Enormously
Entertaining Camp
(August 25, 2003)
When
I see a film with "Andy Warhol Presents"
near the title, I cringe. For the record, I think that a guy who paints
pictures of Campbell soup cans and passes it off as satiric art deserves
my scorn. Moreover, I think a society reveals its moral bankruptcy when it
elevates an odd duck like Warhol and his acolytes into figures worthy of
worship. My personal opinions about Warhol and his "Factory"
caused me a good measure of turmoil after I watched Paul
Morrissey's "Blood for
Dracula". This campy retelling of the Dracula legend is,
by all accounts, closely associated with Warhol's forays into various
forms of media, so if I despise Warhol I must necessarily despise this
picture. I can't make that leap, however, because I discovered much to my
liking in this cheesy movie. Discovering that Criterion actually released
this on DVD might well be the biggest shock of them all; anyone familiar
with the home video market recognizes Criterion's reputation for releasing
some of the finest films ever made. Oh, how I dislike these dilemmas!
"Blood
for Dracula" opens with a pathetic Count Dracula lumbering
through his musty castle in Romania. It's the early twentieth century, and
Drac finally realizes that the good old days are long gone. Once upon a
time, a hard working vampire with charm and a little money could easily
woo plenty of young virgins and sup on their blood at leisure. Now with
those pesky modern ideas, a gal just doesn't keep herself pure until
marriage anymore. This causes the Count a lot of trouble, especially since
he suffers violent spasms whenever he imbibes the blood of a deflowered
youngster. This poor guy's starving to death until his personal servant
Anton proposes a brilliant idea: why not move to Italy? Virgins abound in
that sunny clime, assures the valet, because with the Catholic Church's
influence in the region all of the girls assume a dignity sorely lacking
in the bleak atmospheres of the East. With nothing to lose, the good Count
agrees to leave his castle and head to Italy. Like most tourists, he's
just looking for a good meal. The fact that the Count's car sports a
wheelchair and coffin strapped to the roof doesn't faze these two
travelers in the least. All one need say is that the coffin holds a loved
one headed for burial in Italy.
Once
Count Dracula and his assistant reach Italy, they quickly fall in with a
decaying noble family with four lovely daughters. Now all the Count must
do is find out which one is the virgin and his health will improve in
direct proportion to the amount of blood he drains from her neck. The only
problem with this plot concerns the nature of this family. None of the
marriageable daughters possess virginal attributes. In fact, these young
ladies are complete degenerates who spend most of their waking moments
down at the handyman's cottage or in each other's arms. To further
complicate matters, the handyman subscribes heart and soul to the
doctrines of communism, and he definitely does not like the Count's
aristocratic manners or the idea of one of his young conquests married off
to this Romanian intruder. This young communist soon discovers the Count's
secret and dispatches the vampire in a sufficiently gruesome manner.
"Blood
for Dracula" assembles the necessities for a campy film:
atrocious acting, cheesy gore, and laughable dialogue. Simultaneously, the
movie contains lavish set pieces, good costumes, lots of nudity, and
several nifty twists on the Dracula legend. Morrissey's film also throws
in a charming musical score by Claudio Gizzi
that seems out of place in such a trashy film. You would think this movie
is high art after listening to the quaint sounds of piano washing over the
menu screen, and you would be wrong. This production attains a high cheese
content from the opening sequence to the closing credits. That doesn't
mean the film dives for the gutter all of the time: the plot adroitly
deals with European class issues through the characters of the Count and
Mario, the commie handyman. Many of the erotic sequences include dialogue
about the rich versus the poor, and the handyman's sexual power over the
wealthy daughters hints at the triumph of the working class over the
decadent rich.
The
acting steals the show in "Blood for
Dracula" I've watched thousands of films throughout my
thirty odd years of existence, and I've rarely seen overacting reach these
heights. Everyone's guilty here, but Udo Kier
as Dracula, Joe D'alessandro as the
handyman Mario, and Arno Juerging as
Dracula's servant Anton are the most egregious offenders. D'alessandro
gives a new meaning to the term "wooden," with facial
expressions carved from granite and dialogue delivered in a Brooklyn
accent totally out of place on an Italian estate. Udo Kier screams his
lines in a German accent so over the top that my ribs hurt from the
concussive blasts of laughter rocketing out of my mouth whenever he
appeared on screen. Arno Juerging takes his accent one step further, if
that's possible, with every utterance simmering with implied threat. Why
are Dracula and Anton so angry all the time? Who knows, but it's hilarious
to watch. Overkill is the name of the game in this film.
I
chortled and guffawed through every scene in this movie. I went in
expecting to hate "Blood for Dracula" and
emerged with an excellent opinion of the proceedings. If you enjoy cheese
as much as I do, you must pop this classic in the DVD player soon.
Criterion throws in a commentary with Kier and Morrissey, a stills gallery
set to the beautiful musical score, and a great transfer of the movie to
conclude the package.
I
can't recommend it enough. --This text refers to
the DVD
edition
Courtesy
of: Jeffrey
Leach (Omaha,
NE USA) - See
all my reviews
