Shocktober 2026 – Billy the Kid vs Dracula (1966)

“I’m very tired. I might sleep all day.” – Count Dracula

You know how this works by now – right? You know I like excruciatingly bad “B” movies – right? And if you’ve followed Shocktober for any length of its twenty year history, you’ll certainly know that I love, some years, to throw a B movie here and there into the mix.

This is one of those years.

I’m willing to give exceptionally great odds that I’m probably one of the only people wandering around having seen this at the cinema. I was 14, so it would’ve been a re-release in 1974 when I saw the poster for a double bill outside one of the two cinemas we had in my hometown back then. Billy the Kid vs Dracula and Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. To hell with it being a school night and homework, that was my evening sorted. To give some perspective, this was when I was just getting into horror movies and seeing what was out there. I was limited, mainly, to TV screenings. I had seen a few of the Universal monster movies, and seeing the promise of John Carradine as Dracula on the poster was definitely a lure.

I had seen Bela Lugosi in the role, and for two other films in the Universal series, House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula both made in 1944, John Carradine had played the Count. Now, somehow here was another film with him in the role, albeit 21 years later in his career. The fact that I had never heard of the film was unsurprising, I was still exploring and finding my way around – I hadn’t even seen a Hammer movie yet.

I never forgot seeing that double bill (in near solitude, as I recall I don’t think there was much of anybody else at the screening) but I went on about my life, never really thinking about it. A few years ago, I stumbled on the films on Amazon while looking for something else. I made a mental note that someday, I’d revisit them, but even with hundreds of satellite channels now available they were never shown. But I was getting curious – and when figuring out this years’ Shocktober theme and which films could fit in to my criteria – I saw the perfect excuse. It was time.

I wasn’t prepared for how much of a B movie it was. My 14 year old self was way easier to impress than 66 year old me. 52 years ago, I’d have sat in wide eyed wonder. These days, I wonder how it ever got made.

I like the idea of taking the Count and dropping him in the old west. I like that very much, and I believe there’s a great story and a great movie to be made. But this isn’t it. The script isn’t actually THAT bad, but it’s the execution of the script that’s awful.

Director William Beaudine had been a poverty row director since the day of silent movies, and was known in the industry as One-Shot Beaudine. In 1966, this seems to have still been his working method in 1966, as he shot both Billy the Kid vs Dracula AND Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter back to back in EIGHT days – with a budget surplus of $25,000. They don’t come any quicker or cheaper – that’s for sure. And that’s part of the huge flaw in the film – it’s all shot in daylight. Bright daylight. We only know it’s supposed to be dark if characters are sleeping, or they actually mention that it’s dark outside. Case in point, a scene with passengers inside a stagecoach where the windows are blacked out and they mention it’s night, yet the conversation between the driver and shotgun again discussing how they’re nervous about the dark takes place in bright sunshine. (It’s the little things.)

The film starts at night (not that we’d know) and a family of German immigrants are sleeping in the open air, next to their wagon as a bat flutters nearby. It’s an odd looking little bat with a weird square head, honestly, as if it’s wearing a little top hat. The bat morphs into Dracula who feeds upon the young daughter. Now the sharp eyed among us will have noticed that the poor maiden was displaying bloody neck wounds before Dracula descended. I guess we can thank One-Shot for the continuity error.

I said Dracula morphs from his bat form. That’s not entirely true. One second, he’s a bat, the next John Carradine turns up. There’s no morphing. More of a popping up. Such was the special effects budget. But when Dracula is about to bite anybody in the movie, John Carradine, now looking gaunt and elderly despite only being sixty years of age, contorts his face and widens his eyes while a red spotlight is on him. (Just for subtlety’s sake.)

Speaking of subtlety, John Carradine was anything BUT subtle when it came to talking about this movie; “My worst film? That's easy, a thing called Billy the Kid Versus Dracula...It was a bad film. I don't even remember it. I was absolutely numb!"

Wow!

So, Dracula in the Wild West. After snacking on the young immigrant girl, he catches a stagecoach where he meets an elderly brother and sister on their way to look after their niece who has just lost her parents and is now in charge of their ranch. Stopping off for a break, Dracula takes a bite of a young Native American girl, which causes the rest of the tribe to form a war party and pursue the stagecoach, killing all on board except the one who’s already dead obviously. I guess he watches from a distance in his bat body.

Now the immigrants show up at the ranch of young Betty Bentley (Melinda Plowman) who is engaged to William Bonney (Chuck Courtney) better known as Billy the Kid. Billy has put his gunfighting days behind him and is now working on the ranch. (Don’t look for historical accuracy here.)

Dracula seizes his opportunity to assume the identity of Betty’s uncle who was killed by the war party on the stagecoach, and he plans to make Betty his vampire bride. Billy suspects that all is not right with Betty’s uncle, the immigrant couple immediately spot him for what he is, and the town doctor Henrietta Hull (Olive Carey) is surprisingly easy to convince that vampires walk among us. I’d like to believe that her character was named after Henry Hull, the lead actor in Werewolf of London (1935) but I can’t find any reference to substantiate this.

During a last reel standoff in a disused silver mine where Dracula is about to finalise his transformation of Betty, Billy finds that bullets are of no use against a vampire, it’s Dr Hull that hands him a silver scalpel with which he can stake Dracula through the heart, leaving him to live happily ever after with a now instantly recovered Betty.

Given time and money, (no, wait – they HAD money, they just didn’t spend it,) this could’ve been an above decent film. But it still entertains, though not for the reasons One-Shot probably hoped.

Next time, it’s the second half of this fondly remembered double bill from my mis-spent youth as I cover Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. (Yes, I bought that one too.)

And fair warning – even THESE aren’t the worst I’m covering this year.

Until then…

Don't forget the Piercing the Veil Shocktober Special at this link.