Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This was our feature on the nineteen seventy two tragic romantic horror classic Blackula, directed by William Crane starring William Marshall. This episode originally aired on February two, twenty twenty four.
Enjoy, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the nineteen seventy two tragic romantic horror film Blackula.
Yeah. Yeah, so this is in a sense another Dracula movie. We'll get into that in a bit, and I'm generally down for any Dracula film. We've covered various Dracula movies already on Weird House Cinema. Most recently we talked about nineteen seventy two's Dracula Ad nineteen seventy two, in which
the Count awakens in contemporary London. Today's movie is also a nineteen seventy two release, and it also centers around a vampire prints awakening in the contemporary world, only this time it's Los Angeles.
Is it Los Angeles? I kept thinking that the exterior shots looked like LA, But then I would see, like there was a scene at the police station where in the background, I'm pretty sure they had a map of Staten Island on the wall.
Well, I didn't notice that. I believe the movie when it told me it was Los Angeles.
Well wait, did the movie even say it was LA? I didn't remember that.
Yeah, our character, doctor Thomas, supposedly works for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Oh okay, then, oh, maybe he's just like a Staten Island map hobbyist.
That's up there.
I don't know, but you know what. So this movie had been on my radar for many years, but I hadn't seen it until you picked it for the show. Rob. First of all, I really liked it, But second, it's
a very different movie than I imagined. I think because the title is a pun and because I understood it to be part of the black exploitation wave, I had always expected it would be more of a satirical horror comedy that it would be sort of a satirical take on American culture from a black perspective, using some using like vampire themes to get across some of its like comedic observations.
But it's really not a comedy at all. Instead, it is a I think, very serious and very effective, tragic, romantic horror film.
Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting it. We'll be discussing this a bit, like the degree to which that transformation seems to have taken place, because I think the studio initially envisioned something that was more of a comedy and was more of a more satire and was just about, you know, given the audience a good time. But this was transformed by at least two of the key individuals involved, if not more.
Also, I have to say the comparison to Dracula nineteen seventy two AD is hilarious because multiple things. So, first of all, I think Blacula is a much better film than that. But the other thing is that we kept joking in that episode that Dracula in nineteen seventy two a D did not really put Dracula in nineteen seventy two a D. He was almost like he just hangs out in and abandoned church the whole time, and then victims are brought to him, so he never encounters modern
culture or anything like that. And we talked about the potential for realizing, you know, Dracula as a sort of fish out of time character who's running into all of the texture of the modern world and having friction when interacting with it. You could expect that that Blacula could be like that as well, but really there is not much fish out of time about it at all. In fact, by the time our our vampire hero arrives in nineteen seventy two, he's like the coolest person in nineteen seventy two.
He's like more at ease and at home than anybody who just normally lives their life here.
Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, Black Youa is a very well known film in the history of horror and vampire movies and certainly has a has its place in the history of black cinema. So like yourself, Yeah, I've been familiar with it for a long time, but I'd never taken
the time to actually sit down and watch it. And and part of, you know, part of that was, like I assumed it was more of a comedy, you know, I wasn't sure how it might have aged, how it was received, and what his legacy was, because you know, not everything that is often categorized into the broad label of black exploitation is worth a revisit. But I just kept seeing more film creators, more artists, more historians, especially artists and historians of color, singling it out for its strengths.
One such artist is Rodney Barnes, an American screenwriter and producer whose writing credits include Everybody Hates Chris, The Boondocks, and also the TV series Winning Time on HBO. He was also apparently and he has an additional crew credit. I'm blade. I'm not sure what he did on that, but still in nice vampire connection. But I picked up his twenty twenty three graphic novel Blacula, Return of the King,
illustrated by Jason Sean Alexander, and it's really fun. It's a modern sequel to the film Blacula, reawakening our central Prince character once more in contemporary Los Angeles and on a collision course, this time with his vampiric maker. It's really again, really good, really fun, and it includes an extended intro in which Barnes describes being a horror fan as a kid and being at the time mostly dependent on a diet of hammer horror films which featured predominantly
white casts and never a black vampire. So he mentions like seeing the ads for the first time. I think he says that he saw them during the commercial breaks for a Soul Train and he was instantly excited. As a child, he was like, you know this, this is something different. This is here. Here is a case where I get to see like a black vampire character in a film. So black Yela the movie called to him
ultimately helped inspire him to become a creator himself. And you know, he acknowledges that the film has its flaws, but that its power was undeniable. Now, I want to throw into one quick note about the language of the film. While the film is rated PG and doesn't really contain anything objectionable in terms of gore or sexuality, we should stress that a homophobic slur is used at least a couple of times, one instance by a key protagonist, and
once in a really unnecessary and hurtful way. It certainly ding's enjoyment of the film, especially since there's so many captivating elements of the picture otherwise, so I wanted to single that out. I was reading a little bit more about this in The Dracula and the Blacula nineteen seventy two Cultural Revolution by Lemon and Browning. This was published in two thousand and nine's Draculas, Vampires and Other Undead
Forms Essays on Gender, Race, and Culture. And this article makes the case that we also see efforts in the movie at challenging homosexual stereotypes, just as the film challenges stereotypes of black and African characters, though the authors here acknowledged that the film fumbles in this and ultimately quote encourage stereotypes and bigotries concerning homosexuality more than they challenged them.
So I just wanted to throw that out there in case anyone was looking to pause the podcast go watch the film. I think it's just a good heads up to have. All Right, well, at this point, let's go ahead and have a little trailer audio. The actual trailer for the film is a bit long, but we were able to dig up the radio spot here. I love a good radio spot, so let's listen to the original radio spot for Blackula.
You Shall Black Prince. I pressure with my name, you shall be black Cula, Blackcula, the black avenger rising from his tomb to fill the night with horror.
Blackcula, tracula soul brother, deadlier even than he Blacula. He first for your blood, he hung less for your soul, more horrifying than Draccular, the Black of anger. Blackcula, an American International really rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.
Now, of note that voice you heard at the beginning, that is the voice of Count Dracula, as we'll discuss.
M You know, that raises another way in which this movie I think is different than what some people might assume going into it, which you might assume of the premise is what if Count Dracula were black, but instead our black vampire prints in the movie is very much set in opposition to Count Dracula, Like Count Dracula is still the villain.
Oh yeah, absolutely complete and utter villain, but then also one that will not factor into the film directly after after just a few minutes into the film, really.
Yeah, he disappears after like three or four minutes in.
Yeah. All right, Well, if you're intrigued, if you're interested in watching this one on your own, before proceeding with the rest of the episode. It's pretty widely available. We watched it on the twenty twenty three Blue from Sandpiper Pictures. It's bare bones, doesn't really have anything in the way of extras, but the quality is great. We rented it from Video Drum here in Atlanta, though I believe it's
also streaming on Prime and other sources. So again, you shouldn't have any problem getting a hold of this movie. All right, let's get into the people who made this film, starting at the top with the director. William Crane born nineteen forty nine, American director in UCLA Film School graduate, best remembered for this film and thus his contributions to black cinema of the seventies and more broadly, the horror
genre itself. Prior to Blacula, he'd worked in TV. He directed a nineteen seventy one episode of Mod Squad, though he apparently worked as an uncredited intern director on the nineteen seventies Sydney Quadier movie Brother John, which also features
Paul Winfield. But anyway, after Blacula, he continued to direct episodes of such TV series as Starsky and hutch Swat and The Rookies, before returning to the world of black centric horror films with nineteen seventy six is Doctor Black Mister Hyde, starring Bernie Casey in the lead roles.
