“Blacula” (PG, 93 min.) ★★★ / “Scream, Blacula, Scream” (PG, 96 min.) ★★★
“Man needs ritual — some form of worship to combat the very real existence of death.”
— Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) discussing religion and incidentally explaining the existence of horror movies in “Scream, Blacula, Scream”
Emerging on the cutting edge of a filmmaking trend not yet popularly known as “blaxploitation,” “Blacula” is an often-campy 1972 B-movie with a racial message too unmistakable to be a joke. If its false vampire teeth are sometimes slipshod, the beats of its stake-targeted heart of darkness flash a message that is poignant, tragic and profound.
As played with baritone gravitas by Shakespearean actor William Marshall in “Blacula” and its 1973 sequel, “Scream, Blacula, Scream,” the African prince-turned-title monster is the embodiment of the victimization of the African people at the hands of Western exploiters. Dignified, powerful and sophisticated, Prince Mamuwalde is introduced as a symbol of black achievement (“The crystallization of our people’s pride,” in the words of his ill-fated wife), while his transformation into a vampire offers monstrous proof of the dehumanizing influence of slavery and racism. Yet even as he shoulders this burden like the cape on his shoulders, the so-called Blacula remains more anti-hero than villain. In America, he becomes a fantasy vigilante of vengeance and retribution (the bat if not the chicken coming home to roost), killing white cops and collecting reparations, drop by drop, in blood.
The “Blacula” movies are book-ended with incidents that deliver the series’ message with operatic intensity. In the first film, when Count Dracula transforms the visiting Prince Mamuwalde into a vampire, the Transylvanian aristocrat thunders: “I curse you with my name — you shall be Blacula!” The moment is ridiculous (would Dracula really be a fan of market branding via racial pun?), yet also devastating in its evocation of the way in which captured men and women were stripped of their African identities and given Westernized slave names. But if the Blacula moniker is intended as an insult as well as a curse, by the end of “Scream, Blacula, Scream,” Mamuwalde has given up hope of recovering his true self: “The name is Blacula!” he roars, and his embrace of his slave name signals his acceptance of his soul’s defeat, even in the midst of his body’s triumphant killing spree. Mamuwalde is dead; long live Blacula? This loss of hope ends the two-movie series on a note of true pop tragedy.
Long available on DVD, “Blacula” and “Scream, Blacula, Scream” received an essential Blu-ray upgrade this month via Scream Factory, the busy genre imprint of the Shout! Factory label. Paired on a single double-feature disc, the movies are clear, crisp and colorful; disc extras include trailers, photo galleries, an interview with “Scream, Blacula, Scream” actor Richard Lawson and a commentary track (on “Blacula”) with “blaxploitation” historian David F. Walker.
Released by American-International Pictures, the country’s leading purveyor of exploitation fodder from the 1950s through the ’70s, “Blacula” is described as “Dracula’s Soul Brother” in the movie’s trailers, though the film in fact presents this relationship as anything but brotherly. Suggested by Marshall himself, according to Walker, the lengthy Blacula-meets-Dracula prologue of “Blacula” is the most interesting episode in the movie; it generates sympathy for the title vampire while also ensuring that the film’s racial themes are undeniable.
Functionally helmed by UCLA film school graduate William Crain, an African-American TV director who returned to the subgenre in 1976 with “Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde,” “Blacula” opens in 1789, at Castle Dracula in Transylvania, where Mamuwalde, a prince of the “Niger delta,” and his wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee), have come to enlist Dracula’s support in an effort to ban the slave trade.
An ambassador for Africa, the mustachioed Mamuwalde is eager to introduce “our ancient culture into the community of nations,” though he has no patience for the elitist gatherings of the European aristocracy, with their “pseudo-intellectuals and dilettantes.” Perhaps predictably, however, Mamuwalde’s host, the evil Dracula (Charles Macaulay), is the epitome of decadent European privilege and snobbery, and specifically a fan of trapping, selling and imprisoning human beings. “Slavery has merit, I believe,” he says, leering at Luva: “It’s a compliment for a man of my station to look with desire on one of your color,” he tells her. When the angry Mamuwalde labels Dracula an “animal,” the vampire responds: “Let us not forget, sir, it is you who comes from the jungle.” Of course, it is the “jungle” man in this case who is civilized, while the aristocrat is barbaric. (It is very easy to imagine the Christoph Waltz of the Tarantino films in the Dracula role here, and the scene is a likely influence on the Leonardo DiCaprio phrenology lecture in “Django Unchained.”)
