LET’S GET THE BANNED BACK TOGETHER! Ep 22: BLOOD FOR DRACULA (1974)

“Pretty funny, especially Roman Polanski’s cameo, though not nearly as wild as Flesh for Frankenstein — but then again, few movies are.”

Rob Gonsalves – LETTERBOXD

Who made it? Directed by Paul Morrissey | Written by Paul Morrissey based on characters and concepts from Bram Stoker | Director Of Photography Luiig Kuveiller | Special Effects/make up Carlo Rambaldi| Music Claudio Gizzi

If you weren’t watching this the month it came out, you might have been watching…

Production notes and whatnot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_for_Dracula

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071233/

What’s it all about?

It’s 1930. Ish. As the saddest of mournful pianos tinkles on the soundtrack, we watch an interesting and little seen part of the Dracula myth: the fact that our 502 year old Vampire might need to rigorously apply foundation, a touch of concealer and a bucket of Just For Men if he’s not to scare the bejeezus out of everybody. We watch Dracula slowly apply make-up to his gaunt face: colour, toner, the full contour effect. As he reddens his lips we see some tell- tale fangs peeking from his gums. A thick black paste is slapped onto his white hair, bringing him slowly to some resemblance of a person born this century.

The music tinkles and the greasepaint is dabbed and the camera slowly circles to reveal a dressing table with brushes and powders.

We see the large mirror in front of which the count sits. No reflection peers back at him.

Yep. It’s vampire time.

But Drac wouldn’t be Drac without a sinister limping Egor-like assistant, so let’s meet him too as he plays a big part in our flick. As Drac sits in his gloomy room of stuffed birds, heavy furniture and dark swaggy furnishings, his fussy assistant Anton brings in Drac’s sister. Oh, she doesn’t look well. Because she isn’t.

Anton is demanding of his quincentennial boss: they MUST leave Transylvania, otherwise Dracula will perish! It’s been weeks since Drac has had a life-giving throatful of virgin’s blood and the withdrawal is killing him dead. Or deader, if you prefer. His murderous reputation has meant they can’t get a decent dinner guest for love nor garlic in the local borough, so it’s “up-sticks or bust”.

Anton suggests Italy for their next stay. The double-plus good of both: a. A country impressed by Aristocratic titles; and b.A strict Roman Catholic atmos means he’ll be invited to all the parties and be fang deep in God-fearing religious virgin wenches before the jet-lag has worn off.

But what of his bed/coffin, Drac pleads? Where will he sleep in Italy? Anton’s recommendation is strapping the coffin to the roof of the 1934 Lancia and passing it off as a dead relative returning home for burial. Ah well, looks like that’s the plan.

Anton and Drac (or Ant and Drec, as I’m going to call them) heave the sister down to the crypt – all candles and sawdust – to put her to bed among the creaking teak of his ancestors’ coffins before they pack up and head West for all the Olive oil, oranges and Type O Positive they can get their gums on.

Next morning, in the sort of dazzling bright sunlight we don’t see in vampire movies too often, the dynamic duo clamber into the car and chug off, over the bridge through the Transylvanian countryside. Next stop, Italy. The chair, bike and coffin on the roof rack shouldn’t bother border customs too much they hope.

So nary ten minutes in, we and the plot are up and running. Jolly oompah music with a touch of European accordion follow the car and passengers o’er hill and dale, Drac pulling his hat brim over his eyes from time to time to stop himself crumbling into screaming dust, we assume. Anton fiddles with the radio and tries to find Magick FM.

Meanwhile, Italy awaits. In a faded mansion, crumbling like old stilton, live the DiFiore family, the girls of whom are about to put the “pants” into “unwilling partici-pants” of our story. While dad DiFiore potters about like a fusty old patriarch, let’s meet the three youngest sisters of the DiFiore family who are in the grounds of the house gardening badly:

Perla is about 14 (or meant to be). She has a pointy nose and a naïve way about her. The middle two sisters are Saphiria (Saffy) and Rubinia (Ruby) – the lustier and bustier 2 of the family. As they ineffectually prod the dry turf with hoes, they are watched from the balcony by the other 2 women of the family: Eldest sister Esmerelda, (Essie) and the doting mother Marches Di Fiore.

Essie and Mom chat about the family’s bygone days, old times, the glory days. It’s a wonder Bruce Springsteen doesn’t turn up in a truck. Across the field they spy the 2 middle girls – Saffy and Ruby – who have decided to go topless and booby in the sweaty sun as they work. Young Perla is mightily embarrassed. Mum yells for them to “Put them away, for Chrissakes!” or words to that effect.

