Dracula's Last Rites (1980; Domonic Paris)

Several years ago, I found this and three other Paragon VHS titles for $1.99 each, in a sales cart outside of a local used book and movie store. After going inside to pay for them, and plunking down the tapes on the counter, the cashier asked incredulously: “You want these?!?”

His reaction was appropriate, because the slipcovers were rippled with water damage. Like the films Paragon often distributed, these tapes looked like they were rescued from the depths. Their VHS box art would consist of a scanned movie poster on the front, and the back cover would be adorned with a silk-screen illustration or “artist’s interpretation” (instead of a proper still or video capture) above a plot synopsis that wouldn’t fill the space allotted for the 2AM movie in “TV Guide”. 

Paragon’s catalogue consisted of the oddest films from around the globe. If ever VHS was ever considered state of the art for home entertainment, the Paragon label would be the 8-track tape of the bunch. Their murky, often-greenish transfers made the films even more odd and displaced. 

And these reasons are precisely why I collected Paragons back in the day. The medium was also the message. It seemed that there was an “authorship” behind the Paragon Pantheon, as many of their films had a similar odd and alienating tone, further enhanced by their no-frills presentation.

Odd, alienating, and no-frills surely describes Last Rites (so named on the opening credits, and its theatrical run). This is one of several titles in Paragon’s catalogue that were released to theatres by Cannon. Before the company had found its niche with ninjas and Chuck Norris, its identity crisis was evident in their oddball selection of imports, sex comedies, and horror films for distribution. 

There is a whisper of originality in the screenplay, by Ben Donnelly and director Domonic Paris, that attempts to update vampire lore to the twentieth century. In this scenario, the vampires are in a small-town conspiracy including the sheriff, the doctor and last but not least, the mortician named A. Lucard. (Ho! Ho!)

In the elaborate opening, a young couple suffers a car accident in the aftermath of a drag race. The young man is dead on scene, but while the girl is still alive (though barely), she is declared dead so that her body is brought to the mortuary, and the vampires can snack on her neck. After drinking her blood, they drive a stake through her heart so that she won’t resurrect as an undead vampire. Then they patch up the puncture wounds, prepare her body for burial ceremonies, and no one is any the wiser. Nice twist!

However, this enterprise goes awry as soon as we are introduced to our protagonists, the Fondas. (Yes, the Fondas.) Marie and Ted are grieving at the death of her mother. Of course the doctor of this motley bunch prematurely declares her dead so that she is sent to the mortuary. (In a cut-in, we see the punctured neck of her body at the morgue.) However, once the Fondas insist that they have the funeral services at home, Lucard and his gang attempt to retrieve the body from the house because they haven’t staked her yet. (Why didn’t they do it right away, as with the girl in the car accident? Were they saving the mother-in-law for leftovers, like cold pizza for breakfast?)

Similar gaps of logic occur in the climax, as the undead mother-in-law roams upstate New York (well, as far as the movie can afford, anyway) looking for fresh blood. The vampires attempt to destroy her by exposing her to sunlight. Then, why are these guys able to roam freely at all times of day? Instead of fleshing out these plot points, more running time is devoted to these bloodsuckers always bickering among themselves. If these scenes are intended as satire, they are too forced. 

There is a cold, brooding tone throughout the film, greatly enhanced by its throbbing “John Carpenter on the brain” synth score, the sparse, remote locations, and the minimal amount of characters. The only inclination that this takes place in the real world at all, is when Ted drives past a strip plaza with a Pizza Hut. The low budget production values, and unconventional looking actors (for many, this film was their sole acting credit) are an asset to its alienating tone.

It is too bad that a novel idea gets fumbled in the execution on paper, and on screen. The acting and direction are often uninspired (those squabbling vampires!), but at least the film has a mood. This too is unfortunately hampered: frequently we see microphones, studio lights and the boom person’s arm in the frame. Was it masked improperly for exhibition, or did they just not care?

Availability: the mighty Paragon had released Dracula's Last Rites to VHS; as far as we can tell, its only appearance on DVD was on the now-defunct EastWest label.