"Dragula" is a song and debut single co-written and recorded by American rock musician Rob Zombie. It was released in August 1998 as the lead single from his solo debut Hellbilly Deluxe. Since its release it has become Zombie's most recognizable song as a solo artist. It is also his best-selling song, and had sold over 717,000 copies in the U.S. by 2010.[2] The song is based on the drag racer "DRAG-U-LA" from the sitcom The Munsters.
The audio clip "superstition, fear and jealousy" heard at the beginning of the song is a sample of dialogue from the 1960 horror filmThe City of the Dead (also known as Horror Hotel), and is spoken by Christopher Lee.[3]
Zombie told Billboard magazine that the title came from the name of Grandpa Munster's eponymous dragster DRAG-U-LA on The Munsters. He goes on to say that it "was a classic show with great comic characters. Strangely enough, 'Dragula' was one of the last songs finished for the record. It fell together really fast and worked, but it could just as easily not [have] been on the record."[4]
Music video[]
The music video shows Rob Zombie driving the Munster Koach (not the actual Dragula racing car) with various shots of the band members and different scenes from movies, e.g. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the beginning of the video and the killer robot from the old movie chapter serial The Phantom Creeps. It achieved heavy rotation on MTV following the huge success of the album. The video also appears in the film Idle Hands.
