Blood For Dracula (1974): Yell! Magazine’s Greatest Films Series

Yell! Magazine review:

In the horror genre, when speaking of a stock character like Dracula, it’s hard to find a movie that stands out as different. Dracula is either portrayed as an scary blood-sucking monster, or a seductive lover with murderous intentions. In either situation he is evil incarnate.

Blood For Dracula, or sometimes referred to as Andy Warlhol’s Dracula, is one of the exceptions. What makes this one of the greatest Dracula movies is the way Paul Morrissey (writer and director) portrays Dracula (Udo Kier) as a tragic hero.

In Morrissey’s fantasy world, Dracula must have the pure untainted blood of a virgin to survive. This was not much of a problem for the Count as Transylvania, hell all of Europe for that matter, was full of chaste women all saving their virginity for marriage and a husband. That is until now. With the social revolution of the ’60s spread across the world, which included the fall of the Aristocracy across Europe, the mass adoption by women of the pill, and the resulting popularity of premarital sex, Dracula has quickly run out of available victims.

Dracula must leave his native land and go in search of pristine blood. He is weak and dying. But where can he travel to? The Count travels with his entourage to Germany, the last bastion of virginal women left on the planet. Germany has bucked the trend. The church is still a driving force in the country, the Aristocracy still has hold with the population and the women have held strong against the trend of sexual freedom adopted by their counterparts around the globe; or so Dracula thought.

It seems Germany is chaste in appearance only and the women Dracula feasts on a as repugnant to his palate as they are back home. By the end of the film, Dracula realizes that the world has moved on without him, he has become anachronistic, a being out of place in modern times. Dracula must accept his fate and disappear from this god-forsaken, fornicating world.

Although the special effects in this film are quite dated, they are a minor distraction. This is because you realize Paul Morrissey did something that no other director has done with Dracula before. He made you feel sorry for the blood-sucker. It’s a brilliant achievement. Add to it, the fact that Blood For Dracula is also a 103 minute social criticism of the women’s movement, subtlety stating that society is in a worse condition when women gain the ability to fuck anyone they choose whenever they want, and you come to the conclusion that this Dracula film is much more than just another horror flick.

Blood For Dracula Scenes:

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

Year Released:

27 November 1974

Director:

Paul Morrissey

Cast/Crew

Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Vittorio De Sica, Maxime McKendry, Arno Juerging

Genre

Horror, Comedy

Official URL:

none