Blacula

Blacula is a 1972 American blaxploitation horror film produced for American International Pictures. It was directed by William Crain and stars William Marshall in the title role about an 18thcentury African prince named Mamuwalde, who is turned into a vampire and later locked in a coffin by Count Dracula in the Counts castle in Transylvania in the year 1780 after Dracula refused to help Mamuwalde suppress the slave trade. Two centuries later, in the year 1972, two interior decorators from modern day Los Angeles California travel to Castle Dracula in Transylvania and unknowingly purchase the nowundead Mamuwaldes coffin, which they ship to Los Angeles. Later unlocking the coffin, the decorators release Mamuwalde, becoming his first two victims as a vampire, turning them and others he encounters in his bloodthirsty reign of terror into vampires like himself. Mamuwalde later meets a woman named Tina Vonetta McGee, whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his deceased wife Luva also played by McGee in the preopening credit scenes at Draculas castle.

In 1780, Prince Mamuwalde William Marshall, the ruler of the Abani African nation, seeks the help of Count Dracula Charles Macaulay in suppressing the slave trade. Dracula refuses to help, and transforms Mamuwalde into a vampire, whom he names Blacula and imprisons in a sealed coffin. Mamuwaldes wife, Luva Vonetta McGee, is also imprisoned and dies in captivity. In 1972, the coffin has been purchased as part of an estate by two interior decorators, Bobby McCoy Ted Harris and Billy Schaffer Rick Metzler and shipped to Los Angeles. Bobby and Billy open the coffin and become Prince Mamuwaldes first victims. At the funeral home where Bobby McCoys body is laid, Mamuwalde spies on mourning friends Tina Williams Vonetta McGee, her sister Michelle Denise Nicholas, and Michelles boyfriend, Dr. Gordon Thomas Thalmus Rasulala, a pathologist for the Los Angeles Police Department. Mamuwalde believes Tina is the reincarnation of his deceased wife, Luva. On close investigation of the corpse at the funeral home, Dr. Thomas notices oddities with Bobby McCoys death that he later concludes to be consistent with vampire folklore.Prince Mamuwalde continues to kill and transform various people he encounters, as Tina begins to fall in love with him. Thomas, his colleague Lt. Peters Gordon Pinsent, and Michelle follow the trail of murder victims and begin to believe a vampire is responsible. After Thomas digs up Billys coffin, Billys corpse rises as a vampire and attacks Thomas, who fends him off and drives a stake through his heart. After finding a photo taken of Mamuwalde and Tina in which Mamuwaldes body is not visible, Thomas and Peters track Mamuwalde to his hideout, the warehouse where Bobby McCoy and Billy Schaffer were first slain. They defeat several vampires, but Mamuwalde manages to escape. Later, Mamuwalde lures Tina to his new hideout at the nearby waterworks plant, while Thomas and a group of police officers pursue him. Mamuwalde dispatches several officers, but one of them

Source: Wikipedia