Draculas große Liebe

In "Count Dracula's Great Love" Paul Naschy plays legendary vampire Dracula.The legend says that he is still lurking in his castle in the middle of nowhere.Four buxom ladies decide to spend the night at the old castle which most recently was used as a sanitarium.Quickly the passengers fall prey to Count Dracula.But Count falls in love with Karen...Javier Aguirre's "Count Dracula's Great Love" is a trashy and sleazy piece of Eurohorror with plenty of nudity and grue.The shots of white mists and dense forests are wonderfully atmospheric and the macabre mood is very sensual.Paul Naschy is memorable as Count Dracula/Dr.Wendell and he plays his evil character with gusto.8 sensual vampires out of 10.

Oh this was almost a great flick. Firmly placed in the sexploitation Eurotrash genre, it just needed to push the envelope a little bit more. Sadly it is therefore only a 4/10 job.

So blood and guts were only quite good, when they had every ability to be better. Naschy is on form as the villain, but is just a bit wooden. The women are beautiful, but do not take enough of their clothes off to make the film truly sensual etc. We really need a touch of Jean Rollin on this one.

The DVD transfer I saw on Sinema Diable is a woeful effort direct from video. No extras. A bargain basement job that gives the film no chance to redeem itself. In summary, an also ran....

The inimitable Paul Naschy stars as the eeevil character of the title, living high in the mountains in his crumbling castle of solitude.

Uh oh!

Drac's serenity is interrupted when a carriage full of nubile lasses arrives. It's not long before these unexpected guests take a nice, naked dip in the castle pool. When one of the Count's vampire henchmen bites the lone male of the group, a bloodsucking plague begins.

Much nudity ensues as the Prince of Darkness attempts to resurrect his dead daughter.

A lot of this film is rather muddled, making little sense. Still, as Naschy films go, it's not bad. His fans will want to see it no matter what...

DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE (1972) ** ½ Paul Naschy, Haydée Politoff, Rosanna Yanni, Ingrid Garbo. Four women and a man wreck their stagecoach and must take refuge in a nearby castle. Unfortunately for the travelers, the castle's owner, Dr. Wendell Marlow (Paul Naschy), turns out to be none other than Count Dracula. After Dracula falls in love with one of the women, she must decide whether to live eternally as Dracula's bride or reject him and continue to live as a mortal. Her not-so-surprising choice leads to a strange and surprising ending. Like a lot of '70s European horror movies, the film suffers from slow pacing and a somewhat muddled plot. But there's lots of gothic atmosphere and a few creepy moments here and there to keep things interesting. Worth a look.

Paul Naschy is, of course, famous for his many portrayals of the "hombre lobo", but he has also tried his hand at any number of other classic monsters like Mr. Hyde, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc. with various degrees of success. Here he tries Dracula. Naschy doesn't physically fit the part of the classic Dracula, but then again he doesn't really play the classic Dracula--he turns the traditional bloodsucking embodiment of evil into a tragic, doomed figure much like his "Waldemar Daninsky"/"hombre lobo" character who can only be cured of vampirism by a virgin who truly loves him giving herself freely to him.

In a horribly clichéd set-up a group of attractive young women and their male chaperon have to take refuge in the sanitarium where Dracula lives after a wheel of their carriage falls off and crushes their driver. The group is vampirized so fast that the vampires are soon left fighting each other over the one survivor (and virgin). This is pretty typical Naschy movie really in that it has the style of an old Hollywood or early Italian Gothic horror movie, but with the old 1970's standbys of blood, boobs, and, of course, bloody boobs.

And speaking of boobs, the best way to see this movie unedited today is on the double-feature DVD hosted by Elvira. I'm sure this movie was heavily edited when it featured back on TV's "Movie Macabre" back in the 1980's, but it sure isn't now. And, for the record, the Elvira cutaways are optional on the disc, and hardly necessary--with busty Spanish starlets like Roseanne Yanni and Mirta Miller in the cast, it already looks like a Russ Meyer movie even without the famous cleavage of Elvira/Cassandra Peterson. Recommended to those of you who know who you are.