No, I'd be interested to see that one too.
Yeah. Yeah, I saw a bit from an interview with him where he said he had more freedom in that one, So I'm interested to read more about it, see how it was received, and potentially watch it now. Afterwards, he directed episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard, Matt Houston, and Designing Women. There are a lot of interviews with him out there. I ran across one from a This is a twenty twenty one interview on WBBM News Radio with Mike Ramsey. He says, AIP, that's American International Pictures. They
were doing exploitive movies. The rumor was they were in the red and so they were going to do a black vampire movie. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. The original concept was Count Brown's in Town. It was this Shuckin' and jivin and I didn't want to do it, but they hired me to do this movie. William Marshall said, let's just make this straight.
So William Marshall is the actor who plays Memo Walde, the main vampire in the movie, And yeah, this is in line with what I've read that he was a big force in reimagining the movie as a more serious dramatic project.
Yeah, according to Lemonon Browning in that article, I decided when he came on board to star in the picture, he insisted on certain changes to Mamalwalde's character and wrote or rewrote key scenes concerning Memalwalde's eighteenth century mission to Europe as well as his connection to his wife Luva. So he seems to have been heavily involved in the choices that made this film notable.
But by emphasizing the tragic romance at the core of it, I don't want to undersell the horror elements of this film now because, to come back to Crane's approach to it as a horror film, I think the scary scenes, though it's not wall to wall scares, the scary scenes
are quite effective. There are some extremely creepy shots in this movie, like it does a thing a couple of times where a character like a monster, a vampire character is just directly approaching the camera, So the camera is at a fixed position and the vampire is just gliding straight into your face. And I don't know, that's not a kind of shot that I think of is very common in horror films. But even though it seems like it would be, I don't know why it's not. But it's very effective here.
Yeah. Yeah, you can imagine these scenes really sizzling on the big screen in front of a packed house. And it's worth noting that this film was quite a success and certainly played an important part in sort of paving the way for additional black horror films that came out afterwards, though we should also note this was not I think sometimes this is described as the quote first black horror film, which is not the case. There were earlier examples of this.
The credited right on this are Joan Torres and Raymond Koenig. I don't have dates for them. I don't think dates are available, though I believe Joan Torres at least is still still around. This and the nineteen seventy three sequel Scream Blacula Scream are their only credits. Joan Torres has a website, Joan Torres dot com, which details her additional
work as a playwright and a novelist. Given the subject matter the film, it's notable that neither of the credited writers was themselves black, But again, the film's black director and black lead evidently further crafted the screenplay in this more serious direction.
Just wanted to note you mentioned the sequel Scream, Blacula Scream, which does also have William Marshall in it. I don't know anything about the reputation of that movie, but I wanted to note it does have Pam Greer in it. So that's the reason to watch true.
All right, Well, let's come back to William Marshall again. This is our star who plays Prince Mama Walde, the vampire. William Marshall lived nineteen twenty four through two thousand and three. Yeah, the star of this picture and just an irrefutable central force in the making of the film. What it making the film what it is bringing dignity, power and complexity to a character that otherwise could have unlikely would have
been a much more shallow exercise in vampire horror. Marshall was an American actor, director, and opera singer with impressive credits across stage, screen and TV. He studied at the Actor's Studio in New York and was I believe had some opera training. I'm not as informed about his career regarding opera, but he performed on Broadway in the late forties and early fifties, and he played the title role
in Othello in both the US and Europe. There's a nineteen eighty one production of A Fellow with him in the lead role that was filmed and I believe is available.
I'm not surprised to hear that he was an opera singer because he has an absolutely magnificent voice, just a beautiful bass, like a I'm trying to think, what's the metaphor, it's like a ship sailing through smooth Is this just like an amazing voice. It is the kind of voice that every time he speaks, people just turn and listen.
Yeah, it's captivating. So his TV credits, he has a lot of TV credits, include a second season episode of The original Star Trek. This one was titled The Ultimate Computer in which he played a brilliant human computer scientist. And then he may also be a familiar face from his later years for some of you because he played the King of Cartoons on Peewee's Playhouse, according to his
New York Times obit. In nineteen eighty three, he appeared in a one hour, one man show for PBS called Frederick Douglas, Slave and Statesman, and he adapted this for the theater as inter Frederick Douglass, which he performed for many years. And yeah, he has a whole bunch of credits. I did note that on the old nineteen eighty Spider Man cartoon he voiced both the Juggernaut and Tony Stark,
whoa in cinema. His other credits include nineteen fifty four's Demetrius and the Gladiators, nineteen seventy three sequel Screen Blackula, Scream of Course, the nineteen seventy four zombie movie Abby, seventy seven's Twilight's Last Gleaming, and nineteen ninety four's Maverick.
So again, yeah, he's absolutely commanding in this role. You can see how he was such a powerful force on the trajectory of this film as well, first of all in pushing for these changes, and secondly, according to Crane in that interview, I was looking at in being able to deliver on those changes in such a way that as the dailies or the raw footage was rolling in from the filming the studio like they just followed suit. They didn't fight it because they saw that it was
absolutely working, all right. So moving on to the rest of the cast, we have a dual role here of Tina and Luva, which we'll get into what that means here in a bit. But these characters are played by Vanetta McGhee, who lived nineteen forty five through twenty ten, American act who'd been in several films prior to this, including the Italian western The Great Silence. Her subsequent films included nineteen seventy three as Shaft in Africa and Detroit
nine thousand. In nineteen seventy five, she was in The Eiger Sanction opposite Clint Eastwood. I believe that was She's like second build on that. She's in nineteen eighty four's Repo Man in nineteen nineties to Sleep with Anger, all right,
now playing Tina's sister in nineteen seventy two. The sister's name is Michelle, played by Denise Nicholas born nineteen forty four, American actress with extensive television credits, including an episode of Night Gallery Love American Style, Different Strokes, The Love Boat, and sixty nine episodes of In the Heat of the Night. Her film credits include seventy seven's capricorn I, nineteen nineties
Ghost Dad, in two thousand's Ritual. She won a nineteen seventy six NAACP Image Award for her role in Let's Do It Again.
I feel like a big part of Michelle's role in the plot is we have to have somebody who is skeptical of the vampire stuff, because Tina ultimately is going to become wooed by the power of Memo wall Day, and you know, she ultimately is like, yeah, Okay, I'll be a vampire because I love you. The character we're about to talk about, doctor Gordon Thomas, he's pretty much from the beginning is like, I think a vampire could
be responsible for these killings. So Michelle is going to be the one who's like, I don't believe this, and I do not want to go dig up a grave tonight.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So let's get to doctor Gordon Thomas because he's essentially the Van Helsing character yes of the movie.
He's the investigator, the human hero.
Yeah, and he is played by Thalmus Rassulula. He lived nineteen thirty nine through nineteen ninety one American actor with extensive TV credits going back to nineteen sixty including Perry Mason, The Original Twighlight Zone, All in the Family, Mission Impossible, Sanford and Son, The Jefferson Kojak, The Incredible Hulk. He also shows up in an episode of Star Trek The
Next Generation, playing the character Captain Donald Varley. Also notable, he pops up on a nineteen seventy five episode of Saturday Night Live, specifically in a skit titled Exorcist two in which he plays Father Marrin.
