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1973 - UK / Yugoslavia Directed By: Dan Curtis. Starring: Jack Palance, Nigel Davenport, Simon Ward, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Murray Brown, Penelope Horner, Virginia Wetherall, Sarah Douglas and Barbara Lindley.
Aka
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Current Availability
Available on US R1 DVD from MPI either as a standalone release or as part of their 4-Disc Dan Curtis Macabre Collection box-set, which also includes television adaptations of The Picture Of Dorian Gray, The Turn Of The Screw and The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde all of which involved Curtis in some creative capacity.
Recommended?
Not really. Although Curtis deserves some credit for being the first to play up the romantic aspects of the Dracula character, this sadly translates into a tedious misfire which sees a totally miscast Jack Palance floundering as one of the most ineffectual screen Dracula's ever.
Review
Noble intentions define this ambitious attempt to breathe fresh life into the endless cycle of horror films featuring Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire. Having notched up a hit with the popular television series Dark Shadows, Dan Curtis – who would eventually become the first name of American televisual horror – teamed up with sci-fi/horror author and regular collaborator Richard Matheson and moved on to attempting to return Dracula closer to his original literary and historical origins with this high profile television special. Filmed in both the United Kingdom and the former Yugoslavia, Curtis Dracula, despite having been made with American television audiences in mind, would enjoy a theatrical release in Europe..
Screenwriter Matheson’s take on the Stoker tale sees British lawyer Jonathan Harker (Brown) travel to Transylvania in view to selling a British property to Transylvanian nobleman Count Dracula (Palance). Soon after arriving at Dracula’s foreboding castle Harker realises to his horror that his sinister host is in actual fact a vampire. Having used Harker to procure him his British property, Dracula sets off for England leaving Harker to meet his doom at 5the hands of the Count’s vampire brides who lurk within the castle.
The plot then shifts to England where Dracula soon develops a lovelorn fixation with Lucy Westenra (Lewis), who bears a striking resemblance to the Count’s own long lost love. As poor Lucy is inducted into the cult of the vampiric undead, her fiancé Arthur Holmwood (Ward), concerned for her health, calls in family friend Dr Van Helsing (Davenport) who soon recognises the mark of the vampire.
When Lucy dies only to return from the grave as a vampire herself, Van Helsing and Arthur promptly kill her by driving a stake through her heart. Upon discovering that his love has been taken from him once again an enraged Dracula swears vengeance leading Van Helsing and Holmwood to Transylvania and a deadly battle of wits with the century’s old vampire.
Say what you will, it is hard to fault Curtis’ integrity as he conscientiously moves away from the traditional gothic territory and places an heavy emphasis upon the romantic aspects of vampirism as Dracula’s love for Lucy Westenra sows the seeds of his eventual undoing. Curtis’ Dracula also treads new ground in that it fleshes out the history of the Dracula lineage, identifying the mighty vampire as infamous historical tyrant Vlad Tepes (better known to most as Vlad The Impaler) upon whom many literary and historical scholars assume Stoker’s original characterisation of the Count was based. Taking this into consideration it becomes safe to say that Curtis was making a concerted effort to redefine and revitalise the Dracula character which had grown passé during the course of Hammer’s numerous and increasingly tired retreads throughout the late sixties and early seventies.
Alas, it is only its makers worthy intentions that ultimately warrant any real merit as Curtis and writer Richard Matheson uncharacteristically lump the projects considerable promise into a deeply flawed and unsatisfying whole. Although the opening scenes in Transylvania remain commendably faithful to Stoker’s original tale, once the plot shifts to England messrs Curtis and Matheson take questionable liberties with the source material which ultimately prove detrimental to the film as a whole. Unquestionably the film is hurt by the necessity to bring the screenplay in at a length friendly for a two hour time slot with allocation for commercial breaks. Resultantly Matheson takes the scissors to Stoker’s original narrative without mercy, producing an abbreviated revision in which the key characters of Dr Seward and the lunacticRenfield are omitted entirely and those of Jonathan Harker and his fiancé Mina Murray are relegated almost to the point of irrelevance to the narrative at large.
