With a title likeBlacula, it’s been pretty easy for many horror fans to write the film off as something like a feature-length joke. In pinnacle 1970s style, the film posters are campy, highly saturated, and littered with gimmicky taglines like “deadlier thanDracula!” For those who may not be privy to the significance of Blaxploitation cinema,William Crain’s1972 film has often been reduced to more of a punchline rather than a film with extremely important historical and political significance. The Blaxploitation film movement was a largely independent and low-budget endeavor by Black filmmakers that took large amounts of inspiration from the ideologies of the Black Power movement. Meaning, these films were not afraid to be politically charged and extremely pointed with their anti-establishment messaging. They were largely concerned with reinserting Black perspectives and narratives into the cinematic canon that were generally ignored by Hollywood. Iconic films likeGordon Parks’ShaftandGordon Parks Jr.’sSuperflywere born from this movement and even after 50 years,Blaculais still one of the most recognizable figures to come out of the 1970s Blaxploitation film boom.
While Blaxploitation films were not always horror-centric, many of them were drawn to the themes of monstrosity within the genre with particular emphasis on how historically white establishments facilitate the production of monsters onto the backs of marginalized communities. Not only did fresh takes on the genre arise through films likeBill Gunn’sGanja & HessandCliff Roquemore’sPetey Wheatstraw, but many chose to reclaim the famous narratives of Universal’s classic monster movies as a way to comment on the rampant racial and political strife in the United States. Frankenstein’s monster was reimagined asBlackensteinand Dracula was made complicit in the creation ofBlacula.In this way, Blacula uses the audience’s familiarity with the horror icon Dracula as a vehicle to comment on the ongoing legacy of slavery as well as systemic oppression and generational trauma.
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What Is ‘Blacula’ About?
Blaculatells the story of Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) and the fate which is imposed upon him. The prince and his wife Luva (Vonetta McGee) take a diplomatic trip to meet with Dracula (Charles Macaulay) to discuss their disdain toward the slave trade and their desires to urge the count to help them stop it. Here, Mamuwalde is notably presented as Dracula’s equal. He is just as (if not more) powerful, aristocratic, and self-assured as the count himself. He also isn’t afraid to hurl an insult or two toward the Big Bad. Upon expressing their request, Dracula scoffs at the proposal and quips that he believes “slavery has merit,” to which Mamuwalde rebukes Dracula’s favor toward the slave trade by dismissing the practice as an act of “barbarity.” In this way, the film plays with historic narratives surrounding slavery.Blaculamakes a pointed effort to disconnect notions of barbarity from Africa and enslaved peoples and, instead, points its finger to those who uphold such systems as the true barbarians.
Despite Dracula’s relentless slights hurled toward Mamuwalde and Luva, the prince remains calm and collected with an air of intense disdain toward the count. It isn’t until Dracula makes a pass at Luva by mentioning his desire to enslave his “delicious wife” that Mamuwalde brilliantly replies, “Sir, are you ill?” This whole exchange is a show of power. Dracula’s power, apart from his vampirism, solely lies in his need to assert his perceived racial dominance over the prince. In contrast, Mamuwalde’s power lies in his intellectuality and refusal to stoop to the same level as the count. When Dracula realizes that he cannot intimidate Mamuwalde through social power, he desperately clings to his need to feel superior to the prince through resorting to his vampirism. When they try to imprison both Mamuwalde and Luva, a fight breaks out between the prince and the count’s henchmen. It takes three of them to subdue the prince enough for Dracula to finally bite him. Even then, Mamuwalde stands on his own two feet during the entire exchange while Dracula needs the assistance of others to overtake the prince. In this way, unlike Mamuwalde, Dracula’s power is an illusion and falsified reality. Like the racist ideologies that upheld slavery, his influence does not lie within himself but in the ways he infects others.
