Vampire Flicks: Blacula (1972)

Dracula's soul brother.

One month in the spring of 2001, possibly April, the theme for AMC's American Pop block was "70's Horror," specifically the early 70's, no later than 1972. Except for this one, none of the movies they showed were at all major in the history of the genre, as they were B-movies like The Return of Count Yorga, Frogs, and The Thing with Two Heads, and Frogs was the only one I knew of beforehand (even then, all I knew about it was the title). The week before they showed Blacula, they played the original theatrical trailer for it after the movie for that Saturday night and that alone got me interested, especially since I'd rather dismissed beforehand because of silly the title sounded. The trailer seemed to imply that this movie was not a joke or a comedy and it showed Blacula kicking a lot of ass, besides just biting people. Plus, I always remembered how it described him as being, "More horrifying than Dracula." Despite my interest, for whatever reason, I missed about half of the movie the following week, but that said, I'll never forget how I did change the channel to AMC that night and came in right at the beginning of the moment where Juanita Jones, the cabbie turned vampire, comes screeching out of the morgue in slow-motion, right at the camera. For a 13-year old, that was quite eerie to see, and it was enough to get me to watch the rest of the movie, which I really enjoyed. I liked it enough to where I bought the VHS of it around New Year's that winter and I liked it even more after being able to see the whole thing. It's still a movie I really enjoy, which is interesting given how "blaxploitation" is not a genre I've ever been interested in. In fact, if you don't count the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, which was deeply influenced by it, this and its sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream, are the only blaxploitation movies I've ever seen. That said, I'm sure I'm not speaking out of turn by saying that this has to be the best blaxploitation horror film. I haven't seen Blackenstein or Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde but from what I know of them, I don't see them topping Blacula, as this film is simply marvelous in every way.

In the year 1780, Count Dracula entertains Prince Mamuwalde and his beloved wife, Luva, of the African Abani tribe at his castle in Transylvania. Things go smoothly until Mamuwalde reveals to the count the true reason for their visit: his people hope that he will use his influence to stop the slave trade. Dracula, however, scoffs at this and makes some thinly veiled racist remarks towards Luva, enraging Mamuwalde. When they attempt to leave, Dracula has his men attack Mamuwalde, who puts up a good fight but is ultimately knocked unconscious. As Luva is restrained by his vampire brides, Dracula proceeds to bite Mamuwalde, cursing him as a vampire and giving him the name of "Blacula." He proceeds to leave him in a hidden vault to suffer for eternity and keeps Luva down there as well until she dies. Nearly 200 years later, in 1972, two gay interior decorators, Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer, buy Dracula's castle and ship the furniture to Los Angeles, including the coffin that contains the cursed Mamuwalde. Upon breaking the lock at a warehouse there, McCoy and Schaffer become the African prince's first victims as a vampire. The next night, while watching some mourning friends of McCoy's family at the funeral home, Mamuwalde's eye is caught by Tina Williams, who looks exactly like Luva. On her way home, she runs into him but is frightened and runs away. He attempts to follow her, gathering up her dropped purse, but is hit by taxi cab driver Juanita Jones, whom he subsequently turns into a vampire. Meanwhile, Dr. Gordon Thomas, a pathologist for the LAPD and the boyfriend of Tina's sister, Michelle, is puzzled by the bizarre condition of McCoy's body, as well as by that of Juanita when he examines her at the morgue the next day. Starting to form a bizarre theory, Thomas asks his friend and superior, Lt. Jack Peters, to get him the official report on McCoy and Schaffer. That night, as she and her friends are celebrating Michelle's birthday at a dance club, Tina is formally introduced to Mamuwalde when he returns her purse. She's immediately taken with him, as he is with her, and is intent upon seeing him again. That night, Thomas learns that McCoy's body has disappeared from the funeral home and when he digs up Schaffer's body on a hunch, he comes face-to-face with him as a vampire, which he has to destroy. Once he convinces Peters that vampires are real, he soon learns that Mamuwalde is the main one, which is complicated by the fact that Tina has fallen in love with him and he's intent on taking her.

Blacula's director, William Crain, a graduate of UCLA's film school, is kind of notable for being one of the first African-American filmmakers to achieve commercial success, particularly with this film, which was one of the highest grossing movies of 1972. It was his first film as director after he'd served as an intern on the Sidney Poitier film, Brother John, and directed an episode of Mod Squad, but its success did anything but launch his career. In fact, the only other full-length film Crain directed after Blacula was the aforementioned Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde; otherwise, he mainly served as a TV director on shows like Starsky and Hutch, S.W.A.T., The Dukes of Hazzard, and Designing Women, the latter of which was the last thing he did until 2016, when he directed a short called Nothing as It Seems. (He's so obscure, I couldn't find a definitive photo of him.)

I've said before that I don't really like it whenever they try to make Count Dracula into a sympathetic character, as he feels works best as just a figure of pure evil, but that doesn't mean I don't care for sympathetic vampires and monsters in general; you just have to do them right. Blacula, or rather, Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall), is a prime example of such a creature, and a tragic one at that. He and his wife are on a mission to stop the slave trade that threatens their people, only to learn that Count Dracula, the influential man they hoped would help them, is far from the good man he appears to be, both in regards to their race and as a man altogether. Upon being enraged when Dracula makes insulting and hardly subtle remarks about Luva, Mamuwalde attempts to leave, only for Dracula to sic his goons on him. Even at this early stage, Mamuwalde proves to be a very proficient fighter and able to hold his own, but he's ultimately overwhelmed and knocked unconscious with a vase to the head, after which Dracula bites him. The evil count then places the hideous curse of vampirism on him, naming him "Blacula" and intending to have him suffer from his insatiable hunger for blood for all eternity in a vault within the castle, with Luva dying in there with him. Then, 200 years later, Mamuwalde is finally released and able to satiate his hunger by feeding on Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer after they break the lock on his coffin. Initially, he seems completely overtaken by the curse that Dracula placed on him, seeming to revel in it as he evilly laughs while getting back into his coffin upon quenching his thirst, and watching Bobby's body at the funeral home, waiting for him to come to life. That's when he catches sight of Tina Williams, who looks exactly like Luva. Yearning for her, he follows her when she walks home from the funeral home but intentionally frightens her and causes her to run. Chasing after her, and grabbing her dropped purse, he ends up getting hit by Juanita Jones, whom he's initially angry at, blaming her for his losing Tina, and then decides to use to satisfy his bloodlust for the night. The next night, while Tina is out with Michelle and Dr. Gordon Thomas to celebrate the former's birthday, Mamuwalde tracks her down, returns her purse, and makes up a story about her resemblance to his wife, saying that he lost her recently. Spending time with them, he ultimately retreats when trying to avoid being photographed, but makes it clear that he intends to see Tina again, as she does him.

The love that he develops for Tina seems to make the good man that Mamuwalde once was emerge somewhat from the monster he's become but he remains a rather complex character. Believing her to be Luva reincarnated, he genuinely wants to be with her, wishing for him to join her, and when she initially refuses, he tells her that he will not take her by force. In fact, he also intends not to see her again at all if she won't come with him, but once she gives herself over to him, accepting who and what he is, there's nothing that will keep him from her. At the same time, he's still satisfying his hunger for blood, creating more vampires as a result, and also covering his tracks, such as by killing Nancy, a photographer at the club who snapped a photo of him with Tina, and destroying the photo she developed (although, he didn't get rid of the negative, an oversight that allows Dr. Thomas to realize he's the main vampire). When he joins Tina, Michelle, and Thomas at the club again and they discuss the murders and their possible connection to a vampire, Mamuwalde is very blase and talkative about it, chuckling at the idea that the police really do believe that a vampire is behind it all and laughing off Thomas' telling him that they're conducting a search for the coffin by suggesting, "Perhaps the modern vampire doesn't require a coffin. They are rather elusive, you know." Later, when Tina talks to him about this, Mamuwalde tells her that he doesn't care about them or what they think in the slightest; she's all he cares about. When Thomas then breaks in, having learned that he's the vampire, Tina is all that keeps Mamuwalde from killing him, as he then merely bats him away before escaping, killing a police officer who follows him by bashing his head in against a wall. He also proves to be much smarter than the police realize, as when they show up at the warehouse where he killed McCoy and Schaffer and contend with a bunch of other vampires hiding in there as well, he later tells Thomas and Lt. Peters that, thanks to the former's advice, he's moved his coffin. Instead of killing them right then, he changes into a bat and flies away because he has a, "Rather urgent appointment... elsewhere."

