Mama Dracula

Embarassing vampire satire with Fletcher sucking the life out of her career.

Decidedly off-beat, farcial, incomprehensible story about Countess Dracula(an Elizabeth Bathory type that keeps young bathing in the blood of young, female virgins - or as she says "wirgins")and her two vampire sons who run a clothing story called Vamp and have enlisted the aid of a young, American professor of blood. While there is no denying that the film is really going for your funny bone rather than your jugular, much of the humour is hit and miss(mostly miss) akin to a nurse with poor eyesight trying to find a vein with a needle. Academy Award winning actress Louise Fletcher plays Mama Dracula with subtle humour, grace, and charm and looks quite stunning in much of the fashion, but she has virtually nothing to work with in this Belgian horror comedy that relies more on two vampire son boobs for much of the film's motivation. The Wajnberg brothers, Marc-Henri and Alexander, are two strange men indeed. They look quite ridiculous, act even more so, and, despite such elementary things as gaping and running about like two school children much of the time, have glimpses of talent. There is one scene with them doing a pantomime which I rather liked, but the story, the rest of the actors, the less than inspiring direction make this film a far more arduous thing to sit through. Much of the failure of the film must be squarely put on the shoulders of director Boris Szulzinger and his adolescent prowess at showing virtually nothing resembling horror. We see a quite impressive castle with impressive sets, but maybe total three shots of any blood at all - all nothing more than a prick-size bleed. No one is bit on stage so to speak. There are lots of girls showing us their breasts but no action otherwise. The humour is pretty stale stuff too. I like a good horror parody...OK, this is nothing like a good horror parody...but Mama Dracula just doesn't mange to do what a good horror parody does: blend comedy and horror together so as to create something that could be labeled as both legitimately. this film has only Dracula in the title and some scenarios that revolve around the concept of a bloodsucker - beyond that it is nothing more than a mild European sex comedy. Poor Louise Fletcher - she really does and did deserve more than this.

Louise Fletcher is Mama Dracula. Actually Elizabeth Bathory the long ago wicked queen who bathed in the blood of virgins to remain young. Here she's re-imagined as a vampire in modern day trying to deal with the dwindling number of virgins.

Its strange off beat films like this that kill many an award winning actor's and actress's career. Nominally a comedy this is a strange little film that is humorous but never laugh out loud funny. The plot careens along in odd directions and can be somewhat disjointed. Its the type of movie you watch and wonder why anyone thought to make since its neither good nor bad, it just sort of is. Clearly there was something in in the mix that made Ms Fletcher take the role, though it might have been only money.

Frankly this is a hard film to describe. worse its a hard film to remember, partly doing to its disjointed nature and partly due to the the film not being worth remembering. Is it worth seeing? not if you have to search it out. If it falls in your lap, I ran across it as part of a multi movie set, it might be worth trying, assuming you have something else to go to if it doesn't catch your fancy.

What a bomb! Another example of how trying too hard to be camp just doesn't work. If you can imagine a bunch of stoners trying to make "The Three Stooges meet Countess Dracula" and loading it with bare-breasted women you may get an idea of what this is like. Unfortunately the many pairs of boobs make it unfit for 5-10 year old boys who would otherwise be the best audience for this. One pair of boobs just right for the little boys would be the idiot twin sons of the Countess who do a rather intriguing mirroring-each-other pantomime, getting out of bed and starting their morning ablutions. But mostly they're just two stooges in black capes and bad "Transylwanian" accents.

Louise Fletcher manages to glide over this morass, ever elegant and charismatic. Watching her shine so magnificently over the ordure that is the rest of it is rather amazing to see, and the fashion show in the last 15 minutes has some fun costumes. Maria Schneider just looks like she's waiting to get paid. One hopes that she and Ms. Fletcher were getting plenty. Given the production values, either their pay ate up the entire budget, or they were blackmailed into this disaster.

This may rival "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter" for worst vampflick ever, but at least "JC" was clearly an amateur production. There is no excuse for this abysmal waste of time.

And no, it is not even Ed-Wood-so-bad-it's-good. Ed Wood, bless his soul, took his work seriously enough to give it a quirky charm. Even "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter" was compellingly weird in its gawd-awfulness. I like quirky bad movies, but this was just pointlessly vacuous.

Poor, poor Louise... I'm sure she's done her best to forget this trainwreck, and so shall I!

Obviously I had nothing to do with this production, and actually it was released before I was even born, but still I somewhat feel the necessity to apologize to all the poor people who – like myself – struggled their way through this film and literally hated every single minute of it. Why? Because I'm from Belgium and apparently so is this miserable excuse for a horror movie! There aren't too many horror films being made in Belgium, but judging by the quality of "Mama Dracula", that's maybe a good thing. This is supposed to be a horror comedy, but we all know what the main problem with these flicks is… They're not scary and they're definitely not funny! Some of the basic ideas in the script definitely show potential (like the spin on the Countess Bathory legend), but the film is unendurably tedious, imbecilic and embarrassing. It's a complete mystery how Louise Fletcher ended up in such an inferior Belgian film production, barely five years after winning an Oscar for one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, but luckily enough she stills keeps her dignity. Fletcher plays the title role, but perhaps they couldn't pay her enough, as her role definitely isn't the leading part. She's a posh vampire who requires bathing in the blood of young virgins in order to maintain her beauty. The problem nowadays, however, is that virgins are becoming quite rare in this indecent day and age. She therefore orders to kidnap the young scientist Dr. Van Bloed, as he's on the verge of achieving a breakthrough with his synthetic blood formula. The jokes – if you can even refer to them like that – solely revolve on a handful of totally insufferable characters. The horrible vampire twin brothers are the absolute worst, closely followed by a police inspector who yells out "sabotage" all the time, and the young dorky scientist. "Mama Dracula" is hectic and irritating, with a plot that continuously jumps back and forth between semi-processed plot ideas and lame gags. The twins own (or perhaps just work) in a fashion store where they kidnap young girls from the cubicles. These sequences aren't very important, but I want to mention them nevertheless because at least they featured some nudity. Horrible movie, avoid at all costs … and once more my most sincere apologies in case you already had the displeasure of seeing it.