The Cinema - Count Yorga, L.A.'s Best Vampire

I was so excited by picking the Super Bowl right and getting the chance to vote for Sen. Obama (and thereby stick one in Mrs. Evil's craw*) I forgot to extol the virtues of Count Yorga, Vampire.

This 1970 film broke new ground. Never before had a VW bus played such a pivotal role in a horror movie. An entire generation of hippies had to blink and say "Darrr?"

The flick opens at a seance, presided over by the Count himself, who sticks out like a sore thumb in his evening dress next to the tweed-jacketed and turtlenecked geeks at the shindig.

The seance itself is a bit of a fizzle, but it suits the Count's purpose just fine - identifying his next batch of victims.

Specifically, Erica, who feels a little wonky after her first encounter and goes to see the chain-smoking, whiskey-swilling quack, who advises she eat lots of rare steak.

Which she does. Unfortunately, she uses the family cat.

Then there's an immense amount of plot and blah blah blah and walking around Los Angeles until the guys decide to go bust into the vampire's hilltop manor, which doesn't work out too well in general but does finish off the Count.

I remember seeing this as a kid and being scared to death at the VW bus scene. It strikes me as slightly comical now, but what doesn't?

Good oily lounge lizard vampire, correctly dressed. Dumb male leads who deserve everything they get. The briefest hints of nekkidness, cleavage, lesbianism. Chain-smoking medico who wears puke-yellow shirts and therefore deserves everything he gets. Gratuitous voice-over narration. Bulgarian lackey with the best dentistry then available behind the Iron Curtain. A big piece of cheese. Two coils.

* In case you are wondering about the oblique reference to Sen. Clinton as "Mrs. Evil," consider this:

• Using numerical values for the alphabet (A=1 and so on to Z = 26), the total for "Hillary", 157, divided by the mystic number 23, results in 6.826. The value for "devil," 52, divides by 23, is 6.872. I, for one, am not going to turn over the leadership of my beloved country to someone whose Mystic Value is a mere .038 away from The Devil.