Dracula padre e hijo

"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".

Dracula and Son (1976)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) seduces a woman into giving him a child. As an adult that child, Ferdinand (Bernard Menez) decides to try and live his own life and before long Dracula and son are separated. Dracula ends up landing in London where he's a successful actor. Ferdinand, on the other hand, ends up in Paris where he struggles to make much of a living.

Dracula AND SON is out there in a couple different versions. I watched the uncut French version, which clocks in around 95-minutes and I'm going to guess that this is what most people will want to watch. The film was released in an American version, which apparently ran 79-minutes and featured someone other than Lee dubbing him. Even worse from what I've read is that some of the scenes appear to have been arranged out of order. The dubbing issue is an interesting one since in the French version there's a second done in English and Lee does his own voice.

With that out of the way, this film comes from director Edouard Molinaro who also did the landmark LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. Sadly this film isn't in the same league, ballpark or planet for that matter and it's really too bad because this could have been an interesting idea. This was meant to be a comedy and sadly it's one of the unfunniest that you're going to see on the subject with there only being one great laugh and that's when Dracula goes to bite a woman and then notices that he has bitten the neck of a blow up doll.

The majority of the film really drags at times and I must say that there wasn't a pinch of style to be found and I'd also argue that the film is incredibly lifeless and really doesn't have any energy to it. The direction is certainly flat throughout. All of that is too bad because Lee actually gives a good performance in the role, although one shouldn't be expecting to see the same type of Dracula that he did in his Hammer pictures or his film with Jess Franco. This was the final time he played Dracula on the big screen so that reason alone makes it worth watching. I also thought Menez was good in his role but he honestly wasn't given too much to work with.

It's doubtful either version of Dracula AND SON is going to appeal to many people. Fans of Lee will probably be the ones tracking down copies of the picture but sadly there's nothing overly good here outside of his performance.

Transylvania, 1770: young, beautiful Hermine is on her way to meet her fiancé, but her coach is intercepted by the minions of a nameless vampire-count. She soon finds herself not only the interest of said count but, before being turned into a vampire herself, pregnant with his child. Soon after giving birth to her son Ferdinand, Hermine accidentally succumbs to the rising sun, leaving the count to raise his son on his own. Alas, Ferdinand is not only a reluctant vampire but a bit of a goof, who's rather help people rather than suck the blood out of them. In the mid 1970's a lot has changed: Romania is now under communist rule and the vampires have to abandon their castle, trying to seek refuge in the West. Unfortunately, due to a botched burial at sea (naturally the two gentlemen travel via coffins), father and son get separated. Ferdinand lands in France, where some friendly Arab guest-works take him under their wings and he is forced to "make a living" as good as he can. The elder vampire is more fortunate, landing in England, where he soon is discovered by a film-company as leading man in vampire-movies. Eventually father and son reunite, but the harmony only lasts that long, after falling in love with the same woman (who happens to be the spitting-image of Hermine).

French comedies are not everybody's cup of tea, especially among the English-speaking audience, which has less to do with the humoristic quality than the (usually) horrible dubbing that (usually) sucks the last grain of charm out of the films. However, especially here in Germany, one virtually grew up with the comedies of Claude Zidi, Louis de Funes, Pierre Richard and countless other comedians and directors.

Director Edouard Molinaro (a veteran of the comedic genre, who would later produce the celebrated "The Birdcage"; the original as well as the American remake) obviously understood that a Horror-Comedy doesn't necessarily means spoof a la "Dracula – Dead and Loving It" or "Love at First Bite". Rather he combines elements of the classic Hammer-Horror-flicks and harmless, often satirizing French comedies into one entity. The mix works rather well. There are moments of chill and gloom, especially during the first quarter of the film, set in Transylvania, despite better knowledge that you're watching a comedy. The jokes are generally subtle, satirizing the genre but never venturing into slapstick. To mention just a few examples: the vampires being driven from their castle with a hammer and sickle turned makeshift crucifix, Ferdinand being forced donate blood after being caught trying to feed at a blood-bank or the Count accidentally biting into the neck of a sex-doll (the incredulous, undignified look at Lees face is worth the price of admission alone).

Sir Christopher Lee seems to have a ball with his performance, which seems a little surprising since the actors disdain for having been typecast for years in the role is legendary (and this was his 10th outing as the blood-thirsty count). Indeed, Lee only accepted the role under the condition that the name Dracula would not be mentioned and that his "Count" - a Baron in the original version - should be a completely different figure. The director honored that wish - the distributing companies didn't, as we can see from the title (and in the English dub he is even identified as Dracula by name). But at least Lee pulls his full repertoire: He can be regal, charming, even amiable, is able to show his comedic talent (which has often been neglected in other movies) and, as to be expected, is at the same time raise some scares when necessary. Not to mention, Lee has more lines in this film than in all his Hammer-Draculas combined, which may have been a factor of comfort.