I like that the implied comedy of this skit is how ridiculous it would be to make a sequel to the Exorcist. But then just a couple of years later, they literally did yeh of.
Note that episode of Saturday Night Live was hosted by Richard Pryor, you know, the great stand up comedian, and the musical guest was a legendary Gil Scott Heron. Reportedly, Pryor only agreed to host the show if both of these men were involved, so they were like handpicked. He's like, I'll do it. You got to bring in gil Scott Heron and you got to bring in Thalmus to be in this skit with me.
He's really effective in this movie. And he has a sort of thankless role to play because William Marshall's character gets to be the vampire, gets to be the tragic prince and at the center of this tragic love story, whereas Gordon Thomas Thomas Roussoula's character has to be hunting him down and doing so in a like. The character is written as an irascible and business oriented man. Like he's not fun, and yet it is fun watching the character do what he does.
Yeah. I think it's a really solid performance. You know, he's like he's a grumpy but smooth Van Helson character. Yeah, all right, this is a minor character. But I also want to call out that Jaitu Kombuka is in this playing the character Skillet. Skillett is a bit comic relief character who really likes Memwalde's Kate. Yes, but it's a memorable brief bart. He lived nineteen forty through twenty seventeen.
He was a main cast member on the Spice series A Man called Sloan with Robert Conrad and Dan o'hurlehay. He was in Roots's. His other credits include Doctor Black, Mister Hyde, nineteen seventy one's Brian Song, seventy six is Bound for Glory, eighty five Brewsters Millions, and nineteen eighty nine's Harlem Knights.
This character appears multiple times to admire Memolde's cape and to comment that he has one strange dude.
Yeah, that's his sole purpose here. All right. We mentioned that Dracula is in this movie, and we'll discuss the way Dracula is envisioned in this film here in a bit in more detail. But Dracula here is played by Charles McCauley, who lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen ninety nine, an American actor of stage, screen, and TV, whose earliest film role is an uncredited part in Roger Corman's horror
comedy Creature from the Haunted Sea nineteen sixty one. We haven't watched this one on Weird House, but it's often considered part of a trilogy of horror comedies that Corman did, along with Bucket of Blood and The Little Shop of Horrors. McAuley also worked with Corman, credited, this time in nineteen sixty two's Tower of London. His filmography features a great deal of mainstream TV work, along with various entries in
the horror genre. On TV, he appeared on two episodes of The original Star Trek, thirty five episodes of Days of Our Lives, He was on Mission Impossible, Night Gallery, Colombo, and much more. In film, his credits include sixty eight's Head, seventy twos, Twilight People, seventy four's The House of Seven Corpses seventy five is the Hindenburg Airport seventy seven, and he played the President of the United States in the nineteen eighty four Mermaid comedy Splash, which just I haven't
seen Splash in a while. Watched it a lot as a kid, but now I'm just imagining, like President Dracula.
Uh huh, I've never seen it, but now there's a treat waiting for me.
If I ever get there. Oh yeah, I remember it as being fun. More on Dracula in a bit, but it is. It's a very memorable Count Dracula. Yeah. This is just an aside, I guess mostly for people who were big into like the history of stunt work and or grappling and so forth. And pro wrestling. But one of Dracula's henchmen is played by Jean LaBelle, who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty twenty two. Noted grappler, judo practitioner,
pro wrestler, stunt man. He pops up in a lot of things, often in just like really small roles.
It is funny in this movie that Dracula just has wrestlers working for him, Like he calls out his wrestlers and they've got the you know, the Lacey cravats on, but they're just like these beefy.
Guys, all right. Get a few credits from behind the scenes here. Sandy DeVore is the title designer on this film who lived nineteen thirty four through twenty twenty American artist, graphic designer, and title designer who worked with some big recording artists of the day, including Sammy Davis Junior, and went on to create title sequences for such TV shows
as The Partridge Family. We've actually seen some of Sandy Devorre's work on Weird Howse Cinema before, because he did the excellent title sequence four The Dunwich Horror, which had a very similar style only instead of like red black and white, it was like blue and black.
Yeah. I really like the title design in this movie. It's sort of a like an animated bat chasing a red outline of a woman around in this abstract landscape that almost looks like you've zoomed in a lot on calligraphy, and the figures are trying to navigate in the spaces between the bars of the letters.
Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool and it's like a nice I like how it breaks up the film too, because we have a very heavy opening and then we get this fun title sequence before Trent's pourting to the modern day of nineteen seventy two. And I'll also add that there's an excellent website called artofthetitle dot com and they have multiple examples of Divorre's work, including the intros to Blacula and the intro to The Dunwich Horror. He also did one on a nineteen sixty nine film called DSAD.
This was a Row Roger Corman film starring Kerr Dooley as the Marquis de Sade. Also has John Houston in it. But it's also like similar style and also very amusing to watch the composer on this film on Blackula is Gene Page, who lived nineteen thirty nine through nineteen ninety eight, American composer and record producer. He also did arrangements on tracks for some of the biggest musical acts of the
time period. He has something like fifteen hundred and fifty five writing and arrangement credits on discogs what including Yeah, it's like this man works a lot working with artists. I can't even list them all, but just as a brief overview, people like Barry White, James Taylor, Michael Jackson, Cher. It seems to be the main main work that he did. This is his most well known film score out of only a handful of score composition credits.
I love the music in Blackula, and it works I think on every level. Like there's i'm just non diegetic background music that you know, it brings the right horror ambiance. But then there is also plenty of funk in the movie, and then even some diegetic on screen band performances that are fantastic as well.
Yeah, yeah, we're going to discuss them in just a second, but yeah, I all agree, absolutely wonderful score. It's funky and soulful, blazingly upbeat in places, but it also does get into that what I like to think of is like the horror jazz night gallery zone as well, tweaked with some synth weirdness in places. It really drives on the creepy moments. Now, the musical performances that you mentioned,
these are performances by the Hughes Corporation. They were a pop and soul trio, best known for a hit that would come out a couple of years later in nineteen seventy four, Rock the Boat. I mean, I don't even have to humme it. You all know it. You've all heard Rock the Boat. At the time of Black consisted of Saint Clair Lee who lived nineteen forty four through twenty eleven. This is the vocalist with the headband H. M.
Kelly born nineteen forty seven, and Carl Russell. I believe he left the group after the movie, but also maybe returned later during a time period when they got back together again. I'm a little foggy on how all that works, but they are a lot of fun in their performances in Black Law.
They get at least two on screen musical performances in the film, or are there even more.
They have at least three tracks on the soundtrack. There's There He Is Again, which we'll talk about in a bill. Oh yeah, wonderful. There's What the World Knows, which is a more soulful, romantic number, and then I'm Gonna Catch You, which is also a really fun song. It's like a cheating heart song, but it's really good.
There He Is Again is my favorite because it's it can the lyrics can be read as a song about a vampire.
Yeah, absolutely like it if you're not analyzing the lyrics too closely, like, yeah, yeah, of course it's about Mamawaldi, it's about this vampire. I also note there are two tracks on the soundtrack by the twenty first Century LTD. This is or I guess I would say twenty first century limited heavy changes and main chance. These are both romantic numbers, and I honestly can't remember how they're integrated into the film or you know, to what extent they are.
Okay, you're ready to talk about the plot, let's do it. So we open on the exterior of a castle on a darkened, stormy night. Rain pours down, battering the castle towers, and bolts of lightning cut through the darkness, and a chiron. Text on the screen says Transylvania seventeen eighty Castle Dracula.
