Last night’s movie in our Quarantine Movie Marathon was the 1972 blaxploitation horror film, Blacula. The film was directed by William Crain, one of the first successful black filmmakers to have graduated from a major film school. The film stars William Marshall as Mamuwalde, an 18th century African prince who— while visiting Transylvania to advocate for the abolition of the slave trade— is captured and turned into a vampire by Count Dracula who renames him “Blacula.” Dracula imprisons him in a coffin for centuries and leaves his wife to die in the crypt containing Blacula’s coffin. Blacula wakes up in 1972 after a gay couple purchases the coffin at an estate sale.

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