Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) Review

When it was released, it was released as a
double feature with Jesse James Meets
Frankenstein's Daughter, which I also
took the liberty of recording. I will write
a review of it soon.

BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966)

Director: William Beaudine

Writer: Carl Hittleman

Producer: Carroll Case

Editor: Roy V. Livingston

Cinematography: Lothrop B. Worth

Music: Raoul Kraushaar

Starring: John Carradine, Chuck Courtney, Melinda Plowman, Virginia Christine, and Bing Russell.

Runtime: 1 hour 13 minutes

Rating: Not Rated. Comparable to PG

Genre: Horror, Western, Drama

Release Date: April 10, 1966

Intro: (Please bear with me. I know it's November now, but I started writing this in October. It's a good intro though, so I decided to keep it.) I love October. The weather starts to get cooler and it actually starts to rain again (I mention it a lot in my review of Drive), the baseball playoffs are on a lot and those consume a lot of my time, and, of course since it's near Halloween, there are tons of cheesy horror movies being shown on TV. This is where I found Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. While perusing through channels, I found it and immediately set up the DVR to record it. I mean, can you really pass up recording a movie called Billy the Kid vs. Dracula? I sure as hell couldn't. It turns out that the movie is about as stupid as you'd imagine it would be. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula had very little hope and budget starting out, and with the hope and budget it has, it doesn't do much with it.

Plot: In the Old West, a mother and her brother are heading from the East to see her daughter named Betty that she haven't seen since she was a child and her brother has never seen. On the way there, the wagon picks up a mysterious foreign traveler with weird attraction to the picture of the mother's daughter in a locket she has. When they stop for the night, an nearby indian girl is mysteriously killed by two incisions on the neck (hint) and the indians stereotypically rampage and kill everyone on the wagon train except for the strange man (Carradine). The strange man (It's Dracula, ok?) finds the locket in the wreckage of the wagon and assumes the personality of Betty's uncle she's never met named James Underhill. Meanwhile, Betty and her boyfriend Billy the Kid (or just Billy) are planning to get married when "her uncle James" shows up and tries to pull the two apart, since Dracula wants Betty for himself. While Dracula tries to trick and seduce Betty and ultimately make a her a vampire, the foreign housekeepers and Billy suspect something is wrong and try to save Betty before it's too late.

Things people may find “objectionable”: Not that much. There are a couple BWC shots and a couple scenes with minor blood, but nothing major. One thing that might offend some is that the Indians are extremely stereotyped and portrayed in a way that would have you believe that the directors are a bunch of xenophobic white guys. And you know what? You're probably right.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography:

     -Acting: 5/10. John Carradine, who plays Dracula, is actually what you may consider a "real actor." He's kind of like Vincent Price and Nicholas Cage in that he's a pretty good actor, but at least towards the end of his career, he picked really crappy movies to star in for whatever reason (seriously, Cage needs to fire his agent). His performance is more cheesy than anything else, but I'd blame that on the director. Everyone else can't act that well, but it's not truly awful acting like the kind that is seen in I Eat Your Skin.

     -Writing: 4/10.

          -Story: 4/10. I really didn't see much creativity in the story, as it's pretty formulaic aside from the whole Billy the Kid meeting Dracula thing. It did have kind of a cool vampire legend twist that was intriguing and something I hadn't heard before, but the rest of the story was worthless and cliché.

          -Script: 4/10. Very forgettable script. Wasn't great but wasn't awful like the one in The Last Airbender. I wouldn't consider the script a strength or a weakness. It was just kind of there.

     -Special Effects: 1/10. Laughably terrible special effects. The best special effects were the super-fake flying bat (see picture below).

Two of the greatest shots from the movie: the über fake bat and Dracula's creeper stare.
 If someone looks at you like Dracula is in the picture on the left, call the police immediately.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. The music was very lame and cheesy. They got a lot of work out of the one harpist the hired, as every single time Dracula does his creepy stare (see picture above), a harp plays the exact same pattern. everything else just seems cheesy and formulaic. There was absolutely no creativity in writing this score.

     -Power/Emotion: 3/10. They kinda try to get you to care about the characters, but it doesn't work exceedingly well. In their defense, the writers' work was probably done when the movie's name convinced people to spend their $5 on this movie, creating a small, quick, profit.

     -Adrenaline: 4/10. The movie is really pretty boring until the end. The story gets caught up into this whole character development and love story crap and forgets what the audience is there to see: Billy the Kid fighting Dracula. It is pretty entertaining at the end, but it isn't that suspenseful.

     -Intelligence: 3/10. This movie really doesn't make you think at all. It's pretty mindless and serves pretty much only as cheap entertainment, which was its purpose.

     -Stupidity: 7/10. The title of this movie should give you a good insight into what

     -Humor: Intentional: 1/10. Unintentional: 5/10. The movie attempts to have a little bit of humor in it, but it fails for the most part. The movie is unintentionally hilarious because of the fake flying bat, Dracula's creepy stares (see picture above for these two) and mostly because of this lovely scene below, which is during the climax of the movie:

The funniest scene in the movie, and how Billy takes out the vampire after

 using many bullets to no effect and losing a fist fight to him.

     -Best Credit: None, sadly.

     -Final Score: The bottom line is you just shouldn't make genre mashups involving westerns and try to make them serious. I think Cowboys and Aliens failed for the same reason. Trying to mash genres is hard enough, but it's even harder when you try to make it serious. Still, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula fails more than Cowboys and Aliens because of the lack of budget and A-list actors. I would recommend this to any b-movie fans out there looking to kill about an hour and a half. If nothing else, the death scene and the scenes with the bat are entertaining and a brilliant way to kill time.

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