Review of Blood Of Dracula

Introduction

For starters, this 1957 American International Picture has nothing to do with the Count at all. Released here in the UK as "Blood Is My Heritage", this is a standard drive-in potboiler full of overwrung performances and cheesy dialogue.

It is impossible to spoil this movie, as the cover notes do a bang-up job of telling you the whole story with commendable brevity. The movie combines those two staples of exploitation cinema, the all-girl school and a rampaging monster. Unfortunately for the heroine of the piece, she is the rampaging monster, hypnotised by her evil chemistry teacher (aren`t they all?).

The movie is a round of catfights, off-screen murders and a brain-erodingly awful musical number "Puppy Love" (no, not *that* song) that interrupts the proceedings like a cataclysmic release of trapped wind.

By the end of the movie you know there can`t be a happy ending, and there ain`t.

Video

Age has withered this movie, and the source print is not in the best of condition. The image is slightly fuzzy, although the hard contrast of the black and white picture goes some way to compensate. Grain, stock deterioration and wear and tear is very evident. The movie is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Audio

The sound is, typically for a movie of this vintage, shrill and fuzzy. Reproduced in DD2.0 Mono, no filtering or processing has been attempted to improve quality.

Features

There are the usual nine theatrical trailers for the movie and the rest of the series, and the same 50 minute audio interview with Samuel Z Arkoff at the BFI. There are no English subtitles, only Dutch and German. The disc is region 0 coded.

Conclusion

You have to be a fan of these drive-in type movies to enjoy them. Some of the movies in this series have been stylistic icons, but this particular effort is not among the best.