Conde Yorga, el vampiro

When we think of great vampire portrayals, normally the names of Lugosi and Christopher Lee immediately pop into our heads. Robert Quarry, however, is as convincing a vampire as both of those great actors. His performance and demeanor as a Bulgarian Count in this film is truly outstanding. He lives in a large house somewhere in California and terrorizes young women and their boyfriends. What makes this picture a better than average vampire film is that it has a very tense and atmospheric plot structure. We basically know what fate will befall our innocent(just) protagonists, but we become riveted to their actions and those of the Count. Quarry plays the Count with a charm that is both amiable and yet caustic. He makes one of the wittiest vampires in film. The rest of the cast is adequate, and I think Roger Perry does a wonderful job as a blood specialist who goads Count Yorga one evening into talking about the supernatural. A must see for the classic horror fan.

Not owning the rights to the Bram Stoker creation, AIP decided to invent their own vampire myth: the result is Dracula-in-all-but-name, being suave (sporting gracefully graying hair), cunning (even when caught off-guard, he manages to assert himself and turn the tables on interlopers), psychic (amusingly, he doubles as a medium at private séances!) and feral (his creepy dashes for prospective victims, seemingly out of nowhere, with blood-red eyes and arms outstretched actually gave me a jolt on a couple of occasions!). As played by Robert Quarry, he is quite creditable and effectively gave Christopher Lee (Hammer Film's Dracula incarnate) a run for his money.

Incidentally, he anticipated the other Count's transition to modern times by 2 years and actually managed it a whole lot better (with, thankfully, little resort to Camp). That said, in the attempt to look at the phenomenon with a contemporary mindset, we get a contradiction – people repeatedly scoff at the idea of vampirism in our age, claiming it is a fabrication of literature and cinema, which rather suggests that they are aware of what it entails…and, yet, they are still surprised at what should be its predictable outcome and are required besides to pore over ancient tomes in search of a way to fight it! Though the film was given the alternate title of THE LOVES OF COUNT IORGA, VAMPIRE {sic}, which is actually borne by the copy I watched (for the record, this had been shown on local TV in my childhood but I first caught it years later on British Cable TV), it does not overstress the romantic angle. Indeed, one girl is shown quenching her unnatural thirst for blood by literally draining the life out of a kitten! The presence of a sinister (that is to say, hulking and deformed) acolyte is, admittedly, a bit of a cliché – but Yorga himself seems to have moved with the times (in spite of his traditional attire), since he is shown jadedly presiding over a lesbian vampire show in his living-room!

The stylish film was produced by Michael Macready (who also assumes the requisite heroic persona on-screen, though the doctor-turned-vampire-hunter played by Roger Perry actually has an even more central role!), son of distinguished character actor George Macready (who generously supplies the portentous narration here and which, at the start, erroneously refers to vampires as "The Living Dead"{!}: indeed, the whole film – scripted by Kelljan himself – aspires to a certain literariness but often merely results in being verbose…which, however, it often works around by having characters conversing about the unusual events in which they had been thrust presented as voice-over laid on exterior crowd scenes!). The climax is a downbeat one: while Yorga is almost comically disposed of by being pierced (typically, through the heart) with a splintered broomstick, the lone-survivor hero sustains a vampiric attack from his own girlfriend (herself newly-inducted into the ranks of the Undead)! AIP presumably turned a fast profit with this one, seeing how they immediately commissioned a sequel (and whose own viewing followed that of the original in the current "Halloween Challenge"). However, they would soon come up with yet another (and even more outrageous) variation on vampire lore with the cult Blaxploitation offering BLACULA (1972) – which, in turn, led to the as-yet-unwatched SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM! (1973; helmed by Kelljan himself!)...

Count Yorga (Robert Quarry), a vampire, comes from Bulgaria to 1970 Los Angeles and starts making a coven of beautiful female vampires. Will their boyfriends be able to stop him?

This was a huge hit in 1970 because it was the first modern vampire film. Up until then all vampire films had been set in Europe in the 1800s or early 1900s. This was the first vampire film set in modern day. Still it isn't a great film. It was originally shot with soft core sex scenes which were (pretty obviously) edited out and it was turned into a sleazy PG rated film. It was made on a very low budget (it shows) and suffers from some horrible 1970s fashions and dialogue. Also the makeup on the female vampires is pretty poor. Still this isn't a total disaster either.

The script is actually pretty intelligent considering this was a fairly rushed production. The acting is good--especially by Quarry who makes an imposing vampire. Very subtle performance but he handles the violent scenes quite well too. It moves at a fairly quick pace and has a great bloody climax--pretty extreme for a PG film. This won't impress audiences like it did in 1970 but it's still not that bad.

The 2000 video version I have has "Yorga" spelled as "Iorga".

Some friends gather at the mansion of Robert Quarry (Count Yorga) so that they can hold a séance and Donna Anders (Donna) can contact her recently deceased mother Marsha Jordan. Marsha and Quarry had been lovers. What follows is a vampire film with the women predictably the victims/aggressors and the men predictably running around trying to solve things. In the meantime, Quarry is the bad guy with a clichéd side-kick who resembles a monster and has super strength. Good versus evil – can you guess which side wins…..?

The film is OK but I find films in this genre quite limited in emotional connection for me. There are a couple of rare exceptions but on the whole, you know what you're going to get. The film does have one memorably scary part that is well done - check out the stuck-in-the-van sequence. We know what is coming, but it's still scary and gets you. This happens on another occasion as well as at the end. This predictability, unfortunately, lets the film down - as well as the comically bad narration, especially at the end. Aside from that, the film is a little dull and just plods along. The bloody images start to appear at the end of the film and there is a pretty grotesque moment with a kitten. Personally, I don't approve of gratuitous gore so these things lose points for me. I want to like these vampire films but they are ultimately boring and predictable. This one scores on the OK-ometer.

I was a bit surprised by this rather low budget 1970s incarnation of vampire films. That's because around this same time period, vampire films were getting a bit stale and silly--with too many Hammer Dracula films (the franchise was getting weaker due to so many sequels) as well as dumb films like OLD Dracula and the Blacula films (which weren't terrible, but they sure were silly). However, despite my fear that this would be another stale film, this one turned out to be better than average and well worth a look. While only a nut would compare this to the greatness of Dracula or NOSFERATU, it still is a decent example of the franchise.

Before talking about the plot, there was something odd I noticed and that was how sexy the film was and it looked, at times, like it was a soft-core porno movie. However, again and again when it looked like it was going that direction, the movie abruptly changed direction--sometimes as if scenes were edited out to make this a film for general viewing. I checked IMDb for this and was not at all surprised to find that this was indeed the case. For example, a lesbian sex scene seemed about to occur--then the scene just ended. In another case, a woman was wearing a very revealing nightgown and began a very torrid scene with Iorga (there were two spellings in the film) and this just ended as well. There was also a very gratuitous scene involving a couple making love in a van for absolutely no reason--but again, with creative editing you really didn't see anything! As a result, the film is still quite sexy--but also one you could probably still let your teens watch.

Iorga/Yorga lives in the Los Angeles area in a house that looks more like a castle than a house. Even in crazy L.A., this house was definitely out of place! The film begins with his having a séance with three couples and it's soon apparent that the Count has magical hypnotic powers. Soon, it also becomes rather obvious that the Count is a heterosexual vampire--with strong desires for the three women but only a desire to kill off the men.

Many elements are taken from Dracula--even including a Dr. Helsing-like character. Despite the familiarity, the decent acting and nice update of the old tale make this worth a look. Plus the performance by the guy playing the Count was pretty cool.