So we cut inside the castle to an ornate dining room illuminated by candles and a roaring fireplace, and Count Dracula is here and he is hosting a pair of guests after what seems to have been some kind of international diplomatic function meeting with dignitaries. Now, this Count Dracula is not exactly of the Bela Lugosi variety. He has like longer hairs, kind of grayish brown in color, and
a goateee. He's wearing a black and gold coat over a blue vest with a frilly white cravat, and he is immediately unlikable, smarmy palpably untrustworthy, and we will soon come to realize racist he is. He's at first kind of superficially friendly to his two guests, and the guests are Prince mam U Walde and his wife, Princess Luva, who are royalty from what is initially an unnamed African country, but we will later learn that they are from the
Ibani nation in the northeast of the Niger Delta. Memoalde is dressed in a dark suit with a powder blue cravat, and Luva is wearing a beautiful, elaborate multicolored dress with beadwork jewelry. So they've just seemingly finished a meeting with an array of diplomats and heads of state from around the world, and Dracula is pouring cognac all around. Memoalde and Luva explained to Count Dracula that they're here for
a reason. They are on a mission to gain international allies in support of what seems to be a treaty, a treaty to do what well. Luva pulls out a text, a document to present to Count Dracula, and he reviews it, and then he recoils from the document in disbelief. Apparently, this treaty that they're pursuing would bring about the cessation of the international slave trade. Dracula doesn't like this idea. He counters that. He says, surely slavery has merit, and
Memoalde raises an eyebrow. He asks how one would find in barbarity, but Dracula says, well, slavery may be barbaric from the point of view of the slave, but it holds lots of appeal to the slave owner, and then he transitions to making revolting comments with sexual overtones about how it would in fact be appealing to him to own luva.
Yeah, the overt racism of Dracula is quite fascinating here. I think the film delivers the vibe in a way that a mere summary doesn't really capture. But yeah, this Dracula is, in many respects presented, is almost a kind
of He's almost the institution of slavery incarnate. You know, it's all done in a few short scenes here, but you know, he dismisses objections to the practice on economic and sort of this is the world grounds, but quickly slides into it increasingly overtly racist rhetoric before directly provoking Mamma Walde by offering in cruel jess to buy his wife. And this then quickly transcends into physical assault, separation, murder,
and a curse that transcends human lifetimes. And we also see his aristocratic mass completely slip from again from this like snide aristocrat to just absolute evil, cruelty and hunger.
Yeah. So at the beginning of the exchange, Dracula is condescending and smarmy, but it's interesting to see how it just flips to overt hostility as soon as he is faced with something he disagrees with. So, of course Mamowalde won't tolerate this shocking behavior from Dracula, but he keeps his composure. He rises from his seat and he gathers Luva and says that they are leaving, but the evil
Count will not allow it. He summons his minions, his hinchman to take hold of them, and then violence breaks out. Memowalde puts up a valiant fight. He uses like improvised weapons from the room. I think he grabs a torch off the wall, and then one of the henchmen grabs a saber off the wall and they fight there in
front of the fire. But eventually Miawalde is outnumbered and overpowered by the Count's fighters, and eventually we see the Count's side including not just like the muscly wrestlers the stuntman we were talking about earlier, but like a whole coven of looming ghouls and these wheezing hooded blood drinkers, and this whole group approaches Prince Mama Welde and then Dracula exposes his neck and bites.
It's all very well done, but I will note that one of the vampires in that scene does look to be an actual, actual, actual vampire from the apple she has. It's kind of like wide eyed and big, big fangs, But that's still it doesn't doesn't attract from the sequence.
But it goes onto a horrifying escalation here. So there is an interment scene. Luva and Mama Welde are walled up in a secret room in the castle where Dracula is going to doom Luva to die of thirst and starvation in the room, while Mamo Walde is locked inside a coffin to transform into a vampire and forever yearn for blood that he cannot have. And here Dracula he places a curse. He says, quote, I shall place a curse of suffering on you that will doom you to
a living hell. A hunger, a wild, gnawing animal. Hunger will grow in you, a hunger for human blood. Here you will starve for an eternity, torn by an unquenchable lust. I curse you with my name. You shall be Blacula, a vampire like myself, a living fiend. You will be doomed never to know that sweet blood which will become your only desire. And then slam slam shut the coffin door. They pad lock it, and they close the wall, and the curse to Mamowalde and Luva are left trapped in this room forever.
Yeah, it's heavy stuff, and it's also worth noting here like this. We hear the name Blacula here, and we'll hear an echo of this later. But Mama Walde never in this film self identifies as Blacula, Like this is the name uttered by Dracula as he curses him.
Yes, now, it might seem curious why Dracula is portrayed, Robin, I bet you picked up on the same thing. He's portrayed not just as being cruel to them, but specifically as having an orientation of vengeance. He is vengeful towards Mamma Walde and Luva, and they've done nothing whatsoever to harm him, Like there's no reason for him to be vengeful.
But I think it fits. It goes with the theme like this is a common posture of racism, like vengeance, a feeling of need for vengeance in response to nothing.
Yeah, I think that's a great point. I want to again mention that Macaulay is really great in this sequence. He continues to lay on Dracula's evil very effectively, and I love the way that they made him up, so blood dripping from his lips after he has fed on Mama Walde and he's taunting Luva, but is also draining from his eyes, you know, like he's like he's he's a vicious beast that's so fatted on blood that his body can't contain it all anymore, and it's just kind
of leaking out of every orifice. And yeah, it's just brutal stuff.
Well yeah, and I think the blood running out of the eyes, to me, it is a visual signal to convey hate. Do you get the same thing?
I think?
So? Yeah.
So here we go to the credits, and again I love the design of the credits. There's groovy modern music. There's the animated bat chasing a woman around in the abstract landscape. It's very cool. After the credits, we return to Dracula's castle, but it's the present. Dracula's house is undergoing an estate sale, and we've got a couple of wholesale antique buyers from America who are here too. They're about to sign the paperwork to buy everything from the castle.
The two antique dealers are the character's Bobby McCory and Billy Schaeffer. And these are the characters I think you alluded to earlier, rob who are portrayed as very stereotypically gay. Apparently they don't find out until the last minute that all of the stuff they're about to buy belonged to Count Dracula. The seller is worried that this is going to endanger the deal and gives them a discount. But do they really need one, answer is no, because the
Dracula thing is a bonus to them. Bobby says, where we come from, Dracula is the Krim de la crim of camp. We're going to get a fortune for these things.
Yeah, the guy here was worried about, you know, about about having a deal with a Dracula refund or a Dracula discount. He should have been he should have been adding to the price. He should have been asking more for all this Dracula stuff.
Billy also says that he has seen all of Dracula's movies, So I think it's interesting that it, like, what is the understanding of Dracula in the world of this movie. Here's what it seems to be. First of all, in this movie, vampires are real. Count Dracula was a real historical vampire in the late seventeen hundreds, though some modern characters believe he was just a myth. And this character
is separate from Vladim Paler who lived in the fifteenth century. Also, in this universe, Dracula exists as a character known in horror films and stories. Presumably the novel Dracula exists.
Yeah, it's interesting to tease all this apart. Rodney Barnes in the in blacular Return of the King, the way he kind of treated it was okay, Mama Walde had knew that this Count Dracula had there were some rumors about him about how he might be connected to this earlier tyrannical figure, but he just dismissed it as myth. So, yeah, there are multiple layers of fiction and history and fictional history that you have to juggle in this scenario.
