Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
Speaker 3: talking about the nineteen seventy two tragic romantic horror film Blackula.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so this is in a sense another Dracula movie.
Speaker 2: We'll get into that in a bit, and I'm generally
Speaker 2: down for any Dracula film. We've covered various Dracula movies
Speaker 2: already on Weird House Cinema. Most recently we talked about
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two's Dracula Ad nineteen seventy two, in which
Speaker 2: the Count awakens in contemporary London. Today's movie is also
Speaker 2: a nineteen seventy two release, and it also centers around
Speaker 2: a vampire prints awakening in the contemporary world, only this
Speaker 2: time it's Los Angeles?
Speaker 3: Is it Los Angeles? I kept thinking that the exterior
Speaker 3: shots looked like LA But then I would see, like
Speaker 3: there was a scene at the police station where in
Speaker 3: the background, I'm pretty sure they had a map of
Speaker 3: Staten Island on the wall.
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't notice that. I believe the movie when
Speaker 2: it told me it was Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Well wait, did the movie even say it was LA
Speaker 3: I didn't remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our character, doctor Thomas, supposedly works for the Los
Speaker 2: Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, then, oh, maybe he's just like a Staten
Speaker 3: Island map hobbyist. That's myself there. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: you know what. So this movie had been on my
Speaker 3: radar for many years, but I hadn't seen it until
Speaker 3: you picked it for the show.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: First of all, I really liked it, But second, it's
Speaker 3: a very different movie than I imagined. I think because
Speaker 3: the title is a pun, and because I understood it
Speaker 3: to be part of the black exploitation wave. I had
Speaker 3: always expected it would be more of a satirical horror comedy,
Speaker 3: that it would be sort of a satirical take on
Speaker 3: American culture from a black perspective, using some using like
Speaker 3: vampire themes to get across some of its like comedic observations.
Speaker 3: But it's really not a comedy at all. Instead, it
Speaker 3: is a I think, very serious and very effective, tragic
Speaker 3: romantic horror film.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting and we'll be discussing this
Speaker 2: a bit like the degree to which that transformation seems
Speaker 2: to have taken place, because I think the studio initially
Speaker 2: envisioned something that was more of a comedy and was
Speaker 2: more of more satire and was just about, you know,
Speaker 2: given the audience a good time. But this was transformed
Speaker 2: by at least two of the key individuals involved, if
Speaker 2: not more.
Speaker 3: Also, I have to say the comparison to Dracula nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two AD is hilarious because multiple things. So, first
Speaker 3: of all, I think Blacula is a much better film
Speaker 3: than that. But the other thing is that we kept
Speaker 3: joking in that episode that Dracula in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 3: a D did not really put Dracula in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: two a D. He was almost like he just hangs
Speaker 3: out in an abandoned church the whole time, and then
Speaker 3: victims are brought to him, so he never encounters modern
Speaker 3: culture or anything like that. And we talked about the
Speaker 3: potential for realizing, you know, Dracula as a sort of
Speaker 3: fish out of time character who's running into all of
Speaker 3: the texture of the modern world and having friction when
Speaker 3: interacting with it. You could expect that Blacula could be
Speaker 3: like that as well, but really there is not much
Speaker 3: fish out of time about it at all. In fact,
Speaker 3: by the time our vampire hero arrives in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: he's like the coolest person in nineteen seventy two. He's
Speaker 3: like more at ease and at home than anybody who
Speaker 3: just normally lives their life here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely so. Yeah, Black Ela is a very well
Speaker 2: known film in the history of horror and vampire movies,
Speaker 2: and certainly has has its place in the history of
Speaker 2: black cinema. So like yourself, Yeah, I've been familiar with
Speaker 2: it for a long time, but I'd never taken the
Speaker 2: time to actually sit down and watch it. And and
Speaker 2: part of, you know, part of that was, like I
Speaker 2: assumed it was more of a comedy, you know, I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure how it might have aged, how it was received,
Speaker 2: and what its legacy was, because you know, not everything
Speaker 2: that is often categorized under the broad label of black
Speaker 2: exploitation is worth a revisit. But I just kept seeing
Speaker 2: more film creators, more artists, more historians, especially artists and
Speaker 2: historians of color, singling it out for its strengths. One
Speaker 2: such artist is Rodney Barnes, an American screenwriter and producer,
Speaker 2: whose writing credits include Everybody Hates Chris, The Boondocks, and
Speaker 2: also the TV series Winning Time on HBO. He was
Speaker 2: also apparently and he has an additional crew credit. I'm blade.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what he did on that, but still
Speaker 2: in nice vampire connection. But I picked up his twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three graphic novel Blackula, Rich Turn of the King,
Speaker 2: illustrated by Jason Seawan Alexander, and it's really fun. It's
Speaker 2: a modern sequel to the film Blackula, reawakening our central
Speaker 2: Prince character once more in contemporary Los Angeles and on
Speaker 2: a collision course, this time with his vampiric maker. It's
Speaker 2: really again, really good, really fun, and it includes an
Speaker 2: extended intro in which Barnes describes being a horror fan
Speaker 2: as a kid and being at the time mostly dependent
Speaker 2: on a diet of hammer horror films which featured predominantly
Speaker 2: white casts and never a black vampire. So he mentions
Speaker 2: like seeing the ads for the first time. I think
Speaker 2: he says that he saw them during the commercial breaks
Speaker 2: for a Soul Train and he was instantly excited as
Speaker 2: a child. He was like, you know this, this is
Speaker 2: something different, This is here here is a case where
Speaker 2: I get to see like a black vampire character in
Speaker 2: a film. So Blacula, the movie called to him ultimately
Speaker 2: helped inspire him to become a creator himself. And you know,
Speaker 2: he acknowledges that the film has its flaws, but that
Speaker 2: its power was undeniable. Now, I want to throw into
Speaker 2: one quick note about the language of the film. While
Speaker 2: the film is rated PG and doesn't really contain anything
Speaker 2: objectionable in terms of gore or sexuality, we should stress
Speaker 2: that a homophobic slur is used at least a couple
Speaker 2: of times, one instance by a key protagonist, and once
Speaker 2: in a really unnecessary and hurtful way. It certainly ding's
Speaker 2: enjoyment of the film, especially since there's so many captivating
Speaker 2: elements of the picture otherwise, so I wanted to single
Speaker 2: that out. I was reading a little bit more about
Speaker 2: this in The Dracula and the Blacula nineteen seventy two
Speaker 2: Cultural Revolution by Lemon and Browning. This was published in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine s Dracula's Vampires and Other Undead
Speaker 2: Forms Essays on gender, race, and Culture. And this article
Speaker 2: makes a case that you know, we also see efforts
Speaker 2: in the movie at challenging homosexual stereotype, just as the
Speaker 2: film challenges stereotypes of black and African characters. Though the
Speaker 2: authors here acknowledge that the film fumbles in this and
Speaker 2: ultimately quote encourage stereotypes and bigotries concerning homosexuality more than
Speaker 2: they challenged them. So I just wanted to throw that
Speaker 2: out there in case anyone was looking to pause the
Speaker 2: podcast go watch the film. I think it's just a
Speaker 2: good heads up to have. All Right, well, at this point,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and have a little trailer audio. The
Speaker 2: actual trailer for the film is a bit long, but
Speaker 2: we were able to dig up the radio spot here.
Speaker 2: I love a good radio spot, so let's listen to
Speaker 2: the original radio spot for Blackma.
Speaker 1: You shall.
Speaker 3: Black Prince, I press' wait my name?
Speaker 4: You shall be black Tula, the Black Avenger, rising from
Speaker 4: this tool to fill the night with horror. Black Cula
Speaker 4: Dracula soul brother, deadlier even than he Blacula the First
Speaker 4: for your blood. He hung less for your soul, more
Speaker 4: horrifying than Draccula, the Black Avenge. Black Cula an American
Speaker 4: International release rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.
Speaker 2: Now of note you that voice you heard at the beginning.
Speaker 2: That is the voice of Count Dracula, as we'll discuss.
Speaker 3: Hmmm. You know that raises another way in which this
Speaker 3: movie I think is different than what some people might
Speaker 3: assume going into it, which you might assume of the
Speaker 3: premise is what if Count Dracula were black, but instead
Speaker 3: our black vampire prints in the movie is very much
Speaker 3: set in opposition to Count Dracula. Like Count Dracula is
Speaker 3: still the villain.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, a complete and utter villain, but then
Speaker 2: also one that will not factor into the film directly
Speaker 2: after after just a few minutes into the film.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, he disappears after like three or four minutes in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right, Well, if you're intrigued, if you're interested
Speaker 2: in watching this one on your own before proceeding with
Speaker 2: the rest of the episode, it's pretty widely available. We
Speaker 2: watched it on the twenty twenty three Blu ray from
Speaker 2: Sandpiper Pictures. It's bare bones, doesn't really have anything in
Speaker 2: the way of extras, but the quality is great. We
Speaker 2: rented it from Video Drum here in Atlanta, though I
Speaker 2: believe it's also streaming on Prime and other sources, So again,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't have any problem getting a hold of this movie.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's get into the people who made this film,
Speaker 2: starting at the top with the director. William Crane born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine, American director in UCLA Film School graduate,
Speaker 2: best remembered for this film and thus his contributions to
Speaker 2: black cinema of the seventies and more broadly, the horror
Speaker 2: genre itself. Prior to Blackula, he'd worked in TV. He
Speaker 2: directed a nineteen seventy one episode of Mod Squad, though
Speaker 2: he apparently worked as an uncredited intern director on the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies Sydney Quaidier movie Brother John, which also features
Speaker 2: Paul Winfield. But anyway, After Blacula, he continued to direct
Speaker 2: episodes of such TV series as Startsky and hutch Swatt
Speaker 2: and The Rookies, before returning to the world of black
Speaker 2: centric horror films with nineteen seventy six is Doctor Black
Speaker 2: Mister Hyde, starring Bernie Casey in the lead roles.
