Wanted: Undead or Alive (1)
Billy the Kid vs Dracula
This past weekend, Cinema Year Zero provided programme notes for a double bill screening of two cowboy vs vampire films. Presented at The Cinema Museum by programmers Kit Ramsay and Jack Higgins, Wanted: Undead or Alive paired Billy the Kid Vs Dracula (1966) with Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1986), the latter playing on a pristine 35mm print.
Below, you can read Ben Flanagan’s piece on Billy the Kid Vs Dracula. Check back later this week for part two.
Billy the Kid vs Dracula (1966, William Beaudine)
It takes patience to love the films of William Beaudine. Posthumously nicknamed ‘one-shot’ for his apocryphal tendency not to retake, he worked across genres, from beginnings in socially-alert silents through to the comic and criminal demands of poverty row. He handled large, unruly ensembles, composed of faces you just don’t see on screen anymore—and maybe never should have. His hastily-produced films often ran no longer than 75 minutes, captured in long, static shots, and without emphasis on such aesthetic gluttony as blocking or camera placement. Scenes drag for as long as they can, to hit the requisite length and get everyone paid. This economical production line would make Roger Corman look like a decadent emperor. By the time of his death in 1970, he amassed an estimated 200 features, painting a filmmaking persona which has drifted into myth. How apt for a filmmaker who toyed with the imagery of cultural folklore. Just take his final film, Billy the Kid vs Dracula, which has become perhaps the most representative of this unique figure in the American Cinema.
