Schlock-O-Rama: The Films of Al Adamson

Explores the low-budget shocker films made by Al Adamson, telling the stories behind the scripts, the choice of actors and actresses, and the difficulties of production

Jerry Seinfeld once got to the nut of the goodness of bad movies: enthusing to pal George about going to Ed Wood's great, terrible Plan 9 from Outer Space, the Seinfeld star says, "Don't you see? There are hundreds of bad movies out there. But this is the one that worked!" His neat irony captures everything that David Konow celebrates about Al Adamson, whose work over four decades produced more than 30 drive-in bombs. With titles like Hell's Bloody Angels, Blood of Dracula's Castle and, of course, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Adamson's films had the full Ed Wood allure--the shoddy sets and wooden line readings, the shot-to-hell continuity, and the random scripts. Early on, Konow tries to argue that Adamson's appeal lies in more than mere camp, and to that end he mounts a brief, half-hearted defense of the director's "twisted vision of what was going on in America in the late '60s and '70s." But mostly this book is a passionate valentine to Adamson, his weird, twilit career in the land of the Z-budget. Among other jobs, Adamson delivered newspapers so that he could finance his films. How weird is that? Konow knows his subject, and in interviews with "Al" and other principals (including the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who worked with Adamson when he first arrived in the U.S.) Konow paints a full picture of the sleazy grain of the biker and horror movies that the straitlaced Adamson made, and ends up setting down an important chunk of the story of underground movies between 1950 and 1995. In any event, where else are you going to learn that the so-so Drew Barrymore vehicle, Bad Girls, was actually inspired by a better bad movie of Adamson's called Jessie's Girls? --Lyall Bush