Speaker 3: No, I'd be interested to see that one too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I saw a bit from an interview with
Speaker 2: him where he said he had more freedom in that one,
Speaker 2: So I'm interested to read more about it, see how
Speaker 2: it was received, and potentially watch it now. Afterwards, he
Speaker 2: directed episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard, Matt Houston, and
Speaker 2: Designing Women. There are a lot of interviews with him
Speaker 2: out there. I ran across one from a This is
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty one interview on WBBM News radio with
Speaker 2: Mike Ramsey. He says, AIP, that's American International Pictures. They
Speaker 2: were doing exploitive movies. The rumor was they were in
Speaker 2: the red and so they were going to do a
Speaker 2: black vampire movie. I happened to be in the right
Speaker 2: place at the right time. The original concept was Count
Speaker 2: Brown's in Town. It was this Shuckin' and jivin and
Speaker 2: I didn't want to do it, but they hired me
Speaker 2: to do this movie. William Marshall said, let's just make
Speaker 2: this straight.
Speaker 3: So William Marshall is the actor who plays Memo Walde,
Speaker 3: the main vampire in the movie. And yeah, this is
Speaker 3: in line with what I've read that he was a
Speaker 3: big force in reimagining the movie as a more serious,
Speaker 3: dramatic project.
Speaker 2: Yeah. According to Lemonon Browning in that article, I decided
Speaker 2: when he came on board to star in the picture,
Speaker 2: he insisted on certain changes to Mama Walde's character and
Speaker 2: wrote or rewrote key scenes concerning memal Walde's eighteenth century
Speaker 2: mission to Europe, as well his connection to his wife Luva,
Speaker 2: So he seems to have been heavily involved in the
Speaker 2: choices that made this film notable.
Speaker 3: But by emphasizing the tragic romance at the core of it,
Speaker 3: I don't want to undersell the horror elements of this
Speaker 3: film now, because to come back to Crane's approach to
Speaker 3: it as a horror film, I think the scary scenes,
Speaker 3: though it's not wall to wall scares, the scary scenes
Speaker 3: are quite effective. There are some extremely creepy shots in
Speaker 3: this movie, like it does a thing a couple of
Speaker 3: times where a character like a monster, a vampire character
Speaker 3: is just directly approaching the camera, so the camera is
Speaker 3: at a fixed position and the vampire is just gliding
Speaker 3: straight into your face. And I don't know, that's not
Speaker 3: a kind of shot that I think of is very
Speaker 3: common in horror films. But even though it seems like
Speaker 3: it would be, I don't know why it's not, but
Speaker 3: it's very effective here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you can imagine these scenes really sizzling on
Speaker 2: the big screen in front of a pack house and
Speaker 2: it's worth noting that this film was quite a success
Speaker 2: so and certainly played an important part in sort of
Speaker 2: paving the way for additional black horror films that came
Speaker 2: out afterwards. Though we should also note this was not
Speaker 2: I think sometimes this is described as the quote first
Speaker 2: black horror film, which is not the case. There were
Speaker 2: earlier examples of this. The credited writers on this are
Speaker 2: Joan Torres and Raymond Koenig. I don't have dates for them.
Speaker 2: I don't think dates are available, though I believe Joan
Speaker 2: Torres at least is still still around. This and the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three sequel Scream Blackula Scream are their only credits.
Speaker 2: Joan Torres has a website, Joan Torres dot com, which
Speaker 2: details her additional work as a playwright and a novelist.
Speaker 2: Given the subject matter of the film, it's notable that
Speaker 2: neither of the credited writers was themselves black, but again,
Speaker 2: the film's black director and black lead evidently further crafted
Speaker 2: the screenplay in this more serious direction.
Speaker 3: Just wanted to note you mentioned the sequel screen Blacula Screen,
Speaker 3: which does also have William Marshall in it. I don't
Speaker 3: know anything about the reputation of that movie, but I
Speaker 3: wanted to note it does have Pam Greer in it,
Speaker 3: so that's the reason to watch true.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's come back to William Marshall again.
Speaker 2: This is our star who plays Prince Mama Walde, the Vampire.
Speaker 2: William Marshall lived nineteen twenty four through two thousand and three. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the star of this picture and just an irrefutable central
Speaker 2: force in the making of the film. What it making
Speaker 2: the film? What it is bringing dignity, power and complexity
Speaker 2: to a character that otherwise could have unlikely would have
Speaker 2: been a much more shallow exercise in vampire horror. Marshall
Speaker 2: was an American actor, director, and opera singer with impressive
Speaker 2: credits across stage, screen and TV. He studied at the
Speaker 2: Actor's Studio in New York and was I believe had
Speaker 2: some opera training. I'm not as informed about his his
Speaker 2: career regarding opera, but he performed on Broadway in the
Speaker 2: late forties and early fifties, and he played the title
Speaker 2: role in Othello in both the US and Europe. There's
Speaker 2: a nineteen eighty one production of A Fellow with him
Speaker 2: in the lead role that was filmed and I believe
Speaker 2: is available.
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised to hear that he was an opera
Speaker 3: singer because he has an absolutely magnificent voice, just a
Speaker 3: beautiful bass, like a I'm trying to think, what's the metaphor,
Speaker 3: it's like a ship sailing through smooth water. Is It's
Speaker 3: just like an amazing voice. It is the kind of
Speaker 3: voice that every time he speaks, people just turn and listen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's captivating. So his TV credits, he has a
Speaker 2: lot of TV credits, include a second season episode of
Speaker 2: the original Star Trek. This one was titled The Ultimate Computer,
Speaker 2: in which he played a brilliant human computer scientist. And
Speaker 2: then he may also be a familiar face from his
Speaker 2: later years for some of you, because he played the
Speaker 2: King of Cartoons on Pee Wee's Playhouse. According to his
Speaker 2: New Times obit. In nineteen eighty three, he appeared in
Speaker 2: a one hour one man show for PBS called Frederick Douglas,
Speaker 2: Slave and Statesman, and he adapted this for the theater
Speaker 2: as inter Frederick Douglass, which he performed for many years.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he has a whole bunch of credits. I
Speaker 2: did note that on the old nineteen eighty Spider Man cartoon.
Speaker 2: He voiced both the Juggernaut and Tony Stark, whoa in cinema.
Speaker 2: His other credits include nineteen fifty four's Demetrius and the Gladiators,
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy three sequel Screen Blackulas Scream of Course,
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy four zombie movie Abby, seventy seven's Twilight's
Speaker 2: Last Gleaming, and nineteen ninety four's Maverick. So again, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's absolutely commanding in this role. You can see how
Speaker 2: he was such a powerful force on the trajectory of
Speaker 2: this film as well, first of all in pushing for
Speaker 2: these changes, and secondly, according to Crane in that interview,
Speaker 2: I was looking at in being able to deliver on
Speaker 2: those changes in such a way that as the dailies
Speaker 2: or the raw footage was rolling in from the filming
Speaker 2: the studio like, they just fall it suit. They didn't
Speaker 2: fight it because they saw that it was absolutely working,
Speaker 2: all right. So moving on to the rest of the cast,
Speaker 2: we have a dual role here of Tina and Luva,
Speaker 2: which we'll get into what that means here in a bit.
Speaker 2: But these characters are played by Vanetta McGee who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five through twenty ten American actress who had
Speaker 2: been in several films prior to this, including the Italian
Speaker 2: western The Great Silence. Her subsequent films included nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: three's Shaft in Africa and Detroit nine thousand. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five, she was in The Eiger Sanction opposite Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 2: I believe that was She's like second build on that.
Speaker 2: She's in nineteen eighty four's Repo Man in nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: to Sleep with Anger all Right, now playing Tina's sister
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two. The sister's name is Michelle, played
Speaker 2: by Denise Nicholas born nineteen forty four, American actress with
Speaker 2: extensive television credits, including an episode of Night Gallery Love
Speaker 2: American Style, Different Strokes, The Love Boat, and sixty nine
Speaker 2: episodes of In the Heat of the Night. Her film
Speaker 2: credits include seventy seven's Capricorn One, nineteen nineties Ghost Dad,
Speaker 2: in two thousand's Ritual. She won a nineteen seventy six
Speaker 2: NAACP Image Award for her role in Let's Do It Again.
Speaker 3: I feel like a big part of Michelle's role in
Speaker 3: the plot is we have to have somebody who is
Speaker 3: skeptical of the vampire stuff, because Tina ultimately is going
Speaker 3: to become wooed by the power of Memo wall Day,
Speaker 3: and you know she ultimately is like, Yeah, Okay, I'll
Speaker 3: be a vampire because I love you. The character we're
Speaker 3: about to talk about, doctor Gordon Thomas. He's pretty much
Speaker 3: from the beginning is like, I think a vampire could
Speaker 3: be responsible for these killings. So Michelle is going to
Speaker 3: be the one who's like, I don't believe this, and
Speaker 3: I do not want to go dig up a grave tonight.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. So let's get to doctor Gordon Thomas
Speaker 2: because he's essentially the Van Helsing character of the movie.
Speaker 3: He's the investigator, the human hero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he is played by Thalmus Rassulula. He lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine through nineteen ninety one American actor with
Speaker 2: extensive TV credits going back to nineteen sixty including Perry Mason,
Speaker 2: The Original Twilight Zone, All in the Family, Mission Impossible,
Speaker 2: Sanford and Son, The Jefferson's Kojak, The Incredible Hulk. He
Speaker 2: also shows up in an episode of Star Trek the
Speaker 2: Next Generation, playing the character Captain Donald Varley. Also notable.
Speaker 2: He pops up on a nineteen seventy five episode of
Speaker 2: Saturday Night Live, specifically in a skit titled Exorcist two
Speaker 2: in which he plays Father Marrin.
Speaker 3: I like that the implied comedy of this skit is
Speaker 3: how ridiculous it would be to make a sequel to
Speaker 3: the X, Or says, But then just a couple of
Speaker 3: years later, they literally did.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Of Note that episode of Saturday Night Live was
Speaker 2: hosted by Richard Pryor, you know, the great stand up comedian,
Speaker 2: and the musical guest was a legendary Gil Scott Heron. Reportedly,
Speaker 2: Pryor only agreed to host the show if both of
Speaker 2: these men were involved, so they were like handpicked. He's like,
Speaker 2: I'll do it. You got to bring in Gil Scott Heron,
Speaker 2: and you got to bring in Thalmus to be in
Speaker 2: this skit with me.
