The Blacula Duology

BLACULA – (1972)

 

Just from hearing the title, you know what you’re getting with Blacula. A trashy horror movie mixed with the blaxploitation genre.  And thanks to this classic, we got other blaxploitation horror movies to follow such as Blackenstein and Abby (the black version of The Exorcist (also with William Marshall).

The story involves an African prince named Mamuwalde, who gets turned into a vampire by Dracula and is given the title of ‘Blacula’. Mamuwalde’s wife dies while he sleeps, and about 200 years later he is awakened and finds a woman identical to his old wife. Naturally, being the ladies man he is, he plans to take her for himself and make a small army of vampires to serve him.

Obviously this movie is pretty dumb, and is complete with black and gay stereotypes that you resist laughing at if you’re with others. Decent stuff but this movie has one aspect that’s absolutely amazing, and that’s William Marshall as Mamuwalde/Blacula. He’s so cool and refined that pretty much everyone who watches this must concede that he is the man. One weird thing is that he always shouts like Pee-wee Herman or Kermit the Frog when he bites someone’s neck, which never ceases to get a laugh out of me.

With a funky soundtrack as you’d expect, this is trashy classic is a fun movie; check it out with the right crowd.

 

SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM – (1973)

Not even a year later, Blacula got a sequel in Scream Blacula Scream (a wonderful title I might add) which thankfully brought back William Marshall as Blacula. But it also added blaxploitation superstar Pam Grier, one of my favorite actress’. That, plus a much more exciting finale then the original, make this sequel better than the original.

The plot naturally involves Blacula being resurrected, this time by a voodoo priest named Willis who believes he should take over the cult, instead of his rival Lisa (Grier). His plan was for Blacula to solve his problems, but naturally he’s not having any of that. After building up another small vampire army, Blacula wants Lisa to use her voodoo to free him from his vampirism so he can return to his homeland in Africa.

One repetitive thing about this movie is that we still have the boyfriend to the female lead slowly find out Mamuwalde is a vampire, which was in the first movie. Could’ve just been the same character from the last movie so we just skip that part. But I really love the addition of Richard Lawson as Willis. He’s just a loudmouth who obviously gets on Blacula’s last nerve, so any scene with him and William Marshall is just golden.

 

The finale involves the police against the vampires, with tribal African music blasting the whole time, as Blacula tires to overcome his vampirism. After that fails, Blacula goes full on crazy, and that's when you know he's not joking around anymore. Pretty awesome ending for an awesome movie, check this one out.

Even with all the horror remakes nowadays, it’s unlikely that Blacula would be remade. And that’s a good thing, because these are 70’s to the core, trashy, dumb, politically incorrect, and pretty entertaining. And of course genius, because Blacula equals “Black Dracula”; Genius!