Cult director Jess Franco follows up his reasonably successful horror/rock/comedy The Killer Barbys by teaming up with the band for another shot at it with the sequel to that film, 2002's The Killer Barbys Vs. Dracula.

The plot, written by Franco, is pretty simple stuff. In a nutshell, The Killer Barbys are lined up to play a series of concerts at an old west style amusement park somewhere in Spain (where both they and the director hail from). Once they arrive, they're introduced to a myriad of unusual characters who are hanging around the stage and the park, one of whom is an older man who claims that he is, in fact, Dracula.

The older man is proven to be a liar when a government worker from Transylvania shows up with a coffin in tow. What could possibly be in that coffin? Why the corpse of Dracula himself, that's what! While he's meant to be on loan to the park as a simple tourist attraction, it isn't before things go awry and the lord of the undead himself is stirred back to life (ironically enough it happens when the band plays one of their songs called 'Wake Up'). Back to life and full of a new found enthusiasm for what he does best, Dracula soon takes a shining to Silvia, the sexy siren who fronts The Killer Barbys. Soon a Dr. Seward (Dan van Husen who played the warden in Werner Herzog's fantastic re-imagining of Nosferatu) shows up to put a stop to the bloodsucking menace, but he's blind and he's going to need some help…

Franco manages to assemble an interesting cast for this one – Silvia from The Killer Barbys is a gorgeous woman and she spends a good part of the film in a bathing suit. Bela B. from Der Todesking is one hand, and it shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Franco's films that Lina Romay is here too. Aldo Sambrell from Sergio Corbucci's fantastic The Hellbenders has a decent supporting role and Pietro Martellanza from Death Walks At Midnight is in a few scenes as well. You'd think with a solid assortment of character actors on hand Franco would be able to craft something worthwhile even if the storyline isn't exactly his best work. Sadly, no one in the film is all that good. I usually find Romay to be pretty dependable, same with Sambrell and Martellanza but here they don't really have much to work with. The storyline is all over the place and aside from one or two clever lines, the humor simply isn't funny, nor are the horror elements frightening or even all that interesting.

None of this is helped by the lackluster camera work. Sure, it was shot on video and that doesn't help things much (though I won't hold budgetary restraints against the mans' work) but the cinematography in the film is neither complimentary of the interesting sets that Franco has found to shoot on (and some of these are pretty cool) or the odd assortment of actors he's placed in them.

The movie isn't completely worthless – as I mentioned, there are a few clever lines here and there and Silvia is a stunner to look at. The Killer Barbys music is fun in a three chord power-pop kind of way and even if it's a little too sugary to really be as punk rock as the band tries to look, it'll still get your foot tapping. Unfortunately the film needs more than that to really hook you and pull you in. The first movie they made together had that – this time out, sadly, it is missing.

Video:

The Image DVD is presented in a widescreen 1.78.1 anamorphic transfer. The German DVD that came out last year from Polyband was 1.66.1, and that might be the proper aspect ratio judging by the fact that some of the credits that play during the opening sequence are a little bit cropped. Aspect ratio aside, for a shot on video production Killer Barbys Vs. Dracula looks okay. There are a few scenes where the colors are a little soft and as such the image is a little bit fuzzy looking but aside from that there isn't any print damage and there aren't any mpeg compression issues aside from some very mild edge enhancement.