Speaker 3: He's really effective in this movie, and he has a
Speaker 3: sort of thankless role to play because William Marshall's character
Speaker 3: gets to be the vampire, gets to be the tragic
Speaker 3: prince and at the center of this tragic love story,
Speaker 3: whereas Gordon Thomas Thomas Roussoula's character has to be hunting
Speaker 3: him down and doing so in a like. The character
Speaker 3: is written as an irascible and business oriented man. Like
Speaker 3: he's not fun, and yet it is fun watching the
Speaker 3: character do what he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a really solid performance. You know,
Speaker 2: he's like here grumpy, uh but smooth Van Helson character. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, this is a minor character. But I also
Speaker 2: want to call out that Jaitu Kombuka is in this
Speaker 2: playing the character Skillet. Skillett is a bit comic relief
Speaker 2: character who really likes Memowalde's cape. Yes, but it's a
Speaker 2: memorable brief bart. He lived nineteen forty through twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: He was a main cast member on the spy series
Speaker 2: A Man called Sloan with Robert Conrad and Dan o'hurlhay.
Speaker 2: He was in Roots He's. His other credits include Doctor Black,
Speaker 2: Mister Hyde, nineteen seventy one's Brian Song, seventy six is
Speaker 2: Bound for Glory eighty five Brewsters Millions in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine's Harlem Knights.
Speaker 3: This character appears multiple times to admire Memo Walde's cape
Speaker 3: and to comment that he is one strange dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's his sole purpose here, all right, We mentioned
Speaker 2: that Dracula is in this movie, and we'll discuss the
Speaker 2: way Dracula is envisioned in this film here in a
Speaker 2: bit in more detail. But Dracula here is played by
Speaker 2: Charles McCauley, who lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine an American actor of stage, screen, and TV, whose
Speaker 2: earliest film role is an uncredited part in Roger Corman's
Speaker 2: horror comedy Creature from the Haunted Sea nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: We haven't watched this one on Weird House, but it's
Speaker 2: often considered part of a trilogy of horror comedies that
Speaker 2: Corman did, along with Bucket of Blood and The Little
Speaker 2: Shop of Horrors. McCauley also worked with Corman, credited, this
Speaker 2: time in nineteen sixty two's Tower of London. His filmography
Speaker 2: features a great deal of mainstream TV work, along with
Speaker 2: various entries in the horror genre. On TV, he appeared
Speaker 2: on two episodes of The original Star Trek, thirty five
Speaker 2: episodes of Days of Our Lives, He was on Mission Impossible, Night,
Speaker 2: Gallery Colombo, and much more. In film, his credits include
Speaker 2: sixty eight's Head, seventy two's Twilight People, seventy four's House
Speaker 2: of Seven Corpses seventy five is the Hindenburg Airport seventy seven,
Speaker 2: and he played the President of the United States in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty four Mermaid comedy Splash, which is I
Speaker 2: haven't seen Splash in a while. Watched it a lot
Speaker 2: as a kid, but now I'm just imagining like President Dracula.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, I've never seen it, but now there's a
Speaker 3: treat waiting for me if I ever get there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I remember it as being fun. More on
Speaker 2: Dracula in a bit, but it is. It's a very
Speaker 2: memorable Count Dracula. Yeah. This is just an aside, I
Speaker 2: guess mostly for people who are big into like the
Speaker 2: history of stunt work and or grappling and so forth
Speaker 2: and pro wrestling. But one of Dracula's henchmen is played
Speaker 2: by Jean LaBelle, who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. Noted grappler, judo practitioner, pro wrestler, stunt man.
Speaker 2: He pops up in a lot of things, often in
Speaker 2: just like really small roles.
Speaker 3: It is funny in this movie that Dracula just has
Speaker 3: wrestlers working for him, Like he calls out his wrestlers
Speaker 3: and they've got the you know, the Lacey cravats on,
Speaker 3: but they're just like these beefy guys.
Speaker 2: All right. Get a few credits from behind the scenes here.
Speaker 2: Sandy DeVore is the title designer on this film who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty four through twenty twenty American artist, graphic designer,
Speaker 2: and title designer who worked with some big recording artists
Speaker 2: of the day, including Sammy Davis Junior, and went on
Speaker 2: to create title sequences for such TV shows as The
Speaker 2: Partridge Family. We've actually seen some of Sandy Devorre's work
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema before, because he did the excellent
Speaker 2: title sequence for The Dunwich Horror, which had a very
Speaker 2: similar style, only instead of like red, black and white,
Speaker 2: it was like blue and black.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I really like the title design in this movie.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a like an animated bat chasing a
Speaker 3: red outline of a woman around in this abstract landscape
Speaker 3: that almost looks like you've zoomed in a lot on calligraphy,
Speaker 3: and the figures are trying to navigate in the spaces
Speaker 3: between the bars of the letters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool and it's like a nice
Speaker 2: I like how it breaks up the film too, because
Speaker 2: we have a very heavy opening and then we get
Speaker 2: this fun title sequence before Trent's pourting to the modern
Speaker 2: day of nineteen seventy two. And I'll also add that
Speaker 2: there's an excellent website called artofthetitle dot com and they
Speaker 2: have multiple examples of Divorre's work, including the intros to
Speaker 2: Blackula and the intro to The Dunwich Horror. He also
Speaker 2: did one on a nineteen sixty nine film called Desad.
Speaker 2: This was a Roger Corman film starring Keer Dooley as
Speaker 2: the Marquis de Sade. Also has John Houston in it,
Speaker 2: but it's also like similar style and also very amusing
Speaker 2: to watch. The composer on this film on Blackula is
Speaker 2: Gene Page, who lived nineteen thirty nine through nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight American composer and record producer. He also did arrangements
Speaker 2: on tracks for some of the biggest musical acts of
Speaker 2: the time period. He has something like ten one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty five writing and arrangement credits on discogs what
Speaker 2: including Yeah, it's like this man works a lot working
Speaker 2: with artists. I can't even list them all, but just
Speaker 2: as a brief overview, people like Barry White, James Taylor,
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson cher that it seems to be the main
Speaker 2: main work that he did. This is his most well
Speaker 2: known film score out of only a handful of score
Speaker 2: composition credits.
Speaker 3: I love the music in Blackula, and it works I
Speaker 3: think on every level. Like there's some just non diegetic
Speaker 3: background music that you know, it brings the right horror ambiance,
Speaker 3: but then there is also plenty of funk in the movie,
Speaker 3: and then even some diegetic on screen band performances that
Speaker 3: are fantastic as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're going to discuss them in just a second,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I all agree. Absolutely wonderful score. It's funky
Speaker 2: and soulful, blazingly upbeat in places, but it also does
Speaker 2: get into that what I like to think of is
Speaker 2: like the horror jazz night gallery zone as well, tweaked
Speaker 2: with some synth weirdness in places, really drives on the
Speaker 2: creepy moments. Now, the musical performances that you mentioned these
Speaker 2: are performances by the Hughes Corporation. They were a pop
Speaker 2: and soul trio best known for a hit that would
Speaker 2: come out a couple of years later in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: four Rock the Boat. I mean, I don't even have
Speaker 2: to hum it. You all know it. You've all heard
Speaker 2: Rock the Boat. At the time of Blackula, they consisted
Speaker 2: of Saint Clair Lee who lived nineteen forty four through
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. This is the vocalist with the headband. H M.
Speaker 2: Kelly born nineteen forty seven, and Carl Russell. I believe
Speaker 2: he left the group after the movie, but also maybe
Speaker 2: returned later during a time period when they got back
Speaker 2: together again. I'm a little foggy on how all that works,
Speaker 2: but they are a lot of fun in their performances
Speaker 2: in Blackula.
Speaker 3: They get at least two on screen musical performances in
Speaker 3: the film, or are there even more?
Speaker 2: They have at least three tracks on the soundtrack. There's
Speaker 2: There He Is Again, which we'll talk about, Oh yeah, wonderful,
Speaker 2: There's What the World Knows, which is a more soulful,
Speaker 2: romantic number, and then I'm Gonna Catch You, which is
Speaker 2: also a really fun song. It's like a cheating heart song,
Speaker 2: but it's it's really good.
Speaker 3: There He Is Again is my favorite because it's it
Speaker 3: can The lyrics can be read as a song about
Speaker 3: a vampire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Like it feels if you're not analyzing the
Speaker 2: lyrics too closely, like yeah, yeah, of course it's about
Speaker 2: Mama Waldi, it's about this vampire. I also note there
Speaker 2: are two tracks on the soundtrack by the twenty first
Speaker 2: Century LTD. This is or I guess I would say
Speaker 2: the twenty first Century limited heavy changes and main chance.
Speaker 2: These are both romantic numbers, and I honestly can't remember
Speaker 2: how they're integrated into the film, or you know, to
Speaker 2: what extent they are.
Speaker 3: Okay, you ready to talk about the plot, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So we open on the exterior of a castle on
Speaker 3: a darkened, stormy night. Rain pours down, battering the castle towers,
Speaker 3: and bolts of lightning cut through the darkness, and a
Speaker 3: chiron text on the screen says Transylvania seventeen eighty Castle Dracula.
Speaker 3: So we cut inside the castle to an ornate dining
Speaker 3: room illuminated by candles and a roaring fireplace, and Count
Speaker 3: Dracula is here and he is hosting a pair of
Speaker 3: guests after what seems to have been some kind of
Speaker 3: international diplomatic function meeting with dignitaries. Now, this Count Dracula
Speaker 3: is not exactly of the Bela Lugosi variety. He has
Speaker 3: like longer hairs, kind of grayish brown in color, and
Speaker 3: a goatee. He's wearing a black and gold coat over
Speaker 3: a blue vest with a frilly white cravat, and he
Speaker 3: is immediately unlikable, smarmy, palpably untrustworthy, and we will soon
Speaker 3: come to realize racist. He's at first kind of superficially
Speaker 3: friendly to his two guests, and the guests are Prince
Speaker 3: Mamuwalde and his wife, Princess Luva, who are royalty from
Speaker 3: what is initially an unnamed African country, but we will
Speaker 3: later learn that they are from the Ibani nation in
Speaker 3: the northeast of the Niger Delta. Memo Walde is dressed
Speaker 3: in a dark suit with a powder blue cravat, and
Speaker 3: Luva is wearing a beautiful, elaborate multicolored dress with beadwork jewelry.
