gavin6942 Dracula travels to the American West, intent on making a beautiful ranch owner his next victim. Her fiancé, outlaw Billy the Kid, finds out about it and rushes to save her.My biggest question is, would people in the Old West know what a vampire was? Obviously the concept goes back a long time, but did Americans really know about vampires before Bram Stoker? I am not so sure. And yet, they throw the term around like it is common knowledge.That being said, this film seems to have a very low critical reception... unfairly. While not great, it is far from bad and really puts a new spin on the western. Were there many horror westerns before this? I think not, which makes it ground-breaking if nothing else.

FightingWesterner Billy The Kid Versus Dracula is cited by many (including the man himself) as the low-point in the career of John Carradine. It's not true. I've seen a lot worse pictures than this.Yes, the premise of the movie is a bit silly, but never boring. Seen in the spirit of the poverty-row horrors and westerns of the thirties and forties (of which director William Beaudine is no stranger), it's actually pretty entertaining.Also, it's a lot of fun to see Carradine reprising his role as Dracula, from Universal's House Of Frankenstein and House Of Dracula, a role that launched his career in horror movies.Don't miss the hilarious climax where Billy the kid beans old Drac in the face with a shooting-iron!

Flak_Magnet In the great cinematic tradition of showdowns, "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" rests somewhere near the weirdest corners. This movie tells the tale of Billy the Kid, now a ranch hand, and his relationship with the beautiful Betty Bentley, whose ranch represents the movie's main set piece. When Betty's mysterious uncle (Carradine) comes to town, bad things start to happen, beginning with the murder of a young woman. When Billy the Kid discovers the uncle's nefarious plans to transform Betty into a vampire, he must stop him at all costs. This is a very hammy B-Western and although the story is ludicrous, the cast are taking their roles seriously. John Carradine hams it up, Lugosi style, while the rest of the cast struggle their way through the formulaic and predictable script. The print looks very fuzzy, but that goes with the territory. Aside from the shoddy print, this was actually a decently budgeted and produced movie, so don't expect a train wreck. We got a couple good laughs, but it wasn't hilarious. Overall, "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" is more of a weird B-Western than a unintentional comedy. Its hokey, cheesy fun, but almost entirely forgettable. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

keesha45 John Carradine said this was the worst movie he ever made. It may have also been his worst performance as Dracula, a role he had assumed more than than any other character he portrayed in his illustrious career (at least six times in films and twice on TV, according to his IMDb filmography.) That being said,it's still not half bad as a B western-horror movie. It may be odd to see a vampire in the old West, but maybe he was looking for Frankenstein's daughter to help her take on Jesse James, the movie which veteran director William Beaudine released just before this one (JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER.) Ironically, this was the last film Beaudine made in a career that lasted from the silent films he made four decades before with Mary Pickford, to a series of Bowery Boys flicks, then on to a string of memorable TV shows like SPIN AND MARTY, RIN TIN TIN and LASSIE. Although Beaudine's cinematic career might have ended here,he kept working, shooting more LASSIE episodes, a DISNEYLAND episode called "Ten who Dared" about Major Powell's epic boat journey through the Grand Canyon and a couple of GREEN HORNET episodes, which were packaged with other programs into two Green Hornet films, a much better ending to his career than his silly film about two legendary killers. The film is just getting started when the story takes an ironic turn. The vampire has boarded a stagecoach at night where he meets a whiskey drummer, just as Carradine's gambler character had done in the classic STAGECOACH film he made with John Wayne. After he kills an Indian girl at a rest stop, her tribe takes off after the stage, in the director's homage to his colleague John Ford's masterpiece. There's not a lot more to recommend for this film. Billy only has one gun fight and two fist fights before the inevitable final showdown between the title protagonists. Dracula faces little resistance except from the immigrant mother of his second victim, who has a hard time convincing anyone a killer is going around biting helpless women and sheep to death. Some memorable TV character actors are seen here, such as Kurt Russell's dad Bing, who played Sheriff Coffee's deputy on BONANZA,Roy Barcroft from SPIN AND MARTY and the aforementioned Folgers Coffee lady.When all is said and done, the film does a fair job of telling what might happen if these two legendary figures from history and literature had met. Sure, the vampire may appear in daylight and the means chosen for dispatching him is something other than a wooden stake, and Billy the Kid would be the last cowboy to give up gunslinging glory to become a sheep puncher for anyone, but this is a Hollywood film after all, so don't expect much accuracy in either historical or literary rendering. Beaudine was never in a class with other great directors of his time, but there were few that lasted in Hollywood for over half a century as he did. Producers liked his way of shooting within a budget and audiences liked the stories he told on film, so his films usually made money and his movies and TV shows were seldom boring to watch. This flick may not have been his or Carradine's best works, but it's a good opportunity to see the efforts of such screen legends as these two at work together, along with some familiar faces from the small screen. Dale Roloff