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Show 'Blacula': Campy melodra- i V Oy by RICK BROUGH Chronicle Staff A couple of years back, in a m0vie called "Cotton Comes to we me. Coffin Ed Johnson John-son and Gravedigger Jones,, two cops not even a mother could love." But apparently someone took a iking to them, for they set off a sequel and a spate of films with one thing in common: the assumption assump-tion andor satirization of white stereotypes by Blacks. Richard Roundtree played John Shaft, the black James Bond. In a scene from "Come Back, Charleston Blue," Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques careened through Harlem in. a hearse, a la "Bullit" and "French Connection. And now William Marshall steps into the shoes (and capes) of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee in American-International's "Blacula." The time: 1780. The place: Transylvania. Tran-sylvania. Count Dracula is playing host to Mamuwalde, the prince of an African nation, "The crystallization crystalli-zation of all our people's hopes," as his wife awkwardly puts it.) The pair seek his help against the slave trade in their country, but soon find out that the Count practices prac-tices his own peculiar brand of slavery. Mamuwalde is chained in a cofin, cursed with an eternal and unquenchable thirst for blood. His wife is imprisoned in a dungeon, doomed to die of starvation and thirst. And this is all before the credits! This is fairly unconventional stuff. But soon we are safely amidst the cliches we know and love. First, of course, is the release of the vampire by two unwary victims, who in this case are a pair of gay interior decorators who buy Castle Dracula and transport its effects back to Los Angeles. "I'm simply dying to open this coffin!" cof-fin!" says one. They do, with predictable pre-dictable results. Cliche No. 2 enters in the person per-son of Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) a tactiturn police pathologist path-ologist who becomes suspicious when several bodies turn up with teethmarks in their necks. He checks out books on vampirism from the local library (which, as usual, has a prodigious amount of material on the subject,) and begins be-gins to talk over a crazy hunch with his skeptical white superior. Meanwhile, his fiance's sister (Von-etta (Von-etta McGee) turns out to be the reincarnation of Blacula's long-lost bride (Cliche No. 3), and the two come to fall in love, even to the extent of going to bed together, which is a pretty neat trick for a guy who turns into a rotting skeleton skel-eton when exposed to the sun! And on it goes. Instead of an English concert hall, normally used to bring vampire and unsuspecting victims together, the main characters char-acters are thrown into a disco-teque, disco-teque, allowing a trio called the Hues Corporation to perform a few musical numbers, (a standard AIP tactic for killing movie time.) Instead In-stead of dialect comedy-relief sup- plied by a cockney, Jli talking hipster, wh0;,ll in the discotequB, ar-,k' pies his time by'st'c buy Blacula's groo-r or else by constantly :lt prince and saying t0'-n, that is a strange (.:,e once wild animals ,i blamed for the mys; suspicion is now feTI Black Panthers ' n Being white, the pc n incompetent than ust; e horor movie. They an rt the initial deaths, ar:ln befuddled when Ihei: disappear. "Who feT. want a dead fagot?',?1 lieutenant (Gordon F-K are poor shots. Tkey tailing the gay bte' cause those kind all them. And when the,-in the,-in an industrial corr;;T them out with an rn hasn't been seen -Jt spaghetti Western. Most of the J value of the pic q writers, for instant; scary to have vampires coming ot: work to attack theh-Marshall theh-Marshall is particulE'- ing. At his most de and clears his thros: 11 ferocity. However, C':i ey makes a very gc ula. He is convincir:'T sistion from courage cour-age beast, and out, best moments to over the helpless Wr c a red tear rolling :' j and condemning lir Count's eternity ol:L The production k noteworthy. (The ' -castle is especially signed in plastic 8TL William Crain's car;N usual fascination t' fangs, and has a it : for the pelvis in rr scenes. t What emerges N combination of genu ty: campy spool, and drama. But there is -SC it that I believe -will long remer;o ula's victims (K-(s ,o a police mo-g:v by E,ishaCook, nial victim. As the phone in serted building. -of re-birth begin uncharge. un-charge. Sudenly. " . she wail of the to Cook's dice,; Blacula's vived, bursts i ; hall, with far ;: and r; flowing behind le her assault. st camera cross- lently betw" ",.' terrified prey- tion, and the ,f most chilling r strained savag |