Somewhere deep in the dust-choked bowels of cinematic history, wedged between forgotten TV pilots and government PSAs about venereal disease, lies Billy the Kid Versus Dracula—a film so bafflingly wrong-headed it feels less like a movie and more like a dare.
Directed by William “One-Shot” Beaudine, a man whose idea of artistic rigor was yelling “Action!” and then leaving the camera rolling while he went out for a sandwich, this 1966 atrocity was supposedly his swan song. If that’s true, then this is the cinematic equivalent of a dying man coughing up a rubber chicken.
Let’s start with the concept: What if we took a real-life outlaw, Billy the Kid, known for gunslinging, gambling, and dying young, and pitted him against Count Dracula, the iconic vampire who usually haunts misty castles in Europe but now, apparently, has decided to relocate to the American Southwest. That’s not just historically inaccurate—it’s like casting Abraham Lincoln in Fast & Furious 12: Ford’s Theater Drift.
Dracula, played by John Carradine, lurches through the film like a hungover substitute teacher in a community theater production of Nosferatu: The Musical. Carradine, to his credit, tries to inject menace into the proceedings. Unfortunately, he delivers his lines as if he’s reading them off a napkin taped to the cameraman’s chest. His accent vacillates between Transylvanian, Mid-Atlantic, and “old man confused by where he is.” It’s less Dracula and more “Creepy Grandpa Who Thinks He’s a Vampire.”
Meanwhile, Billy the Kid, portrayed by Chuck Courtney, comes off less like a notorious outlaw and more like a substitute P.E. teacher doing summer stock. His drawl is inconsistent, his gun-hand shaky, and his haircut suspiciously mid-century suburban. There’s zero charisma, zero grit, and absolutely no reason for anyone to believe this man ever committed a crime more severe than jaywalking.
The plot? Oh, bless your heart for asking. Dracula, for reasons the script doesn’t bother explaining, wants to marry Billy’s love interest, Betty Bentley, so he can drink her blood and… start a family? Settle down on a ranch? Open a vampire-themed dude ranch? Who knows. The film isn’t interested in making sense—only in shuffling its players from one badly lit saloon to another.
The pacing is molasses-level slow. Scenes drag on with all the tension of a hostage negotiation over a dropped sandwich. Characters stare off into space for long stretches, either thinking deeply or forgetting their lines. It’s like watching a daytime soap opera made on a $37 budget during an earthquake.
And let’s talk about the production value—or lack thereof. Dracula’s “transformation” into a bat is accomplished via a rubber puppet thrown across the frame like someone swatting a fly. Blood? Nonexistent. Stakes through the heart? Off-screen or implied. Gunfights? Shot with all the suspense of a game of rock-paper-scissors.
There’s one particularly baffling moment where Dracula—who, again, is a centuries-old creature of darkness—gets brained with a folding chair and is visibly annoyed by it. This is the Lord of the Undead, undone not by silver bullets or crucifixes, but by the kind of chair you’d find at a bingo hall.
The film is full of such moments. A woman faints with the enthusiasm of a bored high school drama student. Horses rear up in fear at things clearly not in the frame. And the musical score? Imagine an accordion falling down a flight of stairs while someone beats a cowbell with a broomstick. Now make it loop for 75 minutes.
Visually, the film is flatter than a week-old pancake. Beaudine, true to form, shoots everything in medium-wide, like he’s afraid to get too close to the actors in case they demand direction. Interiors are over-lit like a dentist’s office. Exterior shots look like someone forgot to clean the camera lens. You could blindfold yourself and still see just as much.
By the time we get to the final showdown—Billy and Dracula in a bare-bones barn—the film has given up trying. Dracula lurches forward, Billy flails a gun, and a woman screams in the background like she’s auditioning for a different, better movie. Eventually, Dracula is killed by getting hit in the head with a piece of iron or wood or plot convenience—no one’s quite sure. It’s anticlimactic, underwhelming, and mostly serves to let the end credits mercifully roll.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that genre mashups require more than a title and a pulse. Billy the Kid Versus Dracula squanders the promise of its pulpy premise and delivers something that feels like a cowboy-themed retirement home’s Halloween play.
And yet… I can’t look away. Like watching a train derail in slow motion while the conductor plays a kazoo. It’s morbidly fascinating. In a twisted sense, it succeeds—not as a western, not as a horror movie, not even as a coherent film—but as a pure, undiluted slab of cinematic schlock. It is sincere. It tries. And it fails. Gloriously.
So here’s to William Beaudine—who made 350+ films, some good, many bad, and this one… this one so uniquely dumb it might deserve a small plaque in the Museum of What the Hell Were They Thinking.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5 wooden stakes. One point for Carradine trying. The rest is tumbleweeds, boredom, and a bat on a string.
If you’re ever drunk, lonely, and wondering what it would look like if your grandfather tried to direct a vampire western during a nap, Billy the Kid Versus Dracula awaits. Just don’t blame me when your brain starts leaking out your ears.
