Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
1970 - Spain / West Germany / Italy / UK. Directed By: Jesus Franco. Starring: Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski, Maria Rohm, Fred Williams, Soledad Miranda, Jack Taylor and Paul Muller.
Aka
El Conde Dracula
Bram Stoker's Count Dracula
Dracula 71
The Nights Of Dracula
Current Availability
Released in February 2007 on US R1 DVD courtesy of Dark Sky Films. A decent official DVD release of this film has been long awaited and Dark Sky deliver just that offering a very good presentation of the film itself complete with a few worthwhile extras.
Recommended
I would say so. While the tight budget sometimes hurts, this is still overall a commendable effort and perhaps Franco's best film. Well-made, atmospheric, creepy and very faithful to Bram Stoker's original novel.
Review
At the outset of the seventies it was not just Britain’s fabled Hammer Film’s who were attempting to milk every possible drop of box-office revenue from the characters, themes and narrative of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. While Hammer’s Dracula cycle was steadily losing its lustre with each increasingly contrived reprisal an all new version of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire tale would sneak quietly out of the burgeoning continental horror market. The film in question would be the European co-production Count Dracula (aka - El Conde Dracula (1970), yet another collaboration between British producer Harry Alan Towers and infamous Spanish trash director Jess Franco for which they roped in the great Christopher Lee to once again don his trust fangs as the redoubtable Count.
Franco and Towers’ very slight reworking of the familiar Stoker tale sees trainee lawyer Jonathan Harker (Williams) journeying to the castle of Count Dracula located in Transylvania. The purpose of his journey is to sell to the Count a property located in England. Upon arriving in the region Hark is both bemused and unnerved when the natives react with fear, apprehension and open hostility upon hearing of his intended destination.
When Harker finally reaches the castle he finds his host Count Dracula to be a gaunt, sinister and intimidating presence. When Harker later finds himself imprisoned in his sleeping chamber terror sets in as he gradually realises that his host is a vampire, subsisting on the blood of innocents.
After a terrifying encounter with three spectral, vampiric women Harker falls over a high castle wall and awakens to find himself at a London mental asylum, under the care of one Professor Van Helsing (Lom).
Van Helsing – who is an authority on the subject of the undead, vampirism and the black arts – believes Harker’s wild story and quickly concludes that Dracula will be on his way to England. Van Helsing’s suspicions prove correct and it transpires that Dracula has already nurtured the innocent Lucy Westenra (Miranda) into his ungodly cult of vampirism. In addition the Count now also has his sights set on a fresh target – none other than Harker’s own ravishing fiancée Mina Murray (Rohm). With this in mind Van Helsing and company realise their only hope is to drive Count Dracula back to his ancestral lair in Transylvania and there destroy him.
The opening title card pledges that this film will represent the first completely faithful adaptation of Stoker’s original story, which prior adaptations from Universal, Hammer and others had only paid the most perfunctory tribute to, lending its characters and basic premise but little else. While Count Dracula doesn’t strictly deliver on its promise – Franco being Franco cannot resist chucking in his own “creative” flourish here or there – for the first half and hour at least it looks at least as if it might do.
The early stages of Stoker’s original text detailing Jonathan Harker’s journey to and subsequent terrifying stay at the Count’s castle have, without a word of exaggeration, never once been realised to such palpably atmospheric and chilling effect as they are here. The exaggerated theatrics typified by Hammer are wisely steered clear of as Franco in what is possibly his finest hour (or half hour if one wants to get anal about these things) directs with a deliberate and consistent Continental horror aesthetic that conjures up the required ambience and atmosphere to something resembling perfection. Whether it is Harker’s carriage trundling through dark, foreboding woodland serenaded by the howling of wolves or Harker fleeing for his very soul through the ghostly passageways of Dracula’s oppressive, haunted castle, everything about this opening third of Franco’s effort makes a strong, creepy impression. If Mario Bava had ever fancied a crack at doing a straight adaptation of the Stoker novel I believe the results would not have been too dissimilar.