Speaker 3: So they've just seemingly finished a meeting with an array
Speaker 3: of diplomats and heads of state from around the world,
Speaker 3: and Dracula is pouring cognac all around. Memoalde and Luva
Speaker 3: explain to Count Dracula that they're here for a reason.
Speaker 3: They are on a mission to gain international allies in
Speaker 3: support of what seems to be a treaty, a treaty
Speaker 3: to do what Well, Luva pulls out a text, a
Speaker 3: document to present to Count Dracula, and he reviews it,
Speaker 3: and then he recoils from the document in disbelief. Apparently
Speaker 3: this treaty that they're pursuing would bring about the cessation
Speaker 3: of the international slave trade. Dracula doesn't like this idea.
Speaker 3: He counters that he says, surely slavery has merit, and
Speaker 3: Memoilde raises an eyebrow. He asks how one would find
Speaker 3: merit in barbarity, But Dracula says, well, slavery may be
Speaker 3: barbaric from the point of view of the slave, but
Speaker 3: it holds lots of appeal to the slave owner. And
Speaker 3: then he transitions to making revolting comments with sexual overtones
Speaker 3: about how it would in fact be appealing to him
Speaker 3: to own Luva.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the overt racism of Dracula is quite fascinating here.
Speaker 2: I think the film delivers the vibe in a way
Speaker 2: that a mere summary doesn't really capture. But Yeah, this
Speaker 2: Dracula is, in many respects presented, is almost a kind
Speaker 2: of He's almost the institution of slavery incarnate. You know,
Speaker 2: it's all done in a few short scenes here, but
Speaker 2: you know, he dismisses objections to the practice on economic
Speaker 2: and sort of this is the world grounds, but quickly
Speaker 2: slides into it increasingly overtly racist rhetoric before directly provoking
Speaker 2: Mammal Waldy by offering in cruel jess to buy his wife.
Speaker 2: And this then quickly transcends into physical assault, separation, murder,
Speaker 2: and a curse that transcends human lifetimes. And we also
Speaker 2: see his aristocratic mass completely slip from again from this
Speaker 2: like snide aristocrat to just absolute evil, cruelty and hunger.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So at the beginning of the exchange, Dracula is
Speaker 3: condescending and smarmy, but it's it's interesting to see how
Speaker 3: it just flips to overt hostility as soon as he
Speaker 3: is faced with something he disagrees with. So, of course
Speaker 3: Mamiwalde won't tolerate this shocking behavior from Dracula, but he
Speaker 3: keeps his composure. He rises from his seat and he
Speaker 3: gathers Luva and says that they are leaving, but the
Speaker 3: evil Count will not allow it. He summons his minions,
Speaker 3: his hinchman to take hold of them, and then violence
Speaker 3: breaks out. Memowalde puts up a valiant fight. He uses
Speaker 3: like improvised weapons from the room. I think he grabs
Speaker 3: a torch off the wall, and then one of the
Speaker 3: henchmen grabs a saber off the wall and they fight
Speaker 3: there in front of the fire. But eventually Mimiwalde is
Speaker 3: outnumbered and overpowered by the Count's fighters, and eventually we
Speaker 3: see the Count's side including not just like the muscly
Speaker 3: wrestlers the stuntman we were talking about earlier, but like
Speaker 3: a whole coven of looming ghouls and these wheezing hooded
Speaker 3: blood drinkers, and this whole group approaches Prince Mama Walde
Speaker 3: and then Dracula exposes his neck and bites.
Speaker 2: It's all very well done, but I will note that
Speaker 2: one of the vampires in that scene does look to
Speaker 2: be an actual, actual, actual vampire from the apple she has.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like wide eyed and big, big fangs.
Speaker 2: But uh, that's that's still It doesn't doesn't attract from
Speaker 2: the sequence.
Speaker 3: But it goes onto a horrifying escalation here. So there
Speaker 3: is an interment scene Luva and Mama Walde are walled
Speaker 3: up in a secret room in the castle where Dracula
Speaker 3: is going to doom Luva to die of thirst and
Speaker 3: starvation in the room, while Mamo Walde is locked inside
Speaker 3: a coffin to transform into a vampire and forever yearn
Speaker 3: for blood that he cannot have. And here Dracula he
Speaker 3: places a curse. He says, quote, I shall place a
Speaker 3: curse of suffering on you that will doom you to
Speaker 3: a living hell. A hunger, a wild, gnawing animal. Hunger
Speaker 3: will grow in you, a hunger for human blood. Here
Speaker 3: you will starve for an eternity, torn by an unquenchable lust.
Speaker 3: I curse you with my name. You shall be Blacula,
Speaker 3: a vampire like myself, a living fiend. You will be
Speaker 3: doomed never to know that sweet blood which will become
Speaker 3: your only desire. And then slam slam shut the coffin door.
Speaker 3: They pad lock it, and they close the wall, and
Speaker 3: the curse to mam Mawalde and Luva are left trapped
Speaker 3: in this room forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's heavy stuff, and it's also worth noting.
Speaker 2: Here like this, we hear the name Blacula here, and
Speaker 2: we'll hear an echo of this later. But Mama Walde
Speaker 2: never in this film self identifies as Blacula, Like this
Speaker 2: is the name uttered by Dracula as he curses him.
Speaker 3: Yes, now, it might seem curious why Dracula is portrayed, uh, Robin,
Speaker 3: I bet you picked up on the same thing. He's
Speaker 3: portrayed not just as being cruel to them, but specifically
Speaker 3: as having an orientation of vengeance. He is vengeful towards
Speaker 3: Mamma Waldey and Luva, and they've done nothing whatsoever to
Speaker 3: harm him, Like there's no reason for he for him
Speaker 3: to be vengeful. But I think it fits. It goes
Speaker 3: with the theme like this is a common posture of racism,
Speaker 3: like vengeance, a feeling of need for vengeance in response
Speaker 3: to nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great point. I want to again
Speaker 2: mention that macaulay is really great in this sequence. He
Speaker 2: continues to lay on Dracula's evil very effectively. And I
Speaker 2: love the way that they made him up. So blood's
Speaker 2: dripping from his lips after he has fed on Mama
Speaker 2: Walde and he's taunting Luva, but it's also draining from
Speaker 2: his eyes, you know, like he's like he's he's a
Speaker 2: vicious beast that's so fatted on blood that his body
Speaker 2: can't contain it all anymore. It's just kind of leaking
Speaker 2: out of every orifice. And yeah, it's just brutal stuff.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and I think the blood running out of
Speaker 3: the eyes, to me, it is a visual signal to
Speaker 3: convey hate. Do you get the same thing?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 4: So? Yeah.
Speaker 3: So here we go to the credits, and again I
Speaker 3: love the design of the credits. There's groovy modern music.
Speaker 3: There's the animated bat chasing a woman around in the
Speaker 3: abstract landscape. It's very cool. After the credits, we returned
Speaker 3: to Dracula's castle, but it's the present. Dracula's house is
Speaker 3: undergoing an estate sale, and we've got a couple of
Speaker 3: wholesale antique buyers from America who are here to they're
Speaker 3: about to sign the paperwork to buy everything from the castle.
Speaker 3: The two antique dealers are the characters Bobby McCoy and
Speaker 3: Billy Schaefer. And these are the characters I think you
Speaker 3: alluded to earlier, rob who are portrayed as very stereotypically gay.
Speaker 3: Apparently they don't find out until the last minute that
Speaker 3: all of the stuff they're about to buy belonged to
Speaker 3: Count Dracula. The seller is worried that this is going
Speaker 3: to endanger the deal and gives them a discount. But
Speaker 3: do they really need one. Answer is no, because the
Speaker 3: Dracula thing is a bonus to them. Bobby says, where
Speaker 3: we come from, Dracula is the Krim de la crim
Speaker 3: of camp. We're going to get a fortune for these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy here was worried about about having to
Speaker 2: deal with a Dracula refund or a Dracula discount. He
Speaker 2: should have been he should have been adding to the price.
Speaker 2: He should have been asking more for all this Dracula stuff.
Speaker 3: Billy also says that he has seen all of Dracula's movies,
Speaker 3: So I think it's interesting that, like, what is the
Speaker 3: understanding of Dracula in the world of this movie. Here's
Speaker 3: what it seems to be. First of all, in this movie,
Speaker 3: vampires are real. Count Dracula was a real historical vampire
Speaker 3: in the late seventeen hundreds, though some modern characters believe
Speaker 3: he was just a myth, and this character is separate
Speaker 3: from Vladdi Impaler, who lived in the fifteenth century. Also,
Speaker 3: in this universe, Dracula exists as a character known in
Speaker 3: horror films and stories, presumably the novel Dracula exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to tease all this apart. Rodney Barnes
Speaker 2: in the in blacular Return of the King, the way
Speaker 2: he kind of treated it was okay, Mama Walde had
Speaker 2: like knew that this Count Dracula had there were some
Speaker 2: rumors about him about how he might be connected to
Speaker 2: this earlier tyrannical figure, but he just dismissed it as myth. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are multiple layers of fiction and history and fictional
Speaker 2: history that you have to juggle in this scenario.
Speaker 3: But it also portrays the historical figure Count Dracula in
Speaker 3: the late seventeen hundreds as having been an influential player
Speaker 3: in international politics, because the reason Luva and Mama Walde
Speaker 3: are going to his castle is to get his support
Speaker 3: for trying to get allies for an international treaty. So
Speaker 3: he's not just seen as like, you know, a reclusive
Speaker 3: figure of mystery. This is like somebody who has influence
Speaker 3: over the affairs of state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is not an evil in the background of
Speaker 2: Europeans aristocracy. He is in the forefront, which which I
Speaker 2: think is key here. But anyway, he's long dad at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. In fact, the guy at the estate
Speaker 3: sale mentions how Dracula died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he says, you know, don't worry about him. It
Speaker 2: was all over hyped anyway, and Van Helsing destroyed him
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years ago. So it's interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: we're set to encounter a reawakened Mamma Walde in a
Speaker 2: world where his greatest adversary is himself long destroyed, but
Speaker 2: the legacy of his crime still resonate.
