Weirdhouse Cinema: Blacula

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1972 horror film “Blacula” directed by William Crain and starring William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
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

(00:49):
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?

Speaker 3 (00:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, I didn't notice that. I believe the movie when
it told me it was Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well wait, did the movie even say it was LA
I didn't remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, our character, doctor Thomas, supposedly works for the Los
Angeles Police Department.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Oh okay, then, oh, maybe he's just like a Staten
Island map hobbyist. That's myself 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.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Rob.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
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

(02:02):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting and 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 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

(02:43):
not more.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
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

(03:04):
out in an 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

(03:27):
interacting with it. You could expect 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 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

(03:49):
just normally lives their life here.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah. Absolutely so. Yeah, Black Ela is a very well
known film in the history of horror and vampire movies,
and certainly has 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

(04:11):
assumed it was more of a comedy, you know, I
wasn't sure how it might have aged, how it was received,
and what its legacy was, because you know, not everything
that is often categorized under 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

(04:33):
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

(04:57):
twenty three graphic novel Blackula, Rich Turn of the King,
illustrated by Jason Seawan Alexander, and it's really fun. It's
a modern sequel to the film Blackula, reawakening our central
Prince character once more in contemporary Los Angeles and on
a collision course, this time with his vampiric maker. It's

(05:19):
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

(05:41):
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 Blacula, the movie called to him ultimately
helped inspire him to become a creator himself. And you know,

(06:04):
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

(06:28):
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 Dracula's Vampires and Other Undead

(06:50):
Forms Essays on gender, race, and Culture. And this article
makes a case that you know, we also see efforts
in the movie at challenging homosexual stereotype, just as the
film challenges stereotypes of black and African characters. Though the
authors here acknowledge that the film fumbles in this and
ultimately quote encourage stereotypes and bigotries concerning homosexuality more than

(07:13):
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

(07:33):
the original radio spot for Blackma.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
You shall.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
Black Prince, I press' wait my name?

Speaker 4 (07:49):
You shall be black Tula, the Black Avenger, rising from
this tool to fill the night with horror. Black Cula
Dracula soul brother, deadlier even than he Blacula the First

(08:14):
for your blood. He hung less for your soul, more
horrifying than Draccula, the Black Avenge. Black Cula an American
International release rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Now of note you that voice you heard at the beginning.
That is the voice of Count Dracula, as we'll discuss.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
Hmmm. 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.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Oh yeah, absolutely, a 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.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Really yeah, he disappears after like three or four minutes in.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
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 Blu ray 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

(09:40):
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

(10:02):
black cinema of the seventies and more broadly, the horror
genre itself. Prior to Blackula, 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 Quaidier movie Brother John, which also features
Paul Winfield. But anyway, After Blacula, he continued to direct

(10:24):
episodes of such TV series as Startsky and hutch Swatt
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.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
No, I'd be interested to see that one too.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
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

(11:01):
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

(11:21):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
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 Mama Walde's character and
wrote or rewrote key scenes concerning memal Walde's eighteenth century
mission to Europe, as well his connection to his wife Luva,
So he seems to have been heavily involved in the
choices that made this film notable.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
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

(12:31):
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

(12:54):
it would be, I don't know why it's not, but
it's very effective here.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah. Yeah, you can imagine these scenes really sizzling on
the big screen in front of a pack house and
it's worth noting that this film was quite a success
so 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

(13:20):
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 writers 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

(13:41):
nineteen seventy three sequel Scream Blackula 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 of 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

(14:02):
the screenplay in this more serious direction.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Just wanted to note you mentioned the sequel screen Blacula Screen,
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.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
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

(14:39):
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 his

(15:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
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 water. Is It's
just like an amazing voice. It is the kind of
voice that every time he speaks, people just turn and listen.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
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 Pee Wee's Playhouse. According to his

(15:59):
New 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.

