# Love at First Bite

Love at First Bite is a 1979 comedy horror film directed by Stan Dragoti and written by Robert Kaufman, using characters originally created by Bram Stoker. It stars George Hamilton, Susan Saint James, Richard Benjamin and Arte Johnson. The original music score was composed by Charles Bernstein. The film's tagline is: "Your favorite pain in the neck is about to bite your funny bone!"

## Count Vladimir Dracula

* Children of the night, shut up!
* You see? Even a child knows! The wolf is a very misunderstood creature. He never kills for sport, only what is needed. And he always protects the young... and the old.
* Without me, Transylvania will be as exciting as Bucharest... on a Monday night.
* [reading an American phrase book] What is this? "Copyright 1923"? Renfield, you bumbling moron, this book is as out of date as... I am.
* I'm going out for a bite to drink.
* [after biting a wino] What was that maniac drinking? Tastes like the Volga river at low tide!
* I never drink wine, and I do not smoke shit.
* Ah, Cindy Sondheim, you should have lived in an earlier age. Things were simpler, less complicated. Do you know how many women had nervous breakdowns in the fourteenth century? Two.

## Cindy Sondheim

* [talking to her kitten, sitting in the fridge]: So that's where you've been for the last two days, and I thought you were lost, you little devil [kisses the kitten].

## Dr. Jeffrey Van Helsing-Rosenberg

* [repeated line] I'm a doctor! I know what I'm doing.
* You know what Freud said: if you don't pay for it, you don't get better.
* [picking hotel room lock] Every now and then it sure helps to have a patient doing five to ten for breaking and entering.
* [is about to set Dracula's coffin on fire] In the name of all the Van Helsings who have ever lived... Burn, Baby! Burn! [throws the lit match on the coffin, and the coffin begins to ignite]
* [After having set fire to Dracula's Coffin] This is a perfect example of a man taking charge of his own life! And I feel... pretty good.
* Look, a check. She paid me everything she owes me. She left me, but she learned something. She's a responsible person ... or whatever.

## Others

* :Black mourner: Alvin - I told you to go find your roots, but who told you to drink the water?

