![]() ![]() It's also competently directed and fairly funny at points, although there are moments where it seems like it can't make up its mind whether or not it wants to be a farcical spoof in the Mel Brooks vein (that said, I enjoyed this a lot more than Dracula: Dead and Loving It). It's not a dynamo by any means but what it has going for it is a delightful performance by George Hamilton as Count Dracula, who manages to be charming, seductive, and funny, as well as rather sad when he laments his wretched existence, and an equally fun performance by Arte Johnson as Renfield, who does a nice impersonation of Dwight Frye's laugh from the original Dracula. In any case, this is another movie I'd never seen until I decided to review it as part of this year's October Fest, and after watching it several times now, I think it's perfectly fine. I was surprised by that, since it wasn't a movie I'd heard many people mention, but upon looking it up, I've learned it was one of the top twenty highest grossing movies of 1979 and was also one of the most successful independently-produced films for many years. 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.Maybe it was original back then but, when I look at that title after seeing and hearing so many variations of it, I think to myself, "Boy, has that become a cliche." Like a lot of movies, I first learned of it from the filmography in the back of that Monster Madness book, and also, when I read a book on horror films from a series published by Virgin Books (the book is just called Horror Films), it claimed that Love At First Bite was the highest-grossing vampire movie until Bram Stoker's Dracula. 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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