Speaker 3: Right, So while going around with the seller, Bobby and
Speaker 3: Billy in the castle here discover an undisturbed coffin in
Speaker 3: a hidden room behind a wall, and we see we
Speaker 3: the audience know that this is the room where Memowalde
Speaker 3: and Luva were buried alive. So they add the coffin
Speaker 3: to their hall and we see it brought back to
Speaker 3: the States to be a cargo ship. And here we
Speaker 3: get some a little bit of fish out of time texture,
Speaker 3: so we see modern streets and traffic and it's set
Speaker 3: to a funk soundtrack. We get some you know, wuah
Speaker 3: wah guitar, and then we see Bobby and Billy get
Speaker 3: the coffin back to their warehouse, and Billy is discussing
Speaker 3: the idea of using it as a guest bed at
Speaker 3: their house. I like this idea.
Speaker 2: Bobby is doubtful though, He's clearly doubtful of this idea,
Speaker 2: and he's like, okay.
Speaker 3: So they start trying to open the stuff. But before
Speaker 3: Bobby can get the coffin open, I think he breaks
Speaker 3: off the lock, but he doesn't open it yet. At
Speaker 3: the other end of the room, Billy cuts himself while
Speaker 3: prying at the lid of another crate, and it seems
Speaker 3: the smell of fresh blood stirs something inside the coffin,
Speaker 3: and so while Bobby and Billy are not looking, the
Speaker 3: lid creaks open and Mama Walde, now transformed into a vampire,
Speaker 3: begins to rise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is our first real shot of the awakened
Speaker 2: prince Man w Walde facing the camera, Dracula's curse audibly
Speaker 2: resonating in his mind. Pretty haunting stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, So he rises from the coffin and he he
Speaker 3: looks almost confused, like he's he's changed now, but he's
Speaker 3: torn between his conscious horror at his fate and his
Speaker 3: immediate thirst for blood like the you know, his conscious
Speaker 3: mind is fighting the vampire within him, and here might
Speaker 3: be a good place to discuss Memoilde's two looks as
Speaker 3: a vampire. So sometimes basically, when he's not about to
Speaker 3: bite someone, he just looks like himself. He looks like
Speaker 3: the regular prince Mamuelde from before. But when he goes
Speaker 3: into vampire mode, when he is about to bite someone
Speaker 3: or transform into a bat or something, he grows fangs,
Speaker 3: of course, but he also grows an interesting pattern of
Speaker 3: facial hair where it's like his eyebrows become very bushy
Speaker 3: and they sort of connect to the hair on his temples,
Speaker 3: and his mustache grows out longer, and he gains these
Speaker 3: sharply sculpted sideburns, and there's a redness added to his eyes.
Speaker 3: He has a different look when he is about to
Speaker 3: behave more like a predatory vampire. And the fact that
Speaker 3: there is this physical transformation is almost a bit werewolfy.
Speaker 3: I like the visual transformation because it coincides with the
Speaker 3: dual nature of Mamoulde the vampire, so he hasn't been
Speaker 3: changed into just a demon of pure evil. Most of
Speaker 3: the time he is simply like himself, like he was
Speaker 3: before the change. And even in the form of even
Speaker 3: as a vampire, Memo Walde is shown to be a
Speaker 3: good and moral man. He has thoughtful, kind, suave, even
Speaker 3: tempered charming, but when he goes into vampire mode, he
Speaker 3: thirsts only for blood and it is almost like a
Speaker 3: werewolf transformation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the pronounced widow's peak he develops when
Speaker 2: he's in full vampire mode in hunger mode is key.
Speaker 2: And I think the real take home here is if
Speaker 2: someone you know you suddenly encounter them and they have
Speaker 2: a pronounced widow peak that extends further down than their
Speaker 2: hairline originally was, then you need to run because that
Speaker 2: person has become a dracula of some sort.
Speaker 3: So Mema Walde bites and drains Billy and Bobby there
Speaker 3: in the antique warehouse, and next we go to a
Speaker 3: scene at a funeral home where we're going to meet
Speaker 3: our other main characters. So Bobby's body is lying out
Speaker 3: for it's lying out in the coffin for visitation, and
Speaker 3: somehow Mima Walde is there like he's looking on from
Speaker 3: behind a curtain at the back of the room, and
Speaker 3: slowly we see Bobby's hand to begin to move from
Speaker 3: its resting place and grip the wall of the coffin,
Speaker 3: but then Bobby stops moving when the living approach, and
Speaker 3: our living characters are Michelle. This is Denise Nicholas we
Speaker 3: mentioned her earlier. Michelle's coworker and romantic partner, doctor Gordon Thomas.
Speaker 3: This is Thalmas Resulola. We get Michelle's sister, Tina, who
Speaker 3: is played by Vanetta McGee, the same actress who played Louva.
Speaker 3: And so Michelle and Tina are visiting Bobby because they've
Speaker 3: known him since childhood. And at first, Tina is wearing
Speaker 3: a hood covering her face when she comes into the room,
Speaker 3: but there's a reveal moment. She pulls it back to
Speaker 3: reveal her face and Mama Walde sees her and he whispers, Luva.
Speaker 2: The hood is almost too much because I initially thought
Speaker 2: she was going to be some sort of sorceress or
Speaker 2: cult member or something, but we quickly learned that she's
Speaker 2: just very stylish.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say, by and large, all of the
Speaker 3: modern costumes in this movie are awesome, Like everybody's clothes
Speaker 3: look really cool. I was gonna mention this later, like
Speaker 3: essentially everything Thalmas rasoulil awares looks awesome. He has this
Speaker 3: great collection of coats and jackets. He has cool like
Speaker 3: a herringbone blazer, and he has a double breasted jacket
Speaker 3: he wears later that looks really cool, often paired with
Speaker 3: a turtleneck. He's got a great look. But Michelle, Michelle
Speaker 3: and Tina also have really cool clothes. Absolutely, and I
Speaker 3: would put the sorceress hood and cloak in that category
Speaker 3: as well. I think it looks great. You know, people
Speaker 3: should dress like sorcerers more often. So anyway, Tina and Michelle,
Speaker 3: they're confused about what happened to Bobby. His death doesn't
Speaker 3: make any sense, and they're asking Gordon if he can
Speaker 3: get any answers for them, because Gordon is not just
Speaker 3: any boyfriend of Michelle. Gordon is some kind of science cop.
Speaker 3: We've talked about science cops on a Weird House before.
Speaker 3: He is a forensic investigator. We're later told he works
Speaker 3: for the Scientific Investigation Division, I suppose of the police.
Speaker 3: So it seems I think he's supposed to be a
Speaker 3: medical doctor at Core, but he is. He works as
Speaker 3: a forensic investment togator. So after Tina and Michelle leave,
Speaker 3: the funeral director is there alone. With Gordon, and he explains,
Speaker 3: I worked very hard on that neck wound, trying to
Speaker 3: make it look as natural as I could so it
Speaker 3: wouldn't be offensive to his loved ones. The flesh was
Speaker 3: just torn right out in a big chunk. I've never
Speaker 3: seen a rat bite that size, and Gordon says rat bite.
Speaker 3: He wants to know how deep was the wound before
Speaker 3: it was repaired, and the funeral director says two or
Speaker 3: three inches at least. So Gordon is his radars pinging.
Speaker 3: Something is seeming off to him, and he's perplexed by
Speaker 3: what he sees. So a rat bite in the neck
Speaker 3: two or three inches deep. He starts looking at other
Speaker 3: things about Bobby's body. He notices that the body is
Speaker 3: drained of blood, even though the funeral director says that
Speaker 3: no embalming has taken place. Gordon points out that the
Speaker 3: veins collapse under pressure. Why would he have been drained
Speaker 3: of blood? Gordon decides he wants to see the body
Speaker 3: of the other victim. But the other victim, Billy, is
Speaker 3: not at this funeral home. He was white and he
Speaker 3: was sent to a white funeral home. The funeral director
Speaker 3: tells us, So our investigator is now on the case.
Speaker 3: He can tell something weird is up. We cut to
Speaker 3: Michelle and Tina walking outside the funeral parlor and they
Speaker 3: split up because Michelle is going to go visit Bobby's family.
Speaker 3: Tina is tired and she wants to go straight home,
Speaker 3: And while walking alone on the sidewalk at night, Tina
Speaker 3: starts to become uneasy. Something doesn't feel right. She picks
Speaker 3: up the pace. She glances around nervously. Then suddenly she
Speaker 3: comes round a corner and runs straight into Mama Welde.
Speaker 3: And he's not in vamp mode here, but he is
Speaker 3: in a full vampire costume, which he pretty much always wears,
Speaker 3: so he's in his dark suit. He's got the cravat,
Speaker 3: and he's got this trailing black cape. And he addresses
Speaker 3: her hopefully at first, saying love, but Tina doesn't know
Speaker 3: what he's talking about. She tries to back away and
Speaker 3: he takes hold of her. He says, Luva, it's me,
Speaker 3: but she doesn't know him. She screams let go, and
Speaker 3: he does. She runs away in a panic, and she
Speaker 3: drops her purse in a pedestrian underpass tunnel, and Memo
Speaker 3: Walde follows and picks up the pocketbook He's still looking
Speaker 3: around for where she went when suddenly he is hit
Speaker 3: by a cab.
Speaker 2: I also want to just mention really quickly. William Marshall
Speaker 2: a very physically imposing actor as well. I think he
Speaker 2: was like six ' five, so that's notable in all
Speaker 2: of these scenes where he is either perceived as a
Speaker 2: threat or is an active threat in vampire mode.