All the same this hardly begins to excuse the lazy and misappropriated plotting as a banal preoccupation with the sense of romantic loss surrounding the Count’s lovelorn fixation with Lucy Westenra relegates this Dracula to precious little more than a tepid, glorified costume drama masquerading in horror film clothing. The romantic and erotic notions of vampirism would eventually be realised far more successfully in John Badham’s more lavish 1979 interpretation of Dracula, here however, they simply serve to sap away at any sense of horror or interest that Curtis had otherwise generated meaning that set pieces such as Harker’s encounter with Dracula’s vampire brides and the crypt encounter with the undead Lucy simply fall flat. It seems as if Curtis and Matheson have intentionally strove to relegate the supernatural and horrific connotations of Stoker’s novel almost to the point of an incidental irrelevance. Even the screenplays much trumpeted bid to establish Dracula’s historical identity and lineage is little more than cursory and is of little real consequence in the greater scheme of things. Eventually the films narrative direction reaches a dead end and before we know it the Count is killing time by terrorising the patrons of a Whitby inn presumably for the want of something better for him to do. Predictably good intentions eventually crumble and in its final act Dracula moves back into a half-baked, clichéd comfort zone of waving crucifixes, wreaths of garlic flowers and stakes through the heart en route to an anticlimactic finale.
The real death knell however for Curtis’ Dracula proves to be its horrendous miscasting, which coupled with some half-hearted, weak central performances sends any sense of credibility flying out of the window. Most glaringly Jack Palance is horribly miscast as Dracula and whilst his cruel features lend themselves well to the role, his stagy and completely overwrought performance is ill-befitting and the lasting impression he leaves is that off a lovesick old man left to rage impotently when his lost love is taken from him once again. The supporting cast, due to weak performances and yet more miscasting, do the film few favours either. Nigel Davenport is possibly the feeblest Van Helsing ever, approaching the role with a glib Englishness. Murray Brown is decent as the terrified Harker but looks far too old for the role and his refined, haughty manner is simply out of touch with Stoker’s description of an enthusiastic young solicitor. Meanwhile Fiona Lewis as Lucy wanders around as if in some sort of heavily sedated, bug-eyed daze and Simon Ward as Arthur seems to be permanently etched with the wide-eyed expression of an astonished ten year old.
Stylistically Curtis’ Dracula is an uneven affair, intermittently benefiting from excellent period costumes and grandiose décor. At other points however, unimaginative set design fails to muster the requisite gothic flavour with the rather drab interiors of the Dracula castle proving a particular disappointment. In addition Oswald Morris’ oddly muted cinematography betrays the films television origins although this is remedied to an extent by Robert Cobert’s majestic score, which for what its worth restores much of the lost grandeur.
So overall this overreaching, anaemic interpretation of Dracula proves a rare misfire for the usually infallible pairing of Curtis and Matheson. Whatever Curtis and Matheson boast in terms of conceptual audacity is totally negated by their failure to translate it into anything even moderately engaging or worthwhile onscreen. At best with its for the time novel emphasis on the romantic aspects of the Dracula character, Curtis’ Dracula can at least be looked upon as a somewhat ropey precursor to the romanticised gothic horrors of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 smash Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
It should be noted that Curtis would promptly return to the realm of famous literary horrors with far more success by penning and producing director Glenn Jordan’s 1973 television adaptation of Frankenstein, which featured Bo Svenson as a highly sympathetic monster. Sadly it did not have much of an act to live up to in the shape of this rather sorry Dracula, which thanks to its depiction of the Count as a lovelorn, geriatric terroriser of random hotel proprietors, Palance’s ham-fisted snarling and a well-intentioned but disinteresting change of narrative direction ranks easily amongst the least of the many screen interpretations of Stoker’s famous novel.
Also Try… Dracula (1979, John Badham) / Bram Stoker’s Dracula / Frankenstein (1973, Glenn Jordan) / Count Dracula (1970, Jesus Franco) / Count Dracula (1977, Philip Saville).
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