We are soon to learn that, as far as Saffy and Ruby go, this is par for the course. While Perla may be the young innocent and Essie the wise elder? Saf and Rubes are a right couple of tarty old ye strumpets and have been getting nightly seeing-tos (seeings-to? Ed) from the local farm-hand, Mario.

Cue, Mario the local farm hand, played with the all the genuine Italian cadence of a Coney Island End of the pier skittle hustler, by Joe Dellasandro (see Flesh For Frankenstein).

With his firm jawline, squinty demeanour, floppy hair he’s borrowed from EastEnders’s Jaime Mitchell, he flashes his pecks and arranges to meet Saffy and Ruby for some casual fucking a bit later. Cue a mixture of coy girlish giggles and aristocratic boredom. There’s a lot of that coming up.

Ant and Drec arrive in the sunny, Godfather-like Orangey groves of Italy. Again, the beating sunshine seems not to bother the Count who merely holds his hat up a bit. In his swept back hair, long coat he is straight out of Stephen Fry’s roaring snob in this early sketch. “Rotting hulk?!” Actually, the topic of the sketch is rather appropriate. But we’ll get to that in good time.

Entering a Trattoria (which it’s impossible for anyone to do with a straight face since Mickey Blue Eyes. If you know, you know)…Anton has questions.

Is there a room they can use? Is there food that is “virgin meat”? Are there local families with virgin daughters who might want to marry into Aristocracy and move to Transylvania? The chuckly stereotype owners answer yes, maybe and hoo-boy, are you in luck! Ahh, the local family! The DiFiores! They have 4 lovely daughters! Perla, Saffy, Ruby and Essie. Anton is interested in their purity. “I’m sure they are religious!” the Trattoriaistas cry, in camp awkwardly dubbed dialogue. “They have a very nice house!” I cannot be certain if this is satire. But then there are many topics in this movie I can’t figure out. Onwards.

Ant and Drec find their rooms. In hammy sitcom loud explanatory posturing, crucifixes are put away, shutters are drawn and with Allo Allo V’s and W’s, Drac complains.

The sunlight! The lack of coffin to sleep in! The lack of virgin meat! (It’s not clear what Virgin meat means? Lamb that hasn’t fucked? Uncooked? I don’t know). The Count collapses on the bed from blood withdrawal – much writhing, gurgling, coughing and am’ dram’ spasming – so Ant heads out to get the skinny on these 4 maidens from their daft parents.

In sumptuous but fading surroundings (think Blackadder The Third and the Prince’s pale walls…

…high ceilings and schmancy portraiture), a posh English mum (and she really is preposterously posh. She calls her girls “Gells!” You get the idea) talks to her old Italian husband.

Clearly, he spoils his daughters rotten, while frail mum tuts and sighs and cleans up after their whims and fancies. But fact is, they are poor. But poor in that idiot way rich people talk about. “Down to their last Gainsborough” poor. “Only three butlers” poor. “Same dress to two balls” poor.

Like this brilliance from the late great Victoria Wood.

Marrying a rich count from Transylvania might be just the thing to save the family home, the family name and family fortune. So they agree to let Anton come to the library and makes his proposal – that the Count may meet the 4 daughters. The dad is flushed and thrilled about the opportunity, rolling Dracula’s name around his mouth like red wine. Mum too is up for the arrangement – the girls are of marriageable age…
Anton promises to return with the Count. And puts in the Count’s lunch order for veggie salad. As you do.

On the way home, Drec being awful boring writhy junkie company, Ant rightly decides to stop off for a pint. He enters a tavern of the most stock tavern-nature: Oompah horns; men in Peeky blinder fashions of beards, hair, hats, moustaches plus waistcoats and boots; Women prep food at a big dark table; The air is full of fairground carousel pipes and organs, the men gamble and drink.

