Jess Franco's "Count Dracula" (1970)

aka "Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht (Germany)", "Les Nuits De Dracula" (France)

Directed by Jesus Franco
Written by Dietmar Behnke and Jesus Franco

Rated PG for implied violence and disturbing imagery.

Jess Franco's "Count Dracula" is a special kind of vampire movie. For one, it's the last portrayal of Dracula by longtime Hammer Horror film star Christopher Lee ("the Horror of Dracula", "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave", "Drink the Blood of Dracula", "Dracula A.D.1972", "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" and others). Though Franco's "Count Dracula" wasn't produced by Hammer, the directer lured Lee back to the role with the promise that, for once, this Dracula film would be a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. While there are a few significant deviations from the plot of the novel, overall Franco's "Count Dracula" is the closest film adaptation to Stoker's original novel.

Christopher Lee in "the Horror of Dracula" and Franco's "Count Dracula" (left to right)

One of the biggest differences between "Count Dracula" and other Dracula movies is that Dracula appears old, grey-haired and mustached, as he is described in Bram Stoker's book. Bela Lugosi's heavy-accented, clean-shaven, youthful interpretation of Dracula had been so deeply engrained in our cultural consciousness that it took forty years for Stoker's original vision of Dracula to make it to the big screen.

 

Dracula welcomes Johnathon Harker (Fred Williams) to his secluded castle to go over documents pertaining to Dracula's purchase of a large London estate. Harker quickly notices something is not quite right at castle Dracula. The count looks suspiciously like the shrouded coachman who drove Harker's carriage to the castle. By the time Dracula gives his "...children of the night. What music they make..." speech, it's safe to say that Harker is majorly creeped out. "Count Dracula" includes the often passed-over part of the story that deals with Harker's stay in Dracula's castle. This includes a sequence with three hot female vampires who live with Dracula at his castle (Dracula always has multiple ladies. It's just how he rolls.), and a scene of Harker escaping his locked room by climbing out a window on a narrow ledge. Both scenes are very cinematic and intense in the novel, but they're usually discarded in film adaptations. After finding Dracula sleeping in his coffin, Johnathon takes a panic-fueled dive out of a window, reawakening in Van Helsing's Hospital in London (In the book, he's rescued by some Swiss nuns and nursed back to health, THEN sent back to England).

Back in London, Harker's wife Mina hopes for his hasty recovery. Meanwhile, her best friend Lucy (pictured above) begins to have strange nightly visitations. She appears anemic, as though her blood is being drained away, and in spite of major blood transfusions and all the care Dr. Seward can provide, Lucy slips gradually away, finally dying of blood loss. When local children start disappearing, Dr. Van Helsing begins to suspect vampirism. He leads Harker and friends to the cemetery, where they find Lucy very much undead, and they commence with the classic vampire-staking scene.

Meanwhile, back at the sanitarium, a patient named Renfield collects flies and spiders, obsessed with taking "lives". Renfield (played by the legendary Klaus Kinski, who also played Nosferatu in Warner Herzog's "Nosferatu  the Vampyre") is reputed to have lost his mind in the same Carpathian mountains where Dracula's castle lies. Kinski's performance in "Count Dracula" is spot-on. It's a shame that Renfield is a relatively minor character, but Kinski uses every second of screen-time as a canvas for his performance art. 

Kinski as Renfield in "Count Dracula" and as Nosferatu in "Nosferatu the Vampyre"

Johnathon, Dr. Seward, Van Helsing and Sir Quincy Morris (whose part in the Dracula legacy is harshly abridged in this film adaptation) regroup and put their efforts into Dracula's complete destruction. Unfortunately for them, he's already began to visit Harker's wife Mina in the night. Will they kill Dracula before he kills Mina?

The DVD transfer of the film is pretty good. A particularly neat special feature is an audio track of Christopher Lee reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula". I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm psyched that someone sat Christopher Lee down and got him to read "Dracula" on tape. Other bonuses include subtitles for the hearing impaired (which I always appreciate), as well as a featurette on Jess Franco and an essay on Soledad Miranda.

I give "Count Dracula" an 8/10. The film has a lot of technical flaws. For instance, many of the shots look as if they were done by a cameraman with Parkinson's disease. There are several unnecessary uses of the zoom effect. Also, all of the bats and spiders in the film are VERY clearly fake. But for all of this, the film maintains a certain rustic charm. Though there are several marked deviations from Bram Stoker's novel, it maintains the Gothic feel of the novel, and is by far the most faithful film adaptation of "Dracula" I've seen. The biggest highlights for me were Christopher Lee doing his "bloodshot eye" Dracula face (which looks like it hurts, and is a call-back to his Hammer Horror Dracula films), Kinski as Renfield throwing himself out a window, and the very attractive Maria Rohm and Soledad Miranda as Mina and Lucy. If you're going to be lame and try to wuss out of reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (which is really an amazing novel), this is as close as you're going to get in terms of film adaptations. A real treat for fans of pre-Twilight vampire films.













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