(16:20):
He voiced both the Juggernaut and Tony Stark, whoa in cinema.
His other credits include nineteen fifty four's Demetrius and the Gladiators,
the nineteen seventy three sequel Screen Blackulas 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,

(16:41):
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 fall it suit. They didn't

(17:04):
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 McGee who lived

(17:28):
nineteen forty five through twenty ten American actress who had
been in several films prior to this, including the Italian
western The Great Silence. Her subsequent films included nineteen seventy
three's 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.

(17:50):
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

(18:12):
episodes of In the Heat of the Night. Her film
credits include seventy seven's Capricorn One, 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.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
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

(18:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. So let's get to doctor Gordon Thomas
because he's essentially the Van Helsing character of the movie.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
He's the investigator, the human hero.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
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 Twilight Zone, All in the Family, Mission Impossible,
Sanford and Son, The Jefferson's Kojak, The Incredible Hulk. He

(19:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
I like that the implied comedy of this skit is
how ridiculous it would be to make a sequel to
the X, Or says, But then just a couple of
years later, they literally did.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah. 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,

(20:25):
and you got to bring in Thalmus to be in
this skit with me.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
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

(20:52):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, I think it's a really solid performance. You know,
he's like here grumpy, uh 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 Memowalde's cape. Yes, but it's a

(21:24):
memorable brief bart. He lived nineteen forty through twenty seventeen.
He was a main cast member on the spy series
A Man called Sloan with Robert Conrad and Dan o'hurlhay.
He was in Roots He'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 in nineteen eighty

(21:46):
nine's Harlem Knights.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
This character appears multiple times to admire Memo Walde's cape
and to comment that he is one strange dude.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
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

(22:18):
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. McCauley also worked with Corman, credited, this
time in nineteen sixty two's Tower of London. His filmography

(22:40):
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 two's Twilight People, seventy four's House
of Seven Corpses seventy five is the Hindenburg Airport seventy seven,

(23:04):
and he played the President of the United States in
the nineteen eighty four Mermaid comedy Splash, which is I
haven't seen Splash in a while. Watched it a lot
as a kid, but now I'm just imagining like President Dracula.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Uh huh, I've never seen it, but now there's a
treat waiting for me if I ever get there.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
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 are 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

(23:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
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

(24:27):
on Weird House Cinema before, because he did the excellent
title sequence for The Dunwich Horror, which had a very
similar style, only instead of like red, black and white,
it was like blue and black.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
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

(25:22):
Blackula and the intro to The Dunwich Horror. He also
did one on a nineteen sixty nine film called Desad.
This was a Roger Corman film starring Keer 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

(25:45):
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 ten one hundred
and fifty five writing and arrangement credits on discogs what
including Yeah, it's like this man works a lot working

(26:06):
with artists. I can't even list them all, but just
as a brief overview, people like Barry White, James Taylor,
Michael Jackson cher that 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.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
I love the music in Blackula, and it works I
think on every level. Like there's some 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.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
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, really drives on the
creepy moments. Now, the musical performances that you mentioned these

(27:13):
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 hum it. You all know it. You've all heard
Rock the Boat. At the time of Blackula, they consisted
of Saint Clair Lee who lived nineteen forty four through

(27:35):
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

(27:58):
in Blackula.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
They get at least two on screen musical performances in
the film, or are there even more?

Speaker 2 (28:05):
They have at least three tracks on the soundtrack. There's
There He Is Again, which we'll talk about, 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 it's really good.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
There He Is Again is my favorite because it's it
can The lyrics can be read as a song about
a vampire.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, absolutely, Like it feels if you're not analyzing the
lyrics too closely, like yeah, yeah, of course it's about
Mama Waldi, 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
the twenty first Century limited heavy changes and main chance.

(28:52):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Okay, you 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

(29:31):
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

(29:51):
like longer hairs, kind of grayish brown in color, and
a goatee. 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's at first kind of superficially

(30:13):
friendly to his two guests, and the guests are Prince
Mamuwalde 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. Memo Walde is dressed
in a dark suit with a powder blue cravat, and

(30:35):
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
explain to Count Dracula that they're here for a reason.