Ant chats with the locals in that awkward “stranger in town” manner, to find out more about his DiFiore family. He waves big papery bank notes around, trying to get info. A table of burly halfwits get him to buy the drinks and con him out of his money in a daft gambling game, much to Ant’s fury. He won’t be taken for the gullible out of towner! Plus he needs that cash for spare coffin lids, vegetable smoothies, neck plasters and blood remover! A struggle! A fight! All interrupted when a local “washer-woman” type bursts in to scream about an accident on the road! A young girl! A Horse! A Cart! Everyone departs as if it was the start of a Black Friday Amazon sale, but quick thinking Ant grabs a crusty loaf as he leaves. Surely he isn’t going to..? I mean..? He won’t..? Surely..? Oh ffs…

Back at La Trattoria, Ant brings the blood soaked loaf to a pale and sickly Drec. He has soaked the injured child’s blood into the bread. And in a gross scene of sucking, gurgling, dripping and pouty hissing, Drac drinks up the soggy bread and the warm blood of the girl. Somehow…this revives him. But we know it won’t keep him long. He’s going to have to get to those DiFiore girls quick sharp.

Back at the DiFiore’s, dad is thrilled. Pacing the faded glory of his old mansion, he spouts poetry about the new good fortune fate has brought them. Dracula! Marriage! Riches! The girls however are less than thrilled about having their lives decided for them. Later in their bedroom, draped in sheer yellowy gowns hinting at pale flesh beneath, they tease and laugh about this “Count” and his proposals.

Neither Saffy nor Ruby seemed so bothered by this marriagey lark, as they have been getting their oats from Mario for the last few summers. In fact they are both frightfully modern about the whole thing. It’s just sex.

Talking of which, to the swaggery sounds of a roller pub piano, the promised attentions of Mario appear as he barrels in from the veranda for some late night action. Ruby and Saffy happily lead him to their room where one at a time, there is writhy pale-bummed passionless sex. Each takes a turn to have Mario kiss and grind and sweat, while the other smokes fags or eats grapes.

They seem bored (in every sense) by the whole thing. Mario is all flexy jaw muscles, rippling contours and homo-erotic poses.

Post fucking, it all gets heated as we get one of our themes of the movie – class war, Marxism and revolution. Mario, despite being a drippy air-head hunk-in-trunks, good for one thing (well two things, if you add wood-chopping), he is a passionate Socialist and angrily spits his revolutionary manifesto at the tired girls. Them and their kind are on the way out! No more us-and-them! Down with the Aristocracy! It will be just like glorious Russia!

Like most women who have to listen to passionate young men bang on about Marx, they couldn’t be less interested in the posturing and hypocrisy. So Mario tires of the girls. He will move on to young Perla. Perhaps she is more interested? Or at least less exhaustingly coy and drippy. So as we leave them, Saffy and Ruby lezz up and Mario tends to his preposterously lank droopy model hairdo.

We’re 42 minutes in, in case you’re wondering.

But hey up! Hold that revolution, as who should appear in their big old black Sturmbannführer–Arnold- Ernst-Toht-mobile, but Ant and Drec. Mario lets them in and in an awkward doorstep meet n greet, the family DoFiori meet the legendary Count Dracula.

Daddy Dolmio is smiling in a greedy creepy way, Mum fusses and the Count casts his hungry blood-starved eyes over Esmerelda, Saphiria, Rubinia and young Perla. Questions about the girls being raised – (ahem) – in the “manner of the church?” And we all know what that means. The parents assure the Count of the girls’ purity and somewhere perhaps, Mario puts down his Penguin edition of Das Kapital and laughs himself stupid.

The count enters to go to his rooms while Ruby and Saffy idly chat about the new cock on the block. How old is he? Twenty? Forty? It’s that Just For Men, I tell you. Works wonders.

But we haven’t had much crow-barred in class-conflict for a few minutes so we get Ant and Mario arguing about who should bring the coffin from the car to their room? Mario the servant? Mario, still angry for revolution and the day his type can lord it over the Antons and DiFiore’s of this world, begrudgingly shoves the suspiciously empty coffin into the crypt.

Let’s stick with Mario a while, as he’s the only one with anything interesting to say. He’s back in his barn, being hunky and butch with hunks of bread and wine in those wicker holders you only ever see in Greek restaurants. As he chews and chomps and broods and stomps, Saffy turns up for some “slap n tickle.” But she’s caught mid rant with Mario being so bolshie and lefty, he might as well flog her a copy of Socialist worker while joining Mark Kermode singing the Internationale in a donkey jacket.

Revolution will come! Mario pounces and has hate-fucking rough sex with Saff who screams and struggles and complains…but then, as is par of the course, gives in, slumps and then kisses him, professing her love. Mario throws her out. Bitch. She leaves and dresses in the field, rightly narked as this shit.

But Mummy DiFiori isn’t going to the poor-house without putting up a fight! Or at least, putting up a daughter. She encourages Saffy to have a bit of give and take, bring Drac his dinner, play nice and think of the inheritance and status. His cash-flow could do wonders for her and the family.

