Made in 1972, Blacula is the first sympathetic treatment of the vampire.
Manuwalde is a monster created by white oppression vis a via the slave trade. The very civilized Manuwalde (notice his western clothes, a sharp contrast to his wife's half western, half "savage" African look) comes to Count Dracula as a statesman who wishes to persuade the Count to cease his country's slave trade (really fuzzy history here). But instead, the Count behaves literally like an animal. He scoffs at Manuwalde, makes racist remarks and openly lusts after his wife, before turning the prince into another animal like himself, someone who will eternally hunger for human blood.
When the Vampire Manuwalde is awakened centuries later in 1972 Los
Angeles, he is still a sympathetic character. True, he looks like a vicious beast, but his victims aren't wholly
sympathetic characters. He first kills the antique dealers,
an interracial gay couple. Even the police aren't' t too sympathetic
to their killings. A white detective investigating
the case refers to them as a couple of "faggots" and suggests that maybe their
mysterious death had something to do with the Black Panthers (so poor Bobby, as
a black gay man, would have been doubly marginalized).
Disparaging remarks about homosexuals wouldn't have been uncommon in 1972.
The Stonewall uprisings happened just 3 years earlier (June 21, 1969).
The Stonewall riots were the flash point for gay rights activists in the
United
States, a sort of lavender Birmingham bus boycott. The next victim is a rude taxi driver.
His third victim, the photographer, must be killed because
she can expose his secret.
Meanwhile the mostly white LAPD doesn't seem overly concerned about the strange deaths of black people. The files keep disappearing, either due to police department incompetence or due to Manuwalde's supernatural abilities.
Later victims are hoards of white LAPD officers who attempt to catch him (apparently Gordon is the only black man working for the LAPD). Gordon, the film's Abraham Van Helsing, is the only one who truly understands what's going on. The others refuse to see that there's anything to be worried about when several black Angelinos turn up dead, let alone believe that a vampire is running loose in Los Angeles.
Manuwalde's appearance becomes less bestial when he discovers the
reincarnation of Luva, his long dead wife. His eternal love for his spouse humanizes
him. Manuwalde is forced to make Luva/Tina into a vampire when an LAPD
officer shoots her in the back while the couple flees.
And Manuwalde, unlike other cinematic vampires, gets to die on his
own terms. When the Vampire Luva is staked by Gordon and
his white flunky, a grieving Manuwalde exposes himself to the sun.
Many later vampire films were influenced by Blacula. A 1973 television version of Dracula with Jack Palance (script written by Richard Matheson of I Am Legend Fame) where the count is a sympathetic character because Mina is the reincarnation of his lost love. A Vampire in Brooklyn borrows heavily from Blacula concerning Max's love for Rita, as well as the setting of the story and appearance of his coffin. Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula incorporates the reincarnation theme in his version.
Blacula is a blaxploitation film, one that used black music and black actors and made for black audiences. It's not uncommon for the monsters to be a sympathetic character in blaxploitation films. The monster is seen as an Other created by injustice, not simply an evil entity to be destroyed. In Blackenstein, another blaxploitation B flick, an injured Vietnam vet is made into a monster when the doctor who should be curing him instead injects him with a mysterious chemical. King Kong was enormously popular with black audiences who sympathized with Kong's plight. This theme is evident in the film Tales from the Hood where the characters we'd commonly recognize as monsters are generally sympathetic characters. In fact, the monsters are more in keeping with the original meaning of the word "monster." They're device warnings rather than simply creatures to be feared. The real monsters in this film are people who walk among us in daily life.
Other web sites of interest: