Love at First Bite

Count Dracula (George Hamilton) has a problem. The communist government of his native Transylvania is demanding he "take his aristocratic shit and get out!" This is so they can transform his fog, shrouded, cobweb-bestrewn gothic castle into a training camp for their Olympic athletes. Threatened with being rehoused in an "efficiency apartment with seven dissidents and one toilet," the Count, with true nobility and panache, strides gloomily from his centuries-long abode, Renfield (Arte Johnson), his sniveling, vermin-scarfing companion, by his side. He makes his way through a Hollywood mob of Universal monster movie peasants, bearing torches and pitchforks. His next stop: NEW YORK CITY.

So begins one of the most memorable and delightful of all the old horror spoofs, one I've personally seen countless times. Dracula (who often reclines in his coffin reading his fashion magazines) has come to L.A. seeking out the raspy-throated Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James), who is a thoroughly-modern fashion model who smokes weed, pops valium, lives in a messy apartment, and "feels like a whore that will sell anything from dog food to toothpaste.' That may not be an exact quote, but you get the picture.

Dracula ("Vladimir") promises to take her away from all of that. Appearing one night at her favorite discotheque, he sweeps her off her feet with his suave good looks, elegant taste, mysterious accent, and secret ways; not to mention his fly dance moves. He seduces her, gives her the expected bloody hickey, and changes into a bat, for comic (if wildly politically incorrect) scenes of him flying into the home of Jamaican immigrants, a Jewish man having an affair (who refers to Dracula the Bat as a "frigid, skinny-legged YENTA!") and an encounter with a bunch of blaxploitation "Superfly" types that ends with a visual joke that is so offensive it would be cut from the film, today.

Dracula lounges, drunk from drinking tainted blood, around his hotel room, in boxers and a spaghetti-strap shirt, depressed about his place in this new world of 1979. "How would you like to go around dressed like a head waiter?" he complains bitterly to the sniveling, bug-scarfing servant Renfield. Perhaps to cheer himself, he and Renfield stage a heist at a blood bank, and he comments upon the fact that in this modern world of convenience, the blood he drinks can be kept in refrigerated plastic containers. Like a soft drink, one supposes.

Problem: Cindy is seeing Jeffrey the Psychiatrist (Richard Benjamin in a wonderful role), who is a long-lost descendant of "Fritz Van Helsing" the famous vampire hunter. Noticing the two bites on her neck, Jeffrey (who "may be in love" with Cindy) puts two and two together mighty quick. He meets Dracula and Cindy for drinks (where he tries to ward off Dracula with the Star of David, confusing it with a crucifix, and prompting Dracula to quip, "Why don't you find yourself a nice Jewish girl, Doctor?"), and then sneaks into his hotel room and sets Drac's coffin on fire. (Protesting as he is dragged away, "I know what I'm doing, I'm a doctor!")

Finally, he attempts to gun Drac down with "three silver bullets" while Cindy is sitting right next to him. Dracula is unfazed, saying, "No Rosenberg, that is for a werewolf!" Jeffrey seems politely surprised before being dragged to the looney bin, protesting, once again, that "I'm a doctor, I know what I'm doing!"

In the looney bin, Jeffrey manages to interest a stereotypical Seventies TV show cop (Dick Shawn) Lt. Ferguson in his story of Dracula being alive and well and, er, living in NYC. They go to Cindy's apartment during a city-wide blackout, but Jeffrey gets caught in the elevator. Cindy and Drac, realizing they need to make a getaway, hijack a cab (with a driver), using Drac's magic powers (he can levitate objects, melt knives, is super-strong, and can even blow noxious smoke out of his fangs).

Jeffrey and the Lieutenant follow, and Jeffrey attempts to pin Drac to the airport runway with a wooden stake. (What else?) Alas! He is too late! Drac has given Cindy the dreaded "third bite," and they both fly away as bats into the moonlight. Jeffrey, not seeming too broken up about it, walks away with Drac's cape and Lt. Ferguson, wondering why Drac was such a ladykiller that he took HIS lady, which, "he almost loved." He observes it's the sexy Transylvanian accent. He loans Drac's cape to Ferguson but wants it back dry-cleaned, he specifies.

Love at First Bite is such a classic in the realm of spoof horror comedies that anyone interested in the genre, or anyone just wanting a good, solid whiff of nostalgia for a bygone, romantic and seemingly more naive era should give it a view. It features turns from Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford, who were both popular on the "The Jeffersons" TV sitcom at the time. (Sanford has a particularly memorable moment as a judge, who tells Fergusen and Rosenberg "Our people have come a long way for you to be waltzing in here with that voodoo, scary DRACULA shit!")

Some of the humor does not date well: some of it is mildly offensive. Some wouldn't cut it in these politically sensitive times. Dracula tosses a young black man into a store window, right before he steals a TV, quipping, "It's dudes like you that give the neighborhood a bad name!"

Cindy comments about gays, "THEY love in THEIR way, and we LOVE in our way, I know. One day homosexuality will be the accepted norm." The accuracy of her prediction aside, this isn't said as if it's a good thing, but one that brings a slight feeling of intolerant ...disgust? Probably not the filmmakers' intention (it was written by Robert Kaufman and Mark Grindes, and directed by Stan Dragouti), but, there it is.

No matter. You'll love Hamilton's suave, debonair Dracula, Richard Benjamin's increasingly crazy Jeffrey Rosenberg, the sniveling, bug-chomping Arte Johnson as sidekick Renfield, and the raspy and self-absorbed late Seventies American neurotic woman portrayed by Susan Saint James. You'll love the disco songs, and all the jokes (even the bad ones).

I've seen it more times than I can remember over the years, and it always puts me in a bloody good mood. I give it three big bites on the neck. Salud!