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Love at First Bite
: This is a wonderful film, and it deserves a special niche in anyone's collection of vampire movies.The transfer to VHS was not very carefully done, and it was never marketed well; now it seems that the same people who made that mistake are also not going to release it on DVD. This is one that deserves better treatment.
 This was one of my favorite comedies of the 70's staring George Hamilton and many other favorites. The campy comedy of Dracula in New York is great, seeing how the stereotype vampire lives in the modern day.
The biggest complaint is this is not the orginal movie. This is a editted version. Do not buy! The most memorable scene where Dracula dances with Sandy has been edited. "I love the night life" has been cut out of the film folks. Write MGM and tell....I did.. I regret buying this movie now and want my money back.
I know this movie inside and out, having seen it on cable a million times when I was a kid. The concept is a scream! George Hamilton plays a rather hip Count Dracula and Arte Johnson his ingratiating sidekick Renfield. Drac falls madly in love with Cindy Sondheim, played by Susan St. James, a high-powered New York supermodel. He despairs of ever having her for himself, but fate deals him a lucky blow couched in misfortune: The local Communist bigwigs, who desire to convert Drac's castle into a training camp for Nadia Comaneci and her teammates, give Drac and Renfield the boot. The logical choice? To escape to America and track down Cindy in New York City, which Drac summarily does. Luckily, she falls in love with him, but before Drac can make her one of the undead, Cindy's high-strung boyfriend Jeffrey Rosenberg, played by Richard Benjamin, interferes. Jeffrey's grandfather -- the famous vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, who had been Drac's nemesis -- died without ever destroying his undead quarry, and Jeffrey is determined to finish what his grandfather started. His attempts to do so backfire hilariously! In the end -- and I was so happy for them -- Drac and Cindy make good their escape to spend the rest of their "lives" together. No matter how often I watched this movie, it never lost its appeal or its comedy. There aren't too many movies out there that are blessed with this gift. P.S. Was the part of the wino played by Richard Mulligan of SOAP and EMPTY NEST fame? If so, I didn't see his name listed in the credits.
How this movie never become a cult classic like the Blues Brothers is beyond me. It's well-written, unbelievably quotable and perfectly acted. George Hamilton's camp Dracula redefines the role. This is not a great movie by any stretch, but it's gotta be one of the most enduring comedies ever.
My ONLY complaint about the DVD is that when Dracula dances with Sandy the perfectly chosen song, "I Love the Nightlife" is replaced with some tepid dance song. I am guessing this because of rights issues, but it's sad that this will probably be the most enduring and watched version of this film now and it is not what the filmmaker's intended. Very sad.
This take-off on the timeless Dracula story is one of the funniest films ever to come out of Hollywood.. George Hamilton is a riot as Dracula, and the movie opens when the poor guy (er, vampire) is about to be summarily kicked out of his Transylvanian castle by the local communist functionaries who want to turn it into a training gym ("In 24 hours ve vill return with trampolines, uneven parallel bars, and Nadia Comaneci. Don't be here.") He and his trusty sidekick Renfield (hilariously played by Arte Johnson) hop the night flight to New York, where Dracula's coffin gets swapped at the airport and he finds himself at the Reverend Mike's funeral parlor in Harlem. (For those unfamiliar with the setting, Reverend Mike's funeral parlor is a spoof on the actual funeral home owned by the real-life funeral director Reverend Ike.) Rising out of his coffin and sending the crowd of mourners screaming for the nearest exits, he's out on the streets of New York searching for the lady of his dreams, a pill-popping anorexic supermodel whose picture he fell in love with on the cover of a fashion magazine. Turning himself into a dog to get close to the lady on a fashion shoot, and running afoul of New York's Finest at the same time (hey, if you're a dog and you gotta do your thing and a fire hydrant isn't handy, a cop's leg will do just as well), he almost ends up in the local pound but springs himself and heads for a night of adventures that includes biting a wino in the neck and getting hilariously drunk from the wino's blood. He heads down to a local nightclub, meets the supermodel (Susan St. James) and it's love at first sight (yep, and bite too). Complications arrive in the form of St. James's nutty psychiatrist boyfriend (Richard Benjamin), who suspects there is something fishy about the competition. The movie rockets along toward its hilarious ending and we have a ball viewing it in the process. This is one comedy film that has stood the test of time; it gets funnier each time you watch it.
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