre in the late 1950s with the releases of “The Curse of Frankenstein” and “Horror of Dracula” and colloquially became known as “the studio that dripped blood” with plenty of sex and gore in lavish Gothic style. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee became the top horror stars of the time. Horror was Hammer’s bread and butter. It tried its hand in other genres such as martial arts and swashbucklers but the studio fizzled out once American tastes became more modernized later in the 1970s with “Jaws” and “The Exorcist.”
Shaping horror films at the same time as Hammer was a studio here in the U.S. taking a different approach. American International Pictures, or AIP, started in the early 1950s by Samuel Z. Arkoff and Jim Nicholson who were not a part of the Hollywood system. They were independent producers who with director Roger Corman developed the knack for making movies on a dime scale at a fast pace. Corman could shoot a film in less than ten days. His 1960 film “The Little Shop of Horrors” reportedly wrapped production in two days. These cheapies often didn’t make as much buck as Hammer films, but the profits they did make added up when so many could be produced. Arkoff and Nicholson noticed the major Hollywood studios spent virtually no time on making movies for teenagers and when they did they often missed the mark on what teenagers wanted to see. AIP crafted an entire genre in its early years with films like “Shake, Rattle & Rock!”, “Dragstrip Girl,” and “High School Hellcats” that had characters who could walk the walk and talk the talk of rebellious teens. It was the film “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” in 1957 that AIP widespread recognition when comedians like Jack Benny and Bob Hope parodied the title on their shows. More horror films with eye-catching titles poured out of AIP like “The Killer Shews,” “Night of the Blood Beast,” and “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.” While Hammer spent hours creating its monsters in the makeup chair, AIP could flip over a flower pot, draw some angry eyes, tape pointed arms for claws and have it be a giant mutated fungus from outer space when filmed in close up. AIP eventually made some horror movies that garnered respect like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “House of Usher,” both starring Vincent Price. As the culture of America changed towards the late 1960s, AIP followed with films to reflect the times, many starring Peter Fonda on a motorcycle before he did so in “Easy Rider” for Columbia Pictures. AIP was also a studio that grew the Blaxploitation genre with “Coffy” starring Pam Grier and “Slaughter” starring Jim Brown, but eventually the studio’s efforts to create bigger budgeted movies in the late 1970s failed and led to it being sold off to Filmways, Inc.
Like a mad scientist assembling a creature dug from graves, I created my own horror-thon from movies shown at the Premier Theatre during 1971 with Hammer’s “Dracula Has Risen from the Grave,” AIP’s “The Return of Count Yorga” and “What’s the Matter with Helen?” which was made by Filmways. The best for Halloween is “Dracula Has Risen from the Grave” with its classic feel and setting. This is the fourth of Hammer’s Dracula series and the villagers are unconvinced the count’s curse has stopped despite him being frozen in ice in the last movie. A monsignor attempts to appease the malaise by exorcising Dracula’s castle, only to have an assisting priest stumble and crack his head on Dracula’s icy grave, reviving him with drops of blood. Rising from the grave, Dracula discovers he cannot enter his castle after it’s been cleansed of evil and so he decides to return the deed by targeting the monsignor’s niece as his next victim.
The next of my horror-thon Count Yorga returns from the grave as well, shockingly, in this sequel to 1970’s “The Loves of Count Yorga, Vampire.” Debonair as his co-bloodsucker Dracula, Yorga roosts at an orphanage in San Francisco and uses mind control to fool the police when people go missing. His skills are enough to even fool a sergeant played by Craig T. Nelson who a decade later would have to deal with the supernatural again in the 1982 hit “Poltergeist.” The Yorga films I found to be stylishly filmed with a more subdued color than Hammer’s palette, relying more on atmosphere and dread, but I have to say they are dull, especially for vampires and not the cheesy fun AIP was known for. The studio released a more legendary vampire movie a year later that was the quintessential 70s blaxploitation horror film, “Blacula”, and soon Yorga became forgotten.
Lastly, there’s Helen, sweet, pitiful Helen. What happened to Helen? Her son and another young man went to prison for committing a particularly brutal murder of an innocent woman in 1930s Iowa. Helen and the other convicted killer’s mother Adele (played by Debbie Reynolds) flee to Los Angeles, change their identities and start anew as dance instructors looking for the next Shirley Temple. Adele meets a smooth-talking suitor played by Dennis Weaver (who afterwards starred in Steven Spielberg’s high-octane TV-made thriller “Duel”) and soon all the jealousy and stress take a toll on Helen’s sanity. After she pushes a man with a letter addressed to her real identity to his death, Helen becomes unhinged and Adele comes home to find the rabbits killed. Adele phones for help but it might be too late. Shelley Winters gives a great performance here and there are a few scenes reminiscent of Hitchcock but the film turns a bit too campy by the end.
For my triple feature this month, I rate the following on a four-star scale:
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (2 ½ stars)
What’s the Matter with Helen (2 ½ stars)
The Return of Count Yorga (2 stars)
Those looking to conjure the Halloween Spirit, you can find “Dracula Has Risen From the Grave“ and a number of films from Hammer on HBO Max, including the original “Horror of Dracula.” For free, you can find many AIP films on YouTube or the free TV/movie app Tubi including Corman’s “A Bucket of Blood,” which may have inspired the byname given to the Lake Theater located on Franklin Street, also run by the Shauer Family. Patrons referred to it as “The Bucket” for its reputation of showing violent westerns or exploitation films, the kind of fare AIP had been producing. Speaking of buckets, I’d advise keeping one close by if your choice is to binge-watch “The Twilight Saga" which you can find on Netflix.
Special Note: All three of these features played at Valparaiso’s Premier Theatre at different times in and before 1971.