I'll end the review with a word of warning: if you come across this film in it's English dubbed version, save your time and money. What this hack job of synchronization has done to the movie can only be described with the German word "kaputt". Not only are the speakers completely incapable, managing to make Ferdinand sound like some dorky version of Woody Allen, but much of the dialog has been changed completely, making it seems like your watching some vulgar sex-comedy from the 70's. As if to add insult to injury, Vladimir Cosmas atmospheric, excellent soundtrack has been deleted and replaced with some silly Disco-tunes. Do yourself a favor and stick to the French version (if need be with subtitles) or, if necessary, the German-dub, which catches the original spirit rather well and has some excellent speakers.

8/10

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.

Two years after Christopher Lee claims he swore off horror, Hammer and, most importantly, his signature role of Count Dracula, we find him donning that very famous cape once again for this largely forgotten but surprisingly agreeable Gallic spoof. Thankfully, the print I came across is an extremely good-looking one emanating from Germany that is, unfortunately, accompanied by frankly awful English subtitles (that often do not even bother to translate the intermittent German title cards!) which soon forced me to rely on my knowledge of the French language acquired in high school all those years ago; ironically, I managed to acquire a corrected set of subtitles soon after I finished this first viewing of the film!

Having said that, the film occasionally lapses into Romanian (during the early Transylvanian sequences), English (when Dracula is picked up at sea by a British vessel and lands in that country) and Arabic (when Dracula Jr. is taken in by a bunch of them upon first disembarking on French soil) and, while it runs for a slightly overstaying 93 minutes in the PAL-sourced print I watched, it was reportedly much re-edited when cut down to 79 minutes for its Americanized English-language version (the end result got saddled with a *½ rating on the Leonard Maltin movie guide)! Ultimately, the film serves to show that, even at 54 years, Lee owns the role of the Prince of Darkness (essaying it here for the last time even if the name Dracula is never actually uttered) and it was an added pleasure hearing him speak his lines in perfectly fluent French!

Indeed, there are a steady flow of funny lines and situations to be found in the film: Lee to his child, "Ferdinand, finish your blood and go to bed!" and "Ferdinand, don't play bowling with your mother's ashes"; Dracula's son as an adult – played by Bernard Menez (who had appeared in TENDER Dracula itself 2 years earlier) is so hesitant in plying his trade that, when he is sent by his father to bite an old gypsy woman in the woods, he ends up helping out with the cart she had been laboriously pushing behind her!; Lee is at a loss for words, when about to be thrown into the sea in a closed casket, as to how they will manage to reach the surface; the elder vampire bumps into the glass door of a modern British building when chasing after a prospective victim; French character actor Raymond Bussieres offering Menez a bite to eat in a train station when the latter's blood-starved stomach starts to make its hunger heard; the son bites into a frozen corpse during a day job in a mortuary and is later sickened by the sheer overdose of blood available for him to sample in an abattoir; their luggage is amusingly coffin-shaped; Dracula Jr. dumps his father's coffin out of a hotel window in a fit of rage; Lee is taken into police custody (when daylight is imminent) after being suspected of lewd acts in a car!; humiliatingly, he is also being made to advertise toothpaste on TV commercials; Lee pulls up his sheets in embarrassment when surprised by his young new conquest in his coffin, etc.

It goes without saying that this was not the first comic treatment of Dracula on celluloid nor would it be the last – LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT (1979; with George Hamilton at his suavest), FRACCHIA CONTRO Dracula (1985; starring beloved Italian comedian Paolo Villaggio and Edmund Purdom as Dracula) and Mel Brooks' Dracula: DEAD AND LOVING IT (1995; starring Leslie Nielsen) – and, in fact. Lee himself had already sent the vampiric Count up in a much-earlier Italian spoof starring Renato Rascel, TEMPI DURI PER I VAMPIRI aka UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE (1959) but, what I found surprising here is the fact that, much like Roman Polanski's own somewhat heavy-handed spoof of the genre, THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967), this flawlessly replicates (at least in the scenes set in Transylvania) the Gothic atmosphere of a Hammer Horror, down to a full-blooded (pardon the pun) music score by Vladimir Cosma; notably, the makeshift cross – formed by peasants from a hammer and sickle a' la Michael Reeves' THE SHE-BEAST (1966) – is not only able to hold vampires at bay here but also set them ablaze!

Unfortunately, the predictably upbeat ending is somewhat rushed with Lee meeting his demise in the way of his comeuppance in Hammer's first Dracula picture and Menez finding himself cured during a train journey merely by abstaining himself from drinking blood for so long…or perhaps through the power of love since, at the very end of the film we find him, father to a brood of children (one of whom bares his fangs in the closing freeze frame!) with the girl (Marie-Helene Breillat who, rather foolishly, does not believe the vampire lore, even if both father and son keep harping on it) who had been the object of contention between the titular characters throughout the film. The actress was married to director Edouard Molinaro (still a couple of years away from making his cross-dressing international hit, LA CAGE AUX FOLLES) at the time and her younger sister, controversial film-maker Catherine, has her last acting job for 16 years here (prophetically, we think she is being bitten but is actually getting it on with Lee in his coffin in an early scene from the film)!