Without preamble, I present to you one of the most batshit stupid movies ever made.
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula has everything you could ever want in a vampire movie, provided you want to make the worst vampire movie ever made. It has vampires! And cowboys! Rubber bats on strings! A nonsensical plot! Acting that would get laughed out of dinner theater!
This was originally made as a double feature with Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, which is a gem in its own right. It was filmed in 8 days and held together with duct tape and chewing gum. Most of the cast brings a Golly Gee-Whiz energy that was characteristic of movies in the early 60s, and honestly I could see this being a skit on Hee-Haw without having to change all that much.
John Carradine played Dracula in four movies, and he was terrible in all of them. He was one of the most notable character actors of the 20th century, but Dracula was the one character he just couldn’t master. Instead of Lugosi’s cool menace or Christopher Lee’s feral aristocrat, he comes off more of a doddering uncle, someone you humor more than fear.
As for the plot, Billy the Kid is working as a ranch hand, wooing the lovely Betty Bentley and planning to settle down with her, much to the chagrin of her family. You can probably tell historical accuracy wasn’t high on the list of priorities for this film. Anyway, Carradine shows up claiming to be Betty’s uncle and insinuates himself into her life as he plans to make her his bride. A couple of German immigrants who work on the ranch happen to know (Coincidence of coincidences!) that Uncle Underhill (har-har) is actually Dracula, although he is never named as Dracula in the movie. They tell Billy, who then takes it upon himself to save the woman he loves from the dastardly Count.
This movie is horrible in all the best ways. The acting is atrocious, the budget obviously shoe-string, and script and direction something even a low budget TV western of the time would scoff at, and the special effects worse than anything you would find in a school play.
The best scene in the movie is where Billy the Kid clocks Dracula in the face with an empty pistol and knocks him out cold. Bullets can’t stop him, but 2 pounds of cold steel to the face does. It’s amazing, and I can’t believe someone actually wrote that into a script and another person directed it. Sharknado couldn’t come up with anything stupider than that, and I love it.
Try to catch this one with Jesse James Meets Frankensteins’s Daughter. Joe Bob Briggs released a DVD of his riff on Jesse James ( I wish he’d done one on Billy the Kid Versus Dracula but you take what you can get) and they are both a hilarious bad watch. If you love to make fun of awful movies, you seriously can’t do any better than this. Bring friends, open a bag of chips, and have yourself a great time.