Vampira

This movie is rather offensive. Not because I am Black and that I should take offense to the premise, but that they should spoof Dracula to the point where even a card carrying Van Helsing club member would be offended. This movie seemed as if it was a British writer trying to compete with Mel Brooks. I am not offended with the premise because I must defend the actors who chose to do such a dreadful movie. Ms. Graves found popularity by being a beautiful funny Black woman on Laugh In. She needed work and wanted to also be accepted by the public and further her career. She was one of the few Black women to play a lead role with the great David Niven. David Niven, on the other hand, was in his last days as a lead and his last years on earth. He valiantly tried to make something out of nothing. I don't think he (Dracula) was concerned with the color of his bride's skin more than seeing her the way he remembered her. Vampira was sexy enough to grace the last scenes of the movie and even seduce the two lead men. It seems as if the writer was celebrating the new times and he wanted to join the party of real race relations. Ms. Graves went on to have her own series for a short while and I think she made an impact on many young girls and taught them to stand for themselves. The only thing that was disturbing to me was that the young actor playing the Don Juan like character looks a lot like Jeremy Pivens. The end was very predictable and it made the whole thing look like what it was meant to be; A meaningless pursuit of the old ways while change to the new ways ended up not being so bad. In fact the change helped in the end. This movie was fun and the limited nudity expressed some class. I would recommend it to only those with an affinity to the art of movies and you should remember the times when this was done. I believe this was just at the start of Blacksploitation, disco and spoofs. In conclusion, it was a failed attempt to suck blood from the new times and still win favor of the old school. I think I would watch it again, though.

This movie often gets accused of being a "Young Frankenstein" rip-off, but the producers only altered the title from "Vampira" into "Old Dracula" to cash in on the tremendous success of Mel Brooks horror spoof. The truth is that "Vampira" got filmed prior to "Young Frankenstein" and it also can't hold a candle to that film, as this is a truly poor and almost pitiable attempt at comedy. The great cast, including David Niven and Peter Bayliss, do whatever they can, but Clive Donner's direction is uninspired and especially Jeremy Lloyd's screenplay is anemic and almost entirely devoid of laughs and creativity. In Transylvania, Count Dracula and his male servant Maltravers are hosting tourist tours in the old castle, and every once and a while this also allows them to restorage their blood reserves. When a group of Playboy models visits the castle, they discover that one of them has the same and extremely rare blood type of Dracula's deceased wife Vampira. But, as mandatory in lame comedy, the samples get mixed up and the count's beloved wife resurrects as a feisty black girl. Reason enough for the old-fashioned Count to travel to swinging London where his conservative life-style naturally conflicts with the free-spirited mentality. The best parts of the films are the dialogs between Niven and Bayliss, and even those are lukewarm at best. Everything else is downright pathetic, with as absolute low points Dracula's "night on the town" and the predictable finale with atrocious make-up effects.

The movie is just not all that funny - you would expect a comedy to give more laughs than this film gave us. It has a few moments worth of giggles but not bust-a-gut laughter like one wants from a comedy.

All the actors are fine - really good. It's just a terrible story with very few laughs.

I have to agree with other reviewers that Dracula's problem is not that she's black but that he wanted his wife, Vampira, the way he remembered her - he just wanted his wife back. He felt he was with another woman because she acts different and looks different.

It's such a shame the comedy wasn't funnier and the storyline a bit better because this film had the potential to be really comical if better written.

3.5/10

David Niven has a role that is clearly beneath his stature (in his first scene, he is reading a Playboy magazine), and Clive Donner's direction is almost embarrassingly crude (the dreadful copy I saw made it look even worse than it is, but it's crude nonetheless). Still, the movie has some unexpectedly clever lines (Dracula's assistant to his master: "I cross my fingers, sir" - Dracula's response: "I'd rather you didn't"), and (don't crucify me for this) I really found it more enjoyable than Polanski's overrated "Fearless Vampire Killers" - mainly because it has no pretensions of greatness. (**)

David Niven's career hit rock bottom when he played the one and only Count Dracula in Vampira. Niven's dapper English charm is truly put to the test her and it fails.

Times are tough in Transylvania and Castle Dracula is now being rented out as a tourist attraction. The money's good and one can take an occasional bite out of a tourist. But Niven's real mission is to find the right blood to revive the Countess who's been asleep since the Roaring Twenties.

He finds the right blood from one of the tourists, but lo and behold the countess wakes up and turns black into someone that looks a whole lot like Teresa Graves. What to do, Niven's a most conservative Dracula and apparently interracial marriage is frowned on.

The rest of the film is spent on Niven trying to find a cure for Graves. And listening to Graves calling Niven such things as 'jive turkey' with both of them wondering where she's pick up the latest slang.

A few years earlier Godfrey Cambridge did Watermelon Man which laid a giant ostrich egg with the same kind of humor. It's not any funnier with Teresa Graves.

And David Niven should have been ashamed of himself.