Format: IMDb TV on basement television.
There’s something special about exploitation movies of the 1970s regardless of exploitative genre. Blaxploitation films were such a natural outgrowth of the film industry and the rising realization that there was an African-American (Afro-American at the time) audience for films that showed them as the stars. Genre films beyond the crime film, action movie, and police film were natural extensions of this. Since there is a particularly odd strain of conservativism in horror films, co-opting the genre to show Black heroes was a natural choice. Of these films, Blacula is the granddaddy for a lot of reasons.
We start with Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall), sent by the Abani nation to seek help from Count Dracula (Charles Macauley) in suppressing the slave trade. Mamuwalde and his wife Luva (Vonetta McGee) are instead attacked by Dracula, who both thinks that the slave trade has some benefit and, of course, is a vampire. Dracula turns Mamuwalde into a vampire for his impertinence and then locks him in a coffin, sealing both him and Luva in a room—Luva to die and Mamuwalde to suffer. Dracula also dubs Mamuwalde “Blacula,” giving us our title.
