Tuesday, October 14, 2014

October Movie Challenge: Billy the Kid vs Dracula (1966)

Well I am going to start out by saying that this movie was no where near as bad as I remembered it.
Ok.  The bat is still crappy. And the "night" scenes are more like afternoon scenes.

Let's start with some of the good points.
The timing is about right really.  Dracula could have left England to visit America.  And John Carradine does a good Dracula.
I could see Billy the Kid/William Bonny deciding to play it legit too.  It makes as much sense as a vampire really.

All in all it is pretty much a typical Dracula plot.  Dracula sees a pretty girl, decides he wants her, goes after her, killing dozens along the way.  Hero protects girl.

I do like the change of the typical Victorian England or even the "Hammer Hamlet" to the American West.
There are plenty of differences in setting a horror film in the American west rather than say Victorian era Europe. For starters everyone (well not really...) has a gun. And the Americans generally don't believe the old superstitions.  This was something I always felt was done well in George Hamilton's "Love at First Bite".

If anything there are a lot of wasted potential here, but I can't say if that is just my take on it looking at nearly 50 years later or if it is an actual defect of the movie.

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Tally so far:  18 Total Watched / 12 New

What do you find scary?
October Horror Movie Challenge hosted by Krell Laboratories.


1 comment:

JB said...

@ Tim:

Ha! You'd think this one is ripe for a Hollywood remake!

(any crazier than "Cowboys and Aliens?" no)