Count Dracula is a little late to the party in learning "black is beautiful" with the British sex comedy OLD DRACULA, on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

To maintain the upkeep of his Transylvanian castle, Count Dracula (David Niven, DEATH ON THE NILE) has opened it up to tourists, allowing his butler Maltravers (Peter Bayliss, THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN) to play him for the tourists' edification while he pines for his beloved Vampira who he lost to a "blood donor" with pernicious anemia. When the British arm of Playboy Magazine comes to the castle to do a photospread to promote a book on vampire folklore written by another type of playboy Marc Williams (Nicky Henson, WITCHFINDER GENERAL), Dracula wonders if one of the four playmates Ritva (Veronica Carlson, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE), Nancy (Cathie Shirriff, ALL THAT JAZZ), Eve (Andrea Allen, SCREAM AND DIE), or Rose (Minah Bird, ALFIE DARLING) might possess the right blood type to resurrect his bride. Of course, neither Dracula nor Playboy editor Pottinger (Bernard Bresslaw, UP POMPEII) take any notice of comparatively mousey personal assistant Angela (Jennie Linden, WOMEN IN LOVE) whose iciness starts to thaw with a bit of flirtation from Marc. A sample of one of the unsuspecting donors is enough to resurrect Vampira, but an apparent cross-contamination with the sample of Rose's blood turns her black (in the alluring form of THAT MAN BOLT's Teresa Graves). While Vampira is happy enough with her new look, Dracula elects to follow Marc and the models back to London to obtain a new sample to change her back. While Dracula telepathically compels Marc to obtain the samples – much to the consternation of Angela who thinks Marc is fooling around on her – Vampira is having a wild time and endeavoring to turn her husband into a "groovy old dude."

With Hammer seemingly having tapped out not only traditional British horror but also the vampire genre, the mid-seventies saw a string of vampire comedies throughout the continent, the skin content of which was usually of a lighter vein than the poetic erotica of contemporary Jean Rollin, Jess Franco's more transgressive dippings into the subgenre, Jose Ramon Larraz's fleshy VAMPYRES or Harry Kumel's masterful DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS and seeming to draw more inspiration from Roman Polanski's earlier, superior THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS; for example: Germany's THE VAMPIRE HAPPENING, LADY DRACULA, and DRACULA BLOWS HIS COOL, as well as France's TENDER DRACULA with Peter Cushing and DRACULA AND SON with Christopher Lee. Clive Donner's OLD DRACULA – known in the UK as VAMPIRA – follows in that tradition but it manages to be amusing and entertaining despite its tame sexual content and the regrettable waste of seventies talent like Henson, Linden, Carlson, and Linda Hayden who has more to do here than in TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA but less than BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW as a German employee of Castle Dracula who wants to ditch playing a vampire bride for the shores of St. Tropez. The supporting cast is kitted out with talent like Freddie Jones (THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA), ARE YOU BEING SERVED?'s Frank Thornton, Christopher Sandford (DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE), Kenneth Cranham (HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II), MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS' Carol Cleveland, Luan Peters (THE DEVIL'S MEN), Penny Irving (HOUSE OF WHIPCORD), and Nadim Sawalha (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME). While Castle Dracula is decked out in deliberately gaudy Gothic theatrics and the London exteriors are largely of the modern variety – Vampira takes in a showing of BLACK GUNN and window shops for more than just victims – but Dracula's London digs are appropriately atmospheric. There is a compelling narrative thread in the plot with an innocent compelled to do the bidding of the undead Count that seems to have been inspired by Herschel Gordon Lewis' A TASTE OF BLOOD that could have led to something along the lines of a more serious follow-up to TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA and DRACULA A.D. 1972 (especially when Lee's screen time was increasingly reduced to cameo length), but the questionable racial aspect of the storyline is very much of the time of BLACULA, BLACKENSTEIN, and DR. BLACK AND MR. HYDE. The score of David Whitaker (VAMPIRE CIRCUS) moves between horror and funk – with a "Vampira" theme song by The Majesters – while Anthony B. Richmond (DON'T LOOK NOW) provides some handsome photography, but the make-up effects of Phil Leakey (THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN) and Christopher Tucker (THE COMPANY OF WOLVES) are undistinguished (although at least we get a real bat rather than Roger Dicken's rubber bat for SCARS OF DRACULA).

Distributed theatrically by Columbia Pictures, OLD DRACULA wound up with MGM who remastered it in HD for streaming and their manufactured-on-demand DVD-R line. The MGM master popped up on Blu-ray in the U.K. with the British title VAMPIRA from Fabulous Films, but Vinegar Syndrome commissioned a new 2K scan of the original 35mm interpositive for their 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray which restores both the vintage Columbia Pictures logo and the start of the music which was clipped when MGM replaced it on their older master (also restored is the VAMPIRA title card). Reds pop right away from the credits onwards and some nice detail is evident in the production design, clothing, and the facial features of the performers, while the coarsening of grain in opticals and some underexposure in the second unit London shots are more noticeable but organic to the production. The DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track sports clear dialogue while the funky scoring is vibrant, and optional English SDH subtitles are also a nice inclusion.