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Blood
For Dracula
(1974)
Sometime in the 1960s pop artist and experimental film-maker Andy Warhol decided that he might make more money doing more commercial films than eight hour films of the Empire State Building. To this end he financed a series of films by his friend Paul Morrissey. First up were the so-called “bad taste” trilogy of Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972) about life on the mean streets of New York, all of which got surprisingly large audiences and headaches for the censors. The Warhol gang then decamped to Italy where they made two horror-comedies back to back: Blood
for Dracula and Flesh
for Frankenstein (1974).
In his castle in Romania, Count Dracula (Udo Kier) is feeling poorly. He is
running out of pure untouched “were-gin” blood (any other kind makes him seriously
ill, apparently), and so his creepy butler Anton (Arno Juerging) persuades him
to travel to Italy to fill up on Italian girls (they assume that the Catholic
church ensures that all unmarried Italian girls are were-gins). They encounter
a once-rich family who have lost their fortune but have four unmarried daughters
and a social climbing mother. Unfortunately for the Count, they also have a
Marxist servant (Joe Dallesandro) who is doing his best to make the daughters
ineligible for the Count.
Better than Flesh for Frankenstein, this film is also far less gruesome,
at least until the hilariously over the top climax. However there is plenty
of unnecessary nudity (this is an Andy Warhol film after all). The movie opens
with the bizarre image of Dracula painting his hair (with black paint) in a
mirror, in which he casts no reflection but in which he can somehow see himself,
presumably.
Acclaimed Italian neo-realist director Vittorio De Sica (director
of 1948's Bicycle
Thieves
and 1952's Umberto D.) has a small role as the family patriarch
and Roman Polanski also appears briefly as a pub patron. Kier gets into the
spirit of the thing with a very funny, bug-eyed performance as everyone’s favourite
nobleman. Warhol crony Dallesandro (famed as Little Joe in the
Lou Reed song “Walk
on the Wild Side”) strains to read his lines off camera as he blankly recites
communist propaganda in a thick Brooklyn accent (he’s supposed to be an Italian
peasant).
While Blood for Dracula is
probably one of the Warhol factory’s better efforts, but that’s not
saying much. Although Paul Morrissey is credited as director, some believe that
this film was really inflicted on us by Antonio Margheriti. Also the special
effects are by Carlo Rambaldi, who created creatures for Dune (1984) and E.T. (1982).
-Robert
Foster
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Paul
Morrissey
Writer: Paul
Morrissey
Starring: Udo
Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Arno Juerging
Distributor: Bryanston
Distributing
Runtime: 106
min
Rating: X
Release Date: November
27, 1974
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