(30:55):
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

(31:18):
of the international slave trade. Dracula doesn't like this idea.
He counters that he says, surely slavery has merit, and
Memoilde raises an eyebrow. He asks how one would find
merit 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

(31:40):
then he transitions to making revolting comments with sexual overtones
about how it would in fact be appealing to him
to own Luva.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
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

(32:11):
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
Mammal Waldy by offering in cruel jess to buy his wife.
And this then quickly transcends into physical assault, separation, murder,

(32:32):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah. So at the beginning of the exchange, Dracula is
condescending and smarmy, but it's 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
Mamiwalde won't tolerate this shocking behavior from Dracula, but he
keeps his composure. He rises from his seat and he

(33:09):
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

(33:31):
there in front of the fire. But eventually Mimiwalde 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 Walde

(33:54):
and then Dracula exposes his neck and bites.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
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 uh, that's that's still It doesn't doesn't attract from
the sequence.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
But it goes onto a horrifying escalation here. So there
is an interment scene Luva and Mama Walde 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

(34:37):
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.

(34:59):
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 mam Mawalde and Luva are left trapped

(35:21):
in this room forever.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, it's 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.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Yes, now, it might seem curious why Dracula is portrayed, uh, 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 Waldey and Luva, and they've done nothing whatsoever to

(36:01):
harm him, Like there's no reason for he 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.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
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's
dripping from his lips after he has fed on Mama
Walde and he's taunting Luva, but it's also draining from

(36:37):
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. It's just kind of leaking
out of every orifice. And yeah, it's just brutal stuff.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
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?

Speaker 2 (36:59):
I think?

Speaker 4 (36:59):
So? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
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 returned
to Dracula's castle, but it's the present. Dracula's house is
undergoing an estate sale, and we've got a couple of

(37:20):
wholesale antique buyers from America who are here to they're
about to sign the paperwork to buy everything from the castle.
The two antique dealers are the characters Bobby McCoy and
Billy Schaefer. 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

(37:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, the guy here was worried about about having to
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.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Billy also says that he has seen all of Dracula's movies,
So I think it's interesting that, 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

(38:40):
in the late seventeen hundreds, though some modern characters believe
he was just a myth, and this character is separate
from Vladdi Impaler, 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.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
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
like 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,

(39:24):
there are multiple layers of fiction and history and fictional
history that you have to juggle in this scenario.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
But it also portrays the historical figure Count Dracula in
the late seventeen hundreds as having been an influential player
in international politics, because 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

(39:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Oh that's right. In fact, the guy at the estate
sale mentions how Dracula died.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
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 Mamma Walde in a
world where his greatest adversary is himself long destroyed, but

(40:36):
the legacy of his crime still resonate.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
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 Memowalde
and Luva were buried alive. So they add the coffin
to their hall and we see it brought back to

(40:59):
the States to be a 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. We 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

(41:22):
their house. I like this idea.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Bobby is doubtful though, He's clearly doubtful of this idea,
and he's like, okay.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
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,

(41:54):
begins to rise.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah, this is our first real shot of the awakened
prince Man w Walde facing the camera, Dracula's curse audibly
resonating in his mind. Pretty haunting stuff.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
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 Memoilde's two looks as

(42:30):
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

(42:50):
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

(43:11):
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 Mamoulde 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

(43:35):
before the change. And even in the form of even
as a vampire, Memo Walde is shown to be a
good and moral man. He has 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.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
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

(44:18):
person has become a dracula of some sort.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
So Mema 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

(44:42):
behind a curtain at the back of the room, and
slowly we see Bobby's hand to 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 coworker and romantic partner, doctor Gordon Thomas.

(45:05):
This is Thalmas Resulola. We get Michelle's sister, Tina, who
is played by Vanetta McGee, 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,

(45:26):
but there's a reveal moment. She pulls it back to
reveal her face and Mama Walde sees her and he whispers, Luva.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
The hood is almost too much because I initially thought
she was going to be some sort of sorceress or
cult member or something, but we quickly learned that she's
just very stylish.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
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, like
essentially everything Thalmas rasoulil awares looks awesome. He has this
great collection of coats and jackets. He has cool like
a herringbone blazer, and he has a double breasted jacket

(46:05):
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,

(46:27):
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

(46:49):
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 is. He works as
a forensic investment togator. 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

(47:10):
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. So Gordon is his radars pinging.