However, upstairs, in his creaking wheelchair, Drac is panting and sweating and writhing painfully from withdrawal symptoms. He is desperate for the blood of a “Wirgin!” to sustain him. Knock knock, and Saffy brings him a tray of vegetables. “Vairggry sortful,” Drac says. (Trans: “Very thoughtful”)

Unable to hold back, Drac proposes to Saffy. He must have her! She assures him and reassures him over and over that she is pure, a virgin, untouched, hymen intacto. He taunts and teases and quizzes her about her virginity, like he was buying a second hand gearbox. As it were.

The music ramps and excites. Drac gets wide-eyed, drooly and horny for what is to come! Unable to hold back…he lunges! He bites! Gasps! Pushes Saffy back onto the bed. Drinks, but really drinks, from her neck. Slurps and gulps and splashes like at a water cooler.

Chewing and sucking, eyes wide. Standing, panting, quenched and dripping, he suddenly turns a sickly green (or the lighting does) and Drac runs, spasming, writhing, vomiting blood into the white bathtub in waves, splashes and hurls. Loud wretching, overdoing it with the panting and hurling, clawing at the bath, Drac is sweaty and drunk against the cold white tiles.

Nope. That’s not quite the vintage he was after.

We’re an hour in.

Mario has moved onto young Rubinia. They perch in her boudoir among powder puffs and mirrors and whatnot. Ruby is naked, natch. Mario stripped to the waist.

The scene is an excuse for more nudey licks, laps, kisses and nipple sucks but is flat, dull and by the book. But not a good sexy book. And of course any scene with Mario getting horny is another chance for him to take breaks during the pale lifeless rutting to hold forth, back on his soapbox, about manifestos, class divides, politics and the revolution,. Like that tedious student you once got stuck with at Uni.

However we the audience can be nicely distracted from the polemic, rhetoric-filled drum banging with some shots of Ruby on top, grinding away with very neat pubes. Nice.

More politics are on the menu when Mario is tasked with wheeling a poorly Drac and his ratty wheelchair up to his room. Drac is full of questions about the remaining girls, keen not to get another throatful of second-hand strumpet that’ll make him wretch and writhe painfully again. But no, Mario is more keen on ranting floppily but poutily on class-war and glorious revolution. Drac, of course – who remember, has been watching the global aristocracy rise and fall and rise again since the 1500s – is irritated by this farmhand and his politics. As they argue about who gets to carry the old wheelchair up the stairs, Drac’s next victim prances past. It is young Robby. She flirts and teases a little, all talk of her latest read – Three Weeks, by Elinor Glyn. Maybe she’ll lend the Count her copy. Pissed off, and rightly so at all of this Aristo’ nonsense, Mario dismisses them. He doesn’t read fiction. He is busy awaiting a new order. A glorious day. All this righteously spat from behind jutty chin pose acting and droopy gay hair.

The writer director clearly feels we STILL haven’t got the point so we linger on Mario in his quarters. In case you were in any doubt and the lack of subtlety hadn’t beaten you around the face and neck, Mario has a HUGE hammer and sickle daubed on his wall like an earnest 15 year old Billy Bragg trying to impress Alexi Sayle who’s come over to revise for his O Level Sociology.

Under the sickle, Mario snogs with a stocking-topped Robbie. “He’s got nerve, looking for a virgin,” Mario says, slapping and roughing Robbie about a bit. And then, to prove his point that the Aristocracy can pretty much suck his dick, he forces Robbie to pretty much suck his dick. Lovely.

Later, the girls are getting soapy and nude in the bathroom in order to provide raunchy stills for the VHS box. Robbie gives young Perla some wholesome sisterly advice on matters of love and romance. Pretty much, her message goes, it’s okay to cheat on husbands and boyfriends, as long as you wash your bits and smell fresh between lovers. It’s a new age now, she says. “Don’t you read magazines?” It’s not clear to what magazines she refers. One assumes, not TV Quick.

Upstairs, Drac paces anxiously in a browny beige marble hotel-style bathroom. Black hair, blood red lips, he is in a black shiny robe with red piping.

He has lost patience with these young dames. Virgins? Ha. He watches and listens to idiot Robby and her airy-privileged chatter about her future Transylvanian life ahead. Parties? Shopping? It’s like TOWIE with corsets.

But Drac’s fancy is taken. Maybe due to her busty sexiness, but more likely because without a half pint of fresh Virgin claret, he’s not likely to see the end of the week.

