Count Yorga and Blacula, while successfully bringing to (then) modern times a very traditional image of the undead, were kind of the last sputter of the Lugosi-esque Dracula type. After this caped vamps were basically used in comedies like Love at First Bite and Dracula Dead and Loving It. The Count Yorga movies were decent, but in the end Robert Quarry didn’t have the sort of screen charisma necessary to keep a horror career going. Blacula star William Marshall, on the other hand, did. So why didn’t he? I don’t know. I guess black-themed horror movies–because you just could have a black actor in a regular horror movie much, I guess–were too faddish to provide him ongoing work. Too bad, because Marshall was the Tony Todd of his day. Imagine him playing a Van Helsing-like vampire hunter in a series of films. That would have been great. Apparently I’m not the only one who thought so. Surely Jefferson Twilight, the Blacula-hunter from the Venture Bros, was basically Blade as played by Marshall.
Marshall kept sporadically working, but in TV guest roles and the like. However, near the end of his career he enchanted a new generation of kiddies in his role as the King of Cartoons on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. When I first recognized him and saw that the King of Cartoons was the guy who played Blacula, well, my bliss was sublime.
