Tag Archives: vampires

Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973)

Young women at the mercy of Dracula. With boob, blood and Paul Naschy. 75min imdb

Recap:

So there are these young women who have a broken carriage wheel and thus have two stay in a castle where they find a book in which they read that there will always be a Dracula until he finds true love. Conveniently one girl falls in love with Dracula while the other girls are turned into vampires. Now it’s time to revive Dracula’s daughter, the countess. Eventually the girl has to decide whether she wants to become a vampire or not.

Now this may sound stupid, but only because it is. I guess the plan was to a) make a movie with an incredibly long and dull exposition, b) show a lot of boobs, blood and violence and c) eventually come up with a plot that makes sense. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, and this is not the first time I noticed that a mediterranean movie neglected the plot.

On the upside, this movie is not dumber than most current micro-budget movies, but it looks much better, and it has Paul Naschy in it, which is a good thing for the fans of Paul Naschy. But it by no means is a good movie. Mediocre I would say.

Movie 73min

Movie 73min b&w

Trailer

Rabid (1977)

Movie 91min

Trailer

On Cronenberg World, vampirism is a disease much like the rabies. 91min imdb

Recap:

Rose has a motorcycle accident and is picked up by the ambulance of the nearest hospital, which happens to be an institute for plastic surgery where she is given some kind of stem cell treatment. You can imagine that stem cells were rather experimental back in 1977, so from now on she can no longer digest conventional food. Instead she starts hugging people to death, sucking their blood with a proboscis that she keeps in an additional vagina hidden in her armpit. But you know what mosquitoes are like, they spread diseases, in this case: the Vampirabies which turn people into rabid bloodbingers. This disease is quite deadly, especially when you shoot the infected as part of the containment strategy (the other part is handing out vaccination certificates). I would like to file this as a holiday movie because when fighting this epidemic, shooting Santa is just a collateral damage (but then I won’t because only one Santa slayed just isn’t enough).

I guess it’s quite obvious that I like this movie, and why not? People say that this is far from being one of Cronenberg’s better movies, and I don’t disagree. The narrative is a bit choppy, it feels a bit as if they have had a script for a much longer movie and then removed every scene that wasn’t indispensable. Well whatever. I liked it. It is a good movie, it is well done and contains a lot of good ideas. I sure would love to re-watch Videodrome and watch those other Cronenberg movies which are considered better, but there’s nothing wrong (and much right) with this movie.

Nosferatu In Venice (1988)

Italian attempt to cash in on Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979),starring Donald Pleasance, Christopher Plummer, Klaus Kinski and Venice. 97min imdb

Movie 93min

Trailer (German)

Recap:

So there is Donald Pleasance, looking a little lost when worrying about somebody else than Michael Myers. He’s basically a catholic priest, very catholic, drinking the blood of Christ (wine) and eating his body (sammich) while the adults are discussing the important stuff. Then there is Christopher Plummer as the ghostbuster. He vanhelsings across Venice where Nosferatu last was seen. Plummer is always good, especially when he doesn’t sing Edelweiß, and yet he makes me feel the void that Peter Cushing has left behind. Then there is Kinski with a Johnny Winter wig (that’s what you get for not shaving your head, I guess). Most of the time he is just standing there, being himself, getting the chicks. Oh, and then of course there is the star of the movie, Venice, also just standing there and being herself, being just as worn down and ugly as Kinski, but at the same time even more beautiful and enchanting than him.

The 1979 Nosferatu by Kinski and Herzog was such a success that it’s a small surprise that the Italians wanted a piece of the cake. What’s surprising however is how slow this movie is, and not slow in a let’s-pad-the-runtime-with-redundant-dialogue way, it’s more like a we-paid-for-Venice-now-let’s-make-the-most-of-it way. Maybe it’s just because that when they had spent the budget they were far from having finished the script, so they just had to make the most of what they had. So of course the movie was a quirky little flop. But I’m cool with that. I have no idea what I have missed with all that stuff that never was shot. I can only judge what I was actually shown, and that sure was good enough for me. The exterior shots were made in Venice, so you will hardly ever see a movie with more chocolate for the eyes. There’s Kinski in it, and even when he doesn’t even try to deliver a decent performance he is still Kinski, dominating the screen (except for a few occasions when his co-star Venice steals the scene). So, yes, the movie is trash, and it’s stylish, and I like it!

Horror Of Dracula (1958)

Classic Dracula movie directed by Terence Fisher for the Hammer Studios. With Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. 82min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

Basically, this is the battle of Grand Moff Tarkin versus Count Dooku. Spoiler: the one with the cooler Star Wars movie wins.


Okay, let me try again. This is a Dracula movie, this time Harker is a vampire hunter who tries to kill Dracula but fails, but he kills the bride of Dracula, so Dracula bites him and then goes for Lucy.

Also, this is quite an international movie: the innkeeper has a very blonde (and maybe Swedish?) maid called Inga, and the country where van Helsing resides cannot be England which shares borders only with Scotland and Wales, because in this movie they cross the border with a carriage, and along the border you see on the buildings’ walls German words like Zollamtshaus and Friederickstrasse.

All in all this is a priceless historical document. It’s such a pleasure to see skilled actors working for a skilled director, the sets are not exactly big budget but they look so much better than the nobudget stuff that is shot on location nowadays. I guess that there’s pretty much blood for a 50s movie, and I guess that the faces Lucy and Mina make when they expect Dracula may have been quite suggestive back then. Yet I must say that in my personal opinion the movie today is not as overwhelming as it may once have been. But it’s still great to watch anyway.

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