"...we sense that, too late, Dracula proved himself to be, under all the affectation, just another bourgeois creep..."
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No other horror icon has been treated to the celluloid treatment as much as Count Dracula, and, as a result, he's adopted many guises-- as a fumbling clown, a deaf-mute, and even a dirty old man. But imagine a Count Dracula who's basically a wimpy aristocrat who can't even find a proper victim, one who is quite the victim himself, and you'll have a good idea of what you will encounter in...
By ROB CRAIG (Note: This is the second and last installment of a series that looks at Andy Warhol's two campy contributions to the horror film. The series began with a look at Andy Warhol's Frankenstein in last month's issue.) "In Italy, three slutty sisters are primped for possible marriage to Count Dracula, the vampire!" The vampire is indisputably the most popular hero of the horror film. I say "hero" instead of "villain", because everyone agrees that villain is the star of any horror film. As the star of a film is its draw, its icon, its reason to be, it is also its undeniable hero. Even horror film titles herald the villain,not the vanquishers. Who would go to see a movie called The Guy Who Killed Dracula?
As a literal criminal-demon, the vampire represents a temporal and sexual threat to the individual. As an evil outsider, he represents a biological and political threat to society at large. Apocalyptic to the core, the vampire threatens to appropriate and exterminate life itself, dragging the living into the nightmare world of conscious death. Thus, Bram Stoker's charismatic and subversive literary character, Dracula, combines all of these elements to create what has been considered modern literature's first "anti-hero", an evil person of undeniable magnetic attraction to protagonist and reader alike. Dracula may indeed be the first fictional bad guy which the book (and later film) audience consciously rooted for!
Early films treatments, the 1932 Universal film of Carl Leammle most strikingly, took this anti-heroic stance and built a powerful counterculture scenario around it, with fabulous results. In addition, Bela Lugosi's Dracula was overtly, overwhelmingly sexual, a dashing European whose breeding and charm is irresistible to all women, and weak men as well. Lugosi's Dracula has the power to seduce the world, should he care to. Later films took this coded eroticism and draped it in post-modern trappings, creating slick, sterile crap like The Hunger. Somewhere in between stands Blood For Dracula (AKA Andy Warhol’s Dracula), Andy Warhol and Paul Morrisey's follow-up to their revisionist horror outing, Flesh For Frankenstein (AKA Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein). A voluptuous music score and exquisite settings provide the trappings of gothic horror, ala the Hammer films.
Blood For Dracula is, like its predecessor, very arty, self-conscious even. It is talk-heavy and plot-obsessed. The scenario is both campy and literate, and while striving to be theatrical, ends up being highly derivative. Its intended themes of evolutionary morality and radical upheaval in the class system of Europe are largely lost beneath bad dialect and fuzzy exposition. In short, Blood For Dracula is where Warhol/Morrisey lost their way as mainstream/revisionist filmmakers. Are they making a parody, a satire, or as a homage? Is this genre film or art film? Here, Andy and Paul seem content merely to play with a big budget, and the result is neither a good film, nor a lovable bad one.
Blood For Dracula is opulent, even sublime, yet it conveys nothing more than a sterile affectation. Even the gratuitous nudity doesn't amaze. Morrisey uses a lot of zoom shots, a sure sign of cinematic insecurity. His exemplary, hyper-real staging in classics like TRASH is gone, replaced here by a half-hearted, unfocused attempt to go "mainstream". Joe Dellesandro brings his usual anachronistic presence to the proceedings. Udo Kier, so great in Flesh For Frankenstein, tries to make the most out of his speech impediment ("Wergens!"), but it comes across as pretty tired by now. An extended cameo by famed Italian filmmaker Vittorio de Sica suggests (more than suggests?) that Warhol/Morrisey fancied themselves probationary members of the exalted elite of film genii. Yet DeSica is inarguably hilarious in a deliciously hammy performance.
This is not to say that Blood For Dracula holds no interest to the casual viewer. As an faux-arty, pseudo-camp oddity, there is a gripping erotic melodrama striving to crawl out from the heavy-handed artifice. Class tension is a major theme. Early on, Balardo locks horns with Anton: " I thought worker, and servant, meant the same thing!" Each man serves his own master, and can honor no other. Anton's master is Dracula, and Balardo's is sex.
Another strong scene features Drac's manservant Anton engaged in a rigged game of chance with a local thug. Later, Dracula and Balardo argue over politics as well. Yet when Dracula falls ill, the bitter Balardo stoops to help him. Aristocratic Dracula will have none of it, however, and stumbles off to his hideaway. As one might expect, sexual tension is Blood For Dracula’s raison det’re, and as such, the eroticism quotient in Blood For Dracula is high. The cute young sluts at the villa (Rubina and Sopheria) all fuck Balardo, one at a time, while the other watches. Then, they fuck each other.
Balardo, Dellesandro's pretty-boy stud, is a vital, simple sexual being. When he rapes Sopheria, it is disturbingly erotic, and as a political act against royalty, radical as well. Horror scenes mingle seamlessly with the erotic; Dracula grills Sopheria about her virtue, and proceeds to sink his teeth into her. He savors her slut-blood, promptly turns green and vomits blood in painful, convulsive heaves.
Realizing that a woman's treachery has almost killed him, Dracula ponders the disturbing fact that letting down his defenses for a mere tramp has challenged his supposed vampiric invincibility. Thus, Warhol/Morrisey a take loving potshot at the sexual revolution, and posit a creepy pre-AIDs prophecy as well! After another failed attempt at "virgin"-chomping, Dracula realizes that the old ways are no longer working for him: "The blood of these whores is killing me!"
Finally, the virgin is revealed: 14 year-old Perla! But before Dracula can get his hands on her, his two slutty love-slaves fetch her to him. Ironically, the only way Perla can escape eternal death is to fuck the working-class Balardo! Now that's Marxism for you!
Totally pathetic now, the once-proud Dracula grovels on the ground for Perla's filthy sexual "leftovers". Ironically, it is Esmerelda, the eccentric old spinster, who suggests to Drac what he really wanted after all; a middle-class relationship! As Esmerelda is taken by Dracula, we sense that, too late, Dracula proved himself to be, under all the affectation, just another bourgeois creep. Thus, Balardo's destruction of Dracula’s coffin by his axe is powerfully sexual as well as dramatic and political, revealing that the class struggle may be largely an overwrought battle of sexual prowess!
Overall, it is probably best to see Blood For Dracula as a failed experiment in genre hopping, combining Victorian literature with gothic horror and the whole world of kitsch and camp. Not even close to the breathless radicalism of Flesh For Frankenstein, one can see why Blood For Dracula found no friends in the underground nor the mainstream. Neither fish nor fowl, Blood For Dracula is like a charming but soulless little tramp that everybody exploits, but nobody wants to marry! (Rob Craig is the brains behind a fantastic Website that pays tribute to one of the most neglected genre film icons of them all: K. Gordon Murray, the man who brought Mexican horror and kiddie flicks to Baby Boomers back in the Sixties and Seventies. You can visit Rob's amazing Website here.) Thanks, Rob. Yes, Blood For Dracula misses the (fang) mark in several ways--it's not clever enough, nor scary enough, nor even sexy enough to overcome its limp version of the Vampire King and its Marxist-mangled camp storyline. But it is a different approach, all right, and that makes it worth a classic horror fan's attention. Just keep in mind that there are some pretty disgusting scenes in it, though. Article copyright © Rob Craig |
