John’s Horror Corner: Dracula’s Widow (1988), a campy, cheesy, gory bloodbath of 80s schlock.

MY CALL: Another vampire movie from the late 80s rich with tongue-in-cheek jest and grimy special effects. MORE MOVIES LIKE Dracula’s Widow: For more campy vampy flicks of the era that keep the tone light and the effects heavy, consider Vamp (1986), The Lost Boys (1987), or Fright Night 1-2 (1985, 1988).

When the owner of a Hollywood wax museum Raymond (Lenny von Dohlen; Twin Peaks, Teeth) receives an unexpected extra crate of Romanian antiques, he doesn’t think to audit his delivery contents. But the very night of its delivery, the vampire Vanessa (Sylvia Kristel) emerges from the extra crate to feed on some lecherous man in the streets.

Vanessa has the looks of a noir-ish pin-up model and the countenance of a clunky, 8-bit Fembot. Despite being the long-undead widow of Count Dracula, she has little more than a robotic personality. Still, she knows how to have a good time. Vanessa makes a boyfriend-familiar out of Raymond, they attend a Satanic ritual sacrifice, and she murders a dozen Devil worshippers in monstrous form.

The occasional narration of Detective Lannon (Josef Sommer; The Invasion) confers the movie’s momentary intention to feel like (or jest toward) a pulp noir-ish thriller. Lennon follows the case of Vanessa’s first victim, which leads him to Van Helsing’s grandson and several turned vampires that all need a good staking.

The gore is surprisingly decent! Vanessa’s first victim looks like his head was put through a meat grinder. The demonic vampire make-up swings very closely to looking like a monstrous demon, with strongly protruding brow, chin and cheek bones. She even has almost webbed, gnarly, gangly claws (perhaps hinting at bat wings) that she drives into throats. There’s plenty of blood, extra cheese galore, and several amusing gore gags. I was especially fond of the bat attack and transformation scene. In fact, it was gifs of that bat scene that lured me to watch this movie.

Not bad at all, if you’re in the market for a fun, campy, bad movie.