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SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM (1973)
Is it time for a Blacula remake? Great Blacula's bones! That's gonna be my new exhortation. Mamuwalde - played by William Marshall, who out-baritones both Christopher Lee and James Earl Jones - was this African prince who went to Transylvania to appeal to Count Dracula to help him curb slavery in favor of more equitable trade agreements. As it turns out, Dracula was not only not interested in curbing slavery, and a vampire, but a total asshole - putting the chomp on Mamuwalde and entombing him in a coffin as he mockingly called him Blacula. Mamuwalde spent the next century or so in the coffin until he was brought back for some adventures in Blacula, at the end of which he was seemingly defeated and reduced to a pile of bones. But he's brought back again in Scream Blacula Scream, where lucky for all of us it's still the 70's. He's brought back, boots, funky cape and all, by a voodoo practitioner (Richard Lawson) who wants his powers to help him wrest control of the local voodoo sect whose leadership recently went to his rival and "jive-assed bitch", played by Pam Grier, who's a charmer despite giving us the worst screen crying I've ever seen. Mamuwalde, like many screen vampires, disappointingly wants mostly to be rid of his horrible curse, and enlists Grier's aid late in the movie, though not before siring a big throng of vampire thralls, who lurch about like zombies. Mamuwalde offers a few choice bits of commentary on 70's blaxploitation culture (his words to a couple of pimp daddies are a howl), even while helping set the tone for it. Just the name "Blacula" would eventually become a punch line for many people who'd never seen either movie, but Marshall really knew how to sell the role, giving Mamuwalde an imposing presence and Shakespearean-sounding gravitas. He's the only man in the film worth watching though; particularly bothersome is Grier's boyfriend (and the movie's nominal hero) Justin Carter, who has to work alongside a white cop later in the film, where he adopts a weird black-guy-playing-white accent, which is even more bafflingly condescending than when Mamuwalde called voodoo a "science", something even the voodoo priestess refuted. When he's not playing white, he's having one of those conversations with Mamuwalde where they both know everything, and know the other knows everything, but are both still skirting around the issue. "I've always loved the deep red color of fine wine," says Carter. "It is beautiful, isn't it?" replies Mamuwalde. "Yes, much like the deep red color of...blood!" (c) Brian J. Wright 2007 BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |