Dracula, you kill me
Given he's such an iconic figure in literature and cinema, it took long enough for the Dracula parodies to start appearing. There was Bela Lugosi poking fun at his image as one of the villains in 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, (1948), but that hardly counts—so to speak.
Finally in 1979 we get the first sustained take-off on the Dracula legend. And for me it's the best and funniest. It's Love at First Bite (1979), a surprise hit in which George Hamilton plays Dracula for laughs.
Hamilton is terrific and shows great comic timing in the role. The oily vampire comes to New York to raid blood banks and woo Susan Saint James (later starring in TV MacMillian and Wife) to become his bride. Comic actor Arte Johnson is his Renfield and everyman Richard Benjamin is a Van Helsing descendant who has changed his name to Rosenberg to start a career as a psychiatrist.
Very funny in a throwback kind of way. Biggest in-joke: how does night-stalking Dracula get the tan that Hamilton famously sports?
George Hamilton has been trying to get a sequel to Love at First Bite—Love at Second Bite?—off the ground ever since, most recently being reported as hoping to update the story into the Twilight era.
Dracula, you're such a dope
Not quite as successful is Mel Brooks's Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), starring Leslie Nielson. Brooks had earlier struck comic gold with his monster spoof Young Frankenstein but this companion piece was dismissed by critics.
Dead and Loving It is a straight-ahead spoof of the
original story, possibly inspired by Francis Ford Coppola's
Dracula, a few
years earlier. And it's not as dismal as claimed by critics, who
were perhaps expecting something more outlandish than an
old-fashioned parody.
Neilson is his usual goofy self, perhaps putting even more into his comic acting for Brooks here than he usually does.
If you like slapstick and obvious humour (I admit I do), you'll enjoy Dracula: Dead and Loving It. If not, you really don't need to see this.
Except maybe to help you stop taking Dracula too seriously.
