There are many things painfully wrong with Jim Haggerty’s no-budget vampire horror-comedy I Dream Of Dracula, but perhaps the most crippling is that it simply isn’t the least bit fun. Technical and performance issues aside (and there are plenty of both), the horror portions have no sense of suspense or tension, and the comedy is almost totally ineffective. Characters are presented as broad caricatures that barely resemble human beings, and the humor is so broad it feels like the audience is being bludgeoned with a shovel. I’m not going to criticize someone for tossing a fart joke into the mix, but the comedy here wouldn’t elicit guffaws from even the most simple minded teenager. It’s a plodding 75 minutes, occasionally spiced up with nudity, that is totally forgettable.

Even for fans of low-budget cinema, this one is a little tough to get through and the fault has to be laid at the feet of the director. Haggerty gives one of the film’s most amusing performances at the promiscuous Gunner, but as writer and director he’s rather lost. Any camera movement is rare, and when it happens it’s either shaky hand-held, or irritatingly jerky pans (someone should have greased the tripod a little). There are several scenes with a visibly dirty lens, which is particularly distracting during some of the endless dialogue scenes. I will give Haggerty credit for putting in a judicious amount of nudity, but vampire babes are no substitute for a coherent plot. And, I have to be honest, the female vampires are nasty looking. Even unclothed.

Lighting and sound specs are decent, but special effects amount to some fake blood slathered on a few necks. Michael Keller provides a reasonable, though unmemorable, score.
Image quality looks fine, though again there are compression artifacts in any scenes with movement (of which there are few). There are dropped frames and glitches in a few places, but nothing particularly distracting.

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