John austin
This version of Dracula gave Christopher Lee an opportunity to play the role he had already played several times, but this time with the intent of following Bram Stoker's original story as closely as possible. On that point, Count Dracula is fairly successful. It stays mostly on track with the original tale, right down to Dracula's mustache which, while present in the book, usually doesn't show up on screen. It's not a Hammer production, so it looks and feels a little different than what you may be used to. Lee gets more screen time and more lines than he usually got in this part, and there are some good supporting actors with Herbert Lom as Dr. Van Helsing and Klaus Kinski doing his usual kooky thing as Renfield.Unfortunately, if you watch it from beginning to end, you'll find that the whole thing is pretty dull. By the time this movie was made in 1970, the idea had really been wrung out, and there's nothing new or interesting here. This movie is rarely seen today and really only rates a footnote in the history of vampire lore. Postcript: However, with that being said, I did recently pick up an old book that discussed this movie. It was apparently very popular in Europe at the time, especially in France where it was billed as Les Nuits de Dracula (The Nights of Dracula).
Rfischer8655
Oh how dated this film looks. Some movies outlast their era and still look fresh. Not this one. The acting is way overdone, and almost comical. Actors look self-conscious as if always aware of the camera. But what makes this almost unwatchable is the cinematography. I got dizzy with the constant zooming in and out on faces, objects, and scenery. The lens also seems to move back and forth in rooms always looking for subject matter. My gosh, leave the camera on the tripod and let the story do the telling.Finally, for a 1970 movie, the narrow aspect ratio and film quality is awful. Colors are blaring without any subtlety of in-between shades. That may be the fault of poor lighting technique. Sound was was often unsynchronized with the speaker. It almost looks like it was shot on someone's home 35mm camera.The story is fair, and seems to follow the original literature. But I was so distracted by the half-hearted production values, I lost interest. The best version for me is with Louis Jourdan in PBS's version only a few years later.
GusF
Known in English simply as "Count Dracula", this is a very uninspired and rather badly made film. After the 1931 Bela Lugosi version, the 1958 Hammer version and the 1979 Frank Langella version, this is the fourth adaptation of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel that I have seen in the last ten months, notwithstanding the numerous sequels to the first two. Of those four, I understand that this is the most faithful to the novel - which I have never actually read - but it's also by far the weakest of them.The film's version of Dracula is not terribly intimidating. While Christopher Lee is good as the eponymous count, his performances in the Hammer series were far more entertaining. Herbert Lom made for a very good Van Helsing and he deserved to appear in a much better adaptation than this, though I preferred Peter Cushing and Laurence Olivier's takes on the character. None of the other actors made much impression one way or the other. I'm not entirely sure but I get the impression that most of them were dubbed. The film is rather low budget but that wouldn't have been a big problem if Jesus Franco had directed it with any sort of flair, art or imagination - all three of which were lacking in the extreme - rather than making every other shot a zoom shot. I assume that he had made a bet to see how many he could fit into the film. It's a bog standard version of "Dracula", I'm afraid. When it comes to great horror directors, he's no Terence Fisher, who directed the aforementioned 1958 film and most of the other top tier Hammer films.Overall, the film is deathly dull and mostly forgettable except for two things that I've already mentioned. It's always a pleasure to see either Lee or Lom in a film but it would have been a far greater pleasure to see them in a good film.
archie_stanton
I don't know. I'm a big Jess Franco fan, but this has to be seriously one of his weakest movies, despite being one of the most widely distributed.I honestly don't know WHY it doesn't work. It has all the makings of what should have been a GREAT film. Jess Franco, Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski, Soledad Miranda, and Jack Taylor - all doing a movie based on Bram Stoker's Dracula?! I think it misses in that it could have stood to be more graphic. It's also slow. Too slow. I'm also not the biggest fan of Franco's movies he partnered with producer Harry Allan Towers for, of which this is one. The cinematography is great, the sets look nice, but all and all there is just inspiration missing here.For a good Dracula movie that is close to the book, for my money I'd stick with Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula".
AD