When this superb first act concludes and the action shifts away from Dracula’s Transylvanian lair the film predictably becomes a far more mixed, uneven and less impressive work altogether. Franco it appears could not resist the niggling temptation to add his own flourishes and slight but inexplicable additions/variations to the source material. While some of the directors personal touches work (perhaps accidentally) others fall flat. On the positive side the emphasis on the sexual metaphors and parallels of Dracula’s vampiric attacks on the innocent Lucy are noteworthy and Franco is possibly the first filmmaker to carry over4 the cinematically effective notion from Stoker’s novel of Dracula slowly regaining the vigour of youth as he consumes more and more blood. Mention must also be made of a particularly bizarre later scene, wrongly mocked in most critiques of this title, in which the protagonists find themselves menaced by a salvo of stuffed, taxidermy animals given life by the presence of Dracula. Utilising a feverish, rapid, jarringly edited montage of glassy-eyed stuffed animal shots and a feral cacophony of shrill animal shriek’s and growls this sequence possesses an oddly unnerving quality and is possibly the films most memorable moment. Overall however, the aforementioned touches/scenes excepted, Franco’s personal flourishes otherwise bring nothing to the table and occasionally prove unwelcome, annoying diversions.
By contrast Franco, in perhaps his greatest achievement on this film, makes superb use of Christopher Lee who had rose to fame largely on the back of his Dracula roles for Hammer. While Hammer always succeeded in talking Lee into reprising the role over and over again Lee was increasingly bored with the role, feeling that Hammer’s films were gradually drifting far away from Stoker’s original tale and went so far as to voice his opinion publicly. With Count Dracula it is therefore a godsend that Franco and Towers gift Lee with the chance to play Count Dracula in a more faithful accordance to the characters literary origins, something Hammer had never allowed him the chance to do. Lee’s relish at this rare opportunity is evidenced through the gusto in which Lee delivers an extended monologue lifted direct from the novel where the Count proudly recalls to Harker the particulars of his ancestry and bloodline. The sheer power of Lee’s delivery raises goose pimples. In a broader sense it proves to be perhaps the most astute move Franco makes as by restoring Dracula to the sinister nobility of his literary origins he adds an extra dimension to the character missing from practically all previous cinematic treatments which had essentially presented Dracula as little more than a stagy vampiric bogeyman.
The casting in general makes Count Dracula more or less essential viewing to followers of European genre cinema. In addition to Lee we have the ever-commanding presence of Herbert Lom, fresh off his role as sadistic inquisitor Lord Cumberland in Michael Armstrong’s grisly Mark Of The Devil (1970), as a rather stuffy Professor Van Helsing. Far from the dynamic, charismatic vampire hunter of Stoker’s novel Lom’s Van Helsing is written a rather sullen, uptight, reserved character who in a typically nonsensical Franco touch suffers a stroke and spends the second half of the film in the confines of a wheelchair. The great Klaus Kinski also contributes a number of extended but out of place scenes as the lunatic Renfield, proceeding to do nothing more interesting than jabber inanely in his asylum cell. It should be noted that while Lee and Lom’s characters are essentially arch enemies within the narrative they never once appear onscreen together and in fact the two actors never even met each other during production, each having shot his respective scenes at different times for inclusion in the finished film. If that seems bizarre then the story behind Kinski’s participation ius even stranger with some sources suggesting he was essentially conned into taking his role having accepted on the basis of a script presented to him bearing a different title and no mention of it being a Dracula film. Elsewhere considerable female interest is added by the presence of regular Franco babes Soledad Miranda (who was tragically killed in a car accident later that year) and the smouldering Maria Rohm. Other regular Franco player’s such as Fred Williams, Jack Taylor and Paul Muller also crop up in supporting roles.
To be honest the obviously low budget does at times prove to be a definite burden and there are also moments where Franco’s shoddy tendencies shine through, particularly some dreadfully sloppy day for night shots. The films cheap Continental origins are also exposed somewhat by Franco and co having utilised bland mainland European locations as a substitute for the chilly gothic mists of Victorian era London – a move that deprives the seconds and third acts of some much needed favour and atmosphere.
Yet despite its occasional budgetary and artistic blemishes Count Dracula is still worth seeking out. For what it’s worth – which probably isn’t much – this may very well be Franco’s best film. Well-made by any standard given the prohibitive financial limitations, played out by a superb cast and boasting a fantastic, effortlessly atmospheric first act Count Dracula makes for one of the most pleasingly faithful of all screen Dracula’s, restoring up to a point both the narrative and the character of Dracula to the rightful, chilling dignity of their original literary origins.
Also Try... Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979, Werner Herzog) / Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein / The Rites Of Frankenstein / Dracula (1958, Terence Fisher) / Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Please place any comments or queries about this film / review on the message board below. Please note that the newest comment is always displayed first so if you wish to read the comments in order start from the bottom and work your way up. Thanks.