“Are YOU a virgin?!” (or “Wirgin?!” if we know our phonics). Oh we see where this is going. Get a bib and put some paper down. But before it can be discussed any further, Drac makes the mistake of standing by a mirror. Robby notices with alarm the lack of “reversed count” in the looking glass and screams her tits off.

Drac pulls her to the floor and we get a rerun of the previous suckage as some gentle sort-of-Satie piano continues.

But nope. He’s picked a wrong-un again. Drac stands, gargling blood, gagging again. How many times is he going to have to do this? Italy was meant to be chock-full of Virgins? Eyes wide, he collapses, writhing over toilet bowel, sweatily sick and wretching. Ffs.

Later, but we’re not sure how much later, Dolmio dad and posh mum talk at an open carriage. Robby watches from a high window, pale and wan and clutching her neck. Clearly her and Saffy are not coping well with the post-suckage as they are now feint and fey and covering puncture wounds with flouncy scarves to hide their zombie-transformation from the oldies. Daddy Dolmio is off to London to sort his finances, clearly seeing a future ISA in the making if Drac makes good on his promise. He leaves with a clatter of hooves (the horses, not him), as mom stays behind to try and secure at least ONE wedding from all this thirsty nonsense.

But…they’ve blown it. As Mom and Perla crochet quietly, Anton arrives in a hurry. They are leaving. There are none of the virgins promised by Trip Advisor. He and the count have made a mistake. They must go. But as he makes good to depart, his eye is drawn to young Perla. Yes, she is a mere 14 years of age. But SURELY she can provide the virgin blood Drac so longs for?

Meanwhile, Mario chops wood in a righteous lefty way, if you can picture that. Every swing of his chopper seems to have an Aristocrats neck in its sights.

Young Perla appears at his side and asks him to help pack Anton’s car for their departure. Pah! They are too weird! Plus, this coffin of his relative? Suspiciously lightweight. Oh, and as Mario doesn’t appear to have had rapey angry leftwing sex in about 20 mins, he hits on the 14 year old. Perla is having none of it and pulls away. Yeah, like that’s going to stop him…

A woozy and vertigo-washed Count wheels himself about the mansion and discovers the eldest sister (remember her?) Essie. There is sad talk of fading fortunes. The furniture is old, the wallpaper peeling. They have no servants, aside from old Mario Marx down in the woodshed. See, Father Dolmio gambled it all back in London when life was rich. When mum and dad go, it will be the end of all these ways.

We can see Drac, while not sympathetic to this posturing, feels a resonance. Because what is his line, if not a fading one. 500 years of Vampiric tradition is about to end in a smouldering heap of ashes. What’s that coming over the hill, is it a monster? No, it’s the end of the family line.

In a last desperate gasp, like a 45 year old single-dad sweeping up the fat girls at a night club as the lights come on, he makes a play for Essie. Any chance SHE’s a virgin? But sadly, she’s out for the count (as it were). As she has been engaged. Arse, one seem to sense him saying to himself.

But there’ not much more to go of this tale. We sense a dramatic finale on the cards. One by one, the final pieces begin to slot into place.

In dumb trances, the two zombified girls make their way to the Count’s chambers. Downstairs, a very curious Mario goes a-sneakin’ to find out why this dead-relative Ant and Drec have been carting all about Eastern Europe is so light? With a handy crowbar, he prises the lid and – OMG – it’s not a dead relative at all. It’s a comfy bedroom set, of pillow and duvet. He scratches his chin, Scooby Doo Clue style. But this must mean…?

Saffy and Robbie, all fainty and punctured, arrive in Perla’s room. The twin bite marks have Parla a might panicky, but there’s no time for that! The girls MUST know if they can give Perla to their beloved Count?!

Is she a virgin? Well there’s always the chance she’s fibbing, so in a move even outlawed by Jeremy Kyle, they shove a hand up Perla’s nightdress. They let their fingers do the investigation.

It would seem, like East Berliners in the 1980s, there is very much a wall in place. Good good!

But Perla has the energy of youth! She breaks free, terrified of these circumstances. And boom! Straight into the brave Mario. He will protect her! In a slightly left-wing socialist way, we assume. What does he have planned? Leafleting? A meeting above a pub? No! He will keep her safe from the Count who is a vampire! He’s put it all together! The coffin, the look, the blood, the pallor, the obviously-being-a-vampire-ness! Like a Socialist Angela Lansbury, he’s cracked the case and will now do all he can to bring this madness to an end!

