Good Morning POU!
This Halloween week we’ll take a look at some horror cult classics from the campy Blaxploitation era, a few horror funnies from the 80s and 90s as well as a look at the highest grossing horror movie starring and directed by black people to date. Enjoy!
BLACULA
Blacula is a 1972 American blaxploitation horror film produced for American International Pictures. The film was directed by William Crain and stars William Marshall in the title role about an 18th-century African prince named Mamuwalde, who is turned into a vampire (and later locked in a coffin) by Count Dracula in the Count’s castle in Transylvania in the year 1780 after Dracula refused to help Mamuwalde suppress the slave trade.
Nearly two centuries later, in the year 1972, two interior decorators from modern-day Los Angeles, California travel to Castle Dracula in Transylvania and unknowingly purchase the now-undead Mamuwalde’s coffin, which they ship to Los Angeles. Unlocking the coffin, the decorators release Mamuwalde, becoming his first two victims as a vampire, turning them and others he encounters in his bloodthirsty reign of terror into vampires like himself. Mamuwalde later meets a woman named Tina (Vonetta McGee), whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his deceased wife Luva (also played by McGee in the pre-opening credit scenes at Dracula’s castle).
Prince Mamuwalde continues to kill and transform various people he encounters, as Tina begins to fall in love with him. Thomas, his colleague Lt. Peters (Gordon Pinsent), and Michelle follow the trail of murder victims and begin to suspect a vampire is responsible. After Thomas digs up Billy’s coffin, Billy’s corpse rises as a vampire and attacks Thomas, who fends him off and drives a stake through his heart. Thomas also finds a photo negative taken of Mamuwalde and Tina in which Mamuwalde is not visible. After killing one of the undead victims in the city morgue, Thomas and Peters track Mamuwalde to his hideout, the warehouse where Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer were first slain. They locate and defeat several vampires, but Mamuwalde manages to escape.
Mamuwalde lures Tina to his new hideout at a nearby chemical plant, while Thomas and a group of police officers pursue him. Mamuwalde dispatches several officers, but one of them accidentally shoots Tina fatally. To save her life, Mamuwalde transforms her into a vampire. One of the policemen locates the coffin and alerts Peters. However, Peters inadvertently kills Tina with a stake, believing that Mamuwalde would be in the coffin instead. Devastated at losing her again, Mamuwalde willingly climbs the stairs to the roof where the morning sun destroys him.
Blacula was released to mixed reviews in the United States, but was one of the top-grossing films of the year. It was the first film to receive an award for Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards. Blacula was followed by the sequel Scream Blacula Scream in 1973 and inspired a wave of blaxploitation-themed horror films.
BLACKENSTEIN
Blackenstein, also known as Black Frankenstein, is a 1973 American blaxploitation horror film loosely based on Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein. Released on August 3, 1973, it was made in an attempt to cash in on the success of Blacula; released the previous year by American International Pictures. However, Blackenstein a fared poorly in comparison to its predecessor, with most reviews agreeing that the movie was “a totally inept mixture of the worst horror and blaxploitation films”.
Big and burly African-American soldier Eddie Turner (Joe De Sue) stepped on a land mine while serving in Vietnam and lost both arms and both legs. His physicist fiancée Doctor Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) thinks she has found help for him in her white former teacher and colleague Doctor Stein (John Hart) who has recently won a Nobel Peace Prize for “solving the DNA genetic code“.
In a tour of Doctor Stein’s castle-like Los Angeles home, Winifred is introduced to his other patients: the ninety-year-old Eleanor who looks to be only fifty (Andrea King) thanks to Stein’s treatments, and the bald Bruno (Nick Bolan) whose lower legs have been successfully re-attached via “laser beam fusion” and Stein’s “DNA solution”. Winifred is startled when she sees one of Bruno’s legs is tiger-striped, which Doctor Stein attributes to “an unknown RNA problem” which he hopes to correct during the course of treatment. His sinister black assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) seems overly interested in her reaction to this sight and in her in general. Meanwhile, the stoically suffering Eddie is being verbally abused by an obnoxious white orderly (Bob Brophy) at the local Veteran’s Hospital. When Doctors Stein and Walker arrive to ask if he would be interested in submitting to experimental limb transplant surgery that could correct his condition, he consents.
Doctor Stein gives Eddie new replacement arms using his DNA solution, and Eddie seems to be recovering well until Malcomb confesses his attraction to Winifred. Winifed tries to let him down gently, explaining that she intends to marry Eddie as soon as the surgeries are complete, and Malcomb seems to accept her statement, but he later vindictively sabotages the DNA solution used during Eddie’s leg surgeries with the contaminated RNA, causing the former soldier to start to devolve into a primitive brutish state with hairy hands and a Neanderthal-like brow ridge. As his condition worsens and he loses the mental capacity for speech and rational thought, the stony-faced Eddie becomes a slowly shambling monster resembling an African-American version of the iconic Boris Karloffmonster with a squarish Afro instead of the usual scars and neck bolts. Although he lies in a near catatonic state by day, compelled by horrible cannibalistic urges the black suit and turtleneck-clad Eddie secretly leaves the house late each night in search of victims who he dismembers, disembowels and devours zombie-style, always returning in time each morning for his ongoing schedule of DNA injections with his doctors none the wiser.
Two police detectives visit Doctor Stein as the body count starts to rise (their suspicions aroused due to the fact that all the killings took place in the surrounding vicinity and that the abusive hospital orderly was the vengeful Eddie’s first victim), but Stein is ignorant of the fact that there is now a murderous monster living in his basement laboratory. Winifred, however, has become suspicious of Malcomb and spends her time in the lab, examining the various solutions used during Eddie’s surgery. One night, returning from his usual senseless rampage, Eddie hears screaming coming from Winifred’s room. He enters to find Malcomb at her bedside and interrupts the attempted rape. Malcomb grabs a gun and empties it into the unaffected Eddie as Winifred flees. Eddie strangles Malcomb and then goes on to kill Bruno and Eleanor, the latter aging rapidly as she dies. Doctor Stein meets Winifred on the stairs, where she tells him Eddie is the monster. Together they down run to the lab.
Winifred busies herself preparing an injection of the DNA solution that she hopes will cure Eddie. When Eddie draws near, he seems moved by her terror and backs away, perhaps dimly remembering that she is his fiancée. Doctor Stein, however, attacks him from behind, provoking a violent response. After a brief tussle with his creator that ends with Stein being fatally knocked into the high voltage electrical equipment, Eddie leaves the house. The police arrive too late to stop Eddie, but discover Doctor Stein’s body and console Winifred. Eddie finds a brunette attempting to start a Jeep and spends several long minutes chasing her around an empty industrial warehouse. The police call in the Los Angeles County Canine Corps, and the Dobermans surround Eddie, knock him to the ground and, with a fittingly macabre irony, viciously tear the monster to pieces in the same way he killed his victims.