The next night, with the police keeping watch on the streets, Mamuwalde uses his connection with Tina to guide her to his new lair at a nearby underground chemical plant, while creating distraction by flying around in bat form. He soon joins Tina there and is bent upon taking him with her, but when she's fatally shot by one of the police officers who, having followed Tina, tracked them down there, he has no choice but to make her a vampire as well, something he wanted to avoid, as he told Thomas earlier that her life means more to him than his own (I don't know exactly how he planned to be with her otherwise but obviously, he didn't want to curse her in the same way Dracula did him). Enraged by being forced to do this, he declares that everyone in the plant will die and proceeds to go on a rampage, beating a number of police officers to a pulp, throwing one into a circuit breaker, and picking up the plant manager and tossing him like a ragdoll into some officers on a stairwell. But, Mamuwalde's fury is extinguished when Thomas and Peters, upon finding his coffin, inadvertently kill Tina by staking her. With no will to go on, he says a final goodbye to her and climbs the stairs up into the sunlight, willingly allowing it to destroy him.

William Marshall is the reason why this character works so much, as he brings an impeccable sense of gravitas to it and manages to play all sides of him to perfection. With his deep, smooth baritone, he's charming, sophisticated, and romantic when the scene calls for it and is able to make Mamuwalde's desperate need to be reunited with his beloved as clear as a bell; but when it comes time to bring out the beast, he manages to be very intimidating. When he's in full vampire mode, when we really see him go from Mamuwalde to Blacula, he not only sprouts his fangs but he grows thick tufts of hair across his cheeks, his eyebrows suddenly become much bushier, and his hair more wild, with a very exaggerated widow's peak. The idea is probably to make him come across more like a ravenous animal and that's definitely the case with how he sounds, as he lets out these beastly snarls and roaring yells that are quite unsettling. Finally, besides being deadly as a predator, Blacula is also simply somebody you don't want to tangle with, as he proves to be quite efficient at being the stuffing out of those who get in his way. In the opening, when he battles Dracula's servants, he shows off some formidable fighting skills, no doubt a sign of his tribe's strength and skill, and this only increases when he becomes a vampire, as he's able to smack, pound, and throw his attackers like they're nothing, especially when he rampages in the underground chemical plant at the end.

Interestingly, Vonetta McGee has two roles in the film and yet, at the same time, they're likely the same character. In the prologue at Dracula's castle, she plays Luva, Mamuwalde's beloved wife who, despite her very limited screentime, is clearly very devoted and loyal to her husband, singing his praises by referring to him as, "The crystallization of our people's pride." However, she's unable to do anything to save him from being cursed by Dracula, and is cruelly locked away in the vault where he's imprisoned in a coffin, left there to die a slow and painful death, powerless to help him. In the actual story, as Tina Williams, she enters the picture as a family friend of Bobby McCoy's and unknowingly catches the resurrected Mamuwalde's eye at the funeral home. While she's initially frightened by him when she runs into him on the street and runs away in a panic, when she meets him again at the club the following night when he returns her lost purse, there's a mutual, instant connection between the two of them. Tina becomes intent upon seeing Mamuwalde again, and when he shows up at her apartment the next night instead of meeting her again at the club like they'd planned, she admits that she almost ran after when he left, though she doesn't understand why. Confused and a bit frightened by these feelings, she's initially resistant to the idea that she is Luva reincarnated and doesn't know what to think when Mamuwalde tells her of what happened with them and Dracula. She's scared when he asks her to come with him but, when he's about to leave, telling her that he won't see her again if this is her decision, Tina stops him from leaving and the two of them become full-on lovers that night. Now, she's accepted that Mamuwalde is who and what he says he is and, in spite of her fear, she now wants to go with him. She's concerned by how blase and downright arrogant he comes across when he and Dr. Gordon Thomas talk about the occult and vampires at the club the next night, especially in regards to the police's searching for the vampire that's behind the string of deaths in the city but, regardless, continues to love him and long to be with him.

When faced with the fact that Mamuwalde killed a police officer when he bolted from her apartment after Thomas broke in on him, and has done the same to other innocent people, Tina becomes conflicted between her love for him and Thomas' telling her that he must be stopped, no matter what. She agrees to help them but it turns out to be a very flimsy resolve, as Mamuwalde uses their connection to guide her to his hideout in an underground chemical plant, unaware that the police tail her there. She ends up getting shot by one of the police officers when they head down in there and Mamuwalde is forced to make her a vampire to keep her from dying, an action he didn't want to take and is furious when he has to. It doesn't last long, though, as Lt. Jack Peters and Thomas unintentionally stake her as she lies in Mamuwalde's coffin, killing her for good, and this prompts Mamuwalde to destroy himself by walking up into the sunlight. It's never made clear whether or not Tina was actually Luva reborn, as her desire to be with Mamuwalde is all we get as possible evidence and that could possibly be just deep-rooted attraction and fascination on her part.

While just about all of the characters are interesting, likable, and quirky in their own ways, if I had to pick one who's just kind of there, I'd have to say it's Tina's sister, Michelle Williams (Denise Nicholas). She has no relevance to the story aside from being very close to her sister, as well as to the McCoy family, having to go and try to calm down Mrs. McCoy after Bobby has been found dead, and being Dr. Gordon Thomas' girl, whom she works with in his lab. She initially thinks Thomas has lost his mind when he starts reading up on macabre subjects like the occult, witchcraft, and such, and she has no doubt when, after he's unable to get a permit to dig up Billy Schaffer's body for an autopsy, he decides to do so anyway. Thomas manages to persuade her to come with him through his natural charm and gets the shock of her life when he digs up the coffin, opens it, and Schaffer comes at him as a vampire. Initially, she's hysterical because she thinks Schaffer was still alive and when Thomas explains that he was a vampire, she realizes that's why he was pouring over those books. She also comes to the conclusion that Bobby McCoy is a vampire too and is stalking around somewhere. After that, she stays with Lt. Peters' wife while Thomas shows Peters himself the necessary proof to convince him that vampires are real and her only other major moment is when she confronts Tina about her connection to Mamuwalde, angrily asking her if she wants her or any of her friends and family to become his next victims. The last time you see Michelle, she's screaming hysterically when Peters unintentionally stakes Tina as she's resting in Mamuwalde's coffin.

My favorite character aside from Blacula himself is Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala), who's both the voice of reason in the story and also just a really cool, smooth guy, one who just looks and feels like the quintessential 70's blaxploitation character. As a pathologist for the Los Angeles Police Department, he's puzzled by the oddities he finds on Bobby McCoy's body when he examines it, especially the bite marks on his neck that are two or three inches deep and the extreme loss of blood. When he examines Juanita Jones' body the next day and finds the same sort of oddities on her, he begins to formulate a crazy idea that he tries to laugh off but is forced to look further into it to be sure, deciding to do an autopsy on both McCoy and Jones, as well as deal with sloppy police work in order to get the file on McCoy and Billy Schaffer. Things get even weirder for him when he learns that McCoy's body has disappeared from the funeral home and he's frustrated when Sgt. Barnes doesn't bring him the file like he was supposed to. Still needing to know for sure what's going on, and unwilling to tell Lt. Jack Peters what his idea is for fear of being laughed off, Thomas tries to get a permit to dig up Schaffer for an autopsy and begins reading up on occult matters. Irritated when Peters is unable to get the permit, Thomas decides to dig up Schaffer himself, along with Michelle, and when he does, his worst fears are confirmed when he finds that he's a vampire, which means that McCoy is one as well. Needing Peters to believe him, he gets Sam, the coroner, to take Juanita Jones' body out of the freezer to thaw, and while she ends up killing Sam, her presence is enough to convince Peters when he and Thomas show up and the latter kills her with a cross and the rays of the sun. Tired, and realizing the monumental task that lies in front of them, Thomas then remembers Mamuwalde, whom he meant the first night at the club, and decides to feel him out on the subject of vampires when they meet there again. He clearly gets suspicious about him, given how he reacts to his questions, and when he checks out the home of Nancy, a waitress at the club who hasn't been seen lately, he finds the negative of the picture she took with Tina and Mamuwalde and sees that the latter isn't visible there.