However – sigh – he’s still a wanker, so suggests to Perla “You should lose that virginity of yours, before he gets to you.” A winning line. This sort of yuck is not making Marxists look so great, to be honest. Mario forces poor Perla her against the wall against her will, tuggng up her flouncy frock. There are fights and thumps and tears, squeals and writhing complaints. Which, as we now expect, slowly dissolve into passionate kisses and slow pumping. Blimey, that Mario.

Mum arrives! Whoops. Horrified at this woodcutter’s behaviour, she pulls Perla away and they run.

Following this action around the mansion, is of course the Count himself. Very much on his last legs as his blood consumption is now critically low, he arrives to see Perla’s virgin blood spilled on the floor, dripping and wet from her Mario puncturing. Well, better than nothing, and like Zammo with a load of heroin, he falls to floor and starts lapping it up desperately.

When in walks Essie. Their eyes fix. The count presumably thinking, ‘hello! Here’s one I haven’t had a go on yet.’ And Essie thinking it’s a cat who’s found a lot of old Elmlea on the lino.

Dan dan daaaa! Big old proper Hammer Organ chords, straight out of Lon Chaney! Knowing there is nothing now to keep them in Italy, Ant and Drec find the coffin and begin to carry it out to the ’34 Lancia. But Mario is having none of it and he appears, wielding Chekov’s axe, crashing down on the coffin and splintering its proppy balsa-wood shell.

And now it’s the final chase! Violins whirr and scurry as Ant and Drec are chased through the house. They split up! Mum confronts Anton with her revolver! A scuffle, a stab! A neat billet hole in Anton’s forehead and down he goes, mum left to bleed to death on the stairs.

Mario meets Drac on the stairwell and we get the big showpiece: He hacks off Drac’s arm, huge red gushing wet spurts of bright blood splashing over them both, coating the wall with grue.

But no! The count keeps running! Another arm is lopped off in a similar fashion, more jetting claret all over the linen. Now, running absurdly with no arms, like a refugee from Riverdance.

Outside in the darkness, in the grounds of the mansion, Drac and Mario are shoving and pushing (well Mario is, Drac has no arms. He’s sort of gesturing like a man in a straightjacket). Mario swings! He cracks Drac below the knee and off flies his leg. Down Drac goes, still screaming and writhing.

Just one more limb to go, and Mario slams down the axe, severing the final leg, which he then kicks away, watching it roll off like a dropped picnic frankfurter

The axe snaps in a half, the shaft now a useful stake. He raises it high over Drac’s chest…

But no! Wait! Esmerelda! She has become devoted to the count! Screaming and hysterical, she appears, fanged and wailing. Shrieks! Screams! “We will die together!”

But Mario knows his role in this sketch and bangs the stake in to Drac’s wasitcoat. Screams and splashes of gushing red. Desperate to be with her eternal love, Ezzy falls forward and – whoopsie – onto the stake, sliding slimly down to it, like so much lamb kebab.

Silence. We take a moment to review the macabre mess of stumpy vamps in the driveway.

Quietly, solemnly, Mario takes Perla’s hand and leads her back to the house where, we assume, he can now thoroughly get over his hatred of the Aristocracy to take his place as head of the house hold. Which of course is what all lefty student Marxists wanted the whole time, let’s face it.

Credits.

Is it any good?

Well…yes. Given we are over 20 movies in to our Banned project, it’s a great relief to sit back and get a lively, well written, creatively shot, bombasticly operatic Grand Guignol no-holes-barred gothic horror performed with gusto and verve. We can count on one hand the movies so far that might stand up to a 2^nd or 3^rd viewing and aren’t a ghastly tacky waste of celluloid: Night Of The Living Dead, Straw Dogs, Last House On The Left. Hell, even Mark Of The Devil has the production values that stand up to a rewatch. And I’m happy, having sat through it three times, to put Paul Morrissey’s “Blood For Dracula” right up there, for fun, bombast, camp and a crew and troupe giving it their all.

Written and directed by Paul Morrissey, the movie was marketed in many territories as Andy Warhol’s Dracula, leaning heavily on the cache of the pop-art wunderkind’s reputation. When pushed, Warhol allegedly responded that “I go to the parties,” following up that “All of us at The Factory contribute ideas.”

