Billy The Kid vs. Dracula

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966)

Runtime: 73 minutes

Directed by: William Beaudine

Starring: John Carradine, Chuck Courtney, Melinda Plowman, Virginia Christine, Walter Janovitz

From: Circle Productions Inc.

Would you believe I've seen the hokum once before? It's not atrocious, but that doesn't mean it's any good. Read why below:

Much to my delight, this film was on Turner Classic Movies Sunday night (yes, really) and long ago I had seen both this and its companion film, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter; shock of shocks, neither is any good but as this was on I might as well see it a second time.

The plot is quite simple: Dracula (John Carradine) ends up in the Wild West, where he ends up at a ranch. Via contrivances, he impersonates the uncle of a blond lass, whose boyfriend happens to be Billy the Kid. There are also German immigrants who are there to try and convince people this dude actually is a vampire. This is only 73 minutes long so they did not try to write a Dostoyevsky novel with the script.

It definitely is silly and goofy, and has the attention to care and detail you'd expect from William Beaudine, who was known at the time as “One Shot”, which was not a description of his drinking habits but rather how quickly he filmed his movies. Yet while it's a piece of crap, I did not find it to be an awful piece of crap so I can't give it a bottom of the barrel rating. At least I could laugh at its shoddiness and marvel at the doofy vampire mythology it created, where not only did Carradine walk around in the daytime, his way of hypnotizing women is... bugging his eyes out and usually being bathed in red light. That dude did try... he was the highlight of the movie for sure.