Now knowing that Mamuwalde is the vampire they're looking for, and after almost dying at his hands when he attempts to save Tina, Thomas, along with Peters, find a warehouse full of vampires when they track Bobby McCoy to it and the two of them end up having to fight them off. In this scene, Thomas gets to show off that, along with being a cool cat and a really good pathologist, he can kick ass with the best of them, managing to beat down and stake some vampires and having to save Peters from getting killed a couple of times. The two of them run into Mamuwalde, who tells them that, thanks to Thomas' "suggestion," he's moved his coffin. Realizing that Tina is in danger and that Mamuwalde won't stop coming for her, Thomas tells her that, because of what he's done, he must be stopped and tries to get her to help them. But, when Mamuwalde lures Tina to his new hideout at the chemical plant, Thomas, Peters, and the police trail her there and attempt to stop him as well as save Tina. However, they fail at both, as Tina is shot, turned into a vampire, and then staked, and Mamuwalde destroys him by walking up into the morning son, with Thomas and Peters grimacing from the horrific sight of his body rotting away.

Rounding out the main cast of characters is Lt. Jack Peters (Gordon Pinsent), who's both Dr. Gordon Thomas' superior and friend. Gruff and frustrated with the sloppy police work he has to put up with, he gets doubly irked when Thomas starts doing bizarre things like ordering autopsies on Bobby McCoy and Juanita Jones and asking for the files on McCoy and Bill Schaffer, without telling him what it is he's doing. He really thinks Thomas has lost his mind when he asks for a permit to dig up Schaffer for an autopsy, given how difficult it is to get it, but despite his reservations, Thomas persuades him to do it, although his efforts prove unsuccessful. Because of unbelievable the situation in question, Thomas has to show Peters in order for him to believe and decides to do so with Juanita Jones. Sure enough, when they show up at the coroner's office, Peters gets all the proof he could ever need when Jones jumps him when he takes a cover off her body and Thomas kills her by driving her into the sunlight with a cross. Like Thomas, Peters then realizes the task they have in front of them when he learns that vampires spread like an epidemic, doubling each night, and that in order to track down the source, they're going to have to put out an APB on dead people, which he's sure they'll get locked up for. However, it pays off when some officers spot McCoy as he's walking along the street and they track them down to a warehouse that turns out to be full of vampires. Peters proves to not be as proficient in defending himself in this situation as Thomas, having to be restrained from saving an officer who's already doomed when he gets attacked and saved from Sgt. Barnes when he's revealed to be a vampire as well. And as if Peters wasn't freaked out enough, Mamuwalde confronts him and Thomas and transforms into a bat and flies away right in front of them. Trying to trap Mamuwalde the next time he comes for Tina, Peters and the police set up roadblocks on the street outside her apartment but the vampire manages to draw her away to his new hideout. She's tailed there by the police and, after Mamuwalde beats on and kills a bunch of the officers, Peters is the one who ends up accidentally staking her when they rip open Mamuwalde's coffin, expecting him to be in there. With that, Mamuwalde commits suicide and Peters and Thomas both grimace at the sight of his body rotting away in the morning sun.

As I said before, this is definitely an example of a movie where the many supporting characters, no matter how small their roles, are just as interesting and likable in their own ways. Even though their only significant parts in the story are at the beginning, the two interior decorators, Bobby McCoy (Ted Harris) and Billy Schaffer (Rick Metzler), are the most important in that they're the ones who unknowingly bring the undead Mamuwalde back with them to Los Angeles after they buy Dracula's castle and release him from his centuries-long imprisonment. In addition, they're very memorable for being very over-the-top in their flamboyancy, from their mannerisms and speech patterns to the way they dress and use the terms "honey" and "baby" like they're going out of style (McCoy is especially effeminate, doing the snap at one point). Plus, the fact that they're gay lovers is about as subtle as a brick to the head. I know some may cringe at how exaggerated they are but, like I said, they're only really in the film for a short bit at the beginning and I, personally, can't help but smirk, even though I know that's not how gay people really are at all. They're also depicted as being rather shrewd, telling the real estate agent that the fact that the castle once belonged to Count Dracula is going to change their deal and they make him agree to take 15% off of the price. Schaffer seems to have something of a taste for the macabre, as he planned to put Mamuwalde's coffin in their living room, but when he cuts himself while opening one of the crates in the warehouse, Mamuwalde immediately goes for him when he rises before batting away McCoy and taking the fangs to his neck. After becoming vampires, Schaffer ends up buried and gets staked when Dr. Gordon Thomas opens his coffin, but McCoy starts roaming around the city and picks up a friend to take back to the warehouse. When the police track him down there, they find that he, as well as Mamuwalde's other victims, have created quite a number of vampires that are hanging out there, making for a real handful for the officers.

Mamuwalde's third victim is Juanita Jones (Ketty Lester), a mouthy cab driver who accidentally slams into him when he steps out into the street while chasing after Tina. I love how she's not at all fazed by the fact that he's a tall man dressed in black, with a cape, and instead angrily admonishes him for stepping out in front of her, and when he calls her an imbecile, she retorts, "Imbecile?! Who the hell you callin' an imbecile?! You the nut that ran in front of my cab! You're the only imbecile on this street... boy!" That's when Mamuwalde turns his attention to her and decides to use her to satisfy his bloodlust. Thinking he's coming onto her, Juanita tries to talk off and get him to go back after Tina, but it doesn't work and she ends up getting bitten. She remains in cold storage at the morgue for a while, with Dr. Thomas being called into examine her the day after she's found dead, and then, she's ultimately what he uses to show Lt. Peters that vampires are real. When they come in to see her body after he told the coroner to take her out and let her thaw, she jumps them when Peters pulls the sheet off of her body, making a very loud, yipping scream as she does (she was loud that I can remember, when I watched this movie over at my aunt's one time, her dog was actually turning his head at the sound from the TV), and is ultimately killed when Thomas drives her into the sunlight using a cross.

Nancy (Emily Yancy), a photographer and scantily-clad waitress at the club where Michelle Williams celebrates her birthday with Thomas and Tina, unknowingly becomes a target for Mamuwalde when she takes a picture of him and Tina. When she walks over to her nearby house to develop the picture, Mamuwalde sneaks in and attacks her just as she's coming out of her dark room (and has seen no trace of him in the picture at all). After he bites her and destroys the picture, she stumbles out of her house and is spotted by Sgt. Barnes, who comes to her aid. However, when he picks her up, she bites him, turning him into a vampire as well. I know Nancy is one of the vampires Thomas and Peters battle, as you get a brief look at her in that outfit of hers during the sequence, but I don't know if she had a big role in it or if she was so unrecognizable in vampire form, I didn't know it was her. Speaking of Barnes (Logan Field), he was coming by the club to bring Thomas the files on Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer. After Nancy bites him, he disappears for a good, long while, only showing back up with the other police officers when they track McCoy to the warehouse. In the midst of the fight with the vampires, he reveals to be one himself and attacks Lt. Peters, only to be fought off by Thomas. One last onscreen victim of the vampires is Sam (Elisha Cook Jr.), the hook-handed coroner who can be a bit argumentative, as well as a bit slow. When Thomas decides to use Juanita Jones as proof of the existence of vampires, he tells Sam to lock the door to the morgue after he pulls her body out, insisting that he must do that when he gives him the typical, "Yeah, sure," response. Sam almost does that but he gets distracted by a phone call and forgets, which leads to him becoming Juanita's victim when she resurrects and comes screaming out of the morgue at him. It's never made clear if Sam became a vampire or if Juanita tore him apart, as he's never seen again afterward and there's nothing left at the scene, save for some blood on the wall and his workspace looking as if it were ransacked, but Thomas decides to put an APB out on him, as well as Bobby McCoy.