Dracula kills Luva and vampirizes — enslaves — Mamuwalde. Jump ahead two centuries, more or less, and the coffin containing Mamuwalde is in Los Angeles, having been purchased by a pair of stereotypically gay interior decorators as part of what must have been advertised as the Dracula Everything Must Go Estate Sale. “The legend of Dracula, that’s the absolute crème de la crème of camp!” one of the men enthuses. (Played by Ted Harris and Rick Metzler, the interior decorators — one black, one white — are perhaps offensive in their swishy “gayness,” yet at the same time they intriguingly are presented as a successful, committed and legitimate couple.)
Freed from his coffin, Mamuwalde stalks the streets of urban L.A., has a few bites and visits a nightclub where he meets a former detective (Thalmus Rasulala); the lovely Tina (McGee), apparent reincarnation of his late wife; and a comical jive turkey named Skillet (Jitu Cumbuka), who comments behind Blacula’s back: “Did you see the rags he had on? Baaaad cape. I’d like to beat him out of that cape.” Onstage, the Hues Corporation performs several lively soul numbers (though not their big hit, “Rock the Boat”), but Mamuwalde only has eyes for Tina; their love story makes “Blacula” an early forerunner of the romantic vampire trend that hit paydirt with “True Blood” and “Twilight.” Unlike Stephenie Meyer’s sparkly fangsters, however, the handsome Blacula loses his appeal when the bloodlust is upon him and he breaks out in an unattractive and unexplained quasi-werewolf makeup (streaks of hair appear on his cheeks, and his eyebrows become thick and unruly).
Screenwriters Raymond Koenig and Joan Torres (who returned for the sequel) make topical use of the race motif. In a nod to “ghetto” problems, the wounds the prince leaves on the necks of his victims initially are identified as rat bites; a clueless white detective suggests “Panther activity” may be to blame for the killings. The Rasulala character chides his former colleague: “Strange how many of the sloppy police jobs involve black victims,” he comments. None of the black characters are fans of institutionalized law enforcement: Giving new meaning to the term “police brutality,” Blacula repeatedly manhandles helmeted (white) members of the LAPD; it’s hard to imagine audiences didn’t cheer the vampire, just as they might do today, in the wake of Ferguson.
Directed by American-International’s ’70s vampire specialist, Bob Kelljan, (“Count Yorga, Vampire” and “The Return of Count Yorga”), the inevitable sequel, “Scream, Blacula, Scream” is more stylish than its predecessor but also less novel (even if it did beat “Blackenstein,” “Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde” and “Abby” aka “The Blaxorcist” into theaters). Crain’s utilitarian filmmaking testifies to his TV roots, while Kelljan’s compositions — shadowy and odd-angled — are more cinematic; they conjure a certain nightmarish anxiety, particularly during the eerie inside-the-vampire-house finale (which replicates the strategy of the “Yorga” films).
If “Blacula” begins with a consciously race-ambitious prologue before becoming, for its remaining 80-plus minutes, a more typical example of 1970s “urban” storytelling, “Scream, Blacula, Scream” reverses the blueprint: Its “voodoo” prologue verges on stereotype, while the remainder of the film makes an effort to introduce Mamuwalde into an Afrocentric intellectual milieu. (At one point, the vampire pauses to check out a poster advertising a Miles Davis-Nina Simone concert.) To this end, the prince’s potential lady love this time is a part-time voodoo priestess (Pam Grier) with a circle of thoughtful, educated friends who study sub-Saharan art and religion. “All things African interest me,” Mamuwalde affirms.
Even so, the movie is motivated in part by an apparent contradiction. In “Blacula,” the bloodsuckers born from Mamuwalde’s appetites have little if any contact with their creator, but in “Scream, Blacula, Scream,” the resurrected prince cultivates undead followers. (These include Willis, played by Richard Lawson, a fly voodoo priest in a James Brown wig who is chagrined to discover vampires do not cast reflections in mirrors. “Hey, look, man, I don’t mind being a vampire,” Willis laments, “but this really ain’t hip!”)
in other words, Blacula, in the sequel, is something of a slave-master himself, even as he disdains humans who exploit other humans. “You made a slave of your sister, and you’re still slaves, imitating your slave masters!” he lectures a pair of pimps on a city street before tossing them through a plate glass window. “Blacula is not Mackula,” audio commentator Walker states, comparing Marshall’s classical acting style and elegant wardrobe to the ’70s excesses of such “blaxploitation” heroes as Max Julien in “The Mack,” but as “Scream, Blacula, Scream” demonstrates, the indignities of the modern world may drive even a prince to despair, to crime and to hypocrisy.
