You shall pay, black prince. I shall place a curse of suffering on you that will doom you to a living hell. I curse you with my name. You shall be… Blacula!
– racist!Dracula
It’s hard to make sense of Blacula. On one hand, it’s an interesting attempt to update gothic horror stereotypes for a modern audience, translating the horrors of vampirism skilfully from foreign countryside to an urban environment. On the other hand, it’s an uneven mess of a film, with plot holes so large that Blacula doesn’t need to turn into a bat to fly through them. It’s an interesting experiment, and one successful enough to spawn a sequel in Scream Blacula Scream! and to inspire films like Blackenstein, even if some fascinating concepts don’t necessarily add up to a fascinating whole.
A role he can sink his teeth into?
On one level, Blacula seems relatively progressive, and quite ahead of its time. Indeed, it offers perhaps the most sympathetic portrayal of a vampire we’d seen up until this point. William Marshall turns in a fantastic leading performance as Prince Manuwalde, but apparently he also played a role behind-the-scenes in crafting a more complex and insightful character than a mere fiend or (as the posters label him) “bloodsucker!” There was a strong element of tragic romance to be found in Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, but most of the earlier adaptations only flirted with that sense of tragedy, portraying the character as a monster first and foremost.
Prince Manuwalde, on the other hand, is a full-blown tragedy playing itself out on screen. The opening scenes play out his conversion to vampirism at the hands of a racist Count Dracula, making the loss of his wife seem real for the audience, and immediately giving him a sense of pathos. Throughout the movie, we’re shown a vampire who feeds and who spreads his disease, but we never lose sight of the man who just wants to live peacefully. Indeed, it isn’t until he loses his love again at the climax of the movie that he becomes a truly aggressive adversary for those hunting him.
A fine fanged fiend!
A lot of later portrayals of Dracula would return to that sympathetic sense of a tragically misunderstood figure fighting an inhuman hunger, but Blacula gets points for being significantly ahead of the curve in its portrayal of that aspect of the character. Indeed, the movie rather brilliantly portrays Manuwalde’s unquenchable thirst as something quite similar to heroin addiction, an aspect that makes him more sympathetic than he might seem otherwise. When Manuwalde “hungers”, his skin goes pale, he loses the ability to coherently communicate, and his appearance becomes instantly unkempt. It almost looks like he stopped grooming weeks ago, despite seeming perfectly normal seconds earlier. It’s a powerful central metaphor, and one of the many smart things about the film.
William Marshall is perhaps the single best thing about the movie. I discussed Hammer’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness earlier in the week, and I made a similar observation: it seems that the actors playing the vampire are often able to channel a stately grace that the film around them can’t hope to match. Marshall give Manuwalde that raw sense of pathos. Despite the other differences between this film and traditional Dracula adaptations, that feels like the movie’s most distinguishing quality – and that’s a massive complement to Marshall.
I go to and fro on this film...
Of course, there are some other interesting changes. In particular, the movie plays with many of the tropes of vampirism, transposing them to an urban setting. The soundtrack eschews classical music for a funkier and jazzier sound, and there’s something beautiful about setting the movie’s finale in an abandoned chemical plant rather than the traditional gothic cathedral. I think that Blacula has a wonderful sense of place and time, and the movie exploits these aspects remarkably well. It feels markedly different from any other vampire movie, and think that’s a key strength.
However, the movie does suffer from some significant problems. The most obvious is the fact that the plotting seem purely functional at best. Despite its unique setting and the attempts to generate a sense of tragedy around the leading character, the movie is very much constructed along the classic vampire movie formula, with little sense of energy or enthusiasm. The movie even gives us those mandatory awkward comic relief victims – first in an interracial art dealing couple, and then a sassy taxi driver. The humour doesn’t really work too well, dragging the movie into a foul camp that undermines a lot of the otherwise fine work going on here.
Dracula!Addict!
There’s also the fact that most characters seems to accept the truth about Manuwalde far too easily. I’m not saying that there wasn’t evidence to support the claim he was a vampire, but everybody seems to just jump on the vampire train without any attempt to explain or rationalise it. It’s not that big a deal, but it’s an illustration of the movie’s rather functional approach to plotting the movie itself. It adds to an overwhelmingly cheesy atmosphere, one that might put off viewers who would otherwise enjoy Marshall’s performance or the other clever touches.
While it was nice to see a gay interracial couple presented on the big screen, particularly during the seventies, I couldn’t help but feel the movie shot itself in the foot by having every character and their mother – including the sympathetic vampire-hunter character – refer to them as “faggots.”It’s particularly striking because the character in question had just been attacking the police for their shoddy investigative techniques concerning African-American victims. It’s surreal to see the film take up the cause of minority rights so strongly in the way it tackles the relationship between the city’s black population and its police force, but to engage in such casually stereotypical homophobia.
Hi seventies es-cape-ades...
Blacula is well worth a look for a horror aficionados, or anyone who has a strong stomach for cheese. The movie suffers from a dodgy sense of humour that occasionally devolves into camp, and by-the-numbers plotting, both of which occasionally obscure a fascinatingly unique look at vampires. If you can get past these fairly significant surface problems, there’s a lot to like in this delightfully distinct Dracula film, from the clever shifting of classic vampire clichés to the inner city or even William Marshall’s superb leading performance.
If you liked this review, it might be worth taking a look at our review of the other entry in the “Blacula” series:
- Blacula
- Scream Blacula Scream!
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Blackenstein, Blacula, Bram Stoker, dracula, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, film, Marshall, Movie, non-review review review, review, vampire, William Marshall |
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