Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
And now for something completely different..., March 12, 1999
By A Customer
Different is what this movie is. I liked the movie for one, it dares to go off in directions the mainstream of film makers usually don't go. The second, I agreed with one reveiwer that you either like the film or you don't. The traditional Dracula plot is non-existent (He can only survive on the blood of virgins and for some reason there are none in his own home town). This movie is more of a parody and is fun to watch if you enjoy the unusual world of filmdom offerings. I would highly recomend this film in DVD format for the director commentaries and publicity stills included. Viewers should also be aware, this movie is not for the younger viewers, due to high explicit sexual content and nudity.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I wanna hold ya til the fear in me subsides., November 15, 2003
The strength of this otherwise unfortunate movie is Udo Kier's sterling portrayal of Count Dracula. Envision, if you will, Count Dracula sitting lethargically before a baroque vanity mirror, generously painting black dye over his hoary white hair with a brush large enough to swipe a gutter. This chilling, haunting, otherworldly scene sets the tone for all that follows. Faced with doom and obscurity, Dracula must leave his moribund abode and embark on a secret quest to secure the wirgin blood required to maintain his eternal existence. He must lamentably say farewell to his sister, and then board the family car with chauffeur/evil toady Anton for a lengthy road trip.
Operation: 'Wirgin Blood' has now begun.
Eventually Dracula is directed to a large estate, where an aged farmer has in his care a whole stable of absolutely hideous daughters. (It should be mentioned that this film's continuity is backwards or inverted, not unlike that of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika; e.g.: hideous daughters are super-hot; Count Dracula, Prince of Darkness, is powerless; the movie's hero is a lowlife Communist/rapist.) The father invites Dracula into his once-lavish home, and proudly confirms the fact that all of his daughters are in fact good, wholesome, corn-fed wirgins. Count Dracula begins to stalk his prey one by one...
How does the 'Udo Kier' Dracula differ from the conceptual Dracula?
(A) 'Udo' Dracula not only lacks superhuman strength and reflexes, but lacks even the vigor required to fight a frail wine-addled captive wirgin into submission.
(B) 'Udo' Dracula has no demonic powers such as augmented senses, shapeshifting or unnatural magnetism; quite in fact the wirgins are repulsed by 'Udo' Dracula and they mock him behind his back.
(C) 'Udo' Dracula not only lacks a vampire's powers, but is also vulnerable to any ordinary attack or weapon. You could kill 'Udo' Dracula with a compass, a tire iron, or even a stale loaf of bread if you pummeled him enough times.
When Dracula fails in seducing trying to seduce the wirgins, he changes tactics and tries to overpower them physically. Eventually, one of the daughters contemptuously submits to him, and only after biting her and drinking her blood does the horrified Dracula realize that the girl's wirgin blood is NOT in fact wirgin blood! Dracula is forced to vomit the blood into the bathtub, heaving and gurgling as he indiscriminately curses the rodent-like Anton.
Enter the hero: a decidedly non-Van Helsing-like stable boy---a slouching, foul-mouthed, malingering lowlife who balances his time between assaulting the farmer's daughters and spewing pseudo-Communistic rhetoric. Operation: 'Wirgin Blood' is now compromised! Anton self-servingly betrays Dracula in an effort to save himself, and is killed. Ultimately Dracula fails in his quest and is attacked by the stable boy, the latter being armed with an old-fashioned wood axe. The stable boy begins chopping Dracula apart, limb by limb, while the Dracula runs like the wind, a hobbled armless creature with his evil cape streaming behind him. In the end, the stable boy whittles Dracula down to a head and torso.
Defiantly, the defeated Dracula enigmatically exclaims: "You fool, you can't kill me! I'm not one of you!" Form your own conclusion.
Short of the epic thriller Expose, aka The House on Straw Hill, this is probably the most enjoyable of the Udo Movies. Look for the upcoming sequel, Operation: Wirgin Blood vs. Plan 9 From Outer Space.