But it also portrays the historical figure Count Dracula in the late seventeen hundreds as having been an influential player in international politics, because like the reason Luva and Mama Walde are going to his castle is to get his support for trying to get allies for an international treaty. So he's not just seen as like, you know, a reclusive figure of mystery. This is like somebody who has influence over the affairs of state.
Yeah, he is not an evil in the background of Europeans aristocracy. He is in the forefront, which which I think is key here. But anyway, he's long dad at this point.
Oh that's right. In fact, the guy at the estate sale mentions how Dracula died.
Yeah, he says, you know, don't worry about him. It was all over hyped anyway, and Van Helsing destroyed him one hundred and fifty years ago. So it's interesting, you know, we're set to encounter a reawakened mamal Wal in a world where his greatest adversary is him is himself long destroyed, but the legacy of his crime still resonate.
Right.
So while going around with the seller, Bobby and Billy in the castle here discover an undisturbed coffin in a hidden room behind a wall, and we see, we the audience know that this is the room where Memo, Wilde and Luva were buried alive so they add the coffin to their haull and we see it brought back to the States via cargo ship. And here we get some a little bit of fish out of time texture, so we see modern streets and traffic and it's set to
a funk soundtrack. Get some you know, wuah wah guitar, and then we see Bobby and Billy get the coffin back to their warehouse and Billy is discussing the idea of using it as a guest bed at their house. I like this idea.
Bobby is doubtful, though, He's clearly doubtful of this idea, and he's like, okay.
So they start trying to open the stuff. But before Bobby can get the coffin open, I think he breaks off the lock, but he doesn't open it yet. At the other end of the room, Billy cuts himself while prying at the lid of another crate, and it seems the smell of fresh blood stirs something inside the coffin, and so while Bobby and Billy are not looking, the lid creaks open and Mama Walde, now transformed into a vampire, begins to rise.
Yeah, this is our first real shot of the awakened prince Man Wwalde facing the camera, Dracula's curse audibly resonating in his mind. Pretty haunting stuff.
Right, So he rises from the coffin and he he looks almost confused, like he's he's changed now, but he's torn between his conscious horror at his fate and his immediate thirst for blood. Like the you know, his conscious mind is fighting the vampire within him, and here might be a good place to discuss memo. Walde's two looks as a vampire. So sometimes basically, when he's not about to bite someone, he just looks like himself. He looks
like the regular Prince Mamuelde from before. But when he goes into vampire mode, when he is about to bite someone or transform into a bat or something, he grows fangs, of course, but he also grows an interesting pattern of facial hair where it's like his eyebrows become very bushy and they sort of connect to the hair on his temples, and his mustache grows out longer, and he gains these sharply sculpted sideburns, and there's a redness added to his eyes.
He has a different look when he is about to behave more like a predatory vampire, and the fact that there is this physical transformation is almost a bit werewolfy. I like the visual transformation because it coincides with the dual nature of Mamouelde the vampire, so he hasn't been changed into just a demon of pure evil. Most of the time he is simply like himself, like he was before the change, and even in the form of even as a vampire, Mema Waldey is shown to be a
good and moral man. He is thoughtful, kind, suave, even tempered charming. But when he goes into vampire mode, he thirsts only for blood and it is almost like a werewolf transformation.
Yeah.
I think the pronounced widow's peak he develops when he's in full vampire mode in hunger mode is key. And I think the real take home here is if someone you know you suddenly encounter them and they have a pronounced widow peak that extends further down than their hairline originally was, then you need to run because that person has become a dracula of some sort.
So Memo Walde bites and drains Billy and Bobby there in the antique warehouse, and next we go to a scene at a funeral home where we're going to meet
our other main characters. So Bobby's body is lying out for it's lying out in the coffin for visitation, and somehow Mima Walde is there like he's looking on from behind a curtain at the back of the room, and slowly we see Bobby's hand begin to move from its resting place and grip the wall of the coffin, but then Bobby stops moving when the living approach, and our living characters are Michelle this is Denise Nicholas we mentioned
her earlier. Michelle's co worker and romantic partner, doctor Gordon Thomas. This is Thelmas Resulola. We get Michelle's sister, Tina, who is played by Vanetta McGhee, the same actress who played Louva. And so Michelle and Tina are visiting Bobby because they've known him since childhood. And at first, Tina is wearing a hood covering her face when she comes into the room, but there's a reveal moment. She pulls it back to reveal her face and Mamma Walde sees her and he whispers.
Luva, the hood is almost too much because I initially thought she was gonna be some sort of sorceress or cult member or something, but we quickly learned that she's just very stylish.
Well, I would say, by and large, all of the modern costumes in this movie are awesome. Like everybody's clothes look really cool. I was gonna mention this later, but like essentially everything Thalmas rasulil awares looks awesome. He has this great collection of coats and jackets. He has this cool like a herringbone blazer, and he has a double breasted jacket he wears later that looks really cool, often paired with a turtleneck. He's got a great look. But Michelle,
Michelle and Tina also have really cool clothes. Absolutely, and I would put the sorceress hood and cloak in that category as well. I think it looks great. You know, people should dress like sorcerers more often. So anyway, Tina and Michelle, they're confused about what happened to Bobby. His death doesn't make any sense, and they're asking Gordon if he can get any answers for them, because Gordon is not just any boyfriend of Michelle. Gordon is some kind
of science cop. We've talked about science cops on a weird House before. He is a forensic investigator. We're later told he works for the Scientific Investigation Division I suppose of the police, so it seems I think he's supposed to be a medical doctor at Core, but he works as a forensic investigator. So after Tina and Michelle leave, the funeral director is there alone with Gordon, and he explains, I worked very hard on that neck wound, trying to make it look as natural as I could so it
wouldn't be offensive to his loved ones. The flesh was just torn right out in a big chunk. I've never seen a rat bite that size, and Gordon says rat bite. He wants to know how deep was the wound before it was repaired, and the funeral director says two or three inches at least. Gordon his radars pinging. Something is seeming off to him, and he's perplexed by what he sees. So a rat bite in the neck two or three inches deep. He starts looking at other things about Bobby's body.
He notices that the body is drained of blood, even though the funeral director says that no embalming has taken place. Gordon points out that the veins collapse under pressure. Why would he have been drained of blood? Gordon decides he wants to see the body of the other victim. But the other victim, Billy, is not at his funeral home. He was white and he was sent to a white funeral home, the funeral director tells us, So our investigator is now on the case. He can tell something weird
is up. We cut to Michelle and Tina walking outside the funeral parlor and they split up because Michelle is going to go visit Bobby's family. Tina is tired and she wants to go straight home. And while walking alone on the sidewalk at night, Tina starts to become uneasy. Something doesn't feel right. She picks up the pace. She glances around nervously. Then suddenly she comes round a corner
and runs straight into Mamma Walde. And he's not in vamp mode here, but he is in a full vampire costume, which he pretty much always wears, so he's in his dark suit. He's got the cravat, and he's got this trailing black cape and he addresses her hopefully at first, saying luva, but Tina doesn't know what he's talking about. She tries to back away and he takes hold of her. He says, Luva, it's me, but she doesn't know him.
She screams let go, and he does. She runs away in a panic, and she drops her purse in a pedestrian underpass tunnel and Mema Walde follows and picks up the pocketbook. He's still looking around for where she went when suddenly he is hit by a cab.
