A while back, I was really in the trenches of all things Dracula. I slogged through Bram Stoker’s novel three times, read fanfiction, watched the films, TV shows, and ballets. After this, I still had a hole in my heart and needed a Drac-shaped stake to fill it, so I started looking for lesser-known adaptations of Stoker’s text. Spent a long time sifting through people’s internet collections in hopes of finding something fun, maybe from the 80s or 90s. After watching Interview with the Vampire, I was also sort of thirsty for an adaptation of Dracula that was more explicitly gay rather than relying on unspoken desire or homoerotic vibes.
Don’t get me wrong, I love some unresolved tension, and I also think one of the appealing elements of Stoker’s novel is that because it isn’t an explicitly queer book, it doesn’t have to be analyzed through that lens; it’s a dense read with a lot of potential interpretations.
This disclaimer out of the way: I wanted to see an actually gay Dracula. After some scavenging in the niche trenches of Letterboxd, I found a variety of mildly- to moderately-sketchy retro gay vamp movies, including Love Bites, a Dracula-inspired gay romcom from 1988.
synopsis
The film follows Jake Hunter (Tom Wagner), a novice vampire hunter who has never met, much less killed, a vamp before.
We’re introduced to Jake in a scene where he won’t have sex with another guy because he’s too distracted with his vampire book (oh my god he’s literally me), which leads to the guy leaving. Jake turns his attention back to vampires. The one he’s set his sights on is this movie’s Dracula – Count Damien Sanders – whose address Jake finds in a book. Why is Damien’s address in a published book? Is this 80s doxing? Obviously, Jake decides that he’s simply going to break into the Count’s house. Upon arriving, however, Jake stumbles into Lesley Night (Christopher Ladd), a Southern sex worker. Lesley’s accent is very silly and his character is extremely campy. I’m a fan.
Jake initially mistakes Lesley for the Count; Lesley mistakes Jake for the guy he was hired to come to the house to “entertain.” Amid this confusion, the Count shows up.
The Count asks Lesley who Jake is (valid question), and Jake gives the incredibly fanfiction-ish excuse that he’s a stripper who got his house addresses mixed up and came to the wrong place by mistake.
At the same time, Lesley is informed that he was called for the Count’s roommate/servant Manfield, this movie’s Renfield. Because this is a low-budget comedy, neither the Count nor Manfield are genuinely creepy or scary, but I still unironically like Bernard Jarvis’ rendition of the latter character. He does a sort of airy, Peter Lorre-esque voice (also somehow Zoolander-ish), he’s got deranged vibes, and he’s really excited to eat bugs with Lesley. He also seems to have gotten fashion and hair inspiration from Robert Smith.
Jake and Lesley are roped into hanging out with Manfield and the Count, but they take the soonest opportunity to book it (Lesley does not want to eat bugs!). Meanwhile, the Count tells Manfield that “after three hundred and forty-seven years of one-night stands,” he’s fallen in love… with Jake. The next morning, Jake convinces Lesley to join him in his second Count-slaying attempt. Further shenanigans transpire from there.
thoughts & stuff
The acting is awkward at times; the timing of lines is frequently just a bit off, and the line delivery itself often feels somewhat restrained or a little overly theatrical. There’s definitely an amateur feel overall, but it’s clear from the get-go that that’s what viewers are going to get. As an avid enjoyer of low-budget movies, I find films like this charming and don’t mind these aspects so much.
I think there are also some smart choices here in terms of making a visually-appealing movie while (probably) not having a lot of funds. There’s a lot of dim lighting, but much of it is ambient and colorful, which gives the movie a DIY, but also fittingly dark, aesthetic.
The Count never turns into a bat, but he does turn into mist. Vampires shapeshifting into non-sentient entities is a tidbit of spooky, Gothic vampire lore that I feel is somewhat underutilized in favor of linking vampires to actual creatures of the night (e.g. bats, wolves, rats, etc.). Also, it’s possible that using a smoke machine may have yielded a slightly more visually convincing effect than a cheesy rubber bat puppet (although I am a fan of the flappy bats in 1931 Dracula).
A fun bit of lore that Love Bites makes up is that love can make a vampire more human, and also that the bite of a human could maybe turn a vampire mortal. It’s the bite of love, you guys.
Being a queer movie from the late 80s, it might not be surprising that Love Bites subtly involves the topic of the AIDS epidemic. The idea of “bad” blood is inherently a part of vampire media through vampires turning humans by making them drink undead blood, as well as vampires dying due to accidentally drinking the blood of a dead person.
(Side note: I think the argument could also be made that fears surrounding blood in vamp media could be an extension of the themes of xenophobia in Stoker’s novel.)
This movie grounds the topic of “tainted” blood by involving the reality of the AIDS crisis. In a quiet moment over halfway through the movie, the Count explains how vampires are “a dying lot” because of the fear – and reality – of coming in contact with blood that is contaminated. The movie uses this point to highlight how anyone could be at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. It also feels like a subversion of vampires being queercoded as predators. Here, rather than vampires being seductive beings that purposefully infect and damn mortals through contaminated blood, the vampires are blameless in the tragedy, and are victims as well. This aspect of the film also adds a bit more substance to Jake’s character arc; throughout the movie, he must work to overcome his own bigotry and realize that real vampires may not fit the dangerous stereotypes he previously believed.
TLDR
Overall, this is a fun (and pretty short) watch that you might enjoy if you like the idea of a low-budget, silly, campy, queer vamp flick. I had some giggles watching it. Last I checked, Love Bites can be found on the Internet Archive and YouTube.
General warnings: full-frontal nudity (it is a gay 80s flick, after all), some general awkwardness, Dracula gets hate-crimed for being gay (off-screen), and there’s the implication of having sex while under hypnosis (another plot point with strong fanfiction trope vibes. Don’t hypnotise anyone into having sex with you, guys).
rating:
3.75 love chomps out of 5 possible love chomps
Leave a Reply