Wendy Hamilton | Through the Shattered Lens

My first thought when I came across 1994’s The Dallas Connection:

Oh my God, it’s a movie about my hometown!

And, just judging from the film’s poster, it appears that Dallas is blowing up! Look at all of those flames behind Reunion Tower!

(Whenever a film is set in Dallas, you know you’re going to see Reunion Tower in the background. Depending on when the film was made, you’ll probably also see Bank of America Plaza. That’s the green building.)

Of course, film posters are often inaccurate and it’s not really a spoiler for me to tell you that, at no point, does Reunion Tower blow up in this movie. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of stuff does blow up in The Dallas Connection. It’s a Sidaris film, produced by Andy Sidaris and directed by his son, Christian Drew Sidaris. The Sidaris name is pretty much synonymous with stuff blowing up.

That said, a good deal of The Dallas Connection does take place in Dallas and, unlike a lot of other films, it was actually filmed in Dallas. This wasn’t a case of something like Dallas Buyers Club or Killer Joe, where New Orleans was used as a Dallas stand-in. Nor was it like that terrible “Babylon” episode of The X-Files, where a bunch of Canadians in denim were awkwardly cast as Texans. It’s always fun to see building that you recognize when you watch a movie.

That said, The Dallas Connection opens in Paris. We know it’s supposed to be Paris because of all the French stock footage. Inside a Parisian mansion (which looks suspiciously like a house one would expect to find in the suburbs of Dallas), an assassin named Black Widow (Julie Strain) is murdering a scientist. Black Widow’s trademark is that she has rough sex with her targets before murdering them.

Meanwhile, Black Widow’s associates — Cobra (Julie K. Smith) and Scorpion (Wendy Hamilton) — are killing scientists in South Africa and Hong Kong. The South African scenes feature a lot of grainy stock footage that was probably lifted from a nature documentary. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, death comes via an exploding golf ball.

Why are all the scientists being killed? Well, it turns out that they’re all due to attend a scientific conference in Dallas. (Woo hoo! Way to go, Dallas!) Apparently, they’ve developed some sort of missile defense system or something. The last remaining scientist, Morales (Rodrigo Obregon), needs to be protected from Black Widow and her assassins so it’s time to call in Chris Cannon (Bruce Penhall) and his team of incompetent government agents.

In typical Sidaris fashion, the plot is pretty much impossible to follow. That’s not because the story is especially complex or clever. This isn’t one of those films where you need to rewatch it to pick up on all the details or the clues or anything like that. Instead, The Dallas Connection’s incoherence feels as if it’s a result of everyone just making it all up as they went along. It’s a Sidaris film so you know that, inevitably, everyone’s going to end up in the bayous, blowing stuff up.

And yes, yet another remote control boat shows up and explodes. Of all of the Sidaris trademarks, the exploding remote controlled boats is perhaps the strangest. At the same time, it’s also the most amusing. Seriously, whenever anyone is standing near any body of water, you just know a tiny speedboat’s going to come along and blow him up.

In the end, The Dallas Connection is a typically incoherent Sidaris film but at least it features a lot of scenes shot in my hometown.

As I watched the opening of 1970’s Scars of Dracula, I found myself wondering several things.

First off, why do people even bother with trying to kill Dracula? At the end of every Hammer film, Dracula would end up dying but then, just as surely, he would be revived in the sequel. Now, I do think that Hammer deserves some credit for, at the very least, trying to maintain some sort of continuity over the course of its 9 Dracula films. At least they didn’t have Dracula just mysteriously show up alive at the beginning of each sequel. Instead, there was always someone or something who would show up at the beginning of the film for the exact purpose of bringing Dracula back to life. Scars of Dracula, for instance, opens with a rubber bat hovering over the red dust that was once Dracula. The bat spits up some blood and, before you know it, Dracula’s back and, once again, he’s being played by Christopher Lee.

Secondly, what happens to old vampire hunters? Dracula shows up in film after film but, for the most part, his antagonists only show up once and then disappear, with the notable exception, of course, of Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing. Then again, seeing as how they probably know that Dracula never stays dead for more than two years, it’s totally understandable that his enemies would probably leave town while they had the chance.

I mentioned Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing. Interestingly enough, Cushing doesn’t appear in as many Dracula films as you probably think. However, whenever we think of Christopher Lee’s Dracula, we also think of Cushing’s Van Helsing. Peter Cushing was one of the few Hammer actors who had a screen presence as memorable as Christopher Lee’s. As a result, Cushing’s Van Helsing was always seen as a worthy and credible opponent.

The downside of that is that is, when you watch a Dracula film that doesn’t feature Cushing, you find yourself very much aware of just how boring and bland most of Dracula’s other opponents truly were. For the most part, Lee’s Dracula had to deal with an increasingly generic band of “nice” young men and women, none of whom could come close to matching Lee’s dominance of the screen.

Sometimes, of course, that didn’t matter. But often times, as with Scars of Dracula, it’s really hard not to wish that Dracula was spending his time dealing with another Van Helsing instead of the film’s forgettable heroes.

In Scars of Dracula, Simon Carlson (Dennis Waterman) drops by Dracula’s castle while searching for his missing brother Paul (Christopher Matthews). Accompanying Simon is Paul’s fiancee, Sarah (Jenny Hanley). Naturally, Dracula wants to make Sarah into his bride. Complicating matters is the fact that Dracula’s servant, Klove (Patrick Troughton), has also fallen in love with Sarah. There’s plentiful gore, a little nudity, a lot of rubber bats, and Hammer mainstay Michael Ripper shows up playing yet another inn keeper. Christopher Lee is, as always, an intimidating and cruel presence of Dracula and Patrick Troughton has a lot of fun as Klove. But whenever the film focuses on its bland young leads, it comes to a halt.

Scars of Dracula is okay without being particularly memorable. It’s not one of the best of the Christopher Lee’s Dracula films but it has enough of the Hammer style to, if you’re in the right mood, enjoyable.