The movie came about when no less than Roman Polanski stated that Morrissey would somehow be a “natural” to make a lurid Frankenstein picture. Discussions with the then producers Andrew Braunsberg and Carlo Ponti saw Morrissey convince them to allow him the time, film stock and budget to knock out two horror movies back to back. So just 24hrs after principle photography had wrapped on 1973’s Flesh For Frankenstien, Keir (Dracula), Dallesandro (Mario) and Juerging (Anton) were hurried to the barber’s chair for the necessary trims and crops needed for their new roles.

Much controversy, about which you won’t care, peppered the production credits of the movie as all sorts of folk argued and contested in and out of Italian courts over their so-called contributions to the picture: Italian director Antonio Margheriti is credited in Italian prints of the film despite not directing it. This misattribution led both producer Carlo Ponti and Margheriti to be put on trial for “continued and aggravated fraud against the state” by attempting to gain benefits by law for Italian films. Italian credits of the film give different credits, including stating Tonino Guerra wrote the screenplay and story, and Franca Silvi edited the film. Antonio Margheriti is credited as the director in the Italian prints, which he later claimed was not true, but that he did direct scenes with Dionisio and de Sica. Kier himself has stated that he never saw Margheriti on the set. Margheriti credit was due to Carlo Ponti having an Italian credited in order to obtain benefits by law for Italian films. Ponti and Margheriti were both put on trial later “continued and aggravated fraud against the state”. Well, according to Wikipedia anyway.

But enough of the legal wranglings that I’m confident you could give less of a fuck about. Let’s get stuck in to what you get for your 106minutes investment.

Well we have a set of performers committing fully to their roles. The legendary Udo Keir has huge fun in his part as the titular Count. (Sorry, 35 years of reading movie reviews requires me to type like this. Blame Empire magazine, Total Film, Kermode, Kim Newman and the rest for these lazy tropes). His stark, angular features, death-white pallor and piercing eyes absolutely tell of a 500 year old blood-sucker fearful of his bloodline’s demise. Keir’d bent Eastern European vowels and consonants provide all the V’s and W’s we relish (his demands for “Wergins!” a real delight).

Likewise “Vairggry sortful,” (Trans: “Very thoughtful”) gives us wriggling pleasure. Where Keir shows his chops however is in his wide-eyed rage, his spitting fury and some of the finest wretch vomiting seen outside Mister Creosote. When Keir has to act out the writhing withdrawal symptoms of the Vamp-sans-claret he doesn’t hold back. We feel his pain. Looks wise, he’s gone full Gary Numan Telekon 6 years before “Are Friends Electric” bothered the UK charts.

Juerging’s Anton is essentially a young and rather intense Harry Enfield.

Far from the limping, one-eyed humpbacked Egor we are used to from the Hammer era, Anton is an officious, prissy assistant who – were his job description not so macabre – would be a perfectly efficient department store manager, perhaps looking after the stock control of Selfridges menswear.

Marchie (Maxime de la Falaise) is more British than I am, and that’s saying something. Pompous upper-class pronunciation, she is terrifically camp as the posh Aristo’ mum who longs for better days and a life where her daughters would be swept up by Princes and Kings, rather than the tired and weary drabness of the faded mansion her dolt of a husband has left her with. And talking of husbands, – Vittorio De Sica (director, trivia fans, of The Bicycle Theives) is all tubby moustache, smoking jackets, silver hair and is an inch from shouting “Whens-a Your Dolmio Day?!”

Yep, he could convincingly pull off the King in Aladdin (now there’s an image).

What to say about Joe Dallesandro’s Mario? Well, as ever he has decided to play the farmhand role with all the genuine Italian cadence of a Coney Island End of the pier skittle hustler. Broad shouldered, smouldering eyes, floppy hair and thick Brooklyn accent, he’s having huge fun putting in – let’s face it – no effort whatsoever. There was a man cast for his glutes and how he looks in a vest. Rubbish.

Direction and production have their moments. Blood For Dracula is the early 1920s, according to Wikipedia entry. Which frankly means either: Wikipedia doesn’t know what it’s talking about (always possible) or the production crew couldn’t be bothered with true period detail, hence the snappy use of a handsome 1934 Lancia motor car. Honestly, the Count’s car looks like it’s two swastika flags away from having Indiana Jones hanging off its fenders.

The one bit of fancy cinematography occurs towards the end when the woozy and vertigo-washed Count wheels himself about the mansion, the view swooping and swirling in a fish eye lens, the camera fixed to his wheelchair. It’s nicely eerie and vey Kubrickian, to the point where one confidently expects Danny Torrance to hurry past on a tricycle.