(47:33):
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

(47:54):
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 this 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.

(48:16):
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

(48:36):
up the pace. She glances around nervously. Then suddenly she
comes round a corner and runs straight into Mama Welde.
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

(48:57):
her hopefully at first, saying love, 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 Memo
Walde follows and picks up the pocketbook He's still looking

(49:21):
around for where she went when suddenly he is hit
by a cab.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
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 waal Day, telling him
that chasing tail could get him killed. Mema Walde is
very frustrated. He says I lost her because of you,

(50:03):
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

(50:26):
what happened. Michelle says, maniacs are running in the streets,
and meanwhile, Mima Walde goes back to his coffin in
the antique warehouse dejected. He's broken by the fact that
his Louva 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

(50:48):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
It's his signature. Look, it's his blue steel.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Yeah, or in these movies from the forties and fifties,
he just saw a skeleton.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
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 like 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

(52:01):
own thoughts. He laughs and says to himself, come on now,
that's ridiculous. But he 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

(52:24):
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.

(52:48):
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

(53:09):
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

(53:30):
the house band, 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

(53:52):
Is Again, and the Hughes Corporation just rocks. I thought
the song was killer, as 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

(54:14):
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.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, this is my favorite of the Hughes 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.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
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

(55:12):
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 Walde
to join them at their table. And this is not
vamp mode Mama wel dey, obviously, this is evening attire
Mama Wlde. He is super charming at the absolute height

(55:36):
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 I is that
I think he's very like task oriented and most of
the time he's all business.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes rough some feathers, for sure.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah. But his sort of antisocialness 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.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
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 appropriate 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,

(56:40):
they're also drinking all their champagne out of coop glasses
or something very close to a coop glass, And I
feel like I've always heard that argument was like, oh, no,
you want a narrow glass because you know the way
the bubbles form and so forth.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
I feel like coop blesses for champagne have come in
and out of fashion over time.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
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 You
bear an amazing resemblance to my wife, whom I lost
a short while ago. I loved her very much. When

(57:29):
you left the mortuary, I had to follow you. 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.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
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

(58:09):
charisma role. So yeah, he is not controlling her, and
their connection across time would seem to be legitimate.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
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

(58:39):
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 my and Mama

(59:01):
Weelde says, I'm just a passing thought. But then we
get the arrival of Skillett. 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

(59:24):
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 barges in one more time and takes a picture
of them a second time. This picture is just Mama

(59:46):
Weelde and Tina, and this drives Mama Walde 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
have happen. I don't know, but it seems what she
She goes around the club taking pictures of people, and
then she has a house right next door to the club,

(01:00:09):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
I think so.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
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,
there 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,

(01:00:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
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 Waldey is

(01:01:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Absolutely yeah, this is this is This is one of
two really good scares in the picture. This is probably
my favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
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

(01:02:27):
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 way the mythology, the
vampire mythology works here, you can change and I don't know,
it seems like minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's very viral.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
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. He
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

(01:03:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Okay, we'll go violate the graveyard.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
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

(01:03:53):
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, Mamualde, 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

(01:04:18):
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. Tina protests that Count

(01:04:41):
Dracula is a myth. He wasn't real but mamu 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

(01:05:02):
exactly what that means, but it seems that's understood as
join him in undeath. Now she seems torn. She 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.

(01:05:25):
He goes to the door, but she stops him and
asks him to stay. They embrace. It seems she does
want to rejoin 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,

(01:05:48):
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

(01:06:08):
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 that Michelle
and Gordon have both seen the proof. They are definitely
dealing with vampires.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Yeah, there's no denying it now.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
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 Jr.

