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Richard Pryor puts it cogently in a subsequent stand-up analysis: "Why don't you get your teeth fixed?" The prologue in Transylvania envisions a supper between a noble African prince (William Marshall) and bigoted Dracula (Charles Macaulay), evocatively reminiscent of a meeting between Frederick Douglass and Colonel Sanders and built toward an epical proclamation of the rich title. Plagued by a vampiric curse, the aristocrat enters modernity by way of a couple of swishy decorators, who purchase his coffin and bring it to downtown Los Angeles ca. 1972. The caped fiend towers with authority and melancholy, given fangs and the Wolf-Man's protruding sideburns once his thirst for blood is inflamed. His beloved bride from two centuries ago is now a foxy club-dweller (Vonetta McGee), her sister (Denise Nicholas) just happens to be dating Van Helsing, an urbane forensics doctor (Thalmus Rasulala). "What's the sudden interest in ghouls?" The allegory for slavery's lingering warping doesn't quite fulfill its potential (Cohen's Black Caesar is a more suggestive monster movie), though William Crain's transposition of Hammer style has enough frissons to honor Marshall's grisly elegance. A shutterbug (Emily Yancy) parts the curtains in her makeshift darkroom only to see Blacula gliding toward her, elsewhere the bitten cabbie (Ketty Lester) sprints in helter-skelter slow-mo to feast on a hook-handed morgue attendant (Elisha Cook Jr.). There are detours to the graveyard, warehouses full of blue-skinned undead and Molotov cocktails, plus performances by The Hues Corporation. Not "some nut from a Halloween party," the leonine villain faces his tragedy in a chemical plant and dissolves in sunlight beneath a "No smoking" sign. "Next year, we move to the suburbs." Gunn's Ganja & Hess follows as a lysergic riposte. With Gordon Pinsent, Ted Harris, Rick Metzler, and Ji-Tu Cumbuka.
--- Fernando F. Croce |