13 Nights of Halloween Horror part 14 - Prevenge

31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 1 - Count Dracula

Count Dracula

98 minutes

Dir. Jess Franco

Spain/1970

Let’s kick things off tonight with a true classic in many ways, it’s your pal and mine, Count Dracula.  Now this isn’t no black and white Bela Lugosi Dracula, nor is it a modern version of the Count with Gary Oldman, this is Dracula Jess Franco style, starring my favorite actor who has ever portrayed the character, Christopher Lee.  Franco most notable for his sleazier fare brings in the reigns on this one and gives us a serious look at Count Dracula closer to Bram Stoker’s book then has ever been filmed prior to this movie.  For those not familiar with Jess Franco, he is kind of like your crazy uncle who all the other adults tolerate but never take too seriously.  He always get stuck at the kids table during Thanksgiving dinner, but if you actually listen to the stories he has to tell, you realize he is actually a pretty alright guy.  So, let’s start off this year’s 31 Nights of Halloween Horror with the legendary Count Dracula.

As I stated earlier, up until this point the Dracula story was never filmed faithfully too the book.  Both Universal and Hammer took many liberties with the characters and while telling the basic gist of the tale, omitted a lot of things that Bram Stoker’s book included.  It wasn’t until 1970, 73 years after Stoker’s book was first released that a somewhat faithful film adaption was attempted.  And who would have thought, the person to take on this challenge would be Spanish sleaze merchant Jess Franco.  When one thinks of Franco, one does not think of literary adaptions of masterpieces, one thinks of low budget blood and boobs.  But with limited resources as always, Franco pulls off a pretty decent adaption.

The things most notable about Franco’s Count Dracula are the fact that when we are first introduced to Dracula he is an older man, dressed all in black and has a mustache, who gets progressively younger when feasting on the blood of his victims.  A point in the book that all the previous Dracula movies lacked.  Another addition to this movie others have omitted is the introduction of character Quincy Morris played by Franco regular Jack Taylor (though for whatever reason the Arthur Holmwood character was left out.)  Franco familiars other than Lee and Taylor include Klaus Kinski as Renfield, who plays the most subdued Renfield of any Dracula movie and doesn’t utter a word in the film, almost seems like a waste.  And Herbert Lom who plays a convincing Van Helsing, who for whatever reason suffers a stroke in the movie out of nowhere, and the beautiful Soledad Miranda from She Killed in Ecstasy and Vampyros Lesbos as Lucy.

Same basic story here, Harker goes to Castle Dracula, Dracula buys land in London, Harker is trapped in castle Dracula with vampire brides and eventually escapes, meanwhile Dracula is biting Lucy, she becomes the undead and loses her head.  Harker, Quincy and Dr. Seward race against time to destroy Dracula and in this case, they set his coffin on fire and throw it over the ledge of his castle and that pretty does in the king of the undead.

Let’s be honest here, while the Dracula tale is a classic and the character himself never gets tiring, the book is not that exciting and drags on, and like many Franco films, this one does the same.  But that is not to say this is a failure.  Yes, it has its problems and suffers from Franco’s obnoxious zoom in close-ups, but one thing Franco always seems to excel in his locations and this one has some great imagery, beautiful eerie atmosphere and another great Dracula performance by the master Christopher Lee.  Add in an excellent score by Bruno Nicolai and we have ourselves a winner right out of the gate this month.  I love the Universal and Hammer Dracula movies, but there is something about that Eurotrash feel that gives it a look all its own and makes this one of my favorite Dracula renditions.