Dracula Blows his Cool (1979)
aka Graf Dracula in Oberbayern
Article 6065 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-24-2022
Directed by Carl Schenkel
Featuring Gianni Garko, Betty Virges, Bea Fiedler
Country: West Germany / Italy
What it is: Dracula disco sexploitation comedy

A photographer who specializes in girlie magazines inherits a castle with the intent on turning it into a sexy disco hotel, unaware that his ancestors in the family crypt are vampires.

Let’s see, a Dracula disco sexploitation comedy? If you’re me, this sounds abysmal, and if I say I found it better than I expected it would be, it might simply be because my expectations were extremely low. So why did this one feel better than I expected. For one thing, some of the jokes worked; I was amused by the confusion between a giant phallus sculpture and a garden gnome at one point in particular. Secondly, though the movie is pretty bad, it doesn’t come off as desperate. Thirdly, the music didn’t annoy the hell out of me, a nice feat for a movie with “disco” in the title. Fourth, Dracula is not portrayed as a hapless buffoon, and his presence and situation adds a little depth to the proceedings. And finally, the plot in its second half veers the movie in the direction of satire when the presence of a vampire in the castle becomes a marketing tool for the hotel owners. No, the movie never really becomes good, but it does keep from being overly painful, and actually gave me some food for thought.