I also want to just mention really quickly William Marshall a very physically imposing actor as well. I think he was like six five, so that's notable in all of these scenes where he is either perceived as a threat or is an active threat in vampire mode.
That's right, and he is about to change from pining for his lost love to thirsting for blood because he was hit by a cab. The cab driver gets out, and this is a character named Juanita. She is sort of vulgar and starts scolding Memo Walde, telling him that chasing Tail could get him killed. Mema Walde is very frustrated. He says, I lost her because of you, and they trade insults and after she hurls some disrespected him. We
suddenly see a change come over him. He needs blood once again, and he transforms into vampire mode and bites her. Now later, Tina makes it back home. She has to use a hidden spare key to get into her apartment because she lost her purse in the tunnel and she's extremely rattled. Michelle comes home and Tina confesses what happened. Michelle says, maniacs are running in the streets. And meanwhile, mim Waldey goes back to his coffin in the antique
warehouse dejected. He's broken by the fact that his louver ran away from him. Now, the next day we see Gordon Thomas on the case. The doctor is paying a visit to the city Morgue to check out the body of a cab driver found dead the night before, and here we meet a minor character, Sam the morgue worker played by Elisha Cook Junior, who is a character actor you've probably seen in lots of stuff. In this movie, he plays a surly mortician with a hook for a hand.
Yeah. He lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety five, probably best known for such films as The Maltese Falcon the Killing House on Haunted Hill and Rosemary's Baby. I found an image here for you Joe from nineteen forty four's Phantom Lady, in which he's pulling this shocked face that I'm pretty sure he pulls at least once in this movie.
It's his signature. Look, it's his blue steel.
He's like, oh, and then inevitably he's about to be murdered or has discovered a murder, or is about to be killed by a monster.
Yeah, or in these movies from the forties and fifties, he just saw a skeleton.
Yeah.
So Sam leads Gordon inside. They pulled the victim out of the freezer. Sam's just kind of like gabbin at him, so Gordon has to get him to leave, leave him alone so he can investigate. And what do you know, He finds bite marks on the victim's neck. This cab driver was also bitten, just like Bobby. So we know what he's thinking, and we see him reacting to his own thoughts. He laughs and says to himself, come on, now, that's ridiculous. But he's still he has to pursue this lead.
So Gordon goes to consult with police lieutenant Jack Peters. Gordon says he needs reports on the post mortem examinations of both Bobby and Billy, the first two victims, but the department bureaucracy is giving him the run around while he's been looking for these reports, and eventually they admit that the reports seem to have been lost. They don't know where they are, and Gordon says, strange, how many
sloppy police jobs involve black victims. Peters, who is a white police commander, seems to suggest he's like, hey, what if all these neck bite murders were caused by the black panthers? Think about it? And Gordon is like, get real. So Peters promises they will keep looking for the info that Gordon needs, and he puts a cop named Watson
on the job. Gordon explains that if they find the reports, he'll need them brought by the club tonight because he's going to be at the club tonight with Michelle celebrating her birthday. Oh and we also see here Gordon wants to do an autopsy on Bobby, so he calls the funeral home and says that he's going to send some
cops over after closing to collect the body. So next comes the club scene, a scene that is great for multiple reasons, one of which is the awesome performance by the house banned the Hughes Corporation, who we already mentioned earlier. But this is a full musical number. We get to see the entire song, full band playing. There are three lead singers like a singing ensemble in the group, and they are awesome dancers. They each have their own like solos and all that. The song is called There he
is again, and the Hughes Corporation just rocks. I thought the song was killer as we I think we said this earlier, but it sounds like the lyrics could be about the vampire in the film. So the lyrics are like, there he is again looking at me from across the street. There he is again, making my heart skip another beat. There's some line in there, oh well. The chorus is look the other way when he comes by you. There's one part where they're talking about how they think he
can read your mind. There's a line where he says, I know he thinks I want his love so much. I love the levels of mental simulation in that.
Yeah, this is my favorite of the Corporation tracks. And if I haven't mentioned it already. The combined score and soundtrack is widely available on music streaming platforms, so you can definitely dip in and get a taste of this. It originally came out on vinyl as well, but I don't think it's benefited from one of those awesome modern vinyl restorations, which which seems like a missed opportunity.
Oh yeah, this is truly great stuff. It doesn't just like work in the movie. I'd love to just put this on anytime. So anyway, Gordon, Michelle, and Tina are
at the club. They're celebrating Michelle's birthday and Mama Welde arrives and at first it's like, oh no, But then he meets with Tina and maybe she's a little apprehensive at first, but he very kindly returns the purse that she dropped the night before, and she rethinks her initial impression of him, and Tina then surprisingly invites Mama Welde to join them at their table. And this is not vamp mode Mama Welde, obviously, this is evening attire Mama
wall Day. He is super charming, at the absolute height of debonair sophistication. Now it's been kind of a running theme so far that Gordon, despite being our hero in a way, he is somewhat brusque and anti social. He doesn't exactly play nice with people. He's not polite. The more charitable way of putting this that is that I think he's very like task oriented and most of the time he's all business.
Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes ruffles and feathers for sure.
Yeah. But his sort of anti socialness comes through in this scene as well, because Mama Walde sits down and tries to order French champagne, and Gordon is like, that won't be necessary, but then the ladies overrule him, so they do get the champagne service.
Now. Side note, this is another scene in a film where they're sipping champagne from coop glasses, you know, from wide glasses as opposed to flutes. I really need to dive into the history of a pro we're at glass wear for Bubbley, because I've seen that. I feel like we've seen this in some films we've watched on Weird House.
In HBO's The Gilded Age, which is set in the eighteen eighties, they're also drinking all their champagne out of coop glasses or something very close to a coup glass, and I feel like I've always heard that that argument was like, oh no, you want a narrow glass because you know the way the bubbles form, and so forth.
I feel like coop blesses for Champagne have come in and out of fashion over time.
It would seem to be. But my main area of research on this is seeing it in movies that sometimes have vampires in themselves.
I don't know well anyway. One interesting thing about the scene is that I had expected Mama Welde would be more coy about who he is and his relationship to Tina, but instead he comes right out and tells, Tina, you bear in You bear an amazing resemblance to my wife, whom I lost a short while ago. I loved her very much. When you left the mortuary, I had to fall. I didn't consider that I might frighten you so leading
with you look like my beloved dead wife. And just judging by the way she looks back at him, I think Tina is already over whatever apprehension she had previously. She is charmed.
Now. Yeah, the film will stress this later, but it's definitely worth noting that she is charmed. But not bewitched. We see either and perhaps sometimes both in different vampire movies. You know, sometimes a Dracula figure or a vampire lord figure is definitely controlling people and overwhelming their senses. Other times it is more of a I guess, a pure charisma role. So, yeah, he is not controlling her, and their connection across time would seem to be legitimate.