Swenson (Lance Taylor Sr.), the owner of the funeral home where Bobby McCoy's body is kept, is memorable for a few reasons. One, when Tina and Michelle come in to look at the body, he's still trying to push his business, telling them that the room the body is in can be expanded. Two, he seems to cater exclusively to African-Americans, as he tells Dr. Thomas that he didn't prepare Billy Schaffer's body because he doesn't get a lot of whites in his funeral home. Three, while he's cooperative with him, he's not impressed with Thomas, describing as, "The rudest n***er I've ever met in my life!" (I debated whether or not to actually write the word, given that it's just a quote and, what's more, it's said by an African-American, but I decided to play it safe.) Finally, he's quite horrified when McCoy's body suddenly disappears and while, you never hear him, he appears to have been quite hysterical when telling Thomas of it over the phone. Skillet (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) is another type of character you often seen in these types of a movies: a happy-go-lucky, groovy ladies' man who has a thing for Nancy in particular, offering to accompany her when she goes to develop her pictures but she turns him down because she knows that her pictures would be the last thing to develop with him in a dark room. He's also quite fascinated with Mamuwalde, whom he describes as "one strange dude" and says has a "bad cape" that he'd love to get his hands on (it's subtle, but Mamuwalde seems to be annoyed by Skillet's mere presence).

Remember what I said about how I tend to prefer Count Dracula to be a force of pure evil? Well, the filmmakers must have felt the same way, as this particular Dracula (Charles Macaulay) is just a vile bastard, with no redeeming qualities at all. He starts out as a nice enough host to Mamuwalde and Luva but shows his true colors when he not only scoffs at the idea of ending the slave trade, saying that it has merit, but also suggests that he would love to have his "delicious wife" as part of his household. When Mamuwalde tells him that he's acting like an animal, Dracula feels the need to remind him that he's the one who comes from the jungle, and when they try to leave he has his servants keep them from leaving. While watching them fight and eventually knock Mamuwalde unconscious, Dracula lets out an unsettling, evil cackle and reveals his vampiric nature by having his brides restrain Luva before biting Mamuwalde. He then cruelly cruses Mamuwalde to be a vampire like himself and intends to keep him hidden away in his vault, where his thirst for blood will torture him for all eternity. As if that wasn't bad enough, he locks Luva up in there as well, keeping her there until she wastes away and dies, and tells her that Mamuwalde's cries will comfort her before leaving, cackling evilly again. You learn that Dracula met his end at the hands of Prof. Van Helsing but, of course, nobody has any way of knowing that he left a trace of himself down in the vault, which soon gets unleashed.

Blacula is far from the first vampire movie to be set in modern day (at least, "modern" in regards to the time it was made) America, as before this you had Son of Dracula, which takes place in Louisiana, the obscure 1958 film, The Return of Dracula, which takes place in California, and both of AIP's Count Yorga movies, among others; however, I do think that Blacula is the first to put the vampire in an urban setting, whereas those other films took place in small, rural towns, and it makes for a nice change of pace from the usual vampire movie fare. In fact, the movie begins with the more traditional Gothic setting of these types of films, with the prologue in Count Dracula's castle in 18th century Transylvania, where you get the usual trappings, decor, furniture, costumes, and tropes like secret vaults, coffins, and cobwebs, before transitioning to the modern day. Once we move to Los Angeles, we get to see a vampire stalking the busy streets and looking down at everything from the tops of the buildings, while using a warehouse as a hideout for him, his coffin, and the other vampires he creates. In addition, you see a modern police force and a pathologist investigating the bizarre string of deaths that begin to happen, before having to come terms with the absurd but frighteningly real notion that there are vampires about and learning the power of what they're up against, as well as normal people, going about their day-to-day lives in their bland, typical homes, when they're not partying at the local clubs, suddenly finding themselves caught up in this craziness. And I've always enjoyed the setting of the underground chemical plant for the movie's climax, one, because I always like that kind of industrial setting anyway, and two, it's one of the last environment you'd expect to see a vampire.

One of the things that really makes Blacula a real joy to watch is how unapologetic it is as a product of its time. Everything you see absolutely screams 1972, from the hairstyles and the clothes to the vehicles, the slang ("cat," "bad," and "solid," among others), and the music... oh, God, the music! I'm not just talking about the actual score, which itself is often very funkadelic rather than creepy or atmospheric, but also the songs that you hear at the night club, sung by the group, the Hues Corporation. They're these really catchy rhythm and blues numbers, punctuated by the group's gyrating and dancing on the stage in a style that's very 70's, not to mention their signature light-blue outfits and hairstyles (look at the Afro on the female singer). The main characters themselves are very stylish in the way they dress and wear their hair, with Tina and Michelle's poofy hair (especially Michelle), Tina wearing her hair in netting in one scene, Skillet with those brightly-colored shirts under his dress coat, and all the outfits that Dr. Gordon Thomas goes through, from turtleneck sweaters, often underneath wool-like coats, to the denim jacket he sometimes wears. Let's also not ignore how Thomas just looks like an absolute pimp of a man, with that hair and rocking mustache, and comes off like such a smooth operator when he convinces Michelle to help him in digging up Billy Schaffer's body by kissing her until she gives in, prompting her to say that he's so bad but so good. Speaking of Schaffer, he's the only white guy in the whole movie who wears really nice clothes; the rest of them are only seen in their work uniforms, like Lt. Peters, the police officers, and Sam, the coroner. However, his clothes aren't nearly as fruity as that ensemble that Bobby McCoy is dressed in, complete with a purse, as if we already didn't have enough proof that he's gay.

The memorable opening title sequence, designed by Sandy Dvore, is another aspect of this movie that makes it feel very of its time and yet, makes it stand out from most other horror films. Set to the score's funkiest piece of music, it's a quasi-James Bond, animated title sequence, depicting the black silhouette of a bat and vampire as it chases the red-colored figure of a person throughout a black-and-white painting that I think is meant to depict the interior of a cave, with a lot of pits, crags, and other obstacles that they each use against each other. You definitely don't see opening titles like these in most horror films (off the top of my head, the only sequence I can think of that is somewhat comparable is the one to Re-Animator and even that's not this uniquely abstract), especially not set to this kind of music, and it sets the tone perfectly, making it clear that, while this is not a spoof or a horror comedy, it's not going to be completely devoid of camp either.

