Category: The Criterion Collection

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #28: Paul Mor­ris­sey’s Blood For Drac­u­la.

Blood for Drac­u­la is lit­tle dif­fer­ent, in essence, from it’s part­ner, Flesh for Franken­stein. I guess if I had to pick, I’d say I enjoyed this movie bet­ter, main­ly due to the ridicu­lous­ly gra­tu­itous nudi­ty, hot les­bian make-out scenes and a scene that remind­ed me of the Black Knight from Mon­ty Python & the Holy Grail. Shlock has its redeem­ing qual­i­ties, as long as you’re not con­cerned with main­tain­ing a cer­tain lev­el of snob­bery.

Blood for Drac­u­la stars the same folks, in vir­tu­al­ly the same roles. Udo Kier is Drac­u­la instead of Baron Franken­stein, he still has the same creepy assis­tant (more kempt this time around), and Joe Dalle­san­dro remains Joe Dalle­san­dro, fuck­ing any­thing with a pulse. This film was shot back-to-back with Flesh, so it prob­a­bly was­n’t hard for any of these actors to stay in char­ac­ter. (If you can con­sid­er Dalle­san­dro to be capa­ble of act­ing. He does­n’t even try to feign an accent. Prob­a­bly no point.)

There’s quite a bit of heavy-hand­ed pro­le­tar­i­an rev­o­lu­tion­ary talk in this film, and the fact that Dalle­san­dro as sta­ble­boy cum stud ends up own­ing the manor with a harem of three nubile sis­ters who’d love noth­ing more than to spend their days shirt­less out­doors and nights watch­ing each oth­er get porked by Dalle­san­dro, and, well then.

The high aris­to­crat­ic body count is Warhol-gen­er­a­tion wish-ful­fill­ment, only 36 years lat­er, Joe Dalle­san­dro’s char­ac­ter appears just as moral­ly bank­rupt as every­one else. The film remains as a good record of what a cer­tain group of peo­ple thought about at a cer­tain time, but with age has become no longer com­pelling.

Tan­gen­tial­ly, all three films since I’ve start­ed back in on watch­ing the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion have all had some messed up sex­u­al pol­i­tics going on. I’m ready for a change-up.

Supplemental Materials

• Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion essay by Mau­rice Yacow­ar
• Not Com­ing to a The­ater Near You review
• Trail­er:
• Open­ing Cred­its:
• First Bite Scene: