Blood For Dracula, as I’ll be calling it, opens with an unblinking and deathly pale Dracula (played by cult German actor Udo Kier) applying make-up in front of a mirror to give himself some colour.

Why, you might ask, would a vampire use a mirror, as he doesn’t cast a reflection? Best maybe not to pay too much attention to the vampire lore here, as director Paul Morrissey has admitted that he did almost no research into it. ‘I respect the legend, but I wasn’t going to have my hands tied.’

The Count does refuse to eat garlic. He can’t abide the sight of a crucifix, but can happily walk in his courtyard and take a long road trip during the day, although he does shield his face with a hat when he emerges from the car. Why? Morrissey simply forgot about that particular vampire convention while filming and nobody in the crew questioned him about it before he remembered.

Originally advertised in America and some other countries as Andy Warhol Presents Dracula, before being shortened to Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Andy directed this in the same way he produced The Velvet Underground & Nico. As in, he didn’t. The film was written and directed by Morrissey, although just to complicate matters, it was for a time credited in Italy to Antonio Margheriti. Long story.

Morrissey was a fascinating guy. Although very much associated with the Factory and its assortment of socialites, speed freaks, hustlers and drag queens, he was an anomaly in being a traditionalist, who described himself as ‘kind of square’. He preferred Rachmaninoff to The Velvets (who he managed for a time). He worked normal hours, behaved like an adult and was anti-drugs.

Before Morrissey arrived at the Factory (where he gradually took control of film production), Warhol employed an ultra-basic directorial style, consisting mainly of pointing a camera and letting the ‘actors’ get on with it. Or, in the case of Empire, pointing the camera at New York’s most famous building for hours on end, then switching it off. Not the best date movie I’ve ever been on!

Ironically, Warhol listed John Palmer as Empire‘s co-director, Palmer having conceived of the idea and provided funds for the film to be developed and printed. The decision to promote Morrissey’s films with the Warhol brand was a commercial decision to capitalise on the pop artist’s fame. This was apparently fine by Morrissey at the time, although later in life (he died last year), he resented his lack of a proper acknowledgement.

In 1920s Transylvania, Count Dracula is very sick and unable to function without the help of his intense and creepy servant Anton – Morrissey denied this was a comment about his relationship with Warhol incidentally, but the subconscious works in curious ways.

‘You must have the blood of a wurgin. Or you’ll be dead within a few weeks,’ Anton warns his master, the wurgin part being essential as drinking blood from non-wurgins would have seriously bad consequences for the Count. The advice isn’t easy to implement, though, due to Dracula’s local reputation, with local wurgins having learned to give the man a very wide berth. If you’re wondering about my spelling of virgin, I do love Anton and Dracula’s distinctive pronunciation of the word.

A plan is hatched for him to travel to Italy, the home of the Pope and the Vatican, where the ascendancy of Catholicism and the fact that nobody knows him should make finding a wurgin easier. Hey, that’s the theory anyway.

On their journey, Anton discovers that an aristocratic family live nearby. Even better, they have four unwed and beautiful daughters. Anton introduces himself to La Marchesa di Fiore and explains the situation, though obviously not the whole situation. ‘The Count is looking for a wife, an Italian wife and he wishes to know if your daughters are wurgins and available for marriage?’ Anton’s a man who likes getting to the point.

Luckily, she is keen on the idea, and vouches for the chastity of all four daughters. Dracula’s money could be a boost for her family, who have seen better times, the patriarch Il Marchese di Fiore having gambled the family fortune away in casinos. And to digress briefly, he’s played by Vittorio de Sica, who had a real-life gambling addiction, and who, as a director, helped launch the Italian neorealist movement.

Dracula is formally introduced to the daughters: Esmeralda, Saphiria, Rubinia and Perla. He also meets Mario Balato played by Joe Dallesandro (Little Joe who never once gave it away), the estate’s resident handyman, who makes no attempt to hide a distinctly Brooklyn accent, although we’re supposed to believe he’s a native Italian. With a head full of Lenin and the libido of Casanova, Mario takes an instant dislike to the Count and hates the idea of him marrying any of the sisters, especially Saphiria or Rubinia, who are considered the front-runners for his hand. I forgot to mention – no, I better not.

As Mario puts it: ‘Right now, he’s a disgusting person with money. After the revolution, he’ll be a disgusting person with no money. We’re supposed to see Mario as a good guy in contrast to the aristocrats he is forced to work under, but his vision for a new, egalitarian society doesn’t extend to women, or at least to upper-class young women. According to him, Saphiria and Rubinia are hooers, who he slaps around, while he brags that he’d like to rape the hell out of youngest sister Perla. She’s only fourteen (although played by an obviously older actress).

As for Dracula, he’s humourless. Snobbish too. He attempts to trick the sisters into believing that if they marry him, they can enjoy great wealth purely so he can clamp his fangs into their necks, but he can’t help his inherent predatory nature. I found him more sympathetic than the brutish and constantly lecturing Mario, which is frankly damning with faint praise.

Let’s combine the ‘x’ meets ‘y’ cliché with another, even lazier cliché. Blood For Dracula is like Hammer Horror meets John Waters on acid. Decadent and deranged, it’s a consistently bizarre watch that veers between horror and comedy. It will appeal to some; it will appal others. There’s incest, rape, surely the longest vomiting scene in cinema history, and one of the most severe disembowelling sequences I’ve seen outside a Samurai movie or Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Much of the gruesome action is accompanied by a gorgeously melancholic theme tune composed by Claudio Gizzi, who had previously worked with Visconti. Director Luchino Visconti that is rather than than Bowie’s pal Tony. It’s as beautiful as the film’s climax is insanely schlocky.

As for Udo Kier, his weak and vulnerable vampire is one of the most idiosyncratic and memorable interpretations of Dracula I’ve seen. In contrast, some of the other performances are flat, very flat. A considerable amount of the dialogue is also flat, but Blood For Dracula proved intriguing and entertaining enough for me to seek out its companion film Flesh For Frankenstein, which also features Kier and Dallesandro, and which I haven’t seen since the 1990s, when the two movies made up a double bill at London’s legendary Scala cinema. Halloween viewing sorted.

To see the trailer for Blood For Dracula, here’s your link.