La saga de los Drácula

There are a lot of Dracula movies made around this time that were great . And this is not one them. This Dracula sequel unlike most Dracula sequels is not scary. It is badly written. Badly acted. It has an awful ending. Don't wast your money. Don't wast your time. Don't see this movie. It is about Dracula trying find his descendants who don't know he his a vampire. He trying to turn them into vampires. This could have been a good movie. If it was not so badly acted. So badly written and had such an awful ending. Pooh pooh, pooh pooh, pooh pooh, pooh pooh, and pee pee to. Don't see this movie. Don't see it. Don't see it Don't see it.

Count Dracula's granddaughter and her husband are invited to visit Grampa Drac and the family. She is pregnant and he wants an heir to carry on the family and their vampire ways. Funnily she does not look very pregnant until further on into the film. Set in Eastern Europe but the Spanish locations look Spanish, although these plus the costumes and interior sets do make it a rather colourful, costume movie. There are several pretty females who easily shed their clothes (breasts only, plus one male bottom), plus some cheap looking gore.Dracula does already have a male heir in the castle but years of inbreeding has produced a freak, one of the film's most memorable features. The Dracula Saga is no classic Dracula movie but to those who like Euro curiosities then it is worth a watch.

Euro-cult auteur, León Klimovsky hybridizes the bloodthirsty Bram Stoker legend with an appropriately giddy screamplay by writer, Lazarus Kaplan. Along with the original classic, Kaplan references further-flung flourishes of eastern European mythology, the tyrannical Transylvanian terror scourge of the Ottoman Empire Vlad Tepes, the ferocious, flint-faced impaler! An age-old yarn of a neglected count and his no less corrupted clan of deathly pallid, blood-lusting vampires, whose quite literally ailing bloodline is in desperate need of some fresh revivifying blood! None fresher than the unborn son of estranged niece, Berta(Tina Sainz), her visit to the ancestral castle with youthfully virile husband Hans(Tony Isbert) provides the genetic boost their vilely degenerated clan craves! That said, pretty, unsullied Berta might not be quite so keen to prolong the diabolically decadent lineage of her gravely disturbed family!

Iconic slo-mo impresario Klimovsky's deliciously doomy 'The Dracula Saga'is stylishly steeped in crepuscular Gothic glamour, with all the dark grandeur of vintage Hammer Films, plus an additionally erotic frisson of the perfectly pale, punishingly pretty Helga Line! Line's exquisitely exotic beauty makes her a truly irresistible succubus, happy to bare more than her fangs in order to beguile her all too obliging prey! Perhaps not an especially original 'stake' on the vampire mythos, 'The Dracula Saga' nonetheless takes a buxom bite out of the Stoker legend with a terrifying climax that goes straight for the jugular vein! Alongside the eternal genius of J. Sebastian Bach, you also have the mod mood music, and ominous organ of, Daniel J. White & A. Ramirez Angel, right on!

The Dracula Saga is a rather ragged attempt at a costume horror movie that sadly fails on more levels than it succeeds. The story follows a young couple travelling to a remote castle in central Europe to visit the remaining family relations of the wife, who is pregnant. Along the way villagers warn them that the castle is evil, and dead bodies are found along the way with neck wounds. Nothing very original there! On arrival at the castle, all manner of strange things happen as the truth about the family background is revealed...which should come as no surprise, bearing in mind the title of the movie! There is a fair amount of nudity, with lots of female cast members removing their blouses, and some gruesome action as well, especially at the movie's climax.

Unfortunately the enjoyment of all this is hampered by some very basic shoddiness. Although Deimos Films have found a beautiful clean print, and colours are rich and clear, a lot of shots are out of focus. No amount of remastering can correct badly focused photography, and it really shows. Several shots also have a gauze-like mesh effect overlaid on them, which at first I thought was a technical issue, but in reflection it might have been a failed attempt by the director to add atmosphere. The acting is not very good, the English language dub is truly awful, and in another bizarre lapse of continuity, the heroine clearly wears different wigs in different scenes throughout the story!

I suppose this accounts for why Leon Klimovsky never made it as a big name horror director. Having a stunning authentic castle as a setting and adding lots of bare boobs does not make up for all the other budgetary and artistic shortcomings. Even European beauty Helga Line (in a minor role) is wasted here. I do love Deimos' presentation of these Euro horrors, they do very well with the quality, packaging and DVD features. This is just not one of the better movies.

Director Léon Klimovsky is probably best known for his collaborations with the Spanish Horror/Exploitation/Cult icon Paul Naschy, most notably for what is maybe also Naschy's most famous film, "La Noche De Walpurgis" (aka. "The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman", 1971), which is the most widely known of fourteen films in which Naschy played the Werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. Klimovsky made quite a bunch of slightly bizarre Gothic Horror films, which are not all the same quality. Even though Naschy is not involved in this film, "La Saga De Los Drácula" aka. "The Saga of the Draculas" aka. "The Dracula Saga" of 1973 is certainly one of Klimovsky's better films. "La Saga De Los Drácula" is a very different approach to the common Dracula topic which is interesting, to say the least. This time, it is not merely the famous Count, but an entire family of noble blood-suckers that cause fear in the Transylvanian mountains.

The pregnant young Berta (Tina Sáinz) and her husband are moving to Transsylvania to be with Tina's family, the patriarch of which is her grandfather - Count Dracula (Narciso Ibáñez Menta). The elderly Count lives with his three gorgeous brides (Helga Liné, Betsabé Ruiz and Maria Kosty) as well as some other relatives. Needless to say that the Dracula family's favorite beverage isn't raspberry juice, which the innocent Berta and her husband are entirely unaware of...

"La Saga De Los Drácula" is an overall very interesting and highly atmospheric film that bears more surprises and unexpected elements than one might think. Spanish Gothic Horror films such as Klimovsky's usually have a very particular inimitable charm to them, and "La Saga De Los Drácula" a good example for that. Even though the budget obviously wasn't gigantic, the atmosphere is eerily beautiful, and the plot is quite original. The female cast members are entirely gorgeous, especially the red-headed Helga Liné, who is known for her (often sexy) roles in other European Gothic Horror productions including "Nightmare Castle", "Horror Rises From the Tomb", "Las Garras De Lorelei", "Mio Caro Assassino" and others. As it is to be expected, the film includes its share of nudity, sleaze and gore. Narciso Ibáñez Menta is a very unusual (since very old, and comparably un-villainous) Count Dracula, which isn't a bad thing; on the contrary, this different version of the most famous of Vampires contributes to the film's originality. The cinematography is elegant as in all Klimovsky films, and the music by Johann Sebastian Bach fits the film amazingly well, especially the harpsichord parts.

Overall, "La Saga De Los Drácula" is a highly original Vamprie film that does more than to simply deliver what is expected, and highly recommendable to my fellow Eurohorror buffs.