2022 A month of Halloween movies -- October 3rd

Blacula (1972) [Criterion]

I tried watching this one ages ago and didn't get very far into it--if I remember correctly, I think I got as far as Dracula turning William Marshall into Blacula and then gave up not very far past the title sequence.  I don't know why it didn't grab me.  Tonight the Scatterkat and I watched it together while eating delivery Latin American street food, and that was a lot more fun for probably obvious reasons.

The credits sequence is one of the best things about the film, which ought to be a testament to how genuinely cool the animated credits sequence is (and it really is), but is also unfortunate, really, because let's be honest, Blacula isn't very good.  It isn't very bad, either, thanks mostly to William Marshall being one of the best [Dr]/[Bl]aculas ever.  But Marshall wasn't served too well by a screenplay that's generally a lot like the later Hammer Dracula films where Dracula is completely silent because Christopher Lee refused to say any of his lines.  Blacula, or Prince Mamuwalde if you want to go by his proper name and title, isn't silent and that's good because William Marshall possessed one hell of a mellifluous voice; one wishes one could hear him reading an audiobook of Dracula or I should maybe dig around and see if he did any Shakespeare that was preserved.  But it's a dumb script.  Fun.  But dumb.

Vonetta McGee, the reincarnation of Mrs. Blacula who Blacula is obsessed with when he shows up in modern (i.e. 1970s) Los Angeles, looks fabulous.  That's the other great thing about Blacula; it's three great things: a super-cool animated credits sequence, William Marshall, and everything Vonetta McGee wears in this.  I don't mean to reduce her to a dress mannequin: she's a cromulent actress who I now realize I liked in The Eiger Sanction when Wikipedia reminded me she was in it, but her character is basically a plot device in this movie.  That's not her fault.  The character is a MacGuffin and that would be so no matter who played her.  She's fine.  And her wardrobe is fine.

Not sure there's much else to say about this one.  It's pretty much one of the most What It Says On The Tin movies ever made, an American International Pictures production that was made to cash in on the 1970s Blaxploitation wave and the wave of Dracula movies with Christopher Lee that Hammer released 1966-1973 (Hammer released their first Dracula in 1958 and a "sequel" in 1960 where the only Dracula was in the title (The Brides of Dracula, which is one of the best of the Hammer Dracula films despite Christopher Lee's absence and, seriously, Dracula isn't in the actual movie either; Peter Cushing is, and is a badass), and then starting in '66 they released a Dracula movie roughly every two years because reasons).  There's a Dracula, and he's Black; ergo, Blacula, get it?

Oh, and the movie is homophobic as fuck, I guess I shouldn't let that pass unmentioned.

Anyway, other than that, it's okay.