There are many times when you will go into a movie not knowing what to expect. More often than not, it is an exciting venture for many of the best films are those that you discover by accident. The same effect can also happen though when the film quite literally spells it out for you and when you sit down to watch Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, you know exactly just what it is you are getting yourself into. There is absolutely no question as to what this movie is going to give you should you decide to put it on. The title says it all and while you can hardly expect a masterpiece, you do have a pretty good time of it.

Famously shot in an extremely short amount of time and surprisingly it actually features the legendary John Carradine as Dracula, the film cuts a lot of corners when it comes to special effects yet even so, they are not as bad as they could be. If you were to remove the horror element from the movie completely and replace Dracula with another villain, it would have ended up being a fairly solid B Western because despite the lack of a budget, the script and story are half-decent and the acting is not all that bad. If you factor the horror back in, it actually creates a pretty compelling picture as you truly have no idea where it might go next. You can guess, and a little of it is obvious, but the sheer zaniness of crossing these two properties over is genius and not something you would normally see in today’s film world.

Not everybody is going to love this movie, nobody loves every film, but a western/horror hybrid does not come along very often and where it lacks in production values, and despite the fact everything on every level could have been improved, it more than makes up for in heart. No matter how you look at it, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula should not work, but it does and it turns out to be a lot of fun.

3 out of 5