Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!
When I started this blog at the end of 2009 (Jeez…2009!), I knew I would be going to some places that were going to move me out of my comfort zone. I would watch directors I’d never heard of, movies that took me places I hadn’t conceived of, and would see sights that would stick with me for good or ill. But of all of the places I have gone with this project, I could not have foreseen something as singularly bizarre as Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.
The title of this one doesn’t contain any secrets. We’re literally going to see William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney) facing off against Count Dracula (John Carradine) in the Wild West. Dracula is going cross-country for some reason, and it’s not explained. Honestly, that’s probably for the best. It doesn’t matter how Dracula crossed the Atlantic or why he, a creature who depends on a population to feed on and protection from daylight, is crossing a huge wilderness thinly inhabited by settlers and otherwise populated by an almost certainly hostile native population. It also doesn’t really explain how he manages to travel by night when the average stagecoach traveled through the day. These are things better left unexplored, honestly.
Dracula, who appears as a guy in a top hat and a cape and who hypnotizes people by bugging his eyes out at them, is traveling in a stagecoach with a group of people. Among them is Mary Ann Bentley (Marjorie Bennett) and her brother, James Underhill (William Forrest). During the small talk portion of the trip, Mary Ann shows the count a picture of her daughter Betty (Melinda Plowman). Because this is a Dracula tale, he is immediately smitten with the girl. While he bides his time feeding on a young woman (Hannie Landman), he clearly decides that he’s going to make Betty his bride. So, naturally, he slaughters everyone in the carriage and assumes the identity of Betty’s uncle James.
Betty, it turns out, is engaged to Billy the Kid, who is now just going by William H. Bonney. It seems to be an open secret in the area that the Bentley ranch is headed up by an infamous gunman who is wanted more than likely in a number of territories and has a price on his head. But, it doesn’t really matter to anyone who he used to be. And so, like any good Dracula tale, this isn’t going to be about the creation of the undead or the horrors of the vampiric lifestyle. It’s going to be about who gets the girl, the vampire or (in this case) the infamous gunslinger.
Of course no one really believes that there’s a vampire attacking the area despite the claims of the couple whose daughter is killed by Dracula and the number of sheep that turn up dead, exsanguinated with slit throats. But eventually, people are going to come around, and Billy the Kid will have to fight for his position, his woman, and yes, perhaps his very soul.
Honestly, there’s not much good about Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. It clearly had no budget, nor did its companion piece, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (the two movies ran as a double bill). Despite the fact that Dracula cannot be outside during the day--so all of the action that involves him needs to happen at night--the film was clearly made over the course of a very sunny week. This isn’t shot day for night, but day for day, with obvious shadows moving across the screen. The film is so cheap they evidently couldn’t afford any filters for the cameras.
Ultimately, that might be the legacy of Billy the Kid vs Dracula. This is a studio movie that was released in one way or another, not simply hidden in a vault where no one will eventually discover it. This was played before audiences of people who presumably wanted to be entertained. And instead, they got this. Of all of the Grade-Z level movies that have come out, many are terrible, but most aren’t aggressively so.
The ultimate insult? John Carradine thought this was the worst film he was ever in, and he was in a Coleman Francis movie.
Why to watch Billy the Kid vs. Dracula: If you know your Dracula lore, the combination of vampire and cowboy is not that weird.
Why not to watch: It absolutely is goofier than you are currently thinking it is, I promise.