I guess it is rather obvious by now that I am someone who enjoys his classic horror. I also enjoy other genre's as well and a good comedy is always entertaining, but when you can mix both monsters and comedy, it can be quite a treat. Naturally on the top of my list of horror/comedy would be the Abbott and Costello movies and the Classic "Young Frankenstein", but one other one really stands out with me and that is the movie "Love at First bite" with George Hamilton playing the Count. Leaving his homeland where no one is afraid of him any more, he goes to America and finds out that here he is just another nut case in the big city. There are so many great scenes and lines that just never seem to get old no matter how many times you see the movie. Our great Count Dracula goes from being the prince of darkness to a flying black chicken but he still doesn't lose his touch with the ladies and never gives them a "quickie" only a "Longie" The character of Renfield is hilarious yet still true to the original with his evil laugh and appetite for little things. Dr. Van helsing is portrayed very well as he boggles every attempt to get at Dracula and eventually finds himself bargaining with a cop on who gets to use Dracula's cape on what night. So do I have a problem with a Dracula who is drunk and singing in his coffin? Absolutely not, now how about a good Wolf Man comedy.
1 comment:
"Love at First Bite" is a comedy classic that was a trifle misunderstood in its day. As you may recall, the film received mixed reviews when it came out. I think a lot of people were expecting a broad Mel Brooks farce(nothing against Mel Brooks, incidentally). While the opening of the film seems in Mel Brooks territory(and Arte Johnson's performance wouldn't have seemed out of place in a Mel Brooks film), the movie hits its stride in the American sequences. Instead of being broadly farcical, it is in fact satirizing the banality, vulgarity, and emptiness of late twentieth century American culture. It's not Nabokov by any means, but it definitely has its moments. Again and again, the Old World Dracula(who tries so studiously to get 'with it' to little avail) is contrasted with the brash vulgarity of American culture. When Dracula falls in love with an American model(the actress's performance here is so charmingly vulgar), it is almost as if the filmmakers were parodying the Freudian idea of one always overestimating your loved one(hey, it's part of the Human Comedy). George Hamilton's performance is spot-on, flawless. Richard Benjamin gives a sly, wonderful performance as the psychiatrist/Van Helsing. The scene where the psychiatrist pulls a Star of David on Dracula and the staring/hypnotizing contest between the psychiatrist and Dracula are surely classic. Satirical points are also made in the film about some topical matters(e.g., the brownouts and blackouts in New York at the time), about uneasy American race relations, and, in a genial way, the essential underlying anomie of American culture. And the closing line in this film is one of the classic closing lines in all comedy - it just cracks me right up. Too bad the DVD replaced "I Will Survive" with another disco song - the original was so much more appropriate in so many different ways. If you haven't seen this, you have a comic delight awaiting you...Greg Cameron, Surrey, B.C., Canada
Post a Comment