Speaker 3: That's right, and he is about to change from pining
Speaker 3: for his lost love to thirsting for blood because he
Speaker 3: was hit by a cab. The cab driver gets out,
Speaker 3: and this is a character named Juanita. She is sort
Speaker 3: of vulgar and starts scolding Memo waal Day, telling him
Speaker 3: that chasing tail could get him killed. Mema Walde is
Speaker 3: very frustrated. He says I lost her because of you,
Speaker 3: and they trade insults, and after she hurls some disrespected him,
Speaker 3: we suddenly see a change come over him. He needs
Speaker 3: blood once again, and he transforms into vampire mode and
Speaker 3: bites her. Now later, Tina makes it back home. She
Speaker 3: has to use a hidden spare key to get into
Speaker 3: her apartment because she lost her purse in the tunnel
Speaker 3: and she's extremely rattled. Michelle comes home and Tina confesses
Speaker 3: what happened. Michelle says, maniacs are running in the streets,
Speaker 3: and meanwhile, Mima Walde goes back to his coffin in
Speaker 3: the antique warehouse dejected. He's broken by the fact that
Speaker 3: his Louva ran away from him. Now the next day
Speaker 3: we see Gordon Thomas on the case. The doctor is
Speaker 3: paying a visit to the city Morgue to check out
Speaker 3: the body of a cab driver found dead the night before,
Speaker 3: and here we meet a minor character, Sam the Morgue worker,
Speaker 3: played by Elisha Cook Junior, who is a character actor
Speaker 3: you've probably seen in lots of stuff. In this movie,
Speaker 3: he plays a surly mortician with a hook for a hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: probably best known for such films as The Maltese Falcon,
Speaker 2: The Killing House on Haunted Hill, and Rosemary's Baby. I
Speaker 2: found an image here for you Joe from nineteen forty
Speaker 2: four's Phantom Lady, in which he's pulling this shocked face
Speaker 2: that I'm pretty sure he pulls at least once in
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 3: It's his signature. Look, it's his blue steel.
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, and then inevitably he's about to be murdered,
Speaker 2: or has discovered a murder, or is about to be
Speaker 2: killed by a monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or in these movies from the forties and fifties,
Speaker 3: he just saw a skeleton.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Sam leads Gordon inside. They pulled the victim out
Speaker 3: of the freezer. Sam's just kind of like gabbin at him,
Speaker 3: so Gordon has to like get him to leave, leave
Speaker 3: him alone so he can investigate. And what do you know,
Speaker 3: he finds bite marks on the victim's neck. This cab
Speaker 3: driver was also bitten, just like Bobby. So we know
Speaker 3: what he's thinking, and we see him reacting to his
Speaker 3: own thoughts. He laughs and says to himself, come on now,
Speaker 3: that's ridiculous. But he still he has to pursue this lead.
Speaker 3: So Gordon goes to consult with police Lieutenant Jack Peters.
Speaker 3: Gordon says he needs reports on the post mortem examinations
Speaker 3: of both Bobby and Billy, the first two victims, but
Speaker 3: the department bureaucracy is giving him the run around while
Speaker 3: he's been looking for these reports, and eventually they admit
Speaker 3: that the reports seem to have been lost. They don't
Speaker 3: know where they are and Gordon says, strange, how many
Speaker 3: sloppy police jobs involve black victims. Peters, who is a
Speaker 3: white police commander, seems to suggest he's like, hey, what
Speaker 3: if all these neck bite murders were caused by the
Speaker 3: black panthers? Think about it, and Gordon is like, get real.
Speaker 3: So Peters promises they will keep looking for the info
Speaker 3: that Gordon needs, and he puts a cop named Watson
Speaker 3: on the job. Gordon explains that if they find the reports,
Speaker 3: he'll need them brought by the club tonight because he's
Speaker 3: going to be at the club tonight with Michelle celebrating
Speaker 3: her birthday. Oh and we also see here Gordon wants
Speaker 3: to do an autopsy on Bobby, so he calls the
Speaker 3: funeral home and says that he's going to send some
Speaker 3: cops over after closing to collect the body. So next
Speaker 3: comes the club scene, a scene that is great for
Speaker 3: multiple reasons, one of which is the awesome performance by
Speaker 3: the house band, the Hughes Corporation, who we already mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: but this is a full musical number. We get to
Speaker 3: see the entire song, full band playing. There are three
Speaker 3: lead singers like a singing ensemble in the group, and
Speaker 3: they are awesome dancers. They each have their own like
Speaker 3: solos and all that. The song is called there he
Speaker 3: Is Again, and the Hughes Corporation just rocks. I thought
Speaker 3: the song was killer, as I think we said this earlier,
Speaker 3: but it sounds like the lyrics could be about the
Speaker 3: vampire in the film. So the lyrics are like, there
Speaker 3: he is again looking at me from across the street.
Speaker 3: There he is again, making my heart skip another beat.
Speaker 3: There's some line in there, oh well. The chorus is
Speaker 3: look the other way when he comes by you. There's
Speaker 3: one part where they're talking about how they think he
Speaker 3: can read your mind. There's a line where he says,
Speaker 3: I know he thinks I want his love so much.
Speaker 3: I love the levels of mental simulation in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is my favorite of the Hughes Corporation tracks,
Speaker 2: And if I haven't mentioned it already, the combined score
Speaker 2: and soundtrack is widely available on music streaming platforms, so
Speaker 2: you can definitely dip in and get a taste of this.
Speaker 2: It originally came out on vinyl as well, but I
Speaker 2: don't think it's benefited from one of those awesome modern
Speaker 2: vinyl restorations, which which seems like a missed opportunity.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is truly great stuff. It doesn't just
Speaker 3: like work in the movie. I'd love to just put
Speaker 3: this on anytime. So anyway, Gordon, Michelle, and Tina are
Speaker 3: at the club. They're celebrating Michelle's birthday and Mama Welde
Speaker 3: arrives and at first it's like, oh no. But then
Speaker 3: he meets with Tina and maybe she's a little apprehensive
Speaker 3: at first, but he very kindly returns the purse that
Speaker 3: she dropped the night before, and she rethinks her initial
Speaker 3: impression of him, and Tina then surprisingly invites Mama Walde
Speaker 3: to join them at their table. And this is not
Speaker 3: vamp mode Mama wel dey, obviously, this is evening attire
Speaker 3: Mama Wlde. He is super charming at the absolute height
Speaker 3: of debonair sophistication. Now, it's been kind of a running
Speaker 3: theme so far that Gordon, despite being our hero in
Speaker 3: a way, he is somewhat brusque and anti social. He
Speaker 3: doesn't exactly play nice with people. He's not polite. The
Speaker 3: more charitable way of putting this that I is that
Speaker 3: I think he's very like task oriented and most of
Speaker 3: the time he's all business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and sometimes rough some feathers, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But his sort of antisocialness comes through in this
Speaker 3: scene as well, because Mama Walde sits down and tries
Speaker 3: to order French champagne and Gordon is like, that won't
Speaker 3: be necessary, but then the ladies overrule him, so they
Speaker 3: do get the champagne service.
Speaker 2: Now. Side note, this is another scene in a film
Speaker 2: where they're sipping champagne from coop glasses, you know, from
Speaker 2: wide glasses as opposed to flutes. I really need to
Speaker 2: dive into the history of appropriate glass wear for Bubbley
Speaker 2: because I've seen that. I feel like we've seen this
Speaker 2: in some films we've watched on Weird House. In HBO's
Speaker 2: The Gilded Age, which is set in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 2: they're also drinking all their champagne out of coop glasses
Speaker 2: or something very close to a coop glass, And I
Speaker 2: feel like I've always heard that argument was like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: you want a narrow glass because you know the way
Speaker 2: the bubbles form and so forth.
Speaker 3: I feel like coop blesses for champagne have come in
Speaker 3: and out of fashion over time.
Speaker 2: It would seem to be. But my main area of
Speaker 2: research on this is seeing it in movies that sometimes
Speaker 2: have vampires in themselves. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well anyway, One interesting thing about the scene is that
Speaker 3: I had expected Mama Welde would be more coy about
Speaker 3: who he is and his relationship to Tina, but instead
Speaker 3: he comes right out and tells, Tina, you bear You
Speaker 3: bear an amazing resemblance to my wife, whom I lost
Speaker 3: a short while ago. I loved her very much. When
Speaker 3: you left the mortuary, I had to follow you. I
Speaker 3: didn't consider that I might frighten you, so leading with
Speaker 3: you look like my beloved dead wife. And just judging
Speaker 3: by the way she looks back at him, I think
Speaker 3: Tina is already over whatever apprehension she had previously. She
Speaker 3: is charmed now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the film will stress this later, but it's definitely
Speaker 2: worth noting that she is charmed but not bewitched. We
Speaker 2: see either, and perhaps sometimes both in different vampire movies.
Speaker 2: You know, Sometimes a Dracula figure or a vampire lord
Speaker 2: figure is definitely controlling people and overwhelming their senses. Other
Speaker 2: times it is more of a I guess, a pure
Speaker 2: charisma role. So yeah, he is not controlling her, and
Speaker 2: their connection across time would seem to be legitimate.
Speaker 3: That's right, And she seems to imply in a later
Speaker 3: scene that maybe she feels this is true as well.
Speaker 3: But I guess we'll get there in a few minutes.
Speaker 3: So first of all, there's a cutaway to the funeral
Speaker 3: home where we mentioned that the cops were going to
Speaker 3: go collect Bobby's body. But when they get there, they
Speaker 3: like throw open the lid to the coffin in the
Speaker 3: visitation room and the body is missing. Gordon gets a
Speaker 3: call at the club reporting this. He has to like
Speaker 3: go up to the bar and take a phone call,
Speaker 3: and then for some reason, when he comes back to
Speaker 3: the table for Michelle's birthday party, he shares the news
Speaker 3: that Bobby's body is missing, and Mama Walde says, perhaps
Speaker 3: he wasn't dead. At Gordon is like, what does that
Speaker 3: mean he was dead? I examined him my and Mama
Speaker 3: Weelde says, I'm just a passing thought. But then we
Speaker 3: get the arrival of Skillett. This is the guy who
Speaker 3: keeps showing up to admire Mamaelde's cape and to say
Speaker 3: that he's strange. But Mama Walde is suddenly driven away
Speaker 3: from the table because a photographer comes by, and as
Speaker 3: soon as she snaps a photo of their table, Mamaulde
Speaker 3: stands up and abruptly excuses himself, saying that it has
Speaker 3: been a rare pleasure. Tina chases after him, and then
Speaker 3: near the door, she catches him to say that she
Speaker 3: wants to see him again, and they promised to meet
Speaker 3: again at the club the next night, but the photographer
Speaker 3: comes barges in one more time and takes a picture
Speaker 3: of them a second time. This picture is just Mama
Speaker 3: Weelde and Tina, and this drives Mama Walde away. He
Speaker 3: seems alarmed at having his picture taken. So here I
Speaker 3: guess we should describe what appears to be the photographer's
Speaker 3: business model. Maybe this is a thing that used to
Speaker 3: have happen. I don't know, but it seems what she
Speaker 3: She goes around the club taking pictures of people, and
Speaker 3: then she has a house right next door to the club,
Speaker 3: and so she runs out of the club next door
Speaker 3: to her house, develops the photos and makes prints, and
Speaker 3: then brings the prince back to the club the same
Speaker 3: night and sells them to people. Is that how you
Speaker 3: understood it?
