Billy the Kid Versus Dracula

Abraham Lincoln may have tangled with vampires, but the Old West's most notorious outlaw beat Honest Abe to the punch. Prolific B Movie director William Beaudine (Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) teamed Billy the Kid and Count Dracula in a genre-bending showdown.

Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney) outlaw days, working on the Double Barb-B ranch and wooing pretty Betty (Melinda Plowman). But when Betty's uncle (John Carradine) turns up, things. Turns out the Uncle is really Count Dracula, with less-than-pure intentions towards his so-called niece. With the help of a crusty doctor (Olive Carey) and a German immigrant couple (Virginia Christie and Walter Janovitz), Billy seeks to foil the vampire.

At just 73 minutes, Billy the Kid versus Dracula contains more cliches per minute than your average summer blockbuster. Beaudine provides shootouts, saloon brawls, stagecoach chases and bloodthirsty Indians for the Western crowd. Horror fans can relish, erm, a bat on a string and wacky theremin music. Beaudine's inverse auteurism unites bad movie fans of all colors.

The movie's mindboggling incompetence can't help but be endearing. Carl K. Hittleman provides laughably overripe dialogue, as when Dracula calls Carey a "backwoods female pill-slinger." Besides the pathetic bat effect, Beaudine symbolizes Dracula's hypnotic powers by having Carradine goggle with red light splashed on his face. After burning through the expected plot points, Billy climaxes in a way no sensible person would expect.


John Carradine played Dracula so many times he could have sleepwalked through this movie. Instead Carradine opts for scenery chewing, boggling his eyes and growling angrily like a tiger with the slightest provocation. Chuck Courtney makes a bland Billy and Melinda Plowman provides only generic prettiness; against these squares, we're definitely rooting for Carradine. Olive Carey (The Searchers) gets big laughs as a grouchy frontier doctor ("I don't like the looks of this!" she deadpans over a vampire-bitten corpse). Character actors Roy Barcroft, Bing Russell, Virginia Christie and Harry Carey Jr. make brief appearances.

Billy the Kid Versus Dracula provides a treasure trove for bad movie fans. And unlike Cowboys and Aliens, it lives up to its magnificent title. What more can you ask for?