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Paul Morrissey's follow-up to his outrageous FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN is much more low key but superior in many ways, with a witty script, funny performances and some genuinely shocking moments. It's one of the few movies to successfully bridge the gap between the art house and the grindhouse. It is a sleazy American exploitation movie as much as it is an avant garde European art film.
Dracula (Udo Kier) has become weak and sick from a lack of pure blood and travels to Italy with his servant (Arno Jeurning) to find virgins, who's blood may revitalize him. He picks a family in financial trouble, assuming that they will welcome the marriage of one of their daughters to a wealthy stranger.
Unfortunately, the girls are far from virgins, regularly servicing handyman Joe Dallesandro, and Kier is unlucky enough to discover this only after feeding on them and violently puking their tainted blood back up in a pair of outlandishly gruesome sequences.
Slowly, the family begins to suspect who their new guest is, leading up to an outrageously gory finale in which Dallesandro dismembers Kier with a axe! Blood for Dracula (aka Andy Warhol's Dracula) is one of the oddest--and best--vampire movies ever made, with a sharp sense of humor and some nice satirical touches that raise it above the usual grindhouse fare with which it shares the spotlight.
Morrissey's direction and dialog is far more polished than what he displayed in his earlier films but the irreverent and off-the-cuff feel of Trash and Heat is intact. There is some second unit photography by Antonio Margheriti and the bloody make-up effects were provided by future Close Encounters and E.T. creator Carlo Rambaldi.
Highly recommended for fans of cult horror!
score 9/10
squeezebox 24 January 2003
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0134094/ |
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19-2-2021 12:05:16