Transylvania Twist

This solid parody in the style of Airplane! takes a shot at horror movies. It originated as one of a number of projects with which the young, diligent and, above all, enthusiastic Jim Wynorski sought to pay homage to his role model and then-employer, Roger Corman, and his portfolio of B-movies. In Transylvania Twist, Wynorski broke free from his career bonds in terms of the formalistic puns and jokes built on working with the medium of film, as well as on meta references to the earlier tradition of trash cinema and its creative centre in the form of Corman and the first generation of students of his school of remorseless film practice. The hastily thrown-together flick uses the same locations of other projects made at the time and, following the example of Hollywood Boulevard (which it references with the opening Miracle Pictures logo), uses the most ostentatious and expensive shots of action, effects and explosions from the entire existing catalogue of Corman’s New World and Concorde production companies to achieve a greater effect. In addition to a number of hilarious scenes, Boris Karloff’s cameo, cleverly borrowed from Corman’s celebrated dreck The Terror (1963), is the highlight of the movie. (07.03.2021)