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Filmed after "Flesh of Frankenstein" (1973), by the same director, Paul Morrissey, and much of same cast and crew, as well as, again, being advertised as produced by pop-art celebrity Andy Warhol, "Blood for Dracula" is only slightly amusing as a vampire burlesque, but is of more interest for its sexual and political allegory.
As comedy, I prefer the Dracula-related parodies "The Dance of the Vampires," a.k.a. "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967), directed by Roman Polanski, who has a cameo in this film's tavern scene, and "Love at First Bite" (1979). Some of "Blood for Dracula" is funny, or at least absurd. I like the opening mirror scene where Dracula dyes his hair black. In Bram Stoker's novel, the Count's hair also changed from white to black, but there was no indication that he dyed it that way. And there certainly was no reason for him, as in this film, to do so before a mirror, which, of course, doesn't cast his reflection. This Count's vegan dietary restrictions, his distaste for Italian food, the actors' stilted performances and accents that are all over the place also add to the campiness. (What neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica is doing among the cast in this assuredly non-realist film, I don't know.) The blood vomiting and the Grand Guignol finale are grotesquely over the top, and the nudity and sex scenes place the production firmly within the exploitation genre. Overall, the film's production values are good, the musical score is pleasant, and the cinematography has some standout moments, including Dracula's tracking close-up shot from a wheelchair.
Although this Dracula is, unfortunately I think, part of the trend that gained momentum in the 1970s for sympathetic vampires, as well as being in the suave Count tradition of Bela Lugosi, he's not as wimpy as Hammer's vampires. Udo Kier's Dracula is sickly, uses a wheelchair and isn't especially physically strong, but, unlike Hammer's vamps, he doesn't roll over and die from a bit of daylight or the sight of a cross. His main weakness here is his restriction to the blood of virgins, which is proving more difficult in the sexually-promiscuous modern age, hence his feeble condition. "Blood for Dracula" isn't really an adaptation of Stoker's novel, but this bit regarding virgin blood does indirectly rework one of the central themes from the book. As many have claimed, Stoker's "Dracula" is subtextually about venereal disease (especially, syphilis, which may've affected Stoker himself). The vampire represented the carrier of VD, who polluted the blood and sexual purity of Englishwomen. "Blood of Dracula" reverses this, with Dracula being infected by the impurity of the blood of sexually-active female victims. His move to Italy also retains a bit of the book's invasion xenophobia, and it's humorously ironic because it's at the heart of Roman Catholicism, which, it turns out, is less concerned with chastity than is the Count.
Meanwhile, the character who would be expected to be the traditional hero is a rapacious communist, the Italian family's handyman, who also regularly has sex, consensual or not, with the two incestuous sisters of the family. He rails against Dracula's aristocracy and has a hammer and sickle painted on his room's wall. The pun of him having an axe to grind with the aristocratic Count, as he literally chases Dracula while wielding an axe is one of the film's best gags.
(Mirror Note: I already mentioned the amusingly-absurd through-the-mirror shot in the opening scene. There's also another mirror shot where one of the sisters discovers to her horror that Dracula casts no reflections.)
score 7/10
Cineanalyst 16 June 2018
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4205302/ |
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19-2-2021 12:05:17