Trailer
Plot summary
An African prince, Mamuwalde, travels to Transylvania in 1780 to ask Count Dracula's help in suppressing the slave trade. The Count refuses, and after a scuffle with his minions, Mamuwalde is bitten and turned into a vampire. Dracula curses him with the name Blacula and seals him in a coffin, with his wife Luva locked in the chamber beside him. Nearly two centuries later, Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer, interior decorators, buy the coffin and have it shipped to Los Angeles, and Mamuwalde attacks them. At the funeral home where McCoy's body lies, the mourners include Tina Williams, who bears an exact likeness to Luva, along with her sister Michelle and Michelle's boyfriend, the police pathologist Dr. Gordon Thomas. Mamuwalde becomes convinced that Tina is his wife reborn.
Cast
- Lance Taylor Sr.as Swenson
- Ted Harrisas Bobby McCoy
Show all 20 cast
- Rick Metzleras Billy Schaffer
- Logan Fieldas Barnes
- St. Clair Leeas Self (The Hues Corporation)
- Hubert Ann Kelleyas Self (The Hues Corporation)
- Karl Russellas Self (The Hues Corporation)
- Karl Russellas Self (The Hues Corporation)
- Eric Brothersonas Real Estate Agent
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Blacula (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Blacula was the first film to win the Best Horror Film award at the Saturn Awards, taking the prize at the ceremony's first edition in 1972.
- According to director William Crain, American International Pictures made a Black vampire film because of financial troubles in the early '70s. The original script was called Count Brown's in Town and was, Crain said, full of "shuckin' and jivin.'"
- After William Marshall was cast as the lead, he worked with director William Crain and the producers to rework the character from a straightforward villain named Andrew Brown into the African prince Mamuwalde, giving him a backstory of vampirism from the original Dracula.
- Blacula's box-office success set off a wave of Black-themed horror films, among them Ganja & Hess, Abby, which also starred William Marshall, and Sugar Hill.
- The Black vampire in Blacula shaped the Marvel comic The Tomb of Dracula and its breakout character Blade. Troy Brownfield said William Marshall's title performance influenced later Black horror antagonists in Candyman, Tales from the Hood and Bones.
- The animated series The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy based its Dracula, voiced by Phil LaMarr, on Blacula, and Blacula also appears briefly in The Simpsons episode "All's Fair in Oven War," voiced by Karl Wiedergott.