That's right, And she seems to imply in a later scene that maybe she feels this is true as well. But I guess we'll get there in a few minutes. So first of all, there's a cutaway to the funeral home where we mentioned that the cops were going to go collect Bobby's body. But when they get there, they like throw open the lid to the coffin in the visitation room and the body is missing. Gordon gets a
call at the club reporting this. He has to like go up to the bar and take a phone call, and then for some reason, when he comes back to the table for Michelle's birthday party, he shares the news that Bobby's body is missing, and Mama Walde says, perhaps he wasn't dead. At Gordon is like, what does that mean? He was dead? I examined him myself, and Mama we Alde says just a passing thought. But then we get
the arrival of Skillet. This is the guy who keeps showing up to admire Mamaelde's cape and to say that he's strange. But Mama Walde is suddenly driven away from the table because a photographer comes by, and as soon as she snaps a photo of their table, Mamaulde stands up and abruptly excuses himself, saying that it has been a rare pleasure. Tina chases after him, and then near the door, she catches him to say that she wants to see him again, and they promised to meet again
at the club the next night. But the photographer comes it barges in one more time and takes a picture of them a second time. This picture is just Mama well Day and Tina, and this drives Mama well De away. He seems alarmed at having his picture taken. So here I guess we should describe what appears to be the photographer's business model. Maybe this is a thing that used
to happen. I don't know, but it seems what she goes around the club taking pictures of people, and then she has a house right next door to the club, and so she runs out of the club next door to her house, develops the photos and makes prints, and then brings the prince back to the club the same night and sells them to people. Is that how you understood it?
I think so, yeah. I feel like this might be something that would have been more clear to the audience of the time. And I know, based on conversations with my wife, who's a photographer, were you know, there were all sorts of practices kind of like this back in the day when you had to develop your film. There was one in particular that I remember hearing that involved like a zipline, Like they had to like take the photo, get the film, zipline it down to where it was
going to be produced. So there are all sorts of things like that that had to occur given the limitations of film technology. Nowadays, you know, it's all digital and so you have an entirely different model and everything moves so much faster.
The only other way I could understand this is if she's is if this is not her job and she's just like a hobbyist photographer and taking pictures of her friends and happens to live next door to the club.
I don't know.
How, but the real take home here is that it gives us an excuse for a dark room scene, which I absolutely love in my movies.
Oh yeah, this is great. So she runs off next door to develop the photos, and here we get a vampire attack, and I think a very creepy one at that. So she's in her house, she puts on a record. Music is playing, but other than the music playing, it's very still inside, and she's developing the photos and she notices when looking at the negatives that Mama Walday is missing from the pictures she took. So it's just like Tina,
they're embracing with no one. And then she peeks out through the curtains of her dark room and suddenly Mama Waldey's there in vampire mode, gliding frictionlessly directly toward her fangs showing. It's a really scary moment.
Absolutely yeah, this is this is This is one of two really good scares in the picture. This is probably my favorite.
And in fact, this scene develops into a double scare. No pun intended on develops with the dark one, but it's a double scare because Shortly after this, a cop shows up, because remember Gordon was supposed to get those reports delivered to him at the club. So this cop named Barnes appears to deliver the reports and he's in the parking lot of the club and he sees at the house next door a woman stumbles out of the front door and she appears to be dying, so he
goes to help her. But when he picks her up to carry her inside, fangs it's the photographer and she has changed rapidly, so in the the way the mythology, the vampire mythology works here, you can change and I don't know, it seems like minutes.
Yeah, yeah, it's very viral.
So she vamps the cop and Gordon never gets his reports, and he tells Peters as much. The next day at the police station, Peters is mad about this. Gordon wants to get permission to dig up Billy Schaefer's grave to do an autopsy. Peters tries to get a permit for this, but he can't, so then, in a very funny turn, Gordon he explains to Michelle that they're just gonna have to go and illegally dig up Billy's body. Themselves that night, and Michelle is kind of resistant to this idea at first,
but he likes sweet talks her into it. He basically he kisses her and he's like, come on, do it for me, and she's like, okay.
Okay, Well we'll go violate the graveyard.
And so that night, while Gordon and Michelle are out digging up a grave, Mama Walde comes and visits Tina's apartment. He says he couldn't wait to see her and he needed to speak to her alone. They've been dying to see one another again, and Tina explains her complicated feelings. He frightens her, but also when he left the night before, she wanted to run after him. So he says he needs to speak to her about something and she asks, is it about your wife? And he says, you are
my wife. She says that's impossible, Mama al Day and he says, and yet you believe it, and it seems like she does. She's a bit confused, but he explains as if she is Luva reincarnated. He explains who they are, that they come from the Abani people and were sent as diplomats to Europe to gain allies who would support their protest of the slave trade. And then Mama Walde says, on that mission, I myself was enslaved, my wife murdered, and I was placed under the curse of the Undead.
Our assassin was the vampire Count Dracula. Now Tina protests that Count Dracula is a myth, he wasn't real, but Mama Walde explains he was real. Quote as real as I am now, as real as you are, and as real as my need for you. You are my luva recreated. So she asks again what he wants, and he says that he wants her to rejoin him. And it's not spelled out exactly what that means, but it seems that's understood as join him in undeath. Now she seems torn.
She wants to, but she's afraid. She says I can't, and then he says, you must come to me freely, with love or not at all. I will not take you by force, and I will not return. I have lived again to lose you twice, and he rises to leave. He goes to the door, but she stops him and asks him to stay. They embrace. It seems she does want to reach join him whatever the cost.
It's a pointed scene.
It is, and it's emotionally complex because you can see in his performance that when they embrace and kiss that it's not just that he loves her, it's not just that he desires her, but there is a feeling of relief, of like of a burden being lifted, and because, I guess, because he won't have to be like this alone. And so meanwhile Gordon and Gordon and Michelle are doing their grave digging. Gordon digs up Billy's grave in the middle
of the night while Michelle holds a flashlight. They open the coffin and what do you know, Billy pops up a full vampire. He attacks Gordon. Gordon throws some really good punches some haymakers, beats him up with a shovel and stakes him. And now it seems Michelle and Gordon have both seen the proof. They are definitely dealing with vampires.
Yeah, there's no denying it now.
And Michelle is like, oh, all those books you've been reading. Apparently Gordon has been doing a lot of vampire research. But Gordon quickly realizes that the other vampire victims will also rise from their slumber and attack, including the cab driver at the morgue, So he calls Sam from a
payphone that Sam was what's his name? Elisha Cook Junior calls him from a payphone and tells him to take her body out of the freezer so he can come and perform an autopsy with Peters, but also to leave her in a locked room, lock the door, and stay away. And then Gordon goes to pick up Peters to show him the evidence of the vampire menace. What's going to happen? Of course, there is a vampire attack, So vampire Juanita rises from her frozen slumber to attack Sam.
And this is another really well done vampire attack sequence. The music is really great. This is this is awesome.
Yeah, it's a creepy, unusual shot where the door opens and we see from Sam's perspective, he's like at the phone in the hall and she's running directly at the camera in slow motion, just eyes wild, fangs out.
You can imagine this whole sequence playing really well in the theater too, because you get that moment where he almost he has the keys out right, He's almost gonna do it. He's almost gonna gonna lock the body in the room, but then the phone rings. So yeah, it's like you can imagine like the energy in the theater.
Right, No, no, no, So back at Tina's apartment, we see Tina and Mama weel day in bed and she expresses a desire to join him, but he says that can wait now. He has to leave before daylight because daylight would be fatal to him, and she tells him that she loves him. Gordon and Peters arrive at the morgue and they are attacked by the vampire. But Gordon, he's got the he knows what to do now. He subdues the vampire with a big, chunky silver cross. I like this cross. It looks really substantial.
It's really huge, like as it's not one that you would normally just carry on your person, and it would look ridiculous on like a chain around your neck. I'm not sure where you got this.