(01:06:52):
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 like
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
gonna happen? Of course, there is a vampire attack, so
vampire Juanita rises from her frozen slumber to attack Sam.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
And this is another really well done vampire attack sequence.
The music is really great. This, this is this is awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Yeah, it's a it's a creepy, unusual shot where the
door opens and we see from Sam's perspective, he's like
at the phone down the hall and she's running directly
at the camera in slow motion, just eyes wild, fangs out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
You can imagine this, this, 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.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Right, No, no, no, So back at Tina's a part,
and we see Tina and Mama Weelde 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

(01:08:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
It's really huge. I guess 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 he got is.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
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 Huges Corporation is

(01:08:58):
playing again. It's another jam and Gordon, Michelle and Tina
are sitting around at a table and Mama Walde joins
them once again. He cheekily orders a bloody Mary, and
then Gordon is like, hey, Mama Walde can maybe you
can help me? Are you into the occult? It seems
kind of out of nowhere, but I think maybe it

(01:09:20):
means like he's asking him because he wears the cape,
so he, you know, looks like a vampire, I guess because.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Of the and the follow up question, how about the
heavy stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Yeah, exactly, witchcraft all that and this is so it
turns into a general quiz on the subject of the occult,
vampires and the devil, and Mama Walday is like, oh, yeah,
vampires are the most interesting of all that stuff. We
get another visit from Skillett and when he arrives, mamualde
leaves and takes Tina with him. More talked about how

(01:09:52):
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 mamaul Day is missing.
Gordon realizes that he is the vampire he's been looking for,

(01:10:16):
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
a chase. The people are running around through alleyways trying
to find the vampire, and then he finally appears. He

(01:10:38):
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 you know, in accordance with standard lore, the
way you can destroy him is to destroy his coffin,

(01:11:00):
Troy's resting place.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
Yeah yeah, especially I hunt him out during the day.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
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

(01:11:24):
and the other police getting ambushed by vampires and in
the sort of maze of crates and 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 Barnes who went to help the
photographer at her house. He of course we saw it

(01:11:46):
in Bitten, but he's like one of their investigating party,
and of course he turns on them. At the end
of this fight, Mamualde appears and then escapes in bat
form by transforming into a bat.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Yeah, and 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. Look
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.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
Right, it almost always looks silly. I'm trying to think
of a movie where the transformation into a bat does
not look silly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
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 Mama ALDE'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

(01:12:57):
through them through these like mazes of pipes and 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 Welde turns Tina into a vampire because at that
point it's the only way to save her. But he

(01:13:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Yeah, and then follows it up with your tomb, your tomb,
your tomb. And I have to say this 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

(01:13:55):
of dialogue that, on paper or coming from a lesser actor,
have come off a bit silly, a bit fake, but
Marshall absolutely imbues it here with Shakespearean power.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
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

(01:14:29):
lid off, throw the steak 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.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Yeah, but at this point, the Malaldi 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 jack get, you know, like he's pulling a
gun or something, and Mamaldi says that won't be necessary. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:15:07):
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 is
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 collapses dead.

(01:15:31):
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

(01:15:53):
I can think of.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want it any other way.
You could imagine cuts 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 guys won. Or you could have gone an
entirely different direction. It also wouldn't be out of keeping
with other films and just just cut back to the

(01:16:14):
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 Mama Walde. Now a
quick note about the fate of Mama Walde here in
the film. The main poster for Blackula features an image
of him being staked, an image that appears to be

(01:16:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
If that were true, it would seem to be a spoiler.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
Yeah, but again, it wouldn't be out of line with
marketing for other vampire films.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
Yeah, and it's not even true. In this case, he
does not get staked. He just surrenders himself to death
by the sun.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Yeah, but it makes me wonder like was this Like
I'm wonder of what stage in production the poster was
made and maybe at one point 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.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
So I guess that's Blackula a really good tragic romance
and a really good horror movie too.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
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. I
just want to remind everybody that's stuff to blow your mind.

(01:17:51):
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 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

(01:18:13):
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 what's coming next, and you can sort by genre. Now,
I don't think it can go so specific as to
just say show me only the vampire movies, but you
know you could. You can set it to horror and
then figure it out on your own. I don't know

(01:18:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
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