{"id":14929,"date":"2015-03-18T06:46:56","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T12:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=14929"},"modified":"2015-03-18T11:19:10","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T17:19:10","slug":"for-love-of-blacula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=14929","title":{"rendered":"For Love Of Blacula"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBlacula\u201d<\/strong> (PG, 93 min.) \u2605\u2605\u2605 \/ \u201cScream, Blacula, Scream\u201d<\/strong> (PG, 96 min.) \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

\u201cMan needs ritual\u00a0<\/em>\u2014\u00a0some form of worship to combat the very real existence of death.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) discussing religion and incidentally explaining the existence of horror movies in \u201cScream, Blacula, Scream”<\/em><\/p>\n

Emerging on the cutting edge of a filmmaking trend not yet popularly known as \u201cblaxploitation,\u201d \u201cBlacula\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

As played with baritone gravitas by Shakespearean actor William Marshall in \u201cBlacula\u201d and its 1973 sequel, \u201cScream, Blacula, Scream,\u201d 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 (\u201cThe crystallization of our people\u2019s pride,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The \u201cBlacula\u201d movies are book-ended with incidents that deliver the series\u2019 message with operatic intensity. In the first film, when Count Dracula transforms the visiting Prince Mamuwalde into a vampire, the Transylvanian aristocrat thunders: \u201cI curse you with my name \u2014\u00a0you shall be Blacula!<\/em>\u201d 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 \u201cScream, Blacula, Scream,\u201d Mamuwalde has given up hope of recovering his true self: \u201cThe name is Blacula!<\/em>\u201d he roars, and his embrace of his slave name signals his acceptance of his soul\u2019s defeat, even in the midst of his body\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Long available on DVD, \u201cBlacula\u201d and \u201cScream, Blacula, Scream\u201d received an essential Blu-ray upgrade this month via Scream Factory<\/a>, the busy genre imprint of the Shout! Factory<\/a> 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 \u201cBlacula\u201d) with \u201cblaxploitation\u201d historian David F. Walker.<\/p>\n

Released by American-International Pictures, the country\u2019s leading purveyor of exploitation fodder from the 1950s through the ’70s,\u00a0 \u201cBlacula\u201d is described as \u201cDracula\u2019s Soul Brother\u201d in the movie\u2019s 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 \u201cBlacula\u201d is the most interesting episode in the movie; it generates sympathy for the title vampire while also ensuring that the film\u2019s racial themes are undeniable.<\/p>\n

Functionally helmed by UCLA film school graduate William Crain, an African-American TV director who returned to the subgenre in 1976 with \u201cDr. Black, Mr. Hyde,\u201d \u201cBlacula\u201d opens in 1789, at Castle Dracula in Transylvania, where Mamuwalde, a prince of the \u201cNiger delta,\u201d and his wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee), have come to enlist Dracula\u2019s support in an effort to ban the slave trade.<\/p>\n

An ambassador for Africa, the mustachioed Mamuwalde is eager to introduce \u201cour ancient culture into the community of nations,\u201d though he has no patience for the elitist gatherings of the European aristocracy, with their \u201cpseudo-intellectuals and dilettantes.\u201d 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. \u201cSlavery has merit, I believe,\u201d he says, leering at Luva: \u201cIt\u2019s a compliment for a man of my station to look with desire on one of your color,\u201d he tells her. When the angry Mamuwalde labels Dracula an \u201canimal,\u201d the vampire responds: \u201cLet us not forget, sir, it is you who comes from the jungle.\u201d 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 \u201cDjango Unchained.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Dracula kills Luva and vampirizes\u00a0\u2014 enslaves \u2014\u00a0Mamuwalde. 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. \u201cThe legend of Dracula, that\u2019s the absolute cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me