As you might expect in a blaxploitation movie, there are allusions to racial discrimination and the like, though they're not as "in your face" as they could be, save for one aspect which I'll get into. You have the notion of Swenson, the mortician, not really catering to white people in his funeral home and Dr. Thomas having to deal with how clumsy-footed L.A.'s southwest division is in handling the reports on Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer, to the point where Sgt. Barnes has to be sent over there to find them, prompting Thomas to comment that his not getting the reports didn't come to him not having enough pull at headquarters and add to Lt. Peters about how, "So many sloppy police jobs involve black victims." During this conversation, Peters also suggests that the deaths of McCoy, Schaffer, and Juanita Jones could have been the work of the Black Panthers but Thomas immediately shuts him down, describing how ridiculous it would be for them to go after two gay interior decorators and a cab driver. The most overt blaxploitation aspect of the film, however, has to do with Mamuwalde himself. He and Luva go to Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula to try to bring their tribe into the community of nations and hope that Dracula and other such high-standing dignitaries will help them to fulfill their ultimate objective of stopping the slave trade. Instead, he gets sneered at by Dracula, who says that slavery has some merit, that it's only barbaric from the standpoint of the slave, and goes on to suggest that he would love to have someone like Luva as part of his household. When Mamuwalde takes offense at that statement, Dracula says, "It is a compliment for a man of my station to look with desire on one of your color." Mamuwalde and Luva then attempt to leave but Dracula not only stops them from doing so but enslaves Mamuwalde himself, both by keeping him prisoner in a vault in his castle and cursing him with vampirism, going as far as to add insult to injury by giving him the name "Blacula." Upon awakening in modern day Los Angeles, Mamuwalde can be seen as the ultimate reminder of the horrors of slavery, and most of his victims, including his first one, Billy Schaffer, are white rather than black. In fact, he "sticks it to the man" in his own way, as all of the police officers are white and he brutally beats and maims a bunch of them to death, and on top of that, there's the dichotomy that the one black man associated with the police, Dr. Thomas, is the movie's equivalent to Prof. Van Helsing, helping them to stop Mamuwalde.

The depiction of vampires in this film is an interesting one for the time, in that they're depicted as being able to switch from coming across like fairly normal people to full-on bloodthirsty animals, with the exception of Dracula, who comes across the same in either mode. That may not seem much different than how they're usually depicted in film, suddenly sprouting fangs whenever they're about to bite somebody, but as described earlier, the change in Mamuwalde from a charming and dignified gentleman-like figure into a snarling, roaring monster is quite pronounced and the same goes for how Nancy is able to come across like a helpless woman long enough to bite Sgt. Barnes and he, in turn, can act normal to join the other police officers in the raid on the warehouse, only to reveal a mouth full of fangs when he tries to attack Lt. Peters. It's like a more extreme version of the change that Christopher Lee's Dracula and the other vampires in the Hammer films go through. When the vampires are in monster mode, they really do act like animals, with how they snarl, growl, and pant heavily, as they move in on their prey, and they prove to be quite strong and capable of taking people down. As in most vampire movies, they're repelled by crosses, can be killed by staking them through the heart, burning them, or exposing them to sunlight, and, although Mamuwalde is the only who does it, they can turn into bats. They don't seem to have hypnotic powers in order to seduce their prey, although, again, Mamuwalde is the only one we see doing that and Tina is taken with him enough so that he wouldn't have to do it even if he could. That said, while we only see it as a third-party looking in, when Bobby McCoy picks up a guy while walking the streets and takes him to the warehouse, it seemed like he just used his charisma, rather than any mind tricks. In any case, the vampires are so ravenous in their attacks that seducing their prey is probably the very last thing on their minds; they want your blood, and they want it now!

Being a fairly low budget movie, Blacula is very light in the effects department, both visual and makeup. The vampires are created through very simple means, often with just fake fangs and pale skin tones. Like Mamuwalde, some of them go through a noticeable change, with Juanita Jones' hairdo suddenly becoming crazy and spiky and Tina getting white streaks in her hair that are kind of similar to the Bride of Frankenstein. However, a lot of the vampires are hard to take seriously, as they're still wearing the same 70's clothes and hairstyles that they were when they were alive (a vampire with an Afro is not scary), and while those pronounced changes work for Mamuwalde himself, they look silly on all of the rest. Mamuwalde is also the only one you see change into a bat onscreen and it's done through the simple effect of fading William Marshall out and putting an animated bat (a painfully obvious one) in his place. And being a PG-rated movie, you barely see any blood, as the vampire attacks, when they're not Mamuwalde bloodlessly beating on police officers and knocking people away, either happen out of the camera's range, are obscured, or you only see the beginning and ending of the bite. The moment at the beginning where Billy Schaffer cuts himself and Mamuwalde feasts on his blood, getting some around his mouth, and the aftermath of Juanita Jones' attack on Sam are the only times where you see any generous amount of blood and even that's not much. Tina's getting staked at the end is also surprisingly bloodless. The only truly gruesome makeup effect is at the very end, when Mamuwalde allows the sun to destroy him and you see his decomposing face, steaming and gushing blood, with maggots wriggling around in his eye-sockets and other spots, before the image fades into a skull.

As I've said, the film opens in 1780 Transylvania, where Mamuwalde and Luva's visit with Count Dracula goes south upon their learning of what a vile person he is. Just as they're about to leave, Dracula makes it clear that he has other plans, snapping his fingers and motioning for a couple of his servants to detain them. However, when they grab Mamuwalde, he proves to be hard to put a leash on, as he knocks them both away and throws one up against the wall before delivering a hard blow to his back. As Dracula restrains Luva, the other servant and Mamuwalde struggle, with the latter getting forced onto the table, but he manages to punch his attacker away, and flings the servant he bashed before over the table when he tries to attack. Thrown against the wall by the other, Mamuwalde grabs a lit torch for defense, when one of his attackers grabs a sword from the wall. He tries to knock the torch out of his hand with it but Mamuwalde, instead, manages to disarm him, forcing him back with the torch. Just when it seems like he's got the upper hand, a third servant smashes a chair over his back, knocking him to the floor. The three of them lift him to his feet, push him along the floor as he struggles, and one of them grabs a vase and smashes it over his head, knocking him unconscious. Laughing evilly, Dracula sends his many vampire brides in to restrain Luva, while he walks up to the unconscious Mamuwalde, exposes his neck, and bites him. In the next scene, Dracula curses Mamuwalde with vampirism, naming him Blacula and intending to lock him away in his vault to make him suffer from the hunger for blood that is doomed to take him over. Slamming shut the coffin he lies in and padlocking it, Dracula tells Luva of his intention to trap her in there as well, adding, "Listen... for his cries. They will comfort you, until your death." With that, he and his servants leave the vault and shut the door, trapping Luva inside, as she can only sob over the coffin that houses her husband, unable to do anything to help him.

Following the opening titles, we cut back to Transylvania, now in 1972, as Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer close their deal on buying Dracula's castle. Telling the real estate agent of the money they're going to get off of everything in the castle, McCoy asks if they are any secret passages within the castle and the agent, in turn, shows them the vault, where they find several coffins. Schaffer finds himself drawn to the one that Mamuwalde was sealed in and, after the agent offers no objections, it's shipped to Los Angeles with everything else. One night, at the Andrew Brothers Warehouse, McCoy and Schaffer get to work opening the crates so they can tag all the items (when McCoy lights an oil lantern, Schaffer comments, "Oh, if the fire department could see you now, you silly lamp queen," which probably leaves modern viewers speechless). Schaffer is eager to open up the coffin and asks McCoy to do so, which he takes a crowbar to one of the crates. Just when McCoy breaks open the lock on the coffin, Schaffer ends up cutting the underside of his arm with the crowbar and calls him over. Finding a pretty bad gash, McCoy gets some bandages and begins wrapping the cut up, neither of them noticing the coffin's lid opening, as Mamuwalde rises up and steps out. Seeing the two of them, and noticing Schaffer's injured arm, he begins to close in, brandishing his fangs. McCoy is the first to see him and he immediately makes Schaffer turn and look, as Mamuwalde comes in, snarling at them. He grabs Schaffer, ripping off the bandage and batting McCoy away, sending him tumbling into the boxes, before digging his fangs into Schaffer's arm, seeming to be ecstasy over finally satisfying his yearning for blood. McCoy then grabs a plank and smashes it over Mamuwalde's back, but he barely registers it, merely turning and smacking McCoy away again. Seeing another blood meal, he then closes in on McCoy, cornering him against the crates, and grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, before choking him out and biting him on the neck. Now thoroughly satisfied for the time being, Mamuwalde walks back over to his coffin and finds the cape that Dracula placed around him before. Putting it on, he remembers what Dracula said to him about being cursed and walks back to his coffin, stepping in and laughing maniacally as he closes the lid.

