(a.k.a. ‘Blood for Dracula,’ a.k.a. ‘Young Dracula’)
The Bryanston Company, 1974

The plot: Count Dracula is in bad shape, and desperately needs an infusion of virgin blood. He decides to relocate from Transylvania to Italy, figuring a Catholic country will have more unspoiled innocents. He befriends a rich Italian landowner (De Sica) who is eager to marry off one of his four daughters. Two of the daughters enjoy regular trysts with the hired hand Mario (Dallesandro). They lie to the Count about their purity, and their tainted blood makes him violently ill. He sets his sights on the intact 14-year-old daughter, but Mario gets wise to the Count’s vile intentions and deflowers her for her own good. The film ends in an orgy of dismemberment, with barely passable Good triumphing over rather silly Evil.

Why it’s good: Along with “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein” (1973), which featured the same principle actors and crew, this movie has the highest camp value ever put on film. Director Morrissey, who has since directed some fine and serious films, knew exactly what he was doing and delighted in getting the nuttiness on celluloid. Udo Kier is Germanically intense and haughty as the aristocratic Count, but his henchman, Anton, as portrayed with razor-sharp edginess by Arno Juerging, goes so over the top, he’s in orbit. Juerging delivers an absolutely insane performance that one must see to believe. Warhol Factory staple Dallesandro phones in his usual Brooklyn-accented, lugubrious performance (“What choo two hoo-ahs lookin’ at?”) and is such a sore thumb in pastoral Italy, he’s perfect. The art direction is decadent, the sex and violence gross and fun, and the banal dialogue delivered with such ferocity that the laughs never stop.

Why you should own it: This is very much a product of the first half of the 1970s, when weirdness reigned in European and North American cinema. AIDS and herpes had yet to introduce themselves, and cocaine and Quaaludes were naively regarded as good clean fun. Nightclubbing, elegantly wasted and bisexual was the way to go, and Warhol’s gang was in the vanguard. The fact that they managed to crank out two horror films with actual scripts in one year is remarkable. Class producer Andrew Braunsberg somehow talked the great director Vittorio De Sica into a featured role and Roman Polanski into a cameo. Viewed stoned or straight, this film is a scream. The Criterion DVD features commentary by Morrissey, Kier and film historian Maurice Yacowar. —Kenneth Butler