In the year-long series Sounds Of Blaxploitation, Craig D. Lindsey plays the hits that defined a genre, drawing connections between the music of the moment and the films that gave it a platform.
While Shaft and Super Fly usually get the credit for being game-changing Blaxploitation smashes—films made by Black filmmakers that also saved their respective studios from bankruptcy—we shouldn’t forget about 1972’s Blacula, the first horror entry in the Blaxploitation genre.
UCLA film school graduate William Crain, then just 23, made his feature-film directorial debut with this Afro-centric monster movie. Stage thespian William Marshall, who would later become the King Of Cartoons on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, perfected his onscreen regal swagger as an African prince named Mamuwalde (Marshall came up with the name and his backstory), cursed to a life of bloodsucking after being bitten by a racist-as-hell Count Dracula. He wakes up from his nearly two-century slumber in modern-day Los Angeles, astoundingly unfazed by the whole “another time, another place” thing. Shot on a $500,000 budget, Blacula grossed somewhere between $1.9 and $3 million, taking distributor American International Pictures out of the red—much like those aforementioned hits.
Also like Shaft and Super Fly, Blacula had a contemporary musical artist of color handling the score. Gene Page was an established composer and arranger who, by the movie’s release, had already worked with everyone from Motown stars (Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5) to budding divas (Barbra Streisand, Cher). But Page is best known for being deep-voiced soul great Barry White’s longtime arranger through most of the ’70s. (Page and White would eventually team up to score a different Blaxploitation flick, the crime drama Together Brothers, two years after Blacula.)
With Page’s brother Billy handling the producing, Page’s Blacula score teeters from lively, Black-and-proud funk to anxious scary-movie music. Its funky side first presents itself in the opening credits, as Page’s title track plays over a minimalistic, animated title sequence (created by artist/graphic designer Sandy Dvore). As acoustic and electric keyboards guide the ferocious melody, with horns regularly adding striking runs, Page’s theme makes it sound more like audiences are about to get a Nixon-era police procedural. And we kinda do; the story of Blacula includes the police investigating the string of bloodless, undead bodies Mamuwalde leaves in his wake.
Page must’ve seen a bunch of Alfred Hitchcock thrillers before scoring this. The creepier incidental music is more reminiscent of the myriad shock-and-awe scores Bernard Herrmann did for the Master Of Suspense. Page brings out thumping timpani drums and shrieking harp flourishes whenever Mamuwalde or other vampires are about to attack. During a grave-digging scene, Page opens with a two-note ostinato (read: da-dum, da-dum) that makes me wonder if John Williams might’ve ripped this off for his iconic Jaws theme.
But Page occasionally slips the funk in between the tension-ratcheting numbers. As Mamuwalde pursues Tina (Vonetta McGee), a dead ringer for his late wife, we get a sequence where icy piano notes follow Tina as she walks down a dark street, becoming increasingly aware that she’s being followed. When a confused Mamuwalde chases after her, Page hits us with a rush of funk (aptly titled “Run, Tina, Run”) before returning to the chilly piano notes (and palpitation-sounding bongo slaps) once Tina makes it back to her place.
Most of Blacula‘s score revolves around the doomed romance (like so many Dracula flicks before and after) at the center of this hepcat horror show. Page rounds up some bluesy, sorrowful woodwinds for a sympathetic scene where a lonesome Mamuwalde returns to his coffin after chasing Tina. (The cue returns again during a post-coital scene between Mamuwalde and Tina.) We also get a love theme out of the Page brothers with “Main Chance,” by short-lived, L.A.-based soul group The 21st Century Ltd, whose members would go on to be in Quincy Jones’ backing band.
As a possessed Tina goes to Mamuwalde (he telepathically gives her directions), who is now on the run from the law, she gets serenaded by such longing lyrics as “Come, love, give to me / And we will take the sky.” On the soundtrack album, The 21st Century Ltd. also provides vocals for “Heavy Changes,” a Page instrumental that plays on a record player in one scene, just before Mamuwalde attacks a lady who took some snapshots of his no reflection-having ass.
In addition to this group, Blacula also has a Greek chorus in the form of The Hues Corporation, the Santa Monica soul/pop trio who would have a number-one hit with “Rock The Boat” two years later. They perform a trio of songs (penned and co-produced by group founder-songwriter Wally Holmes) as the house band in two nightclub sequences. Draped in groovy, powder-blue tops, they hit the ground blazing in their first scene. With Karl Russell and St. Clair Lee doing background, Afroed vocalist H. Ann Kelley whoops it up on “There He Is Again,” practically narrating the events that transpire when Mamuwalde appears at the club to return the purse Tina dropped.
“There he is again,” Kelley belts right after Mamuwalde enters the building. As Mamuwalde gets his suave on with Tina, even buying her and her friends a bottle of champagne, that’s when Russell takes the lead vocals for the next number. The title: “I’m Gonna Catch You.”
The band shows up one more time to sing the ballad “What The World Knows.” The song basically serves as Tina’s inner monologue, as she sits with her disapproving peoples—including a police pathologist (Thalmus Rasulala) who eventually figures out what this cape-wearing brotha does in his spare time—waiting for her vampire valentine to arrive. “You and all your friends gonna get together in the end and tell me what the world knows about love,” Russell sings. “Yes, you will.”
Page’s solid, spine-tingling score keeps things interesting even when the story gets more ridiculous than blood-curdling and the awkward B-movie theatrics ultimately makes this—to quote an effeminate antiques dealer in the movie—the absolute crème de la crème of camp. Page catches up with Blacula‘s flamboyantly overdramatic freak in the film’s final minutes, bringing in offbeat percussion, a wistful harpsichord, and a bombastic, orchestrated finish as Mamuwalde ventures into the sunlight, dying in a fashion that can only be described as extra as hell.
Because Blacula, like so many early Blaxploitation films, was a huge hit, Mamuwalde predictably rose again the following year with Scream Blacula Scream, where Marshall teamed up with Blaxploitation goddess Pam Grier. Unfortunately, neither Crain nor Page came back for the sequel (it instead boasts music from Harpo Marx’s adopted son Bill).
Crain went on to remake another classic horror tale—1976’s Dr. Black. Mr. Hyde, starring Bernie Casey—before sliding into steady work as a TV director, while Page went on to create music for himself and others before his death in 1998 at age 58. While it’s sad that Crain and Page didn’t go on to become the Hitchcock and Herrmann of Blaxploitation, they did open up the floodgates for more Black filmmakers to dive into soul-infused horror, setting up future films ranging from Ganja & Hess and Sugar Hill all the way to Tales From The Hood.
Next time: Thanksgiving, the release of Wicked: For Good, and the one-year anniversary of Quincy Jones’ death. We’ll just leave it at that.
