Written and directed by Paul Morrissey
Based on the novel by Bram Stoker
Starring Joe Dallesandro, Udo Kier, Maxime McKendry and Vittorio de Sica
Italy/France, 1975
In the 70s, filmmaker and Andy Warhol bro Paul Morrissey made a duo of monster movies featuring amped up sex, violence and nudity, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (featured in a previous Horrorfest) and BLOOD FOR DRACULA, both starring Udo Kier and Joe Dallesandro. Now that I’ve seen both I can say I prefer FRANKENSTEIN, but they might make a nice double feature.
This liberal adaptation of Dracula has an aging Count (Kier) traveling to Italy at the suggestion of his servant (Arno Jürging). He needs the blood of virgins to regain his vitality, and his servant incorrectly reasons Italy will be lousy with them because they’re all Catholic. The Count reluctantly sets out on this journey and ends up at the broken-down estate of an Italian landowner who has four daughters. That’s four potential virgins! But this is a dark comedy and the joke’s on Dracula as 50% of them are all sexed up by the live-in handyman (Joe Dallesandro) who is also a misogynist Marxist.
The strongest element of this movie is the dark humor, mostly manifesting itself in Kier’s performance as a Dracula who is just so over it. He’s sick of being a vampire. His servant seems more into Dracula being a vampire than Dracula does. Just put him out of his misery, already. He’s great in the role and it’s a shame the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to him.
Warhol superstar Dallesandro, on the other hand, may be a hunk, I guess, but he’s not much of an actor, as far as I can tell.
As far as bringing anything new to the table in the world of Dracula, the movie clearly wants to hint at social importance by getting into the Marx stuff, but its real contributions to vamp lore are in the scenes that treat Dracula as no more than a junkie fiending for his fix. The film spends a lot of time dwelling on Dracula’s sickness and discomfort when he can’t get his blood, or, more graphically, when he gets the wrong kind (non virgin).
While the movie’s mostly boring, the climax is insane, so you can fast forward to that after you get enough of Kier’s fabulously bored and fed-up performance.
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