Bring Back Blacula

Trust me, this is going somewhere.

Years ago, I caught what must have been some sort of pnuemonia. I’d gone to an outdoor concert – stuck with the “third one is the lonely seat, so deal with it” ticket – and a couple of days later was coughing so much I could hardly breathe.

I didn’t go to the doctor. It wasn’t because of any insurance situation where nowadays I’d get some hashtag going, I was just raised to believe you didn’t go to the doctor unless you were at death’s door. It is what it is.

I was in college (don’t worry, it was a bad school and I was a bad student, so you can leave your presumptions about my intelligence in place), and when I was laid up, I spent the weekend alone watching basic cable. I couldn’t sleep one night because of the coughing, which included one period where there was blood in the phlegm, so I was watching some sort of horror marathon.

I was unable to sleep when, in the middle of the night, whatever channel it was announced they would be playing Blacula. A legendary movie that had been the source of so many jokes!

I watched it. I was in a stupor, doped up on NyQuil level medicine, and I can’t hardly remember that first viewing. This is despite the fact I can remember where I was and that I was wearing a plaid bathrobe.

Ah, memories. They never work quite the way you think they will.

All I could remember was that I loved it. I’ve long been a fan of exploitation movies, be they blaxploitation, hixploitation, or what have you. I think that it at least partly is explained by my love of slasher movies, which share a lot of structural DNA with the exploitation genre.

I watched it again years later and it was as gloriously low-budget as I remembered. I also figured out that Blacula himself had even been on Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

But with all the remakes and reboots, I wonder why Blacula hasn’t made the rounds again. It seems that the rise of culturally-conscious horror like Get Out and Us would be paving the way for a reboot/remake of a lost classic like Blacula. After all, we got a decidedly-fun sequel to Shaft. (Which I really enjoyed, for the record.)

Why leave Blacula out of the mix?

For goodness’ sake, Dracula’s had about a thousand remakes. Let’s get Mamuwalde back into the conversation!

Besides, it could pave the way as the origin story for a whole franchise of movies like the MCU. Blacula could spawn a whole host of other vampires, only to end with an Avengers: Endgame-style capper where he faces his greatest student and worst betrayer…Craigula.

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P.S.

Given the topic of this post, and the fact I know how much my phone and apps are listening to me, I fully expect The Stalkwalk to show up on my Spotify playlist soon.