Welcome to Pleasant Hill Hospital, a sanitarium. Location: out of the way. Atmosphere: cozy. Visiting hours: NEVER.

In other words, welcome to Asylum of Satan, from writer/director William Girdler, who would make Three on a Meathook that same year before moving on to Abby, Grizzly and an untimely death at age 30. This, his first film, proves he had a lot to learn, like not to open a horror movie with a country theme, especially one belted by your third lead.

Cute Lucina Martin (Carla Borelli, O.C. and Stiggs) wakes up in Pleasant Hill with zero memory. No worries, the Ruth Buzzi-esque nurse tells her, because she’s under the good care of Dr. Specter (Girdler regular Charles Kissinger). Lucina’s fiancé, Chris (one-timer Nick Jolley, the aforementioned shit-kickin’ vocalist), suspects she’s been kidnapped and involves the authorities.

Turns out, Chris’ gut — and he does have one, packed into high-waisted checkered pants — is right. Dr. Specter isn’t exactly on the up-and-up; in fact, as a police lieutenant (Louis Bandy, 1983’s The Act) tells Chris, “He was picked up several times for devil worshipping.” Specter is also known in “the journals” for his vague work in “pain experiments,” which we see play out as he locks “The Cripple” (per the credits, played by Scalpel’s Mimi Honce) in a purposely drafty room full of bugs, and gives “Blind Girl” (Meathook cheesecake Sherry Steiner) a secret swimming partner by dropping a venomous snake into the pool.

As all medical dramas do, the film climaxes with a satanic ritual in the basement, as minions shrouded in folded dinner-napkin robes watch as Specter summons ol’ Scratch … who looks to be sculpted from SpaghettiOs. Shot on the cheap in little more than one location, Asylum of Satan tells a simple story with a Don’t Look in the Basement quality … minus the quality. —Rod Lott

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Frank Langella is a lusty Dracula and he wants to suck your … blood?

While the scenes of hellish lovemaking in this 1979 retread by John Badham, especially when scored with the appropriately lush music of John Williams, are a thing of blood-drenched beauty, it’s too bad the rest of the film is a Gothic snooze that’ll have you poking your heart with stakes just to stay awake.

With all the swagger of a 500-year-old demon in a hot discotheque, the bare-chested Dracula makes his way to merry ole England, exsanguinating a boatful of hardened seamen along the way. Never one to go soft, as soon as he makes it to shore, he begins his reign of erectile terror, preying upon the fair lasses of London, including a romp with Mina Van Helsing (Jan Howard) and Lucy Seward (Kate Nelligan).

However, when the legendary vampire hunter (and aged boner-killer) Professor Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) discovers what’s going on, he launches an all-out attack on Drac and his ladies of the night, putting an end to the vampire’s libidinous cooze-cruise through Britannia, in a sun-drenched immolation that is the film’s masterful nonmasturbatory moment.

As Dracula, Langella truly is in his swarthy element, portraying the ancient Vlad as a demonic dude that just want his ding-a-ling dunked a few times, which I can understand. Few films have ever truly prodded the erotic beast that is Bram Stoker’s strokable creation, and in Dracula, it’s exploited to its most rigid climax.

But, sadly, every scene that is not focused on Dracula and his conquests are, for the most part, a dreaded bore that make me sensually massage the fast-forward button, that blessed love child of the night who makes viewing tepid movies a true contingency of purely copulative horror. —Louis Fowler

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