Yeah, and Gordon explains to Peters that vampires multiply geometrically. He's done the math. They have to stop this fast, so they put out an APB to look for dead people who have gone missing, like Bobby, and then we get another club scene. I guess it's the next night and they're at the club again. The Hues Corporation is playing again. It's another jam and Gordon, Michelle, and Tina are sitting around at a table and Mama Welde joins
them once again. He cheekily orders a bloody Mary and then Gordon is like, hey, Mama Weldey, can maybe you can help me? Are you into the occult? It seems kind of out of nowhere, but I think maybe it means like he's asking him because he wears the cape, so he, you know, looks like a vampire.
I guess because of the I and the follow up question, how about the heavy stuff?
Yeah, exactly which craft all that? And this is so it turns into a general quiz on the subject of the occult, vampires and the devil, and Mama all Day is like, oh, yeah, vampires are the most interesting of all that stuff. We get another visit from Skillet and when he arrives, mamualde leaves and takes Tina with him. More talk about how he wants the cape. But there's a little tip off here. What happened to the photographer who was here the night before or I guess two
nights before. Maybe Gordon decides to investigate. He goes next door to her house and there he finds the photos where Mamaualday is missing. Gordon realizes that he is the vampire he's been looking for, and of course this makes him worried for Tina, who just went home with him, so Gordon and Michelle rushed to Tina's apartment to rescue her. They bust in. Gordon and Mama Alde fight and Mama Alde runs off, and the police arrive on the scene,
and then there's like chase. The people are running around through alleyways trying to find the vampire, and then he finally appears. He gets one cop isolated and he appears in vampire mode and kills the cop. So now Gordon and Peters know who the King Vampire is, but they don't know where he is, so they begin an investigation to find his coffin because, in accordance with standard lore, the way you can destroy him is to destroy his coffin, destroy his resting place.
Yeah yeah, especially I hunt him out during the day.
Oh yeah, I guess that's the other way is find him during the day and stake him while he's sleeping. So from here on out, the film becomes a lot
more action oriented. Like there's a scene where they find vampire Bobby and trace him back to the antique warehouse, and there's like a raid on the vampire nest there at the warehouse, and there's a big fight with Gordon and the other police getting ambushed by vampires and in the sort of maze of crates and bobs boxes and they end up throwing these oil lanterns to fight them off. There are a bunch of like a person in a
fire suit stunts. Oh yeah, there's a scary moment where you remember the cop Barns who went to help the photographer at her house. He of course we saw it in Bitten, but he's like one of their investigating party, and of course he turns on them. At the end of this fight, Mama Walde appears and then escapes in bat form by transforming into a bat.
Yeah, of course this is a classic bit, right, vampire transforms into a bat. But from an effects standpoint, it's kind of a daring vampire movie trope to include, because I think we've all seen examples of it that look a bit silly, right, you know, you can imagine like here's here's a human poof of smoke, and then a floppy bat on a string.
Right, it almost always looks silly. I'm trying to think of a movie where the transformation into a bat does not look silly.
And you know, maybe I'm being super generous here because I like so many other things about the picture, but I thought this one looked reasonably good considering what the effect is.
This is one of the better ones. I like it. But anyway, this all leads up to a big final showdown a set piece at a chemical factory, which is where Mamaelde's coffin is stored now, so he Mamaelde takes Tina there and the police give chase. And then tragically, while the police are running around in this place looking through them through these like mazes of pipes and you know, chemical tanks and things, they see the two of them, and then a cop shoots at them and Tina is killed.
Horrible tragedy Tina. And then of course Mama Weelde turns Tina into a vampire because at that point it's the only way to save her. But he is now of course furious, and he he yells at the at all of their pursuers through and it like sort of echoes throughout the entire building. Is sort of a curse of vengeance. He says, this will be your inglorious tomb.
Yeah, and then follows it up with your tomb, your tomb, your tomb. And I have to say this bit just keeps playing through my mind because on one hand, just an absolutely great moment in the film that drives home just the vengeful power of vampire Prince Mama Walde. You know, his enemies here are clearly doomed. They have crossed the line.
But it's also one of those bits of dialogue that on paper or coming from a lesser actor, it might have come off a bit silly, a bit fake, but Marshall absolutely imbues it here with Shakespearean power.
It's strong. You can feel his rage. And then it becomes even worse because so he turns Tina into a vampire because it's the only way to save her at this point. And then Gordon and Peters come across the vampire's coffin. They think they've discovered his coffin and they're going to stake him to end this. They rip the lid off, throw the stake down and then they realize they have staked Tina by accident. I guess they would have had to stake her either way because she is
a vampire now. But yeah, it wasn't what they were intending to do.
Yeah, but at this point, Mamalalde shows up. He sees this, and this takes the fight out of him, you know, because this was his whole reason for being, and he says as much. There's this great moment where Gordon reaches in to get that big chunky cross out of his jacket, you know, like he's pulling a gun or something, and Mamalde says that won't be necessary.
Right. It's an incredibly sad turn. You could see he's just given up now and with his love gone, he surrenders himself to his ultimate fate and decides that he's going to walk out into the daylight, which he does. He like struggles, you can see the pain in him, but he walks up the staircase under the roof of the building and bathes himself in sunlight, and then Collapse is dead. And then we see like his skin rots away and turns to worms, and it's a very bleak
and tragic ending. There's not really anything. There's not really anything happy to redeem it that comes back. You just end on this moment of absolute loss, and yeah, I don't know what to say about that. It's one of the bleakest endings I can think of.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want it any other way. You could imagine cuts of the film where you could have had something different, like, you know, the sort of like police chummy chummy having that moment where they're like, hey, well, well at least we stop the vampires. It's sad, but the good guy's won. Or you could have gone in an
entirely different direction. It also wouldn't be out of keeping with other films and just just cut back to the Hughes Corporation doing another number, you know, and just sort of almost like insisting on a change of pace. But they stick to the ending here, and the last thing we see is the skull of Mamma Walde. Now a
quick note about the fate of Mama Walde. Here in the film, the main hoster for Blacula features an image of him being staked, an image that appears to be very manipulated, like it's not I don't think it's a shot from the film, And this, of course is dumb, but in line with plenty of other vampire movies and trailers that show the movie's main vampire being staked.
If that were true, it would seem to be a spoiler.
Yeah, but again, it wouldn't be out of line with marketing for other vampire films.
Yeah, and it's not even true. In this case. He does not get staked. He just surrenders himself to death by the sun.
Yeah, but it makes me wonder, Like was just like, I'm wonder of what stage in production the poster was made and maybe at one point he was the character was going to be staked, and William Marshall was like, no, that's not going to work for me. And if that's the case, I applaud him for sticking to his guns and going and pushing for this ending.
So I guess that's Blacula. A really good tragic romance and a really good horror movie too.
Yeah. Absolutely, I was really impressed with it on the whole. So, as always, we'd love to hear from folks out there if y'all have any thoughts on the film, any memories of seeing it originally for the first time, or revisiting it, and so forth. Everything is fair game. Just want to remind everybody that's stuff to blow your mind. Is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
We do a listener mail episode. On Mondays, we do a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie on weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete list with thumbnails or posters of all the movies we've considered so far on weird House Cinema, well, you can go over to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T e r box d dot com. Our username is weird house. We have a fabulous list there.
You can see everything we've done. Sometimes there's a peak ahead at what's coming next, and you can sort by genre. Now, I don't think you can go so specific as to just say, show me only the vampire movies, but you know you could. You can set it to are and then figure it out on your own. I don't know how many vampire movies we've done at this point, but we've done a few and we'll do a few more. I'm sure.
Here's thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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