The Worst Dracula Movie Ever Made

Hello! Has this ever happened to you? You’re up late one night, unable to sleep and also maybe stoned, and suddenly you have a hankering to see Count Dracula throw down with a notorious Old West outlaw, but in a movie that doesn’t understand vampires, the Old West, or how to be a movie? Well, then, good news!

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Billy the Kid Versus Dracula finds our titular bloodsucker somewhere vaguely in the American southwest, having probably followed a German family there, for reasons never explained. He definitely gets turned on by a photo of a teenager, though, and decides to make her his bride, beginning a convoluted process of murder, gaslighting, inflaming racial tensions, and not using his mind control abilities, all so he can groom a child the old-fashioned way – by posing as her uncle. The teenager, Betty, meanwhile, is already engaged to Billy the Kid, retired from outlawing and leaning hard into that suburban soccer dad lifestyle. Cue the versus.

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What follows is less of a horror/Western mash-up than a briskly-paced drama about stolen identities, the interpersonal politics of cattle ranch management, and generalized xenophobia. Immigrants and Indians are disparaged constantly, with the movie swapping out the standard racist characterizations of Romani for the standard racist characterizations of Native Americans. It also seems to think Germany and Transylvania are one and the same, despite there being most of a continent between them.

Pictured: Not America, so who cares?

The movie’s understanding of vampire lore is similarly questionable. Vampires are explained as “ghosts” that leave their bodies at night, despite this not happening in the movie, nor being a thing anyone’s ever said. Dracula’s in the sunlight all the friggin’ time, even though he makes a point of explaining that this isn’t a Blade situation. And, speaking of blades, Dracula also apparently likes to slit the throats of lambs for fun – not bites, but slits, like, with a knife, and not as a man, but as a bat, according to eyewitnesses.