## Dialogue

    [Dracula takes a sip from a glass of blood and recoils in disgust]
    Count Dracula: Renfield! Renfield!
    Renfield: Yes, Master! [...]
    Count Dracula: [thrusts his glass at him] How many times do I have to tell you: body temperature!
    Renfield: Master, please be careful!
    Count Dracula: What is it?
    Renfield: You nearly stepped on my dinner!
    Count Dracula: [sees the large black beetle] Forgive me. Bon appetit!
    Renfield: I think they're from the government.
    Count Dracula: How do you know?
    Renfield: They're wearing shoes.
    Commissare Woman: You, and your... cockroach-eating friend over there, have 48 hours to get out! Good evening, Comrade Count!
    Count Dracula: Wait one minute. This is my home. My people cleared the land. We tortured innocent peasants for it. We even murdered for it. By Romanian law, that makes it ours.
    Commissare Woman: Either you spend the rest of your life in an efficiency apartment with seven dissidents and one toilet, or you gather your aristocratic shit together and split. [Leaves].
    Count Dracula: Renfield.
    Renfield: Yes, master?
    Count Dracula: What is an efficiency apartment?
    Renfield: I don't know, master. What's a toilet?
    Alexei Rugalov: You dirty bat! You bit my mother!
    Count Dracula: What is your name?
    Rugalov: Alexei. Rugalov.
    Count Dracula: No, Alexei. I bit your mother, [recalls], and your grandmother.
    Air Stewardess: Pardon me, would you like Chicken Kiev, Chateaubriand, or Veal Cutlet Florentine for lunch?
    Renfield: Everything you mentioned is dead. Don't you have anything that's alive... and kicking?
    Lady on plane with Cat: [scoffs at Renfield] I'll have the Chicken Kiev, miss. Oh, why don't you bring a nice juicy mouse for little Salome here?
    Renfield: Could I have one, too?
    [the lady laughs and Renfield laughs with her]
    [a viewing in a funeral home]
    Reverend Mike: I knew Brother Alvin... and he was a swinger!
    Mourners: Yes! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Alleluia! etc.
    Reverend Mike: He loved his booze, hahahaha. He loved his women.
    Mourners: Yeah! And my wife, too! Yes, he did! Sure did! etc.
    Reverend Mike: But must of all, he loved his Cadillac Saville, and it's a beaute. I know, because he left it to me, Hallelujah!
    Mourners: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! etc.
    Reverend Mike: I showed him how God wanted him to have a swell time while he was alive. Because, brothers and sisters, when you is gone, you is gone. And ain't no way, no how, nobody's going to bring you back here once you is dead!
    [the coffin's lid rises, and Dracula sits up inside]
    Count Dracula: Good Evening.
    [the mourners scream in panic, and run out of the funeral home, knocking over the chairs]
    Count Dracula: [to Reverend Mike, thinking him a Hotel receptionist] I am Count Dracula. I would like a large suite with a bath. I have a reservation.
    [Reverend Mike screams and jumps through the stained glass window, shattering the glass]
    Count Dracula: [Confused] This is not the lobby of the Plaza Hotel?
    Renfield: You have 30 seconds to tell me where Miss Sondheim is, or...
    Cindy's Modeling Agent: Or what? You'll eat your lunch in my office?
    Renfield: No-o-o, my lunch will eat you. [Laughs as he reveals that his 'lunch' is a cobra]
    Renfield: I thought you were having fun.
    Count Dracula: Fun? How would you like to go around looking like a head waiter for 700 years?
    Cindy Sondheim: Can I get you anything?
    Count Dracula: [looking around at the mess in Cindy's apartment] A broom, perhaps?
    Cindy Sondheim: Eh? Oh, I hate housework. It killed my mother.
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: No!
    Cindy Soundheim: What?
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: No! It can't be!
    Cindy Soundheim: What, Jeffrey?
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: Dracula!
    Cindy Soundheim: [Amazed] How did you know his name?
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: [speaking of Count Dracula] Where is he?
    Cindy Sondheim: He'll be here.
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: Another fly by night character.
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: [triumphantly] Well, Count, what do you say to that?
    [Pulls out a Star of David. Dracula hides his face, then realizes what it is and removes his hands]
    Count Dracula: I would say, leave Cindy alone and find yourself a nice Jewish girl, Doctor!
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: Huh? [looks at star] Ah shit! It's the other one, isn't it?
    Cindy Sondheim: [Sarcastically] Very cute! I told you I have got a man in here...
    Count Dracula: Now you do.
    Count Dracula: I heard a rooster crow.
    Cindy Sondheim: A rooster? In New York City?
    Cindy Sondheim: We can go to bed, maybe get in a little 'quickie'.
    Count Dracula: No. With you, never a 'quickie'. Always a 'longie'.
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: My name is Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg, and I want to talk to you about a man who sucks the blood out of people.
    Lieutenant Ferguson: A loan shark, eh? What's 's name.
    Count Dracula: Do you think of me as special?
    Cindy Sondheim: Yes, of course.
    Count Dracula: So how can you think of yourself as nothing, when I love you?
    [Rosenberg approaches Dracula and Cindy in a restaurant]
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: The second way to kill a vampire, Count: three silver bullets through the heart!
    Cindy Soundheim: Jeffrey-!
    [Jeff shoots Dracula three times, Cindy faints]
    Count Dracula: No, Rosenberg, that is a werewolf.
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: A werewolf? Really? Are you sure?
    [Guards start to take him away]
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: [to the guards] No harm done! The man's all right! This was for a werewolf! No problem! Calm down! Take it easy! I'm a doctor! I know where I'm going!
    Count Dracula: We're going to make... a hoist.
    Renfield: A heist, Master-
    Count Dracula: -Heist! Heist! Heist!
    Count Dracula: [calling on a blood bank] We've come to make a withdrawal. We have a very sick man in the car. He needs blood, desperately.
    Bloodbank Guard: That's a hearse!
    Count Dracula: So maybe we're a bit late.
    [to Dracula and Renfield]
    Bloodbank Nurse: If you two freaks don't get out of here, I AM GOING TO SCREAM MY HEAD OFF!
    Renfield: If you scream loudly, they'll think you where frightened by a mouse...
    [Renfield places a live mouse above the opening in the nurse's blouse - the nurse screams and runs out of the room. Renfield laughs]
    Lieutenant Ferguson: You know we can't go in there without a warrant.
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: If we don't, her immortal soul will be lost forever.
    Lieutenant Ferguson: If we do I'll lose my pension.
    Cindy Sondheim: [to Renfield] Renfield! Why did you tell him that?
    Dr. Jeffery Rosenberg: Because the bad guys always tell the good guys what they're going to do just before they try to kill them.
    Renfield: He's absolutely right, Miss Cindy, that's part of the rules. But in this case, WE are they good guys.
    [last lines of the film]
    Cindy Sondheim: Oh, this isn't so hard. I think I'm going to love imortality.
    Count Dracula: There is one small disadvantage. We can only live by night.
    Cindy Sondheim: Oh, that's all right with me. I mean, I could never really get my shit together till 7pm, anyway.