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Welcome to William Schoell's GREAT OLD MOVIES blog. Feel free to leave a comment regardless of the date the review was posted -- I read 'em all. Or if you prefer -- and especially if you have any questions directly for me -- email me at tawses67424@mypacks.net and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Click on a label link (labels can be found at the bottom of each post) to find other movies from that year, the star, that director or genre and so on. Or enter a title, director, genre, star or supporting player in the small Blogger "search blog" box at the far left up above and click search blog. [NOTE: While this blog mostly reviews films -- and TV shows -- that are at least twenty-five years old, we do cover films up until the present day.] HAVE FUN AND THANKS FOR DROPPING BY. William.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

COUNT DRACULA

Christopher Lee
COUNT DRACULA  (1970). Director: Jess Franco [Jesus Franco].

This is probably not the worst movie directed by prolific Spanish hack Jess Franco, but it's still not very good. It is purported to be a [fairly] faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" with Lee playing the Count [and having more dialogue than he did in his first appearance as the vampire in the superior Horror of Dracula] and Herbert Lom as Professor Van Helsing, now running a clinic in which Renfield (Klaus Kinski) is one of the patients. Lawyer Jonathan Harker (German actor Fred Williams) pays a call on the count, barely escapes from him; discovers that Lucy (Soledad Miranda), a friend of his fiancee Mina's Maria Rohm), is suffering from some sort of blood disease; and so on. Lee (although he seems a bit bored at times) and Lom are fine, but the movie, told in a straight-forward but tedious manner, has absolutely no style and doesn't hold the attention.

Verdict: Watch Horror of Dracula or the original Dracula with Lugosi instead. *1/2.

2 comments:

CavedogRob said...

Ha! I think it's about the best movie Franco ever directed! Lol!

William said...

Sadly, you're probably right!