Through this bite, Dracula attempts to reassert his power back from Mamuwalde by taking away his agency and sentencing him to a life of slavery to human blood and the night. Mamuwalde’s name is, then, changed to Blacula, a variation of his white “master’s” own name which draws on the history of renaming enslaved peoples in an attempt to strip them of their individuality and identity. This renaming is an attempt to permanently tie the prince to Dracula’s bloodline and legacy; however, Mamuwalde never embraces this name. Despite being the title of the film, Mamuwalde never once refers to or introduces himself as Blacula. Upon subjecting Mamuwalde and Luva to their horrible fates, the count curses him with the statement, “sweet blood will become your only desire.” However, Mamuwalde’s actions upon waking up centuries later prove that he is anything like Dracula and his desires are not governed by the count’s influence or attempts to taint the prince’s resolve.
Reincarnation and Cyclical Trauma
At the core ofBlaculalies a romance that spans centuries. While Mamuwalde was imprisoned in a locked coffin, Luva was presumably left to helplessly starve to death within the same room that held the coffin. Almost two centuries later, Mamuwalde is awakened by a gay couple in the 1970s who come across the coffin that has held the prince prisoner since 1780. Upon his release, Mamuwalde quickly devours them and continues to transverse across Los Angeles looking to take a bite out of anyone he comes across. It isn’t long before he happens upon Tina who is the spitting image of his beloved Luva. Unsurprisingly, he immediately becomes smitten and romantically pursues her. While this romantic take on the vampire story is unsurprising, Mamuwalde’s refusal to hurt Luva is a direct rejection of Dracula’s earlier assertion that he will never desire anything more than human blood. Though Mamuwalde can technically exert his vampiric power on Tina to force her to spend her life with him, he desires a mutual love and her consent to join him in eternal night. Mamuwalde truly sees Tina as his beloved wife’s reincarnation and believes it is fate that they’ve met again.
Though Tina does end up professing her love for Mamuwalde and agrees to spend her life with him, the prince’s killing spree catches up to them. Throughout their whirlwind romance, the police and this film’s version of Van Helsing, Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) are hot on their trail. Desperate to make Mamuwalde atone for his transgressions, they follow him and Tina to their hideout where a fight ensues that leaves Tina mortally wounded. In an act of desperation to save her life, Mamuwalde turns her into a vampire before wreaking havoc on the cops who’ve attacked them. In a dramatic turn of events, one of the cops kills Tina. Her death sheds light on how little Mamuwalde’s circumstances have changed from his ill-fated encounter with Dracula to 1970s Los Angeles. In a rather overt commentary on rampant police brutality as a byproduct of the violent legacies of slavery, the couple is once again caught in the crossfire of racial violence. He’s dealt the same exact hand under different institutions that are centuries apart. In the moments following Tina’s death, Mamuwalde walks into the sun after having lost his second chance at happiness.
This cyclical nature of loss within the film works to shed light on the ways in which oppressive structures rarely go away and, instead, simply mutate into alternate forms. Mamuwalde’s human life was taken away because he dared to speak against the slave trade and his second life was stolen because of the monstrosity passed onto him from Dracula’s racism. Mamuwalde, whether he is human or vampire, disrupts the status quo and is systematically eradicated because of it.Blacula’sdepiction of the titular character killing violent cops, a figure of retribution and vengeance against legacies of police brutality, is evocative of a fantastical reimagining of whether revolutionaries likeFred HamptonandMalcolm Xwere allowed to live. Though, unlike Dracula who needs to be killed, Mamuwalde takes his fate into his own hands by refusing to fall again at the hands of a different oppressor.
DespiteBlacula’sfirst impression that gives off the idea that it may just be a simple parody, it ends up providing a deep and insightful look at the parallels between vampirism and the legacies of slavery. Through its connections between the parasitical natures of both vampirism and racism, the film asks the audience to question who (or what) the monster truly is. Despite being forcefully turned into a vicious creature, Crain’s film takes care to show Mamuwalde as a sympathetic character until his bitter end. Mamuwalde deconstructs and rejects Dracula’s brand of vampirism in true revolutionary fashion. He dared to desire more than blood. As the first Black vampire put on film,Blaculaunapologetically brought the historically coded political nature of horror right up to the audience’s faces. Not without its faults, the raging and casual homophobia being one of them, revisiting Blacula’s legacy as a horror icon in the wake of 21st century terms like “elevated” and “political” horror proves that the genre has always been concerned with shedding light on the terror embedded within sociopolitical issues.
