Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) & The Return of Count Yorga (1971)

          Even though England’s Hammer Films was the undisputed leader in the vampire-movie business during the ’60s and ’70s, low-rent U.S. outfits including American International Pictures still ventured into the realm of bloodsuckers. For instance, AIP’s Count Yorga, Vampire did well enough to warrant a sequel, though it’s plain both films are feeble attempts at Americanizing the Hammer formula.

          Written and directed by the singularly unimpressive George Kelljan, Count Yorga, Vampire takes place in modern-day California, where ancient European vampire Count Yorga (Robert Quarry) has taken up residence. For reasons that are never clear, Yorga works as a part-time mystic, so he’s introduced leading a séance for several young people. Then, after two séance participants drive the count home and get stuck on his property, Yorga attacks them. One of the victims, Erica (Judith Lang), shows wounds on her neck and develops monstrous behavior, such as eating her cat, so the heroes, led by stalwart Dr. Jim Hayes (Roger Perry), figure out Yorga must be a vampire. One of cinema history’s least exciting showdowns ensues, largely comprising an interminable scene of Dr. Hayes chatting with Yorga in order to keep the vampire awake until sunrise. Dull, talky, and unimaginative, Count Yorga, Vampire features such amateurish flaws as a high percentage of out-of-focus shots and some truly inept acting by second- and third-string cast members. That said, Quarry has an enjoyable way of injecting condescension into all of his line readings, and costar Michael Murphy—who later became a go-to actor for Woody Allen and Robert Altman—lends credibility to his scenes.

          The Return of Count Yorga shows considerable improvement in the areas of acting, since even the bit players are competent this time, and cinematography, since future Jaws cinematographer Bill Butler generates the visuals. Alas, the pacing and storyline of the sequel—once again directed by Kelljan—are as lifeless as those of the first picture. Set at a coastal orphanage and a nearby castle, which happens to be Yorga’s new crash pad, the movie offers a feeble explanation for the titular vampire’s revival following the climax of the first picture. Yorga becomes infatuated with a pretty orphanage employee, Cynthia (Mariette Hartley), so he and his vampire brides slaughter Cynthia’s family, and then Yorga hypnotizes Cynthia into believing her relatives are traveling while she “recuperates” in his castle. Meanwhile, cops and a friendly neighborhood priest discover what’s really happening. After lots and lots of preliminary chit-chat, the good guys converge on Castle Yorga to effect a rescue. Oddly, several cast members from Count Yorga, Vampire appear in the sequel, though many of them play different roles.

          While many sequences in The Return of Count Yorga are almost unbearably boring, redeeming qualities appear periodically. Hartley is appealingly earnest, future Poltergeist star Craig T. Nelson shows up in a smallish role as a cop, cameo player George Macready does a fun bit as some sort of aging voodoo-hippie scholar, and Quarry elevates his performance style to full-on camp. Butler’s moody imagery helps a great deal, though his work is stronger during evocative exterior scenes than during the interior scenes that Kelljan orchestrates clumsily.

Count Yorga, Vampire: FUNKY

The Return of Count Yorga: FUNKY

Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker (1979)

          Timing has a lot to do with how and why movies leave lasting impressions. Take, for example, this unremarkable telefilm about the dangers of catching car rides from strangers. Essentially an afterschool special with a higher level of menace (it aired in primetime), the picture tells the paper-thin story of Julie, an average California teenager from a good home who ignores myriad warning signs while hitching back and forth from the suburbs to her summer job at a fast-food joint on the beach. Julie is played by pint-sized bombshell Charlene Tilton, at the time a TV star on Dallas, and her costars include fell0w small-screen players Katherine Helmond, Christopher Knight, Craig T. Nelson, and Dick Van Patten. Viewers are treated to bland scenes of Julie debating the pros and cons of hitchhiking with her worried dad, plus vignettes of Julie’s romantic adventures with (gasp!) an older man. Meanwhile, Julie’s unfortunate friends get rides from skeezy dudes, including a rapist/serial killer who prowls the SoCal highways in a muscle car with darkly tinted windows. As directed by competent action guy Ted Post, Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker is ordinary except when it lays on the horror-movie clichés—every time the serial killer is about to strike, Post cuts to a montage of detail shots as the murderer’s car revs up. And while the visual allusion to a pervert getting aroused is laughably obvious, it’s also crudely effective.
          Or at least it seemed that way when I was 10, which is where the whole business of timing enters the discussion. Watching this flick during its original broadcast, I was just old enough to grasp the storyline’s depiction of rape, and just young enough to buy into the paranoid implication that every footstep on the shoulder of a highway was a move into the path of a roaming murderer. Because of this collision between a fraught subject and a receptive viewer, the movie’s lurid mixture of cautionary-tale seriousness and exploitation-flick tackiness did a number on my young brain. Adding fuel to the pscyhological fire, the sight of Tilton and her sexy pals strutting around in skimpy shorts and tight T-shirts was enjoyable, but the cheap thrills were tainted by the subconscious knowledge that I was replicating the same male gaze as the flick’s psychotic antagonist. Anyway, you can see why these were not the easiest concepts for my preadolescent mind to process. Seen outside of its original context, Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker loses much of its mojo, coming across as an overwrought thriller with a heavy-handed social message. That said, the nasty scenes are put across with gusto, and Tilton does a passable job of capturing the developmental moment when gaining independence seems like the most important thing in the world.

Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker: FUNKY

Flesh Gordon (1974)

          Although it’s not the out-and-out porn film its reputation might suggest, Flesh Gordon is a cheerfully filthy spoof of the old Flash Gordon movie serials—the picture tries to blend satire with titillation by bombarding viewers with crude jokes, nudity, and sex scenes. The movie is quite awful, of course, but it moves along at a breakneck speed and, in its best moments, approaches an anything-goes party vibe that suggests a low-rent version of the comedy style perfected a few years later by the makers of Airplane! (1980). Obviously, the big difference is that the makers of Airplane! had real actors and a real budget, to say nothing of the fact that the Airplane! team didn’t have to interrupt their movie periodically for lingering close-ups of genitalia.

          The plot of Flesh Gordon is adapted from the first Flash Gordon serial, released in 1938 and starring Buster Crabbe. (Another version of the very same plot was employed for the big-budget Flash Gordon movie released in 1980.) When Earth is bombarded by a sex ray from outer space, which drives victims to uncontrolled lust, dashing adventurer Flesh Gordon (Jason Williams), his new girlfriend Dale Ardor (Suzanne Fields), and kooky scientist Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins) fly into space to find the source of the sex ray and save the Earth. Arriving on the planet Porno, the heroes battle minions of evil Emperor Wang the Perverted (William Dennis Hunt), along the way encountering monsters and other fantastic creatures. This being a sex comedy, those fantastic creatures include the flamboyantly gay prince (Lance Larsen) of a men-in-tights troupe and the Amazonian leader (Candy Samples) of a lesbian cult.

          Ninety-nine percent of the jokes in Flesh Gordon are painfully stupid, the performances are terrible, and the editing is so choppy that some scenes appear as if from nowhere. However, writer/co-director Michael Benveniste and his collaborators cleverly shield themselves from legitimate criticism by framing the movie as a campy goof—the worse the acting gets, the better. Yet some aspects of the picture run perilously close to real filmmaking. For instance, the flick includes several elaborate scenes of stop-motion animation fused with live-action, leading to Harryhausen-style scenes of real actors fighting stop-motion monsters. This stuff is executed fairly well, given the budget constraints.

          That said, the way Flesh Gordon devotes long stretches of screen time to pure adventure would seem sure to infuriate the heavy-breathing crowd more interested in Flesh than Gordon. But then again, that’s why Flesh Gordon is so peculiar—it’s a kiddie movie for pervs. Consider this amusingly infantile chant, delivered by bottomless cheerleaders (!) in Wang’s palace: “Emperor Wang is the one for me—without him, the planet Porno would be ever so forlorn-o.” Or consider the very strange finale, which involves a giant, cloven-hooved monster who chases after the heroes while speaking in smooth, lounge-lizard patter. (Craig T. Nelson, the only familiar actor involved with the project, voices the monster in one of his earliest film performances, though he’s not credited.)

          FYI, there are two versions of Flesh Gordon in circulation. The original 78-minute version carried an X-rating, even though it’s not hardcore, and the 90-minute version available on home video is unrated. In the 90-minute version, the only full-on porn action involves a few extras making out on the periphery of crowd shots. Oh, and one more thing: Howard Ziehm, who co-directed and co-produced Flesh Gordon, resuscitated the character by directing a 1989 sequel, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, with an almost entirely new cast. Suffice to say the picture was not well received.

Flesh Gordon: FREAKY