Count Dracula (David Niven) opens his castle to tourists, draining blood from the guests in an attempt to find someone whose rare blood type can revive his beloved wife Vampira. Success comes when he uses blood drawn from a group of Playboy playmates, but the vampire is shocked when the revived Vampira turns black. Together with his loyal assistant Maltravers (Peter Bayliss) and his wife (blaxploitation babe Teresa Graves), Dracula travels to London to find a way to restore Vampira's original colour.
While watching the opening credits for Vampira, I was delighted to see the name of one of my favourites actresses, 'Confessions..' beauty Linda Hayden, but sadly she isn't in the film for long: she wears a blouse unbuttoned to reveal some tempting boobage, and gets turned into a sexy vampire by Count Dracula, but is dispatched all too soon by Maltravers, who shoots a crossbow bolt through her heart.
With Linda gone so quickly, I felt just a little downhearted, but put my trust in writer Jeremy Lloyd (creator of the excellent 'Are You Being Served?'), usually reliable star Niven, several more lovely ladies (including Hammer hottie Veronica Carlson), plus many a familiar face from British cinema and TV of the '70s. Surely 'Carry On' legend Bernard Bresslaw and TV favourite Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock from 'Are You Being Served?') wouldn't let me down...
Unfortunately, Lloyd's script is extremely poor, stuffed with stale humour that rarely works, and there's very little the talented cast can do to generate laughs. The whole 'black Vampira' plotline is horribly dated and embarrassingly un-PC, more cringeworthy than chucklesome. After lots of weak vampiric shenanigans, in which Dracula hypnotises Playboy employee Marc (Nicky Henson) to do his bidding, we are given a truly awful finalé that sees David Niven sporting dreadful black make-up, Dracula having been bitten by his wife.
While watching the opening credits for Vampira, I was delighted to see the name of one of my favourites actresses, 'Confessions..' beauty Linda Hayden, but sadly she isn't in the film for long: she wears a blouse unbuttoned to reveal some tempting boobage, and gets turned into a sexy vampire by Count Dracula, but is dispatched all too soon by Maltravers, who shoots a crossbow bolt through her heart.
With Linda gone so quickly, I felt just a little downhearted, but put my trust in writer Jeremy Lloyd (creator of the excellent 'Are You Being Served?'), usually reliable star Niven, several more lovely ladies (including Hammer hottie Veronica Carlson), plus many a familiar face from British cinema and TV of the '70s. Surely 'Carry On' legend Bernard Bresslaw and TV favourite Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock from 'Are You Being Served?') wouldn't let me down...
Unfortunately, Lloyd's script is extremely poor, stuffed with stale humour that rarely works, and there's very little the talented cast can do to generate laughs. The whole 'black Vampira' plotline is horribly dated and embarrassingly un-PC, more cringeworthy than chucklesome. After lots of weak vampiric shenanigans, in which Dracula hypnotises Playboy employee Marc (Nicky Henson) to do his bidding, we are given a truly awful finalé that sees David Niven sporting dreadful black make-up, Dracula having been bitten by his wife.