
As well as Salem’s Lot and Thirst, we had no less than five Dracula films Love At First Bite, the umpteenth version of Dracula starring Frank Langella, the remake of Nosferatu The Vampyre, Nocturna: Dracula’s Granddaughter which also brought the Count into the present day, and the sex comedy Dracula Blows His Cool. Or when Dracula and his possible nemesis Jeff both try to hypnotise each other in a restaurant to the boredom of the lady present.ġ979 was a bumper year for vampires. As someone who’s a huge fan of the character and have reviewed a great many of his screen adventures, I loved and laughed at, for instance, Dracula ending up in the wrong coffin en route to America and climbing out of it during a funeral service in Harlem just after the priest has said, “Cuz when you is gone, you is gone! And there ain’t no way, no how no one is ever gonna bring you back here once you is dead”! Dracula politely says “good evening” and everyone flees screaming. In the meantime though we have this 1979 comedy which tends to go for the obvious, yet which I enjoyed both as a teenager and as a much older adult primarily for that very reason. Perhaps the premise of the caped, fanged aristocrat in today’s world is best suited to humour? I reckon that one day some writer and director will lick it. While vampires set in the present day have fared pretty well and reached such diverse heights as Fright Night, Let The Right One In and Martin, the old Count himself has usually seemed a bit lost, efforts such Dracula 2000, Hammer’s Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites Of Dracula and that disastrous final episode of the BBC’s Dracula from two Christmases ago just not coming off. But if you do, than this spoof that leans more on the romantic than the bloodthirsty might do you nicely. But this one opens with Dracula playing the piano while the wolves outside are howling so much that he cries out, “Children of the night, shut up”! It you don’t find this funny, than Love At First Bite probably isn’t the film for you. There probably aren’t many films which you can tell if you’ll enjoy or not enjoy in the first two minutes. The sexually liberated Cindy turns out to be easy prey for Dracula, but unfortunately he has a rival, psychologist Jeff Rosenberg who’s the grandson of a certain arch-enemy of his…. However, Dracula has seen a picture of Cindy Sondheim, a fashion model whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his old love Mina Harker, so he and Renfield head for New York City. Starring: Dick Shawn, George Hamilton, Richard Benjamin, Susan Saint JamesĬount Dracula and his manservant Renfield are expelled from Castle Dracula by Romania’s Communist government so it can be used by the national gymnastics team. Written by: Mark Gindes, Robert Kaufman, Stan Dragoti
