Nocturna (1979)

Watching the opening credits of Nocturna - or Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula, to give the film its promotional title - you start to suspect that it might be a vanity project on the part of Nai Bonet, who is credited as star, co-producer and co-writer. Which, in essence, it is, having been conceived by Bonet as a means to kickstart her acting career.  At this point, you are probably wondering exactly who Nai Bonet is - the answer to which is that she was a Vietnamese belly dancer, singer and actress, who had been appearing in small roles on TV and films, usually as a belly dancer, since the mid-sixties.  Nocturna was an attempt to establish her as a star.  In low budget movies, at least.  The film itself aspires to be a horror comedy, most specifically parodying vampire movies, but also strays into several other genres, most notably disco, romance, soft porn and even Blaxploitation.  Ultimately, it is the movie's inability to fully settle on one genre which undermines it - that and a poor script and threadbare production values. 

The plot is straightforward: the Dracula family have fallen on hard times and the Count (John Carradine) has been forced to turn his castle into 'Hotel Transylvania', run by his Granddaughter, Nocturna (Bonet) and his assistant Theodore (Brother Theodore).  Nocturna falls for a musician (Tony Hamilton) whose group has been hired to provide entertainment for the guests and discovers the redemptive power of disco - when she dances, she finds that she has a reflection and becomes human.  She follows the musician to New York in order to pursue her attempt to become human and explore true love, pursued by a disapproving Dracula and Theodore.  In New York she falls in with an old flame of her Grandfather, Jugulia Vein (played by Lily Munster herself, Yvonne de Carlo), who is herself involved with a group of US vampires attempting to gain recognition from the government as a minority group.  Bonet befriends a vampire who dresses ans speaks like a stereotypical black pimp, who snorts powdered blood as if it was cocaine and operates behind the front of a massage parlour, where his 'stud' of girls drain the blood of unwitting customers.  Dracula eventually arrives and, after Theodore fails to kidnap Nocturna and dispose of her boyfriend, confronts the couple in a disco.  There is also a lot of disco dancing and musical numbers and a fair bit of nudity.

All of which could have made for a reasonably entertaining film, except that the script fails to deliver any real laughs - the humour that is present is lame and forced.  What humour there is in the script is so poorly executed by the principal cast that it falls flat.  The only cast members who seem to have any idea as to how to play this sort of thing are Carradine and de Carlo, but the script simply doesn't give them a chance.  Brother Theodore seems to be in a different film altogether, clearly improvising most of his part and regurgitating bits of his usual act.  While his performance is probably the most memorable thing about the film, it still feels jarring and he frequently comes over as a dirty old man rather than a comically menacing heavy, in particular in a deeply uncomfortable scene where he spies on Nocturna as she takes a bath.  Which brings us to one of the film's biggest problems: Nai Bonet's performance.  It has to be said that she is a pretty poor actress, failing to imbue Nocturna with any real character and delivering her lines in the same monotone, regardless of the emotion she is supposed to be conveying.  Her scenes opposite a wooden Tony Hamilton are particularly painful.

On top of all of this, the film's production values are woeful, with only the opening hotel sequences looking as if they have had any money spent on them.  The New York locations all look depressingly dirty, poorly lit and dull.  As for the special effects, well, the vampires' transformations into animated bats are considerably inferior to a similar effect used in the 1940s Universal Dracula films, (which also tended to star John Carradine as the Count). It has to be said, though, that Harry Hurwitz's  (credited as Harry Tampa) direction of the film starts well.  The opening sequence features a nicely realised tracking shot to reveal Nocturna under abridge, biting into the neck of a young man, before following her into the hotel and across the lobby.  Sadly, it's all downhill from there, as from thereon in, the direction becomes very flat and TV movie-like.  The New York scenes, in particular, are very dully directed, making little out of the locations and generally feeling limp and lifeless, with only the disco sequences displaying any energy.  The only other time Hurwitz's direction comes to life is in the aforementioned bath tub scene, where he goes into full softcore porno mode to give us lots of shots of Bonet soaping her breasts and bending over to show us her behind, (although it is a very nice behind).

It is tempting to think that Nocturna was inspired by the George Hamilton starring Dracula spoof, Love at First Bite, which was in production around the same time (and which Nocturna beat into cinemas by a few weeks).  But I suspect that Saturday Night Fever was as much an inspiration and the makers were hoping to cash in on the disco craze as much as they were the wave of vampire films which appeared 1979-80.  Needless to say, Nocturna flopped at the box office and Bonet made only one other film, 1980s Hoodlum, before retiring from the business.  Despite all of its deficiencies, it has to be said that Nocturna exerts a certain fascination while it is on.  I mean, where else can you hope to see a film where disco dancing can cure vampirism?  Or the sight of John Carradine, in full Dracula get up, in a disco?  Not to mention that more than slightly uncomfortable scene at the end, where he shares a coffin with Yvonne de Carlo?  Isn't this what we watch schlock movies for?