The next night, at Swenson's Funeral Home, Mamuwalde watches McCoy's body from behind some drapers as it lies in an open casket, when the right hand rises up and grabs the edge of it. Swenson then brings in Tina and Michelle Williams, as well as Dr. Gordon Thomas, to pay their respects, when Tina notices the odd position McCoy's hand is in and Swenson describes it as being the result of a reflex. Tina has a hood on over her head but, as she talks about her and Michelle's relationship with McCoy, she pulls it up to reveal her face and when Mamuwalde sees her, he recognizes her as Luva. She and Michelle then head out to try to comfort McCoy's distraught mother, while Thomas, after formally introducing himself to Swenson, examines the body. He learns that the wounds on his neck were two to three inches deep before they were dressed and then notes that his veins have completely collapsed, as well as that he's so pale that it looks as if he lost a lot of blood, yet the coroner's office didn't report a lot of bleeding. Upon learning that Swenson didn't prepare Billy Schaffer's body, he leaves. Meanwhile, Tina, deciding that she's too tired to deal with Mrs. McCoy, asks Michelle to see her by herself while she heads on back to their apartment. As she walks home, Tina seems to feel like someone is following her and, upon hearing some thrashing behind her, slowly but surely goes from fast-walking to a run, until she slams into Mamuwalde when she rounds a corner. Holding onto her, he talks to her as if she's Luva, trying to tell her who he is. However, she's frightened and runs away, prompting him to give chase. He chases her across the sidewalks, down a flight of stairs into an underground tunnel, where she drops her purse before coming out the other end. Mamuwalde finds the purse and picks it up, before heading up the flight of stairs and frantically looking around for her. He's so preoccupied with finding her, he walks into the street and gets hit by an oncoming cab, rolling off the hood and landing hard on the road.

The driver, Juanita Jones, stops her cab and, seeing Mamuwalde rise up, gets out of it, angrily admonishing him for running out in front of her. Mamuwalde, in turn, blames Juanita for making him lose Tina, and she proceeds to give him an earful. After her tirade, he turns and leers at her, clearly deciding to make her his next victim, as he brandishes his fangs. Juanita, sensing that he's moving in on her, nervously tries to turn his attention back to going after Tina, not noticing how wild Mamuwalde looks as he moves towards her. He then grabs her arm, and before she can put up much of a struggle, puts his hands on either side of her head, pulls her in, and bites her with a loud, roaring yell, as he bends her over the back of the parked cab. At this point, Tina makes it back to her apartment and, having lost her purse, takes a spare key out of a nearby box to get through the door. Putting the chain lock on, she walks over to the window and looks out onto the street, when she hears a knock at the door. Grabbing a kitchen knife for protection, she walks over to the door and opens it up a crack, waiting to stab a hand if it reaches in, when the person on the other side of the door reveals herself to be Michelle. Upon letting her in, Tina tells her what happened, while back at the Andrew Brothers Warehouse, Mamuwalde returns and looks at Tina's purse, which he still has before, getting back into his coffin and closing the lid. The next morning, Thomas heads over to the city morgue to examine Juanita's body. After the hook-handed Sam pulls her out, Thomas looks her over and notices the same oddities as with Bobby McCoy's body, right down to the two puncture marks on the neck and the collapsed veins. Initially, he laughs off the idea that forms in his head but you can tell that he then begins to wonder.

That night, Thomas, Tina, and Michelle at the club to celebrate the latter's birthday, and as the Hues Corporation performs their song, There He Is Again (there's about two minutes worth of watching them sing and dance to it, as other club patrons do the same), Mamuwalde comes in and has one of the waitresses bring Tina to him, as he returns her purse. After he apologizes for frightening her and she forgives him (you can't hear them due to the song but it's clear that's what's going on), she asks him to join them at the table. Upon introducing himself and sitting down with them, he explains to Tina that her resemblance to his late wife prompted him to follow her from the funeral home and they all share a toast of champagne for Michelle's birthday. At that moment at Swenson's, he finds that McCoy's body has disappeared from the casket when he opens it for the two men who show up to get it for the autopsy Thomas had planned, and promptly calls the doctor at the club. Thomas tells Swenson that he'll send someone down there and also that he shouldn't touch anything. Walking back over to the table, he explains to everyone about what happened and Mamuwalde suggests that maybe McCoy wasn't dead. That's when Skillet joins them, helping himself to their champagne, and a small cake is brought to the table for Michelle's birthday. However, when Nancy shows up and starts snapping pictures, Mamuwalde immediately stands up and excuses himself, saying that he must be going. As he heads for the door, Tina follows him, as does Nancy with her camera, and while Skillet and Thomas discuss what an odd fellow Mamuwalde is, he and Tina decide to meet up at the club again. He kisses her hand, only for Nancy to photograph him and he immediately ducks outside. Tina then walks back to the table and Nancy leaves to go develop the pictures.

She walks across the street to her small house, heads inside, puts on some music, and goes into her kitchen, which doubles as a dark room. As she begins developing the pictures, outside, some light spills into the room as her front door is opened. She hears the floorboard creak but, when she yells and gets no response, she figures it was nothing and goes back to developing the picture. Still getting an eerie feeling that someone is in her house, she peeks her head out through the drapes separating the room from the rest of the house and looks around. Not seeing anyone, she ducks back in and goes back to her business, while outside, a shadow passes over her record player. The picture has no developed, but Nancy is mystified when she sees that only Tina's image has appeared; Mamuwalde is nowhere to be seen, even though he was right next to her. Dumbfounded, Nancy takes the picture and is about to walk out into the living room, only to see Mamuwalde coming at her. She tries to escape but with nowhere to go, he manages to grab her easily, silence her with a hand over her mouth, and bite into her neck, taking the picture from her hand and crumpling it up as he does so. Outside on the street, Sgt. Barnes pulls up in order to deliver the files on Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer to Thomas at the club, when he sees Nancy stumble out onto her porch and collapse. He runs over to her and helps her to her feet, as she weakly begs for help. He picks her up bridal style and prepares to carry her back into her house, only for her to brandish her own fangs and bite his neck.

With no files on the first couple of victims, and with Lt. Peters unable to get him the necessary permit to dig up Billy Schaffer's body for an autopsy, Thomas, who's started pouring over books on the occult, breaks it to Michelle that the two of them are going to have to dig up the body themselves. Come nighttime, while they're out doing exactly that, Tina gets a visit at her apartment from Mamuwalde, who tells her that he couldn't wait to meet her at the club, as they'd originally planned. He sits her down and tries to make her understand what's going on, telling her of how the two of them are of the Aboni tribe, what happened between them and Count Dracula, and that she is Luva reborn. He asks her to rejoin him but, when she refuses, he says that she must come to him of her own will or not at all, adding that he won't return. As he's about to leave, he turns to her and says, "I've lived again, to lose you twice." But then, just as he reaches the door, Tina asks him to stay with her and she goes up to him. The two of them embrace, kiss passionately, and Tina removes his cape, prompting him to hug her tightly and lovingly. Elsewhere, though, a much less romantic scene is happening, as in a cemetery, Thomas is busy digging up Schaffer's coffin, while Michelle sits beside the grave, holding a flashlight. When she asks what he's expecting to find, he admits that he hopes it to be nothing, and then asks her to shine the light down in the hole, as he removes the last substantial chunk of dirt. He swipes the rest of it off with his hands and opens it, only to jump back when Schaffer, in full vampire mode, lunges up at him and grabs him around the neck. Thomas punches him in the face, grabs the shovel and smacks him with it, hits back down, and then pulls out a wooden stake, which he stabs into Schaffer's chest and drives in with the shovel (he stabs it into the wrong side, though). He then climbs out of the hole and tries to calm Michelle, who is hysterical, both over what happened and because she thinks Thomas just murdered a man. He explains to her that Schaffer was a vampire and that they just put him out of his misery. As she calms down, she realizes why Thomas has been reading all those books and it also hits her that Bobby McCoy is a vampire too. She tells him to call Peters but Thomas knows that telling him won't work, as they have to show him. That's when he remembers Juanita Jones.