The music works well, although is a mixed bag. Most of the score is what one might politely, if slightly pompously term, sub-Satie pop-Prokoviev.

Lonely Parisian piano and European pomp. Comedy fans will know Prokoviev from Woody Allen’s Love & Death. Classical music fans will know Prokoviev because they’re meant to. (That was a bit Alan Partridge, I know. Apologies, I’m currently wriggling with joy at Steve Coogan’s audio books and it tends to leak in). At one point, during the sexy bits, the score goes totally Morricone with what appears to be an early version of the lovely slow jazz bit from The Untouchables.

The rest of the time it’s that shellac out-take from The Shining over the gramophone. You’ll know it.

But what is the most interesting part of Blood For Dracula is the script’s themes. Yes, it’s a vampire movie and has all the fangs, coffins, crucifixi, stakes, blood, pale necks and virgins of the genre. However screenwriter Paul Morrissey has clearly decided to bang home a very different message than one might get from the standard Hammer Horror Cushing/Lee efforts.

The key message of the movie is one of change. Of revolution. Of old ways passing and the future – for better or worse – banging at the door.

Dallesandro’s Mario is the obvious megaphone for the politics, barking as he does at every given moment (chopping wood, brushing his lank locks, nailing a fey Aristo’) about the revolutionary change that’s going to come. We see the olde world fading and Mario’s righteous Marxist anger at the unfairness, double-standards, hypocrisy and cruelty of an us-and-them society. The movie spends more time angry at the wasteful, decadent lives of the inherited wealthy and the two-tier status of 1930s Europe than is does with fangs and flesh.

Dracula, of course, has been watching the global aristocracy rise and fall and rise again since the 1500’s and is a great device to illustrate the us-and-them tempestuousness of revolution. He has, after all, lived through it all and seen the rich and poor battle for leadership for centuries.

We cannot help but laugh at mum and dad’s attempt to cling to their power, knowing what is around the corner for Italy as the 1940s approach.

Modernism is at every turn. Even the sisters sense that the youngest of them are growing out of the traditions and clichés of their cloistered existence.

And what is Dracula, after all, than a metaphor for the end of one life and the beginning of another? Keir’s pleading about the end of his blood line is just more desperate clinging to the “old ways” that society and culture are only too keen to sweep into the Dyson of history.

Although. Mario’s violent gruff ways, forcing the Aristo’s to “suck his dick” as he does merely foreshadows the replacement of one ruling class with another – just as cruel, just as selfish, just as corrupt.

Nasty?

Blood For Dracula was included on a tertiary list of titles that could potentially be subject to seizure by police in England. It was therefore not submitted for video certification by the BBFC until 1995, which was granted, with approx. 4 minutes of cuts. An uncut version was not released in the UK until 2006). Louis Periano, who distributed the film in the United States, later tried to cash in the success of Mel Brooks’ film Young Frankenstein and re-released the film as a 94-minute R-rated Young Dracula in 1976 (as opposed to the original X-rated version).

The blood sucking is genuinely thirsty and gratuitous. When Keir leans over the girls there is no cutaway to hooting owls or flapping bats. He sucks and slurps and drinks and glugs like it was Ice Cold In Alex.

His vomiting reaction to tainted blood is pukey and floppy and splattery, especially as the blood runs in rivers down his pale chin. Deliciously nasty.

And the ending? Well it’s Monty Python. A year before John Cleese cried “it’s only a flesh wound” in Monty Python & The Holy Grail, the dismemberment and chopping, cropping and hacking of the limbs are pure comedy. Blood spurts like ketchup causing more guffaws than grimaces.

Yes, there’s plenty of gore, but all done with such bright, poster-paint camp that it might as well be an episode of Rainbow.

What does it remind me of?

We’re in proper vampire territory for the first time in 22 episodes so lots is new. My list tells me this is only Nasty with “Dracula” or even “Vampire” in the title so this may be the only time we get the full fangs, castles, coffins and stakes. Given this is another Paul Morrissey flick, it has heavy echoes of his earlier gothic adventure “Flesh For Frankenstein.” From the cast, to the colour, the tempo and the tunes. 1970’s Mark Of The Devil shares the glorious locations and period detail, detailed costume and whatnot. Plus it shares a wet gushy spurty limb-chopping colour palette of dismemberment so, while it doesn’t have the relentless tortures, it’s in the same ballpark.

Where do I find it?

Nice copy here you can enjoy for free on YouTube. Enjoy!

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