It’s a 70’s-riffic blaxploitation movie! A classic, actually, started the whole “blaxploitation horror” subgenre, back in the day (and yeah, there was a “Blackenstein” too). The original title, before director William Crane took on the project, was “Count Brown’s in Town” featuring the vampire Andy Brown. Wanting to make things a smidge more dignified, he made Andy Brown an African Prince and re-titled it “Blacula.” Is this an improvement? Well… the title is still kinda silly but compared to “Count Brown’s in Town?” Come on, now!
Prince Mamuwalde goes to Count Dracula to ask his help with abolishing the slave trade, Dracula laughs, says a bunch of racist shit, then turns him into a vampire and names him Blacula. Yep. Kind of a dick. Nails him into a coffin, and there he stays for 200 years.
Fast forward to 1972, a flouncy interracial gay couple acquire all the castle’s stuff to use in their interior decoration business back in L.A. Super gay. 1970s movie gay. A little cringey. Blacula wakes up, eats ’em both and goes back to bed.
His first day out he sees someone that looks a little like his late wife, immediately decides she’s Luva’s reincarnation and obsesses over her. Kind of a modern staple in the Dracula myth. Gotta pine for lost love while lamenting lost humanity. Also, stalking women. Kind of a staple in these Draculicious movies.
He meets up with her later, introducing himself as Mamuwalde (because not only is Blacula essentially a slave name, it’s also kinda silly), orders two bottles of Champagne for the table, and Gordon (New Luva’s sister’s boyfriend, and also the police medical examiner who happens to be working on the case of a string of vampire murders because “CoInCiDeNcE!!”) is not a fan of getting out-macho’d by new dude in a cape.
Great music in this movie, by the way. Crane opted for a soundtrack of funk and soul, rather than ominous instrumentals typical of an early horror movie. You’ll see what I mean during this previous scene I mentioned.
Gordon follows leads, Mamuwalde eats some people, the gay dudes come back to life, and everyone sweats all over the place. There’s a lot of sweating. Other people come back to life, too! There are Draculas all over town! Gordon knows it, and he brings that knowledge bomb back to headquarters with him and (‘splodey noise) drops it on erra’body!
Gordon also is starting to suspect Mamuwalde as the culprit. Maybe because he’s walking around wearing a Dracula cape all the time??
Blacula is the first movie combining “blaxploitation” movies and horror. The concept of a blaxploitation movie is, of course, complicated. The term was coined by NAACP president Junius Griffin in the 70’s, he had very little nice to say about ’em and what he felt they represented in black culture. On the other hand, black filmmakers and artists on both sides of the camera viewed their movies as a reclamation of the representation of black ethnic identity in a newly-integrated Hollywood. Granted, not all movies were created equally in this pseudo-genre, some were pretty awful, pretty insulting, not doing anyone any favors. Blacula, however, for all its faults, was fairly successful. It got good reviews from leading critics, won awards, and was financially successful. Blacula was an earnest horror effort, not just some blacktastic Dracula parody, and it started the cultural shift in Hollywood horror that would later be reflected in movies like Candyman, Tales From the Hood, Bones and Get Out.
Not all reviews were great, of course most of ’em (especially the current era reviews) hover around 50%, but I’ve always liked it.