The Crossing point of ALL the worst elements of british cinema of the mid 60s to the mid 70s, 'Vampira' (Also known as; "Old Dracula") some how manages the triptic of being a dire comedy, a dire sex comedy and uncomfortably racist at multiple points across its mercifully brief runtime.
The plot? David Niven IS the most lethargic Count Dracula ever committed to film, gliding through scenes glassy eyed and giving the bare minimum of a performance (Some would say Dracula is a cool, dead eyed beast...I say someone needed there driveway re-paving)
Anyway; Draculas on the way out here, he hasnt had fresh blood in ages and 50 years prior to this, his wife; The Countess succumb to a lack of blood and has basically been in stasis in the basement ever since.
All thats set to change however; as a group of playboy bunnies are shipped out to his Transylvanian dwelling to take part in a sexy photoshoot. Sexy comedy ensues with all the eroticism of a wet dishcloth...
Anyway! Dracula gets his servent to take blood samples from all the girls and miraculously! One of them is a match for The Countess and can help ressurect her! But...OH NO! the blood sample has come from a black woman and its turned our porceline Countess Black as a side effect!
Cue a further 60 minutes of Nivens Dracula, The Countess and their lacky travelling the globe following the supermodels trying to find either the woman who turned the Countess black, or another WHITE woman with the right blood who can 'Un-black' the countess...and dont worry, theres plenty of 'Ugh! your black!' comments across the runtime!...Ugh...
Now I may be a simple country born progressive...But I dont like humour that basically boils down to one race being less welcome than another race and I CERTAINLY neither expected, WANTED or wished to see David Niven in 'Blackface'. But it was enough to put the final nail in THIS coffin I can tell you.
The scripts tone is the ONE thing that kind of keeps it from completely falling over, its a campy british comedy at its heart and (when its not being racist, mysoginistic or generally unpleasent) the vibe is kind of like one of the lesser 'Carry on' films...That combined with some, not TERRIBLE, direction and cine is basically the entirity of my rating summed up on this one.
From the top;
The plot is not only offensive, but SO tediously dull. its just actors standing in rooms talking about nothing in particular for 80 minutes...the comedy is dire, with most of it being grown worthy, awkward or uncomfortble, I charted ONE gag in the 3rd act that stifled a smile...THAT was the absolute best this film got from me.
With it having HEAVY playboy branding, you'd think the expectation for this one would be that it was going to have some level of eroticism in it. But, you'd be wrong. all that means here is that the women in the film wear low cut blouses for most of the runtime and I believe theres 0.2 seconds of exposed boobage. So its a sex comedy that isnt funny, and isnt particularly sexy...
But adding to that, the pacing is postiviely sedementary, it crawls from scene to scene painfully, the characters are ALL one note and dont really get ANY kind of deeper range or context to work with. EVERYONE looks positively bored...When I can say confidently that ACTUAL sex films made around this time, that wernt intending to BE comedic or have any meaningful kind of plot...were funnier and DID have more of a plot than this thing. I hope it helps to clarify just how truely dire the viewing experience for this one was...
As mentioned, the direction and cine arnt 'bad' per se...thats one of the small mercies of this film, the set spaces are interesting, the characters are well utilized within the space and there does seem to be a little bit of a flicker behind the eyes on a creative vision standpoint...Dont get too excited though, because by that, all I really mean is they didnt ACTIVELY offend me with poor cine and direction...they just about did the job, nothing more and nothing less.
Shots are a mixed bag of half decently composed and 'This is the only angle we can shoot from' which is never a good thing, its a colourful film, but they dont utilize a key pallette range to help give the film a sense of distinction or identity and the edit is painful. with random cuts, slow plodding sequences. This was a half an hour 'B-film' and a forgettable one at that...HOW they managed to make an hour and 20 out of it, im still trying to figure out to this day...
The characters are all dull, Even ex-'carry on' star Bernard Breslaw cant raise the spirits of this one. Nivens on auto pilot, the rest of the cast are uninspiring, with the one notable exception of Teresa Graves, here playing the black incarnation of the Countess...She's delightful, bright, full of energy, she actually DOES bring something good to the role she plays...the rest though? eesh...
Honestly? this things so awful and dated I absolutely couldnt actively RECOMMEND it...But if you know your stuff about 'golden age' hollywood actors and want to see the cinematic equivilent of a multi car blood bath pile up. You've found a morbid curiosity in this film.
I likely wont watch this one again, and I advise that, unless you are TRUELY bleakly curious to see how dull and poor taste this thing is, you steer well clear too.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/vampira/
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