When you think of the year 1972, what springs immediately to mind? Is it Kurt Waldheim becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations or Hewlett-Packard introducing the first scientific hand-held calculator (price in 1972 dollars, $395)? Maybe it’s a bunch of Libertarians inventing a micronation they called the Republic of Minerva. The US probe Mariner 9 sending us pictures as it orbited Mars. The Soviet probe Venera 8 surviving on the surface of Venus long enough to transmit data back to Earth for nearly an hour. This was the year 92nd U.S. Congress voted to send the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification, Iraq nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company and some burglars were arrested in a posh Washington hotel.
All well and good, but what would 1972 be without Blacula, which hit theaters in the United States on this day in 1972, and had a cultural impact far beyond what anyone expected from a low-budget vampire movie with a punning title. Widely regarded as the first major blaxploitation horror film, it helped create an entirely new subgenre by combining classic Gothic horror with Black protagonists, Black audiences, and themes rooted in race, history, and identity. And at a time when Hollywood rarely centered Black characters at all, Blacula put a Black prince, Mamuwalde (played by the terrific William Marshall), at the center of a horror story that gave him dignity and a tragic depth.