Die Herren Dracula

"Dracula Père et Fils" was never an excellent film. At the most, it was a sometimes funny vampire satire with good psychological aspects out of the Oedipal conflict father/son and sociological criticisms concerning the immigrants, not so well treated in France.

But to be honest, I admit it was a bit of a deception. The film director Edouard Molinaro himself has lately called it a "failure", despite the fact he had succeeded in hiring Christopher Lee to incarnate ' the Count" (Dracula is never mentioned in the original version) opposing him to a totally different kind of an actor (Bernard Menez, who is actually very proud of this film). The concept here is quite similar to another unfunny vampire comedy "Tempi Duri Per i Vampiri" where Lee was opposed to Renato Rascel.

One should see this movie just to appreciate the almost perfect French accent of the British star who has almost entirely shot it in that foreign language.

Mister Lee has claimed on several occasions he did dub the English version.

I must be one of the rare French moviegoers to have seen the quite different American version and to be able to evaluate the mess they did on the soundtrack.

Most of the dialog has been changed to some ridiculous vulgar trash. The haunting music score by Vladimir Cosma has been misplaced or changed in favor of new music bits, supposedly to speed up the rhythm of the film.

But they didn't hesitate the butcher the editing either: from the 100 min. in its original form, they reduced it to 79. Not only they shortened it, but added some repetition of Lee opening a door and speaking to a concierge with several stupid accents. Not only unnecessary, but very dull! This scene was initially part of the story and is suddenly supposed to be an hilarious illustration of movie shooting. Appalling!

I have heard Roman Polanski had to suffer similar treatments on his masterpiece "Fearless Vampire Killers" (never try to compare this one to Molinaro's flick, by the way!)

Not every one has the talent of Woody Allen to transform a Japonese spy movie into a comedy as he did once (admitting it in a prologue) with "What's up Tiger Lily?".

In conclusion, here are two different films out of the same celluloid: "Dracula Père et Fils" is a not so good film worth seeing however. "Dracula and Son" is just awful and should be placed alongside with the Raymon Burr's version of "Godzilla".

Now, I happened to stumble upon the 1976 movie "Dracula Père Et Fils" (aka "Dracula and Son") by random chance here in 2024, and it was actually a movie that I had never heard about. But seeing that the movie had Christopher Lee in the leading role, of course there was no doubt about me sitting down to watch it.

However, I didn't know that it was a horror comedy, much less a French movie at that. So I have to say that the movie turned out to be quite something else than what I was expecting. I was, of course, expecting a traditional "Dracula" movie, as it had Christopher Lee in the role, and I was sorely disappointed.

Unfortunately I sat through an English dubbed version of the movie, and a rather bland dub at that. The voice they had for Christopher Lee was nowhere near his full, majestic normal voice. And it just wasn't the same. I actually doubt that having had the original voices wouldn't have mattered much, because this wasn't a great movie.

The storyline in "Dracula Père Et Fils" didn't really entertain me much, truth be told. It was a forced script and there wasn't much comedy to be found. For example, the scene where Dracula bites into the blow-up doll, well, it wasn't funny, it was just cringeworthy. And you have to look even harder for the horror elements.

Writers Alain Godard, Jean-Marie Poiré, Édouard Molinaro and Patrick Cauvin didn't exactly put together a convincing or overly entertaining script.

Visually then the movie was okay. I mean, it was made in 1976, and it shows. But there is something oddly nostalgic to that, now isn't there?

This is not a movie I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of director Édouard Molinaro's 1976 movie "Dracula Père Et Fils" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

If you enjoyed FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS probable will like this similar flick based in a homonymous French novel wrote by Patrick Cauvin/Claude Klotz about a comic story of Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) and his half-hybrid son Ferdinand (Bernard Menez) set in 1770 at Transylvania when he was born feeding by blood, nonetheless never bite anyone until nowadays, turns out that they are spelled from Romania, Ferdinand ends up on France and Count Dracula in England.

They meet again when Count Dracula became a famous movie star, meanwhile Ferdinand survives with immigrants on France on lowest jobs, everything going upside down when both compete for same gorgeous girl Nicole (Marie-Hélène Breillat) although by opposite proposals, Ferdinand looking for a girlfriend and Dracula for a mistress of night.

Many funniest gags are scattered along the picture, often floating in Ferdinand's character in astonishing instances like as he has to give blood, trying bit corpses at morgue or working in a slaughterhouse aiming for feeding by beef's blood, once only Ferdinand bite an animal, a fluffy cat which was a tasty snack, actually it was a Christopher Lee's Dracula departure for good, underrated black comedy.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

Possibly the worst dubbed film I have ever seen, miserable acting to boot makes this one of Lee's worst Vampire attempts. Skip this film in English, maybe the original language version redeems. Catch Love at First bite for a better attempt at satire. good luck.

Count Dracula had a son, by the name of Ferdinand. He's a shy and a good nature young man, not very happy to be a vampire. He don't want to bite people because he don't want to hurt them. So he bites rats and cats. His father becomes a movie star - playing, of course, a vampire - and fells in love with a young woman who reminds him his wife. But Ferdinand's in love with the girl too and don't want his father to bite the woman. Fun story of black humour, with great Christopher Lee making fun of his famous role of Dracula. But images are a little bit too dark and sometimes there's dull moments. Watch for funny lines like: Ferndinand, finish your blood and go to bed. Or : Ferdinand, don't play bowling with your mothers ashes. Good bloody fun could have been better, but it's pleasant to watch,