There are killer lines and exchanges, but not the overall consistency you'd hope for in a film like this, or the kind of energy that could drive a stake through our ennui.
Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »
It bites to be Dracula.
The Count must feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of monsters. Look at the way he's been treated in the post-Bela Lugosi cinema. There was "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy"—even "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man." But Dracula? He has to make a cameo in Frankenstein's flick. Then, like a has-been rocker who's relegated to playing county fairs, he turns up on the set of a so-bad-it's-campy western, "Billy the Kid vs. Dracula" (1966). When he does get top billing, more often than not Dracula finds himself with a real turkey on his lap, or else he's the target of I vunt to suck your blood! spoofs. It can't do much for your ego to be played by the likes of professional tanner George Hamilton or perennial goofball Leslie Nielsen, or to have modern filmmakers feel as if they need to throw in a bunch of nudity and gore in order to make your story seem riveting. And the ultimate insult? With the new millennium, movies start to be named for your nemesis, that fanatical Van Helsing guy.
Though it's probably not saying an awful lot, "Love at First Bite" (1979) is the best of the tongue-in-cheek neck biters, and the born-to-be-soap-opera-suave Hamilton actually finds a role that's compatible with his smarmy wooden acting—the best comic Dracula to date. The film was also perfectly compatible with the '70s, hitting the theaters the same year as "Laugh-In" redefined the comedy-variety show on television. In fact, "Laugh-In" regular Arte Johnson—who played a tricycle-riding old man on that show, and the crusty old fellow who tries to pick up frumpy Ruth Buzzi on a park bench—co-stars with Hamilton as the Count's faithful servant, the bug-eating, lecherous-laughing Reinfield. He plays off of the hammy Hamilton in much the same way as the bug-eyed Marty Feldman played off of Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein" (1974). While a much later spoof, "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" (1996) goes for broad comedy and belly laughs, "Love at First Bite" sticks to subtlety, much more so than Mel Brooks' parody. There's also that '70s pacing you have to contend with, and a few "Laugh-In"-style gags that just doesn't seem to hold up as well 30 years later. A starving Latino family tries to catch the Count in bat form, thinking he's some form of chicken? Come on.
Still, the writers have their New Age fun, with Dracula lusting after a cover girl (Susan Saint James) and recalling that he bit her in a different lifetime—once in 1356 Warsaw, and twice in 1931 England. Now the woman's spirit is calling to the Count once again, only this time ah, ah, ah, it could be forever—though it's not love at first sight. In one of their first meetings, Cindy (Saint James) mistakes the Count for her waiter. As for the neck bite ("Oh, that's so kinky!"), it attracts her more than it repels her, much to the consternation of her shrink and on-again-off-again boyfriend, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg (Richard Benjamin). Rosenberg, it turns out, is an assumed name. He's really a Van Helsing, but changed his name to avoid ridicule. Just as well. This Van Helsing is more hapless and befuddled than his ancestors. Whether by direction or his own insistence, Benjamin turns in an understated performance in a role that could have been taken over the top with very little exaggeration. Don't look for the typical hyper-frantic monster-hunter here.
Average user rating (1-5):
Not yet rated.
Not yet rated.
[release]16396[/release]