Billy the Kid Versus Dracula

"THE WEST'S DEADLIEST GUNFIGHTER! THE WORLD'S MOST DIABOLICAL KILLER!"
--Tagline for Billy the Kid Versus Dracula

When this film and its companion piece, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter appeared as a double bill in 1966, they pretty much doubled the number of U.S.-made horror westerns. The films marked the end of the road for prolific Hollywood director William "One-Shot" Beaudine, while also serving as punch lines of many a joke. To John Carradine, who stars as Count Dracula, it was the worst film in his career, though there are many more likely contenders whose less catchy titles might not have sprung as readily to mind. Yet it clearly falls into the camp category of movies "so bad they're good," giving classics like Robot Monster (1953) and Plan Nine from Outer Space (1959) a run for their money. Moreover, at 73 minutes it moves quickly and never takes itself too seriously, which is more than one can say for contemporary clunkers like Mother! (2017) and Battlefield Earth (2000).

Despite titles like The Terror of Tiny Town (1938) and The Fiend that Walked the West (1958), horror and terror have rarely come together in the States. The only two notable examples fell within a year of each other, the no-budget Teenage Monster (1958), about a teenager transformed into a monster when struck by a meteor, and the imaginative Curse of the Undead (1959), about a town stalked by a gun-slinging vampire. The hybrid genre has been more popular in Mexico, where setting tales of monsters and demons in the past almost inevitably puts them into a frontier setting. As a result, the ideas behind Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and its companion piece were relatively fresh when they appeared in 1966.

In the former, Carradine returns to the role of Dracula -- which he had played in Universal's monster mash-ups House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945) -- although he's never actually named in the film. Instead, he's traveling incognito as James Underhill, the uncle of the beautiful Elizabeth Bentley (Melinda Plowman). He hopes to make her into his latest bride, but there's one hitch in his plans. Her current boyfriend, a reformed William "Billy the Kid" Bonney (Chuck Courtney), isn't ready to give her up.

Although credited to credited to Carl K. Hittleman, the script is reputed to have been written by Jack Lewis, a World War II and Korean War veteran, who had worked as a military consultant for films as well as doing stunt work and writing scripts for Westerns and the science fiction film The Amazing Transparent Man (1960). Billy the Kid Versus Dracula combined elements of his past work, but he wouldn't be credited for it. Allegedly, he sold the piece outright to Carl K. Hittleman for $250. Hittleman had written the script for Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter and needed a companion piece to be shot back-to-back with it. The two films were produced by Carroll Chase, who was primarily a TV producer for such shows as Racket Squad and Sugarfoot, and released through Joseph E. Levine's Embassy Pictures.

To direct, Chase hired Beaudine, a director who had become famous for his versatility and his ability to work quickly and on limited budgets. It hadn't always been that way. In the silent era, he had been considered a major director, particularly for his work with Mary Pickford on Little Annie Rooney (1925) and Sparrows (1926). A trip to England in the mid-'30s, where he worked at Warner Bros.' Teddington Studio, derailed his career. On his return to Hollywood in 1937, he had trouble reestablishing himself, eventually turning to poverty row productions to make ends meet. Although he directed some of the best Bowery Boys films, he also directed some major turkeys filled with cinematic gaffes he had neither the budgets nor the time to fix with retakes. His speed earned him the nickname "One-Shot" Beaudine. Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter would be his final features, though he would continue doing television work through 1968. When he retired at 76, he was Hollywood's oldest working professional.

The picture's casting coup, of course, was Carradine, a prolific actor with more than 350 credits in his 65-year film and television career. An esteemed character actor, Carradine had become part of the John Ford Stock Company when he played a small role in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) and continued with the director through ten more films, most notably Stagecoach (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Although he had unbilled bits in such horror classics as The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), he didn't move into the genre in a major way until Universal cast him as a mad scientist trying to turn an ape into a woman in Captive Wild Woman (1943). He continued working in horror films throughout his career, first to finance his touring theatrical company, which gave him the chance to tackle such Shakespearean leads as Hamlet and Macbeth, and later to pay alimony to his three ex-wives and child support for his five children, including actors David, Keith, Robert and Bruce Carradine. By the end of his career, he was sometimes working for as little as $500 per picture.

By the time Carradine made Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, he was already suffering from crippling arthritis, which made it rather difficult for him to hold his own in fight scenes. When he had first played Dracula in the '40s, studio hairdressers had been required to put gray streaks in his hair to make him look mature enough for the role. By 1966, he had to have his hair died black to look fit enough for the character.

For his hero, Beaudine cast Courtney, a bit player turned stunt man on such films as Spartacus and Swiss Family Robinson (both 1960), though he was probably most recognizable as Dan Reid, the title character's nephew on The Lone Ranger. He had previously worked with Beaudine on the Western Born to the Saddle (1953). The cast also included veteran talents like Virginia Christine, best known as Mrs. Olson in the Folgers Coffee commercials, British comic actress Marjorie Bennett (Victor Buono's mother in 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Olive Carey, a veteran character actress and the widow of early cowboy star Harry Carey, and her son Harry Carey, Jr.

The film was shot in only eight days (some sources say five) in the Producers Studio (now Raleigh Studios) on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood and at the Ray Corrigan Ranch in Simi Valley, CA. True to his nickname, "One-Shot" Beaudine didn't bother with retakes if he could avoid them. As a result, the film includes people calling Christine "Mrs. Olson," rather than her character name, "Mrs. Oster," and you can hear Carradine yell in pain and surprise when Courtney throws his gun at him. The slipshod nature of some of the work may also be the result of Beaudine's age. At 74, he often required lengthy breaks between takes.

With its clumsy title, high concept, rubber bats and red-tinted shots of Carradine attempting to be menacing, Billy the Kid Versus Dracula has become something of a joke in cinematic history. Like many jokes, however, it's still kind of fun. More generous reviewers have even labeled it "camp," with some suggesting Beaudine may have done the entire thing with tongue firmly planted in cheek. That it exists at all is a testament to the tenacity of Beaudine, a man who refused to knuckle under to economic problems or bad scripts. Once, when a studio executive complained that he was falling behind schedule on one of his low-budget programmers, he is said to have quipped, "You mean someone out there is actually waiting to see THIS?" It's attitudes like that that turn bad movies into classics.

Director: William Beaudine
Producer: Carroll Chase
Screenplay: Carl K. Hittleman, Jack Lewis (uncredited)
Cinematography: Lorthrop B. Worth Score: Raoul Kraushaar
Cast: John Carradine (Count Dracula), Chuck Courtney (William Bonney), Melinda Plowman (Elizabeth Bentley), Virginia Christine (Eva Oster), Walter Janovitz (Franz Oster), Bing Russell (Don 'Red' Thorpe), Olive Carey (Dr. Henrietta Hull), Roy Barcroft (Sheriff Griffin), Marjorie Bennett (Mary Ann Bentley), Harry Carey, Jr. (Ben Dooley)

By Frank Miller