Blacula (1972)

The title implies a tongue-in-cheek blaxploitation flick, but the film takes itself seriously and if you trim away the genre trappings there’s a decent vampire film underneath. I feel that more could've been made of the 18th Century slave trading/blood-sucking analogy before the leap to present day Los Angeles, but that it’s there at all is praiseworthy.
William Marshall plays the handsome killer as a friendly sort with a confident voice. He’s more sociable than the typical reclusive vampire, aware of social graces (even when out of his time), but otherwise he’s much the same and even finds his reborn Mina (Vonetta McGee) in a by the numbers situation.
The vampire's nemesis, the Van Helsing role, is filled by a bad-ass police pathologist (Thalmus Rasulala) determined to get his man.

2½ black arts out of 5