This is Part 2 of 2 about singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson and his connection to the Beatles. Click here to read Part 1.
Pop musician Harry Nilsson was called by some the American Beatle. Lennon and McCartney praised his albums, and he hung out with the Beatles in the final years the group remained together. After the breakup, Nilsson and Lennon became great friends and spent the better part of a year in a drunken bacchanal.
1972: Ringo played drums on Nilsson’s eighth studio album Son of Schmilsson. The cover art showed Harry Nilsson dressed as a vampire, and the tracks on the album satirized horror film music.
Apple Corps was the Beatles’ company involved in producing music from different artists, as well as their own works, and films. Ringo spearheaded a few movies including a documentary about Tommy Bolan of T-Rex.
When Ringo came to Nilsson with the idea of making a filmed Dracula musical, he assumed Ringo had taken inspiration from Son of Schmilsson. But in reality Ringo never made the connection. It was all a coincidence. Nilsson agreed to not only appear in the movie but to play the title role.
Six Nilsson songs were integrated into the story, all recordings from his previously released albums including the hits Jump Into the Fire and Without You.
The result was Son of Dracula (not to be confused with the 1943 Lon Chaney movie of the same name). It ran 90 minutes in length, and Ringo Starr was credited as the sole producer. He also had a major acting role.
The plot: The only son of the deceased Count Dracula is transported to 1970s London to be crowned King of the Netherworld. His name is Count Down, as portrayed by Harry Nilsson. He’s a vampire but born of a mortal mother. His friend Merlin the Magician - Ringo in long white hair and beard, robes, and pointy hat - and Baron Frankenstein, as played by British actor Freddie Jones, anticipate the Count’s arrival and prepare his coronation. The Count then wanders London until he enters a nightclub where he jams onstage with a rock band (to play At My Front Door). Later he visits his accommodations as prepared by Van Helsing. The Count finds a piano and performs Remember (Christmas), which had previously appeared on the album Son of Schmilsson. Count Down discovers odd things about himself; although he’s a vampire he awakens in daylight. The Count knows he is meant to rule the Netherworld, but he seeks Merlin’s help in becoming mortal. Only Baron Frankenstein can perform the radiation surgery that can make Count Down a human. First, though, he meets Amber, a mortal who becomes the movie’s love interest and the motivation for the Count’s transformation. At the coronation chamber, which has ghouls, mummies, and werewolves (and briefly two men in Ku Klux Klan attire), the Count performs Nilsson’s Jump Into the Fire… for no discernible reason. (Keith Moon drums in the background.) Then that transitions into the tune Daybreak, a calypso pop confection that’s incongruously out of place and the only original track in the film. In the climactic surgery scene, Nilsson’s hit song Without You plays while the Count and Amber lay unconscious on gurneys during his transition into a mortal who can experience love. In his final obligation to the denizens of the Netherworld, Count Down tells his minions that he cannot be their overlord. When the ghouls revolt, sunlight kills them all. And in a surprise twist, Amber was a plant all along unwittingly employed to seduce the Count, get him to go mortal, and destroy the Netherworld. All of it orchestrated by Merlin.
Why the Son of Dracula spoke with an American accent was never explained.
The preposterous plot was never played for laughs. Almost no scenes were funny even in a campy manner. The acting was actually fairly good, despite the atrocious story and dialogue. Even Harry Nilsson wasn’t half bad as an actor. The movie was just terrible.
And Ringo knew it. That was why he hired writers, including Monty Python’s Graham Chapman to rewrite the script with the intent of dubbing in new dialogue later. That didn’t work out.
After a two-year delay, Son of Dracula was released and then promptly forgotten.
And it seems Ringo wanted it that way. After the film’s release, he would not permit further distribution in any other format; no VHS or DVD. You can, however, watch a remastered full version of Son of Dracula on YouTube.
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