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23 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enormously Entertaining Camp, August 25, 2003
When I see a film with "Andy Warhol Presents" near the title, I cringe. For the record, I think that a guy who paints pictures of Campbell soup cans and passes it off as satiric art deserves my scorn. Moreover, I think a society reveals its moral bankruptcy when it elevates an odd duck like Warhol and his acolytes into figures worthy of worship. My personal opinions about Warhol and his "Factory" caused me a good measure of turmoil after I watched Paul Morrissey's "Blood for Dracula." This campy retelling of the Dracula legend is, by all accounts, closely associated with Warhol's forays into various forms of media, so if I despise Warhol I must necessarily despise this picture. I can't make that leap, however, because I discovered much to my liking in this cheesy movie. Discovering that Criterion actually released this on DVD might well be the biggest shock of them all; anyone familiar with the home video market recognizes Criterion's reputation for releasing some of the finest films ever made. Oh, how I dislike these dilemmas!"Blood for Dracula" opens with a pathetic Count Dracula lumbering through his musty castle in Romania. It's the early twentieth century, and Drac finally realizes that the good old days are long gone. Once upon a time, a hard working vampire with charm and a little money could easily woo plenty of young virgins and sup on their blood at leisure. Now with those pesky modern ideas, a gal just doesn't keep herself pure until marriage anymore. This causes the Count a lot of trouble, especially since he suffers violent spasms whenever he imbibes the blood of a deflowered youngster. This poor guy's starving to death until his personal servant Anton proposes a brilliant idea: why not move to Italy? Virgins abound in that sunny clime, assures the valet, because with the Catholic Church's influence in the region all of the girls assume a dignity sorely lacking in the bleak atmospheres of the East. With nothing to lose, the good Count agrees to leave his castle and head to Italy. Like most tourists, he's just looking for a good meal. The fact that the Count's car sports a wheelchair and coffin strapped to the roof doesn't faze these two travelers in the least. All one need say is that the coffin holds a loved one headed for burial in Italy. Once Count Dracula and his assistant reach Italy, they quickly fall in with a decaying noble family with four lovely daughters. Now all the Count must do is find out which one is the virgin and his health will improve in direct proportion to the amount of blood he drains from her neck. The only problem with this plot concerns the nature of this family. None of the marriageable daughters possess virginal attributes. In fact, these young ladies are complete degenerates who spend most of their waking moments down at the handyman's cottage or in each other's arms. To further complicate matters, the handyman subscribes heart and soul to the doctrines of communism, and he definitely does not like the Count's aristocratic manners or the idea of one of his young conquests married off to this Romanian intruder. This young communist soon discovers the Count's secret and dispatches the vampire in a sufficiently gruesome manner. "Blood for Dracula" assembles the necessities for a campy film: atrocious acting, cheesy gore, and laughable dialogue. Simultaneously, the movie contains lavish set pieces, good costumes, lots of nudity, and several nifty twists on the Dracula legend. Morrissey's film also throws in a charming musical score by Claudio Gizzi that seems out of place in such a trashy film. You would think this movie is high art after listening to the quaint sounds of piano washing over the menu screen, and you would be wrong. This production attains a high cheese content from the opening sequence to the closing credits. That doesn't mean the film dives for the gutter all of the time: the plot adroitly deals with European class issues through the characters of the Count and Mario, the commie handyman. Many of the erotic sequences include dialogue about the rich versus the poor, and the handyman's sexual power over the wealthy daughters hints at the triumph of the working class over the decadent rich. The acting steals the show in "Blood for Dracula." I've watched thousands of films throughout my thirty odd years of existence, and I've rarely seen overacting reach these heights. Everyone's guilty here, but Udo Kier as Dracula, Joe Dallesandro as the handyman Mario, and Arno Juerging as Dracula's servant Anton are the most egregious offenders. Dallesandro gives a new meaning to the term "wooden," with facial expressions carved from granite and dialogue delivered in a Brooklyn accent totally out of place on an Italian estate. Udo Kier screams his lines in a German accent so over the top that my ribs hurt from the concussive blasts of laughter rocketing out of my mouth whenever he appeared on screen. Arno Juerging takes his accent one step further, if that's possible, with every utterance simmering with implied threat. Why are Dracula and Anton so angry all the time? Who knows, but it's hilarious to watch. Overkill is the name of the game in this film. I chortled and guffawed through every scene in this movie. I went in expecting to hate "Blood for Dracula" and emerged with an excellent opinion of the proceedings. If you enjoy cheese as much as I do, you must pop this classic in the DVD player soon. Criterion throws in a commentary with Kier and Morrissey, a stills gallery set to the beautiful musical score, and a great transfer of the movie to conclude the package. I can't recommend it enough.
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