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like this might be something that would have
Speaker 2: been more clear to the audience of the time. And
Speaker 2: I know, based on conversations with my wife who's a photographer,
Speaker 2: there were you know, there were all sorts of practices
Speaker 2: kind of like this back in the day when you
Speaker 2: had to develop your film. There was one in particular
Speaker 2: that I remember hearing that involved like a zipline, like
Speaker 2: they had to like take the photo, get the film,
Speaker 2: zipline it down to where it was going to be produced.
Speaker 2: So there are all sorts of things like that that
Speaker 2: had to occur given the limitations of film technology. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: you know, it's all digital and so you have an
Speaker 2: entirely different model and everything moves so much faster.
Speaker 3: The only other way I could understand this is if
Speaker 3: she's is if this is not her job and she's
Speaker 3: just like a hobbyist photographer and taking pictures of her
Speaker 3: friends and happens to live next door to the club.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But the real take home here is that it gives
Speaker 2: us an excuse for a dark room scene, which I
Speaker 2: absolutely love in my movies.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is great. So she runs off next
Speaker 3: door to develop the photos, and here we get a
Speaker 3: vampire attack and I think a very creepy one at that.
Speaker 3: So she's in her house. She puts on a record,
Speaker 3: music is playing, but other than the music playing, it's
Speaker 3: very still inside, and she's developing the photos and she
Speaker 3: notices when looking at the negatives that Mama Waldey is
Speaker 3: missing from the pictures she took. So it's just like Tina,
Speaker 3: they're embracing with no one. And then she peeks out
Speaker 3: through the curtains of her dark room and suddenly Mama
Speaker 3: Waldey's there in vampire mode, gliding frictionlessly directly toward her
Speaker 3: fangs showing. It's a really scary moment.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, this is this is This is one of
Speaker 2: two really good scares in the picture. This is probably
Speaker 2: my favorite.
Speaker 3: And in fact, this scene develops into a double scare
Speaker 3: no pun intended on develops with the dark one. But
Speaker 3: it's a double scare because shortly after this a cop
Speaker 3: shows up. Because remember Gordon was supposed to get those
Speaker 3: reports delivered to him at the club. So this cop
Speaker 3: named Barnes appears to deliver the reports and he's in
Speaker 3: the parking lot of the club and he sees at
Speaker 3: the house next door a woman stumbles out of the
Speaker 3: front door and she appears to be dying, so he
Speaker 3: goes to help her, but when he picks her up
Speaker 3: to carry her inside Fangs, it's the photographer and she
Speaker 3: has changed rapidly. So in the way the mythology, the
Speaker 3: vampire mythology works here, you can change and I don't know,
Speaker 3: it seems like minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's very viral.
Speaker 3: So she vamps the cop and Gordon never gets his reports,
Speaker 3: and he tells Peters as much. The next day at
Speaker 3: the police station. Peters is mad about this Gordon. He
Speaker 3: wants to get permission to dig up Billy Schaefer's grave
Speaker 3: to do an autopsy. Peters tries to get a permit
Speaker 3: for this, but he can't, so then, in a very
Speaker 3: funny turn, Gordon he explains to Michelle that they're just
Speaker 3: gonna have to go and illegally dig up Billy's body
Speaker 3: themselves that night, and Michelle is kind of resistant to
Speaker 3: this idea at first, but he likes sweet talks her
Speaker 3: into it. He basically he kisses her and he's like,
Speaker 3: come on, do it for me, and she's like, okay.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll go violate the graveyard.
Speaker 3: So that night, while Gordon and Michelle are out digging
Speaker 3: up a grave. Mama Walde comes and visits Tina's apartment.
Speaker 3: He says he couldn't wait to see her and he
Speaker 3: needed to speak to her alone. They've been dying to
Speaker 3: see one another again, and Tina explains her complicated feelings.
Speaker 3: He frightens her, but also when he left the night before,
Speaker 3: she wanted to run after him. So he says he
Speaker 3: needs to speak to her about something, and she asks,
Speaker 3: is it about your wife? And he says, you are
Speaker 3: my wife. She says that's impossible, Mamualde, and he says,
Speaker 3: and yet you believe it, and it seems like she does.
Speaker 3: She's a bit confused, but he explains as if she
Speaker 3: is Luva reincarnated. He explains who they are, that they
Speaker 3: come from the Abani people and were sent as diplomats
Speaker 3: to Europe to gain allies who would support their protest
Speaker 3: of the slave trade. And then Mama Walde says, on
Speaker 3: that mission, I myself was enslaved, my wife murdered, and
Speaker 3: I was placed under the curse of the Undead. Our
Speaker 3: assassin was the vampire Count Dracula. Tina protests that Count
Speaker 3: Dracula is a myth. He wasn't real but mamu Walde
Speaker 3: explains he was real quote as real as I am now,
Speaker 3: as real as you are, and as real as my
Speaker 3: need for you. You are my luva recreated. So she
Speaker 3: asks again what he wants, and he says that he
Speaker 3: wants her to rejoin him. And it's not spelled out
Speaker 3: exactly what that means, but it seems that's understood as
Speaker 3: join him in undeath. Now she seems torn. She she
Speaker 3: wants to, but she's afraid. She says I can't, and
Speaker 3: then he says, you must come to me freely, with
Speaker 3: love or not at all. I will not take you
Speaker 3: by force, and I will not return. I have lived
Speaker 3: again to lose you twice, and he rises to leave.
Speaker 3: He goes to the door, but she stops him and
Speaker 3: asks him to stay. They embrace. It seems she does
Speaker 3: want to rejoin him, whatever the cost. It's a pointed scene,
Speaker 3: it is, and it's emotionally complex because you can see
Speaker 3: in his performance that when they embrace and kiss, that
Speaker 3: it's not just that he loves her, it's not just
Speaker 3: that he desires her, but there is a feeling of relief,
Speaker 3: of like of a burden being lifted. And because I
Speaker 3: guess because he won't have to be like this alone.
Speaker 3: And so meanwhile Gordon and Gordon and Michelle are doing
Speaker 3: their grave digging. Gordon digs up Billy's grave in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night while Michelle holds a flashlight. They
Speaker 3: open the coffin and what do you know, Billy pops
Speaker 3: up a full vampire. He attacks Gordon. Gordon throws some
Speaker 3: really good punches some haymakers, beats him up with a
Speaker 3: shovel and stakes him. And now it seems that Michelle
Speaker 3: and Gordon have both seen the proof. They are definitely
Speaker 3: dealing with vampires.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no denying it now.
Speaker 3: And Michelle is like, oh, all those books you've been reading.
Speaker 3: Apparently Gordon has been doing a lot of vampire research.
Speaker 3: But Gordon quickly realizes that the other vampire victims will
Speaker 3: also rise from their slumber and attack, including the cab
Speaker 3: driver at the morgue, So he calls Sam from a
Speaker 3: payphone that Sam was what's his name? Elisha Cook Jr.
Speaker 3: Calls him from a payphone and tells him to take
Speaker 3: her body out of the freezer so he can come
Speaker 3: and perform an autopsy with Peters, but also to like
Speaker 3: leave her in a locked room, lock the door and
Speaker 3: stay away, and then Gordon goes to pick up Peters
Speaker 3: to show him the evidence of the vampire menace. What's
Speaker 3: gonna happen? Of course, there is a vampire attack, so
Speaker 3: vampire Juanita rises from her frozen slumber to attack Sam.
Speaker 2: And this is another really well done vampire attack sequence.
Speaker 2: The music is really great. This, this is this is awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a creepy, unusual shot where the
Speaker 3: door opens and we see from Sam's perspective, he's like
Speaker 3: at the phone down the hall and she's running directly
Speaker 3: at the camera in slow motion, just eyes wild, fangs out.
Speaker 2: You can imagine this, this, this whole sequence playing really
Speaker 2: well in the theater too, because you get that moment
Speaker 2: where he almost he has the keys out right, he's
Speaker 2: almost gonna do it. He's almost gonna gonna lock the
Speaker 2: body in the room, but then the phone rings. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like you can imagine like the energy in the theater.
Speaker 3: Right, No, no, no, So back at Tina's a part,
Speaker 3: and we see Tina and Mama Weelde in bed and
Speaker 3: she expresses a desire to join him, but he says
Speaker 3: that can wait now he has to leave before daylight
Speaker 3: because daylight would be fatal to him, and she tells
Speaker 3: him that she loves him. Gordon and Peters arrive at
Speaker 3: the morgue and they are attacked by the vampire. But
Speaker 3: Gordon he's got the he knows what to do now.
Speaker 3: He subdues the vampire with a big, chunky silver cross.
Speaker 3: I like this cross. It looks really substantial.
Speaker 2: It's really huge. I guess it's not one that you
Speaker 2: would normally just carry on your person, and it would
Speaker 2: look ridiculous on like a chain around your neck. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure where he got is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Gordon explains to Peters that vampires multiply geometrically.
Speaker 3: He's done the math. They have to stop this fast,
Speaker 3: so they put out an APB to look for dead
Speaker 3: people who have gone missing, like Bobby. And then we
Speaker 3: get another club scene. I guess it's the next night
Speaker 3: and they're at the club again. The Huges Corporation is
Speaker 3: playing again. It's another jam and Gordon, Michelle and Tina
Speaker 3: are sitting around at a table and Mama Walde joins
Speaker 3: them once again. He cheekily orders a bloody Mary, and
Speaker 3: then Gordon is like, hey, Mama Walde can maybe you
Speaker 3: can help me? Are you into the occult? It seems
Speaker 3: kind of out of nowhere, but I think maybe it
Speaker 3: means like he's asking him because he wears the cape,
Speaker 3: so he, you know, looks like a vampire, I guess because.
