BLOOD FOR DRACULA (1974)
LABEL	Raro Video
REGION	PAL
LENGTH	103'
ASPECT RATIO	1,85:1 Anamorphic
LANGUAGES	English 2.0
SUBTITLES	Italian
EXTRAS	Test Screening
STARS	Joe Dallesandro, Udo Kier, Silvia Dionisio, Stefania Casini, Vittorio De Sica
DIRECTOR	Paul Morissey, & Antonio Margheriti,

ALTERNATIVE TITLES

DRACULA CERCA SANGUE DI VERGINE...E MORI' DI SETE

OTHER INFO

Contains a 12 pages color booklet in English and Italian.

PLOT DESCRIPTION

A sickly and dying Count Dracula must drink virgin blood to survive travels from Transylvania to Italy. With a shortage of virgins in Romania and thinking he will more be more likely to find a virgin in a Catholic country, Dracula befriends Marchese di Fiori (played by de Sica), an impecunious Italian landowner with a lavish estate falling into decline, who wants to marry off his daughters to a wealthy aristocrat.

Of di Fiori's four daughters, two regularly enjoy the sexual services of Mario, the estate handyman (played by Dallesandro), a bemuscled Marxist with a hammer and sickle painted on his bedroom wall. The youngest and eldest are virgins, but the latter is thought too plain to be offered for marriage, and the youngest is only age fourteen. Dracula obtains assurances that all the daughters are virgins and drinks the blood of the two who are considered marriageable. However, both are non-virgins and their tainted blood make Dracula ill. Mario realises the danger to the youngest daughter in time and ostensibly rapes her for her own protection. But in the meantime Dracula has drunk the blood of the eldest daughter, turning her into a vampire. After more carnage, the peasant Mario commands the estate..

REVIEW

Blood for Dracula is a 1974 Andy Warhol film directed by Paul Morrissey, starring Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Maxime McKendry and Arno Juerging. Roman Polanski and Vittorio de Sica appear in cameo roles.

The film was shot on locations in Italy and was partly improvised as the filming of Flesh for Frankenstein by the same team had been quicker and less costly than expected.

Themes: In one interpretation, di Fiori and his family represent European traditional values, and Morrisey produces a narrative of a doomed Europe that is self-destructing as the bourgeoisie attempts to survive making an alliance with the aristocracy while the aristocracy (represented by the pathetic Dracula in what some consider one of Kier's best performances)

is losing the battle of power against the powers of industry and modernity. Furthermore, Mario's professed Marxism is revealed as another form of oppression. When he supplants di Fiori and dispatches Dracula, Mario represents not the triumph of the people but the merely the replacement of one tyranny with another.