and-go of late rush hour traffic. Silently I curse Mondo Video's Rob Schaffner for choosing such a faraway location. This shoot just couldn't fucking be in the Valley, where all porn is conveniently shot. No. Instead, I'm stuck in a huge, umpteen-mile long parking lot called the 405 freeway, trying to find some dinky location in stinking San Pedro.
This had better be good.
"Velcome to our zet," intones some fanged, would-be-Lugosi castoff, as I step into a very humid cross between Dracula's lair and Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. Kinda like my own home. I suddenly feel quite comfortable and, well, giddy.
There's actually a very interesting mix of people on the set, including porn legend Titus Moody, who is taking stills. Cult horror movie director William Lustig plays the club's bartender, a role that Russ Meyer was slated for but had to bow out of, due to health problems.
Bruno, star of many of Jim Powers' productions, spots me and makes a beeline. As he approaches, he gives me a mega-toothy, shit-eating grin which reveals pointy, inch-long fangs. Of anyone, Bruno makes the best vampire, with his shiny, shaven pate, bizarro cat's-eye contact lenses and fangs. Hmm, seems everyone in the cast has fangs. I'm beginning to like this even more.
"Hey, you're late," booms director Mondo Rob in my ear, as I turn to inform him of the traffic hell I had endured. "You just missed the blood orgy, but you're in time for the vampire eggs to hatch and the girl/girl scene."
Cool, vampire lezbos. The long drive doesn't seem so bad after all.
A moment later I'm accosted and pulled into a dark corner by a vaguely familiar, handsome, black-haired male vampire. Turns out an old friend of mine is now in porn (imagine that), going by the nom de porn of FrankenChrist: the man with the flaming penis. Really. His dick is tattooed down the entire shaft with red and yellow flames, and topping the head like a cherry on a sundae is a Prince Albert piercing. Ah yes, a decorated penis is a good penis, indeed.
Some of the ladies who play Countess Recula's 'daughters' include ultra-mega-über-buxom Donita as Debs, the lab assistant who gets converted into a neck- and crotch-sucking child of the night; inky-tressed Ariel; blond vamp Jennifer Leigh; an adorable, barely-over-3-feet tall cutie with the moniker Bridget "The Midget" Powerz; and Countess Recula herself, Chanté, a tall blond French Canadian with a heavy accent and a huge headdress. My neck hurts from looking at it.
All is quiet on the set as the camera zooms in on the ominous-looking vampire eggs, which are beginning to hatch. Recula, happy as a pig in shit to have more plasma-sucking daughters, joins in a fourway gyno-frenzy.
The next scene is in the night club, complete with spidery, black-laced Goth chilluns and vamps a-twirlin' 'round to the sounds of one very campy German singer who goes by the name of Maskull. The night only got better, as Maskull misses his cue the first time, and then cannot open the door he's supposed to enter from on the second take. Oh, it is to laugh.
This mad monster party is too much fun for me, and from every indication, it looks like this video is gonna be a real goody. I dearly love camp and vamp flicks and all things porno-retro-exploitative '60s.
Much as I actually hate to leave, I do, as it is well after the witching hour and another long work day looms on the morrow's horizon. Sigh.
Let's do the time warp again, shall we, dahlings?\nBrides of Countess Recula is to be released this summer by Mondo Family Video.
