Some of it obviously hasn’t translated well into 2015, like a recurring gag with a black character who can’t stop stealing and looting. It’s funny in the most obvious way, which is true of most of the film-everything is broad as all get-out, with practically everyone mugging for the camera in a spoof that takes some easy and obvious shots. One of the film’s first memorable gags has Renfield mixing up his master’s coffin with an actual dead guy’s, and it culminates with Dracula emerging right in the middle of a funeral service in Harlem (presided over by Sherman Hemsley!). Accompanied by his trusted assistant Renfield (Arte Johnson), he departs for the States in a coffin, only to immediately meet with hijinks when his trip becomes a comedy of errors.Ĭalling it a “comedy of errors” is just a really nice way of saying it’s a total fucking disaster, I guess. When Romania’s communist government (how interesting that the torch-bearing villagers morphed into card-carrying commies as soon as a Cold War was on) repossesses his home, it’s a good excuse to travel across the pond to reconnect with the soul of his dearly departed love. ![]() ![]() Your second clue? A ridiculously tanned Count Dracula (George Hamilton, eternally bronzed) pining away in his decrepit Transylvanian home for Cindy Sondheim, (Susan Saint James) the American fashion model he believes to be the reincarnated Mina Harker. If that sounds absurd, then I think you have your first clue that Love at First Bite is gleefully dumb as hell. Because of this, it is fair to say that Love at First Bite-which arrived seven years after William Crain’s film-is just the white version of Blacula. In addition to bearing little resemblance to Bram Stoker’s famous bloodsucker, it actually introduced (or at least helped to popularize) elements that later Dracula adaptations would adopt, like the Count waiting for centuries to find the reincarnation of his lost love and becoming a fish-out-of-water in modern times. Contrary to popular opinion and what its title might lead you to believe, Blacula isn’t just a Blaxploitation riff on Dracula.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |