Transylvania Twist (USA, 1989) 90 min color DIR: Jim Wynorski. PROD: Alida Camp. SCR: R.J. Robertson, Jim Wynorski. MUSIC: Chuck Cirino. DOP: Zoran Hochstätter. CAST: Teri Copley, Robert Vaughn, Steve Altman, Ace Mask, Angus Scrimm, Steve Franken, Monique Gabrielle, Howard Morris, Jay Robinson, Brinke Stevens, Forrest J. Ackerman. (Concorde-New Horizons)
Ah, Teri Copley, where are you now? You could have been the next Marilyn Monroe. People watched TV’s We Got It Made for its visual appeal (which made her a star for 15 minutes) than for its desperate writing, but even so, this luscious blonde showed she had natural comedy skills that sadly went undeveloped. So if it sounds like a put-down to say that a flick like Transylvania Twist is the best big-screen testament of her talent, it isn’t.
Horror spoofs are a dime a dozen, but this is one of the better spooky satires, and surely one of the most enjoyable films from the prolific Jim Wynorski. Done in the spirit of the Airplane movies, this movie has visual gags aplenty, from a funeral organist with a tip jar, to a baseball game in a spooky castle (you’ll have to trust me on this one). Top-billed Robert Vaughn (whose role is actually quite small) actually seems to be having a good time while wearing plastic fangs- who knew this actor could lighten up? (He for sure surpasses his stunning performance in Teenage Caveman.)
Teri gets into the spirit too, as aspiring rock star Marissa, who journeys to Transylvania to inherit a fortune, but must confront her relative Count Byron Orlock (Vaughn) and his vampire girls. (And since this is a PG movie, perennial B-starlets Monique Gabrielle and Brinke Stevens keep their clothes on.) Along for the ride is the goofy nephew (Steve Altman) of a librarian (Angus Scrimm from the Phantasm movies!), who must retrieve a long overdue “Book of the Dead” from the count. Jim Wynorski regular Ace Mask is Victor Van Helsing, who helps dispatch the vampires into kingdom come (there is a hilarious flashback sequence, where the young Van Helsing stakes a vampire for a school “show and tell”).
The plot is operational at best, but what keeps this movie going from start to finish is the non-stop parade of visual gags and self-referential humour. (Of course, there is a cameo by Famous Monsters’ Forrest J. Ackerman for good measure.) This mixture of Marx Brothers lunacy, Bertolt Brecht, and endless horror movie in-jokes is brilliant at times, including a Honeymooners rip-off (featuring an Ed Norton lookalike) and a clever gag which intercuts Boris Karloff from The Terror (it’s right up there with Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid in its use of mixing classic film footage with the “new” actors). It may be surprising to read, but this film is surely one of the most ambitious projects ever to come out of Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons, which admittedly favoured quantity over quality. It is loaded with more energy and ideas than one would expect, and is hands above far too many horror spoofs that went direct to the video graveyard.
Originally published in The Roger Corman Scrapbook.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.