- Dracula conspires with a mad doctor to resurrect the Frankenstein Monster.
- Judith Fontaine (Regina Carrol) is looking for her sister Joanie, who has disappeared into the hippie community of Venice, California. It turns out Joanie has become the victim of Groton (Lon Chaney Jr.), an ax-wielding homicidal maniac working for Dr. Durea (J. Carrol Naish), who is really the last living member of the Frankenstein family and is now both running a house of horrors by the beach and performing experiments on Gorton's victims. One night, Count Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) visits the doctor, showing him the original Frankenstein Monster that was buried in a nearby graveyard. The doctor revives it and uses it to take revenge on his professional rival, Dr. Beaumont.—Jeremy Lunt <durlinlunt@acadia.net>
- During the day, Dr. Durea [J. Carroll Naish] runs the Creature Emporium [a sideshow attraction in an amusement park on the beach in Venice, California] from the confines of his wheelchair but, by night, Durea is a mad scientist (and the last living member of the Frankenstein family) working on some sort of blood serum. For this serum, he needs the blood of women who were scared to death, as it is their fear that "energizes the molecular structure of their blood". To do this, he has his mute, mentally disabled assistant Groton [Lon Chaney Jr.] behead young girls with an ax and then bring him their bodies. Durea then resurrects them so that he can harvest their blood.
One night, Dr. Durea is visited by Count Dracula [Zandor Vorkov] who has found the Frankenstein Monster [John Bloom], which had been buried in a secret tomb in Oakmoor Cemetary. In exchange for Durea's serum (which Dracula hopes will make him invincible by enabling him to be active during the daytime without the sunlight destroying him), Dracula offers Durea the use of the Monster in order to get revenge on Durea's professional rival, Dr. Beaumont [Forrest J Ackerman], who was responsible for setting the laboratory fire that crippled Durea when Beaumont and two of his colleagues found out about Durea's experiments and his plans for the Monster, after which they buried the Monster in the secret tomb and then forgot about the tomb and where it was. Together, they revive the Monster and he eventually does kill Beaumont.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas showgirl Judith Fontaine [Regina Carrol] is searching for her missing sister Joanie, who disappeared after joining a group of hippies who hang out near the Creature Emporium. Police Sgt. Martin [Jim Davis] has been of no help, so Judith goes to the local hippie hangout and shows around a photo of her sister. No one has seen her. When someone slips some LSD into her coffee, Judith goes through an acid trip and falls unconscious, then wakes up on the couch of aging hippie Mike Howard [Anthony Eisley], who offers his help (along with a few kisses). When they learn that Joanie was last seen at the Creature Emporium, they both pay a visit to Dr. Durea, but he claims to have never seen Joanie.
Meanwhile, more girls have turned up missing and a few male bodies have been found chopped to bits on the beach. When friend Samantha [Anne Morrell] is killed and her body carried up a ladder and through a trap door underneath the Creature Emporium by Groton, Mike and Judith break in and discover, to their horror, the naked and motionless, but neither dead nor alive, bodies of Samantha and Joanie [Marie Lease] that the doctor has been using in his blood serum experiments. In the fight that ensues, Dr. Durea is beheaded in his own sideshow attraction's guillotine while trying to escape and Groton is shot on the rooftop of a building by Sgt. Martin, falling to his death on the pavement below. Judith is hypnotized by Dracula, who ties her to a railing so that he can drink her blood and make her his vampire bride. Mike confronts Dracula and the Monster, then shoves a lit car distress flare into the Monster's face, temporarily blinding him, which causes the Monster to briefly turn on Dracula in his pain. Mike then frees Judith but, as they run away, Dracula blasts Mike with a fire bolt from his one-eyed demon-headed ring on his hand, killing him. Dracula and the Monster [Shelly Weiss from this point on; billed in the opening and closing credits as "the Creature"] then carry the unconscious Judith (who has fainted after seeing Mike die) to an old abandoned church, where Dracula ties her up again (this time to a chair) and again prepares to make her into his vampire bride, but the Monster has a sudden change of heart and protects her by turning on Dracula, but not before removing his ring from his finger.
Dracula and the Monster start fighting each other. Their fight carries them outside into the surrounding woods. Dracula kills the Monster first by dismembering him, tearing off first his arms and then his head. But the Monster has prolonged the fight as he had planned to the point where the sun is starting to rise, and Dracula must return to his coffin or be destroyed. He makes a dash for the church, but the morning sun fully rises, causing him to collapse by the church's front door and slowly disintegrate into dust. Judith frees herself from her bonds and escapes, stopping only to observe Dracula's remains at the church's door and pick up his ring, after which she recalls everything that has happened to her, drops the ring on the ground and flees in terror. [original synopsis by bj_kuehl]
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By what name was Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) officially released in India in English?
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