Driving to a payphone, Thomas calls the coroner's office and tells Sam to take Juanita's body out of the deep freeze, insisting that he lock the door behind him. Sam takes the body out of the freezer and wheels it on the gurney in the middle of the room, but as he's trying to find the keys to lock the door, the phone rings again. Distracted, he heads to answer it and forgets to lock the door. As Thomas drives over to Peters' house to pick him up, dropping Michelle off there, Juanita's body begins to thaw (does the sight of the frost on her body melting give anyone else an icky kind of feeling, because it does me). Unbeknownst to Sam, who's sitting at his desk, her eyes are starting to flutter and she begins breathing heavily. Sam then gets another phone call, and as he answers it, Juanita rises up on the gurney, hissing. She then opens the door and comes rushing down the hallway at Sam, with him barely having any time to react and defend himself before she grabs him and rips him away from the phone. As silly as Juanita may look, with that crazy hair and the robe she's suddenly wearing (rather considerate of her to find a robe and put it on after lying naked underneath the sheet on the gurney, wasn't it?), the image of her running down the hall in slow motion, screaming like a banshee, with her claws and fangs out, and that crazed look on her face, is still effectively freaky. That scene transitions to Mumawalde and Tina, who've just finished making love, but with dawn coming, he's forced to leave her, promising her that when she goes with him, it won't be unpleasant or painful. As he leaves, she tells him she loves him.

Thomas and Peters pull up on the curb at the morgue and head inside, with the former brandishing a large cross. Inside, they find no sign of Sam, and when they walk over to the desk he was at earlier, they see that it's been ransacked, with splats of blood on it and the wall next to it. The two of them walk into the open room at the other end of the hall, with Thomas walking into the freezer, while Peters notices a covered body on a gurney. When he pulls the sheet back, Juanita springs up, yelling crazily, and lunges at him. Thomas comes running out of the freezer and drives her back with the cross right before she can get at Peters, whom she had cornered behind the door. He backs her up into a corner of the room, as she continues squealing and blindly swiping at him. He then opens the blinds on the window and she recoils and screams as the sunlight hits her, collapsing to the ground and expiring, her sounds going to low groans as the life-force leaves her. Thomas tells the stunned Peters that's what he couldn't telling her about and that he had to see it for himself, with Peters admitting that he never would have believed it. The next morning, they discuss what to do, with Thomas suggesting they put an APB out on McCoy and Sam, and as crazy as that may seem, Peters agrees that they do need to put cops on every corner. As he leaves to go home and get some sleep, Thomas mentions that he has something he needs to check out.

That night, they're all at the club again, when Mamuwalde shows up again and joins them, ordering a Bloody Mary. Thomas asks him about the occult and Mamuwalde says that he believes there's some truth in all of it, adding that he finds vampires to be the most fascinating at all when Michelle asks him of them. Thomas admits that it's believed that a real vampire is behind the killings but when he says that most in the department don't believe in them, prompting Mamuwalde that he would believe that to be the vampire's best defense. He also tells him that a search is being organized to find the vampire's coffin, and Mamuwalde suggests that a modern vampire may not need one. That's when Skillet shows up again and Mamuwalde decides it's time for him and Tina to leave. Once they're gone, Skillet mentions that Nancy hasn't been seen since the other night and Thomas and Michelle realize they haven't seen her either. Curious, Thomas goes to Nancy's house to find her dark room ransacked and, after some searching, finds the negative of the picture she took of Tina and Mamuwalde. As he looks at it, he remembers how Mamuwalde reacted when Nancy snapped his picture and immediately puts two and two together, before realizing that he's with Tina. Speaking of which, at her apartment, Tina confronts Mamuwalde about his blase attitude about those questions and he simply answers that no one matters to him but her. As they embrace, Thomas and Michelle pull up outside and rush into the building. Mamuwalde asks Tina to go with him that night, but she gives no answer, instead just kisses him. Thomas then breaks in and charges at him but Mamuwalde grabs him by the collar of his suit. Tina begs him not to hurt Thomas and he merely smacks him onto the couch before rushing out of the apartment. Running through the streets, Mamuwalde catches the attention of some passing police officers, one of whom rushes after him, with Thomas not too far behind. Coming to a dark alley, the officer creeps inside, his gun drawn, when Mamuwalde slowly approaches from the darkness, laughing maniacally. He opens fire on the vampire but it does no good, as he's grabbed by the throat, strangled, and slammed against the wall, with Thomas and the other officer arriving to find him slumped dead against it and with Mamuwalde gone.

While Thomas and Peters wait at Tina's apartment for any report on Mamuwalde, two officers on patrol spot Bobby McCoy as he strolls along the sidewalk and goes up to a group of people standing out there. At the apartment, Peters gets a call about it, informing him that McCoy has picked up a guy, and he and Thomas quickly head out, knowing that the man is in danger; on the way out, Thomas gives Michelle his cross for protection. Back on the street, the officers, keeping an eye on McCoy and his friend, tell Peters that they're heading east on Fifth and Peters, who's riding in another patrol car with Thomas, in turn, asks for a grid on the area to pinpoint where they might be going. However, when the officers round the corner up ahead, they find that they've lost both of them. Hearing this, Peters tells them not to follow on foot and he has headquarters name every building in the sector. As the man on the other end rattles off every building there, it seems pretty hopeless, but when the Andrew Brothers Warehouse comes up, Peters realizes that's it, since that's where McCoy and Billy Schaffer's bodies were found. Within seconds, the police converge on the warehouse, including Barnes, who'd been missing up to that point. He, along with Peters, Thomas, and some others, head inside, armed and ready, while other officers stand guard outside. Inside the warehouse, they don't get far before the big, sliding door they entered through suddenly slams shut behind them, but they keep walking, reaching the center, full of crates, several of which contain oil lamps, including a lit one sitting on top of it. They then find the body of the man McCoy picked up, dead on the floor.

That's when McCoy jumps out at them and starts creeping towards them, joined by many other vampires, who emerge from the depths of the warehouse on all sides, laughing and breathing heavily as they move in. One officer fires on a female vampire, as she advances towards him, only to find that his bullets do nothing to stop her, and he's then jumped from the side by another, who tackles him into some nearby boxes. Seeing the two of them struggle, Peters tries to help but Thomas has to restrain him, telling him that he can't do anything for the guy now, as a couple of other vampires descend on him and begin feeding. Thomas sees one vampire approaching them from behind and several other from the sides, trapping them up against the crates. Noticing the oil lamps, Thomas tells Peters to throw them and in doing so, they manage to make McCoy and some of the other vampires recoil from the flames that result in their being thrown, with one catching on fire. Peters sees a female vampire approaching and tosses an oil lamp on the crates beside her, with Thomas following that up with another that sets her body aflame. As they throw more at her, Barnes suddenly removes his hands from his face, revealing himself to be a vampire. Thomas throws an oil lamp to Peters but he finds himself unable to throw it, forcing Thomas to come running in, grab the lamp out of his hands, and toss it at Barnes himself when he tries to attack. Barnes is instantly set aflame and stumbles around, setting some of the crates about him on fire, before collapsing to the floor. Another vampire jumps at them from atop the crates but they manage to dodge him and he lands in some boxes. Snarling, the vampire comes at them, jumping at and grabbing Peters, but Thomas grabs a shovel, whacking the vampire in the gut, breaking the shovel in two, and then grabs him by the hair and knees him in the jaw, sending him falling back into the boxes. Thomas jumps in and uses the broken shovel handle as a makeshift stake to finish the vampire off. With the place in flames, the two of them run through the big, sliding door and close it behind them, only to find themselves face-to-face with Mamuwalde. After joking about how he should have told them he decided to move his coffin, and ensuring Thomas that Tina's life means everything to him when he's asked if he intends to make her a vampire as well, Mamuwalde decides not to get rid of them right then, saying he has an urgent appointment elsewhere. He then turns into a bat and flies away, to Peters' utter shock.