Speaker 2: Of the and the follow up question, how about the
Speaker 2: heavy stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, witchcraft all that and this is so it
Speaker 3: turns into a general quiz on the subject of the occult,
Speaker 3: vampires and the devil, and Mama Walday is like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: vampires are the most interesting of all that stuff. We
Speaker 3: get another visit from Skillett and when he arrives, mamualde
Speaker 3: leaves and takes Tina with him. More talked about how
Speaker 3: he wants the cape, but there's a little tip off here.
Speaker 3: What happened to the photographer who was here the night
Speaker 3: before or I guess two nights before maybe. Gordon decides
Speaker 3: to investigate. He goes next door to her house and
Speaker 3: there he finds the photos where mamaul Day is missing.
Speaker 3: Gordon realizes that he is the vampire he's been looking for,
Speaker 3: and of course this makes him worried for Tina, who
Speaker 3: just went home with him. So Gordon and Michelle rushed
Speaker 3: to Tina's apartment to rescue her. They bust in, Gordon
Speaker 3: and Mama Alde fight and Mama Alde runs off, and
Speaker 3: the police arrive on the scene, and then there's like
Speaker 3: a chase. The people are running around through alleyways trying
Speaker 3: to find the vampire, and then he finally appears. He
Speaker 3: gets one cop isolated and he appears in vampire mode
Speaker 3: and kills the cop. So now Gordon and Peters know
Speaker 3: who the King Vampire is, but they don't know where
Speaker 3: he is, so they begin an investigation to find his
Speaker 3: coffin because you know, in accordance with standard lore, the
Speaker 3: way you can destroy him is to destroy his coffin,
Speaker 3: Troy's resting place.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, especially I hunt him out during the day.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I guess that's the other way is find
Speaker 3: him during the day and stake him while he's sleeping.
Speaker 3: So from here on out, the film becomes a lot
Speaker 3: more action oriented. Like there's a scene where they find
Speaker 3: vampire Bobby and trace him back to the antique warehouse,
Speaker 3: and there's like a raid on the vampire nest there
Speaker 3: at the warehouse, and there's a big fight with Gordon
Speaker 3: and the other police getting ambushed by vampires and in
Speaker 3: the sort of maze of crates and boxes, and they
Speaker 3: end up throwing these oil lanterns to fight them off.
Speaker 3: There are a bunch of like a person in a
Speaker 3: fire suit stunts. Oh yeah, there's a scary moment where
Speaker 3: you remember the cop Barnes who went to help the
Speaker 3: photographer at her house. He of course we saw it
Speaker 3: in Bitten, but he's like one of their investigating party,
Speaker 3: and of course he turns on them. At the end
Speaker 3: of this fight, Mamualde appears and then escapes in bat
Speaker 3: form by transforming into a bat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course this is a classic bit, right
Speaker 2: vampire transforms into a bat. But from an effects standpoint,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a daring vampire movie trope to include,
Speaker 2: because I think we've all seen examples of it. Look
Speaker 2: that look a bit silly, right, you know you can
Speaker 2: imagine like here's here's a human poof of smoke and
Speaker 2: then a floppy bat on a string.
Speaker 3: Right, it almost always looks silly. I'm trying to think
Speaker 3: of a movie where the transformation into a bat does
Speaker 3: not look silly.
Speaker 2: And you know, maybe I'm being super generous here because
Speaker 2: I like so many other things about the picture, but
Speaker 2: I thought this one looked reasonably good considering what the
Speaker 2: effect is.
Speaker 3: This is one of the better ones. I like it.
Speaker 3: But anyway, this all leads up to a big final
Speaker 3: showdown a set piece at a chemical factory, which is
Speaker 3: where Mama ALDE's coffin is stored. Now, so he Mamaelde
Speaker 3: takes Tina there and the police give chase. And then tragically,
Speaker 3: while the police are running around in this place looking
Speaker 3: through them through these like mazes of pipes and and
Speaker 3: you know, chemical tanks and things, they see the two
Speaker 3: of them, and then a cop shoots at them and
Speaker 3: Tina is killed. Horrible tragedy Tina. And then of course
Speaker 3: Mama Welde turns Tina into a vampire because at that
Speaker 3: point it's the only way to save her. But he
Speaker 3: is now of course furious, and he he yells at
Speaker 3: the at all of their pursuers through and it like
Speaker 3: sort of echoes throughout the entire building. Is sort of
Speaker 3: a curse of vengeance. He says, this will be your
Speaker 3: inglorious tomb.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then follows it up with your tomb, your tomb,
Speaker 2: your tomb. And I have to say this This bit
Speaker 2: just keeps playing through my mind because, on one hand,
Speaker 2: just an absolutely great moment in the film that drives
Speaker 2: home just the vengeful power of vampire Prince Mama Walde.
Speaker 2: You know, his enemies here are clearly doomed. They have
Speaker 2: crossed the line. But it's also one of those bits
Speaker 2: of dialogue that, on paper or coming from a lesser actor,
Speaker 2: have come off a bit silly, a bit fake, but
Speaker 2: Marshall absolutely imbues it here with Shakespearean power.
Speaker 3: It's strong. You can feel his rage. And then it
Speaker 3: becomes even worse because so he turns Tina into a
Speaker 3: vampire because it's the only way to save her at
Speaker 3: this point. And then Gordon and Peters come across the
Speaker 3: vampire's coffin. They think they've discovered his coffin and they're
Speaker 3: going to stake him to end this. They rip the
Speaker 3: lid off, throw the steak down, and then they realize
Speaker 3: they have staked Tina by accident. I guess they would
Speaker 3: have had to stake her either way, because she is
Speaker 3: a vampire now, but yeah, it wasn't what they were
Speaker 3: intending to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but at this point, the Malaldi shows up. He
Speaker 2: sees this, and this takes the fight out of him,
Speaker 2: you know, because this was his whole reason for being,
Speaker 2: and he says as much. There's this great moment where
Speaker 2: Gordon reaches in to get that big chunky cross out
Speaker 2: of his jack get, you know, like he's pulling a
Speaker 2: gun or something, and Mamaldi says that won't be necessary. Right.
Speaker 3: It's an incredibly sad turn. You could see he's just
Speaker 3: given up now and with his love gone, he surrenders
Speaker 3: himself to his ultimate fate and decides that he is
Speaker 3: going to walk out into the daylight, which he does.
Speaker 3: He like struggles, you can see the pain in him,
Speaker 3: but he walks up the staircase under the roof of
Speaker 3: the building and bathes himself in sunlight and then collapses dead.
Speaker 3: And then we see like his skin rots away and
Speaker 3: turns to worms. And it's a very bleak and tragic ending.
Speaker 3: There's not really anything there's not really anything happy to
Speaker 3: redeem it that comes back. You just end on this
Speaker 3: moment of absolute loss. And Yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 3: to say about that. It's one of the bleakest endings
Speaker 3: I can think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want it any other way.
Speaker 2: You could imagine cuts the film where you could have
Speaker 2: had something different, like, you know, the sort of like
Speaker 2: police chummy chummy having that moment where they're like, hey, well,
Speaker 2: well at least we stop the vampires. It's sad, but
Speaker 2: the good guys won. Or you could have gone an
Speaker 2: entirely different direction. It also wouldn't be out of keeping
Speaker 2: with other films and just just cut back to the
Speaker 2: Hughes Corporation doing another number, you know, and just sort
Speaker 2: of almost like insisting on a change of pace. But
Speaker 2: they stick to the ending here, and the last thing
Speaker 2: we see is the skull of Mama Walde. Now a
Speaker 2: quick note about the fate of Mama Walde here in
Speaker 2: the film. The main poster for Blackula features an image
Speaker 2: of him being staked, an image that appears to be
Speaker 2: very manipulated, like it's not I don't think it's a
Speaker 2: shot from the film. And this, of course is dumb,
Speaker 2: but in line with plenty of other vampire movies and
Speaker 2: trailers that show the movie's main vampire being staked.
Speaker 3: If that were true, it would seem to be a spoiler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again, it wouldn't be out of line with
Speaker 2: marketing for other vampire films.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not even true. In this case, he
Speaker 3: does not get staked. He just surrenders himself to death
Speaker 3: by the sun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it makes me wonder like was this Like
Speaker 2: I'm wonder of what stage in production the poster was
Speaker 2: made and maybe at one point was the character was
Speaker 2: going to be staked and William Marshall was like, no,
Speaker 2: that's not going to work for me. And if that's
Speaker 2: the case, I applaud him for sticking to his guns
Speaker 2: and going and pushing for this ending.
Speaker 3: So I guess that's Blackula a really good tragic romance
Speaker 3: and a really good horror movie too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I was really impressed with it on the whole.
Speaker 2: So as always, we'd love to hear from folks out
Speaker 2: there if y'all have any thoughts on the film, any
Speaker 2: memories of seeing it originally for the first time, or
Speaker 2: revisiting it and so forth. Everything is fair game. I
Speaker 2: just want to remind everybody that's stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 2: Is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays. We do a listener mail episode on Mondays.
Speaker 2: We do a short form episode on Wednesdays, and we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird movie on weird House Cinema. If you want to
Speaker 2: see a complete list with thumbnails or posters of all
Speaker 2: the movies we've considered so far on weird House Cinema, well,
Speaker 2: you can go over to letterbox dot com. It's l
Speaker 2: E T T E r box d dot com. Our
Speaker 2: username is weird House. We have a fabulous list there.
Speaker 2: You can see everything we've done. Sometimes there's a peak
Speaker 2: ahead what's coming next, and you can sort by genre. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't think it can go so specific as to
Speaker 2: just say show me only the vampire movies, but you
Speaker 2: know you could. You can set it to horror and
Speaker 2: then figure it out on your own. I don't know
Speaker 2: how many vampire movies we've done at this point, but
Speaker 2: we've done a few, and we'll do a few more,
Speaker 2: I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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