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The Appropriate Tune -- "Vampire" by The Orion Experience
There are probably many of you out there that may draw a blank when I drop the name Harlan Ellison. A speculative fiction writer since the 50s of such stories like “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World", screenwriter and contributor to Babylon 5, The (original) Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek TOS and Marathon alum A Boy and His Dog, and generally known for being an aggressively opinionated and uncompromising person (his self-appointed nickname was ‘The Human Gadfly’). Even fewer people will know that for a couple decades Ellison also wrote a number of essays and movie reviews that appeared sporadically in various publications, wherein he lambasted those he thought were dumbing-down society and critiqued the films of the day in his typical eloquent but irascible style. Star Wars? Unscientific garbage! Back to the Future? Pointless shit! Gremlins? More like child abuse! In fact many of the films that we would consider emblematic of pop culture in that period were dismissed outright as trash by Harlan Ellison at the time, like an anti-James Rolfe, and his reasoning holds up more often than not. Also like an anti-James Rolfe
Aside from those hot takes though, which are all collected in the e-book Harlan Ellison’s Watching, these articles were beneficial in helping me discover movies I might not have ever heard of otherwise. Case in point: Love at First Bite, which Ellison described as the only other vampire movie worth watching, aside from the Universal Dracula film in 1931. Vampires had been taken as far as they could go seriously in the Lugosi film, Ellison wrote, and with their deconstruction in this film the concept was officially played out and should be retired. Glowing praise for Love at First Bite and a damning indictment of every vampire movie since the 30s, but even if he were being hyperbolic in order to sell a couple more newspapers or magazines it did get interested in seeing what the big deal was with this movie, as it did for several other films that may be featured in future reviews. Also I tend to throw a vampire movie on this list every year anyway, so bob’s your uncle.
Released in 1979, Love at First Bite was written by Robert Kaufman (a frequent writer on The Bob Newhart Show), directed by Stan Dragoti and produced by Joel Freeman through Melvin Simon Productions. George Hamilton stars as Count Dracula, who with the help of his crony Renfield (Arte Johnson) managed to survive the events of the novel and has since puttered around in his castle in Transylvania, pining over magazine model Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James). That is until the Romanian government comes in and declares that they will be appropriating Castle Dracula and turning it into a boy’s gymnasium and training center. What’s a blood-drinking demon and his verminous lackey to do? Why go to New York of course, where Dracula’s one true love Cindy lives, and make her his immortal bride! What awaits the Count as he makes his way to this land of opportunity, this Big Apple as they call it? Comic shenanigans, perhaps?
I’ve been struggling for a while to put my thoughts into words for this review, and in the end the issue was Ellison. Given that this film was praised so highly I expected that there was something about it that was deep or profound, but there’s not. There was a hint of something there near the beginning, when Dracula really meets Cindy and we find out she’s kind of a neurotic mess with a passion for pharmaceutical cocktails that we were in for a real deconstruction. Dracula, this old world aristocrat who is used to having whatever he wants clashing against this 20th century doesn’t-take-shit kind of woman and realizing that his usual tricks don’t work. Except they do work and it turns into a bog-standard romance where Cindy is ready to completely throw her life away for this guy she met less than a week and also drops a couple IQ points. Dracula has a moment of vulnerability once about all the things he’s missed by being a vampire, and then this is wasted by barely having to struggle to get everything he wants. Not that every movie romance needs to be Annie Hall, but considering the way Ellison roasted films for not living up to his standards of writing it’s surprising he would let that slide.
Which isn’t to say that Love at First Bite is without merit. When it’s in parody mode and messing with tropes from Dracula it’s funny, like the scene with Jeff and Dracula at the restaurant. There’s plenty of great zingers and dialogue exchanges here as well, the opening scene with Dracula at the piano, Cindy and Jeff’s therapy session, as you’d expect from one of the writers on the Bob Newhart Show. Yet at other times it feels like it’s trying way too hard. Hey let’s be wacky but also serious sometimes while also doing meta commentary and George Hamilton was on Roots that time so let’s name drop Roots a couple times because that’ll always be timely and why not do some race jokes too and it’s all just...meh. At it’s best Love at First Bite is the perfect companion piece to the Mel Brooks classic Young Frankenstein, and at its worst it’s like one of the Mel Brooks movies that no one talks about.
The casting was also good. I’m not quite sure about George Hamilton’s hair but he does do a convincing faux-Lugosi accent and he’s able to do comedy while still largely retaining the mystique of Dracula. Susan Saint James also isn’t bad, but a lot of what she does is subordinate to the romance angle which I’ve already stated my issues with. Richard Benjamin as Jeffrey Rosenberg (formerly Van Helsing) has some of the better jokes in the movie but they really needed to reign him in because at some point he just abandons the premise that this character is meant to be a human being and in favor of ‘look at me, I’m crazy now!’ style comedy. Except he’s not high energy like Robin Williams to make that work, he just grins a lot and shouts randomly, like the one weird kid in class you didn’t interact with much. I did like Arte Johnson as Renfield though, dude had the creepy laugh down pat.
I ended up running out of juice on this review right out of the gate, but no, Love at First Bite is not the only other Dracula movie you need to watch, or the only other vampire movie, or the only vampire comedy movie. It wants to be a screwball comedy but lacks the confidence and wants to be a parody but lacks the conviction, so it ends up all over the place. Whether I would have felt this way if I managed to stumble upon this movie on my own and not had Harlan Ellison in the back of my mind, I’m not sure. Either way I’m giving it the recommendation, as there is some funny stuff here and it’ll probably be a lot more enjoyable to those not pushed into scrutinizing it. Pop open a bottle of champagne and light up a joint this Halloween and see where this film takes you.
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