This is a Dracula who takes only what he needs in terms of blood to survive, and his main purpose is to find and court the old soul he knows in Cindy. George Hamilton plays a highly sensual and romantic Dracula (another ultra-romantic Dracula that comes to mind is Gary Oldman’s version from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film). Offbeat reimaginings of Dracula and Renfield are paired with original characters who have a connection to the original plot from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Let’s take a look at our main players: What I most enjoyed about “Love at First Bite” was the way it interpreted classic horror characters. After being exiled from Castle Dracula by the Transylvanian government, Vladimir and Renfield head to New York to find Cindy. On a soul-deep level, he knows that Cindy is the reincarnation of his one true love. Several decades to a century later (the timeline feels a bit unclear), Vladimir’s given new hope when he sees supermodel Cindy Sondheim on the cover of one of his magazine subscriptions. He also failed to turn his soulmate (reincarnated as Mina Harker) into a vampire. What I forgot about “Love at First Bite” is that it takes place after the events of “Dracula.” We learn that Vladimir (Dracula) escaped from Van Helsing with assistance from his daylight guardian, Renfield. This was a sign to me that, after twenty-something years, it was finally time for a rewatch. Of course, the blu was released under one of my favorite labels, Scream Factory. Is it really anything special, or does our love of it come purely from nostalgia? Recently, while browsing at my local comic book store, I found “Love at First Bite” on a double-feature blu-ray along with the Jim Carrey vampire comedy “Once Bitten” (1985). With three generations of family members enjoying the film, I began to wonder how this simple, quirky horror-comedy was able to have such a lasting impact. From my mom: “She thought Hamilton was cute…your grandmother always liked horror movies, especially vampire movies like ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘Salem’s Lot.’ She also liked ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Amityville Horror’ (she thought James Brolin was cute, too). Apparently, my grandmother had a mini-crush on Hamilton, so this was a regular on her watch list. The time-frame jokes are many and varied, but the best scene, a hypnosis duel, is timeless and a great moment sure, Love at First Bite may have a few regrettable scenes, but there’s plenty of comedy meat on these often gnawed bones.I also later discovered that “Love at First Bite” was a family favorite on my mom’s side. Arte Johnson does well as his cockroach-loving sidekick Renfield, and there’s a few wierdly caustic lines like a psychiatrist saying ‘If you don’t pay for it, it won’t get better’ or a conquest who excuses her messy apartment by saying ‘I hate housework, it killed my mother’. That said, Hamilton is a good laugh here, playing straight and with great style in the way he’s constantly undercutting of his own gravity. The world he encounters is recognisably 1970’s, but it’s odd how some characters recognise the Dracula brand, and others don’t Love at First Bite is so keen to get laughs it can’t maintain a consistent universe. Love at First Bite is a more interesting film that a rather sketchy reputation might suggest this isn’t quite Bram Stoker’s Dracula in that the count can shoot steam jets from his mouth, bend metal with his stare, transform himself into a dog and control a horse and cart with his mind. Along the way, a shrink who is related to nemesis Van Helsing (Richard Benjamin) gets wind of the count’s plans and a duel of wits follows. ‘Dracula goes disco’ would be an equally good title for this film, in which the Count faces a fish-out-of-water culture clash as he encounters nightclubs, modelling shoots, psychiatry and various other late 70’s touchstones. Copyright issues involving a featured Alicia Bridges song have also muted re-release plans. Stan Dragoti’s comedy was a breakout hit in 1979, but has since fallen by the wayside, partly because of some hideous stereotyping black characters are little more than cheerful thieves in the Manhattan that Count Dracula visits. Having followed up on their ‘in-movie’ quote of Zorro The Gay Blade, it seemed natural to look back a couple of years to the film that Hamilton was attempting to recapture the magic of Love At First Bite. After sampling the reputedly toxic, morally corrosive substances emitted by the Joker movie, the immediate aftermath involved watching a short season of George Hamilton comedies, something worth holding the film-makers of Joker directly responsible for.
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