The next night, after making Tina agree to help them, they all wait in her apartment for Mamuwalde to appear, watching out the window at the street below, which is full of police trying to contain an unruly crowd. As Tina waits anxiously in her bedroom, Mamuwalde watches the barricade from a nearby rooftop and then communicates telepathically with Tina, who asks him where he wants her to go. As the police continue trying to get the onlookers to cooperate, Mamuwalde becomes a bat again and flies above the crowd, amongst the buildings. A woman screams in terror at the sight of it and, upon hearing this, Thomas and the others know it's him. Michelle runs to Tina's bedroom to check on her, only to find it empty and the window open. Down on the street below, Tina walks out into the crowd and down the sidewalk, as Peters puts an APB out on her, telling all units to merely watch her and wait for Mamuwalde to appear. Tina now walks amongst some old, abandoned buildings, followed closely by Mamuwalde in bat form, while a patrol car heads down Florence, searching for her. They soon come across her but, per Peters' instructions, they drive on by her, and she continues walking until she rounds a corner and heads down the stairwell leading to an underground chemical plant. Seeing this, the officers radio her location and Thomas, Peters, and Michelle head out from the apartment. Walking down several stairwells into the depths of the plant, Tina eventually meets Mamuwalde and the two of them kiss. Up top, the police have converged on the site and the two of them, hearing the sirens, attempt to make their escape. The officers pour into the place, armed to the teeth and surprising the confused plant manager. Heading down to the bottom, four officers split up into pairs, with one of them getting knocked out by Mamuwalde, who grabs him by the throat and slams him against the wall. Seeing that the coast is clear, he and Tina step over the unconscious man, while up top, Thomas, Peters, and Michelle arrive, along with more cops. Learning that Mamuwalde is down in the plant, Peters tells the officers not to try to take him alone, while Thomas tells them to keep their eyes peeled for his coffin. At that moment, deep in the bowels of the place, one cop comes across Mamuwalde and Tina as they head down a corridor with pipes on either side, towards a flight of stairs. The cop takes aim and shoots, accidentally hitting Tina, who collapses to the floor. He fires a couple of more shots at Mamuwalde, who doesn't react at all. Realizing Tina is mortally wounded, Mamuwalde furiously attacks the cop when he walks up to him, slamming him back and forth against the pipes, punching him in the face, and giving him three hard blows to the head. Going back to Tina, he realizes that she's dying and, unable to take the thought of losing her again, he bares her neck and bites her.

Enraged at having to do this, Mamuwalde rises up and shouts, "Dr. Thomas! Dr. Thomas! You and your dear friends are dead! Not one man shall escape my vengeance! Not one man shall leave here alive! Search out every shadow, every corner! This will be your inglorious tomb! Your tomb, your tomb, your tomb!" Hearing this, Thomas and the others wait in nervous silence, scanning the place, and trying to anticipate what will happen next. For a moment, there's nothing but the sound of the machines humming, when one of the cops is suddenly thrown into a circuit breaker and electrocuted. While the others rush to the source of the sound, Mamuwalde climbs up a ladder and, seeing a couple of cops enter the room he's in, hides until he's ready to strike. He approaches one of the cops, who shoots four times, only to get sent tumbling backwards with a rough slap across the face, with another slap sending him falling over the railing to his death. The plant manager makes the mistake of climbing up there and, finding Mamuwalde there, yells where he is, only to get grabbed, lifted up into the air, and thrown onto a couple of cops coming up the stairs, the three of them tumbling back down. Seeing a couple of more cops on the level below, Mamuwalde throws a steel drum at him, knocking him to the floor, and following that up with another to his legs. Rushing through the place, Thomas, Peters, and Michelle all called over to a lonely corner of the place by one cop. When they get there, they find Mamuwalde's coffin, and Thomas tells Michelle to stay with the cops, as he and Peters walk up to the casket. Getting on either side of it, Thomas prepares to open the lid, as Peters raises a stake, and the doctor yanks it open. Peters immediately brings the stake down, only to stab Tina, who's now a vampire herself. Tina rises up and screams in pain, as Michelle screams upon realizing what's happened and has to be restrained by Thomas, who orders the two cops to get her out, as she cries hysterically. As that happens, Tina screams and writhes in pain until she finally sets back down and expires.

Rushing back to rejoin Peters, Thomas looks down at Tina and wonders where Mamuwalde he is. The vampire then makes his presence known behind them and tells them to move away from Tina, as he walks towards the coffin. Looking down at her, he laments, "Tina. My lovely, lovely Tina. What is left for this cursed creature? His only reason for living has been taken away." Taking her hand, he kisses it and speaks a word in his native language before looking back up at Peters and Thomas, who take a step back, the latter reaching for a cross in his suit. Mamuwalde, however, tells him that won't be necessary and walks over to a nearby stairwell, looking up to see the morning sun outside. He begins walking up the stairs, grimacing from it and wobbling, as he quickly weakens from its effects. Using all the strength he can muster, he manages to make it to the top, where he collapses to the ground and, with his last bit of life, covers his face with his cape. Thomas and Peters rush up there and, when they uncover his face, they see it steaming and full of wriggling maggots as the flesh melts away, gushing blood out, before there's nothing left but a skull.

As has already been made clear, the music score to Blacula, composed by record producer and arranger Gene Page, is very unorthodox for a horror movie, as it features a lot of funk and rhythm and blues, rather than pieces that are meant to be haunting or scary. Make no mistake, there are a few bits of the score that are kind of chilling, like this eerie bit when Dracula traps Luva in the vault with the coffin Mamuwalde is sealed in, a very freakish piece when Juanita comes rushing out of the morgue at Sam, and a similarly unsettling one at the very end, when Mamuwalde's body is dissolving, but for the most part, the "horror" music is done in an over-the-top, stylistic manner that's more campy than creepy. Going back to the funkadelic parts of the score, such a piece not only plays over the opening credits sequence but also during the action bits, like when Mamuwalde first chases Tina, when he escapes from her apartment and attacks the police officer, and during the warehouse battle with the vampires. In addition, Mamuwalde's own leitmotif is actually a soft, romantic piece that hints at the love he had for Luva and, tellingly, is played during the moment in the warehouse when he looks at Tina's dropped purse and during many of their intimate moments. It's actually an instrumental version of a song called Main Chance, performed by the group, 21st Century Limited, and which you hear itself during the sequence near the end when Tina is walking the streets to meet up with Mamuwalde, with its warm but sad sound hinting at how doomed their romance is. You hear it one last time when he finds that Tina is dead and, as he walks up the stairwell to the morning sun, it transitions into a high-pitched, twanging bit that blossoms when he's fully exposed to the rays and dies as a result. Going back to the songs, those performed in the club by the Hues Corporation have some significance to the plot as well. Their first song, There He Is Again, about being followed by a stranger, accentuates Mamuwalde's chasing Tina the night before and the fact that it plays when he finds her at the club definitely has some meaning; I'm Gonna Get You, which plays after he's joined Tina and her friends at the table, speaks for itself; and finally, What the World Knows, about wanting to know the truth about love, is heard during the second scene at the club, as Tina anxiously waits for Mamuwalde to show up.

Blacula is nothing less than a movie that's just as surprisingly well-made as it is entertaining and not nearly as farcical and ridiculous as the title and concept would make you think. The story is well-told, the actors all play their parts nicely, especially William Marshall as the title character, the unabashed 70's-ness is really fun to look at, it's interesting to see a traditional-looking vampire in a modern, urban environment, its allegory on slavery and Blacula's own way of "sticking it to the man" is certainly unique, it goes at a good pace, has some very entertaining sequences, and the music score and songs are as good to listen to as they are unusual for a horror film, as is the memorable opening title sequence. Blaxploitation may not be my cup of tea per se but there's no way I can deny that this story about Dracula's soul brother is most definitely groovy.