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Blacula [1972] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


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That Mumawalde really is one weird dude
Review date: 2005-07-11 Rating: 10 out of 10

1972's Blacula gave birth to the horror subgenre of the blaxploitation genre. Its title probably turns more people away than draws them in, as it's hard to believe a film with such a campy, race-infused title could be any good (and might well be offensive). Blacula, however, is not only a surprisingly good, somewhat serious film - it also works quite well as a horror movie. It essentially follows the traditional mode of the Dracula story, and William Marshall succeeds in evoking the dual persona of the vampire as a creature to be both pitied and feared. Blacula features some wonderful lines of dialogue that we will never hear again in the politically correct modern world, but for all its focus on African-American players in the drama, the racial element of the film is unimportant to the story itself - which, I suppose, was the whole point of the blaxploitation movement.

I have no idea why Prince Mumawalde thought Count Dracula an important diplomat who could use his influence to stop the slave trade, but he did - and he was quite wrong. Dracula got so riled up that he cursed the African prince with both his name and affliction, dubbing him Blacula and locking him away inside a coffin so that he would endlessly hunger for the human blood he could never possibly attain. There he lay for two centuries until a pair of exceedingly gay antique dealers bought Dracula's castle and threw a veritable hissy fit over the wonderfully ornate coffin they found in a secret room. It's not hard to guess what happens when they return to America with their newly-acquired antique wares - there are soon two less outrageously gay men in the world. Blacula then gets his first look at the new world around him - and almost immediately encounters a woman who is the spitting image of his beloved bride. With Tina (Vonetta McGee) as our Mina, all we need is a Van Helsing character, and he soon emerges in the form of Tina's sister's main squeeze Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala, who is perhaps most familiar as Raj's father on What's Happening!!!). With a number of corpses turning up with holes in their necks and then disappearing altogether, Gordon comes to believe that a vampire is on the loose. These characters aren't too hard to convince; when Mumawalde tells Tina his true story, she reacts to the words slave trade but doesn't bat an eyelash over Mumawalde's claim that he was turned into a vampire by Dracula two hundreds year earlier. The final confrontation, which you know is coming, plays out rather well, with Marshall bringing his Shakespearean training to bear in order to give the scene a serious quality that it would probably have lacked otherwise.

Blacula is far from perfect in conception and execution, providing a number of really funny scenes and lines of dialogue. My favorite moment comes early on, when one of Dracula's henchmen conks Mumawalde over the head with a pot or something - he obviously throws it across the room, coming closer to hitting a member of the production crew than Mumawalde himself. Then there are the oil lamps that spontaneously combust, of course. The whole film is just a little too outrageous to take completely seriously, but the depth and probity of Marshall's performance maintains an aura of respectability, some of the vampire scenes are somewhat eerie (although there's a woeful lack of blood each time some vampire puts the bite on another victim), and the ending achieves a poignancy that rises far above the blaxploitation origins of the film. As a pretty decent horror movie as well as a blaxploitation classic, Blacula really is a must-see.

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The film that kicked off the Blaxploitation horror genre
Review date: 2003-11-06 Rating: 8 out of 10

The 1972 film "Blacula" is a much better example of the Blaxploitation period, which began with the success of "Shaft" the previous year, than it is as a vampire movie. William Marshall, with his booming voice, plays the title character and gives the film a sense of credibility that probably only James Earl Jones could have matched. Without Marshall's sense of dignity, "Blacula" would have been reduced to slapstick.

The story is that interior decorates buy the coffin of Prince Manuwalde andbring it back to Los Angeles, unaware that the African prince had been bitten by Dracula (Charles Macaulay) centuries before and locked inside. While wandering the nights in his eternal search for human blood, the prince sees Tina (Vonetta McGee), a woman who looks like his dear departed wife, Luva, and he is convinced she is his beloved reincarnated. While Blacula woos Tina, her friend Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) figures out that this guy is a blood-sucking fiend and tries to hunt the vampire down.

Today the racial humor of this film seems dated, but in 1972 this movie was hip in being self-conscious about its blackness, which was the whole point of the Blaxploitation movement: to black movies made by black casts and crews for black audiences, instead of leaving it to Hollywood to ignore and denigrate blacks in the films that had been produced up to that point. The horror scenes are hokey in the extreme, but since they are basically being done for fun by director William Crain, it is hard to complain. Some critics have bemoaned the miss opportunity to make a telling critique of sexual hypocrisy in society, the way Bram Stoker's original novel did for the Victorian era (if you are inclined to read it that way), but the social agenda here is clearly race and not sex, which is totally appropriate as far as I am concerned.

In addition to the 1973 sequel, "Scream, Blacula, Scream," other Blaxploitation horror films that followed this one included "Blackenstein," "Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde," and "The House on Skull Mountain." However, none of them would enjoy the reputation of "Blacula," which remains the defining film of this particular genre.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Vonetta McGee
William Marshall
Gordon Pinsent
Denise Nicholas
Thalmus Rasulala

Creators:
William Marshall (Primary Contributor)
Vonetta McGee (Primary Contributor)
John M. Stephens (Cinematographer)
Allan Jacobs (Editor)
Joseph T. Naar (Producer)
Norman T. Herman (Producer)
Samuel Z. Arkoff (Producer)

Director(s):

Recording label: MGM
Manufacturer: MGM
EAN: 9780792859161
Binding: DVD
ISBN: 0792859162
Number of items: 1
Format: Colour, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC,
Release date: 2004-01-20
Universal product code (UPC): 027616901538
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 93 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1972-08-25
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: French (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)

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