Count Dracula

This English version of the classic Stoker novel played on PBS in the late '70's and was one of the better shows that I remember watching on public television at that time. It has a quality that gave it more substance than other versions that I have ever seen. Even the Copella "Dracula", which is centerpieced by a fabulous performance by Gary Oldman, does not have quite the depth that this one did. Like many "Dracula" versions, they have changed the story a bit, but have kept the essential feel of piece

It might be said that Louis Jourdan is miscast here, but I would only say that from the standpoint of age (Jourdan was nearly 60). The man has an aura and appeal that draw women in. Even in his 60's when he played the villain in "Octopussy", he was still sexy in a continental playboy sort of way. If he had been maybe ten or 20 years younger he would have been better.

Susan Penhaligon and Judy Bowker will probably be familiar due to the fact that at one point in time they were the English babes of the moment. While Penhaligon is a reasonable actress she wasn't able to rise above it like Jane Seymour. In this show, both give interesting performances. Bowker has a few great moments where her character struggles with the pull she feels for Dracula and her love for her husband.

The great, but underrated Frank Finlay does a fabulous job as Van Helsing.

PBS needs to bring this production back on video or DVD. It would be interesting to see it again. While the production is filmed in as the average BBC studio style, it still has appeal.

I saw this once in about 1978 on public television in San Francisco. It was astounding because for once not just the horror, but also the senusality of the Dracula story was transferred to the screen without the (then) standard "monsters jumping out of the box" treatment. I got marvelous chills and tingles while watching. NOW, if those of us who remember this movie/tv show could just get a copy of it!

Like most people on here I also thought this BBC version was the most faithful adaptation of Stoker's original novel. Granted, they have changed a few details; for example, Mina and Lucy are sisters, the characters of Quincy and Arthur have been amalgamated and Jonathan visits the Count at his castle in Bohemia rather than Transylvania, but these minor deviations aside, I think even Stoker himself would have said this version was fairly close to what he had in mind while writing his famous novel.

Being from the UK I have grown up with the BBC and the programmes it produced in the 1970's. Watching 'Count Dracula' as an adult on DVD was, in many ways, a very pleasant nostalgic journey back to my childhood. Yes, I agree the budget did impose certain restrictions on the production...fake bats and obvious stage sets instantly spring to mind.....along with the mix of video and film but, to me, instead of being negative points these so called 'flaws' all added to its charm. That said, it also had some genuinely outstanding points; it is truly creepy, fantastically acted, perfectly cast and and had excellent script. The undoubted highlight for me has to be the location filming in Whitby cemetery; the scenes of Lucy being attacked in the graveyard were actually filmed in the very graveyard that inspired Stoker when he was writing the novel back in the 1890's. Cut to Francis Ford Copploa's 1992 version....which also makes a claim to being a faithful adaptation of the novel... and it doesn't even mention Whitby at all.

As for Louis Joudan, in my opinion, he is simply the best ever Dracula; understated, sophisticated, menacing and arrogant. Both Lugosi and Oldman were good but they were a bit too camp and shouted their evil from the rooftops. Jourdan, on the other hand, whispered in your ear and chilled the very depths your soul without you even really knowing why. In a word, genius. Another role worth noting is Jack Shepherd as Renfield. Again, not a typical over the top portrayal of a madman in an asylum but rather a somewhat more complex character; a normal man tortured by very specific moments of madness. The scene when he begs Dr. Seward to release him is truly, truly magnificent.

I'll not hide the fact that I am a Dracula fan. I love Stoker's original novel and I love the Victorian Gothic ambiance that it contains. While the BBC's version doesn't quite match Coppola's film for atmosphere and special effects, it certainly makes up for it with its script, the quality of the acting and its faithfulness to the original novel. It has to be, without doubt, my single favourite version of the Dracula story.

I have a comment for Author: kriitikko from Kirkkonummi, Finland. I will first use his comments and then respond.

"Ironically, the only performance not so faithful to Stoker, comes from Louis Jourdan as Dracula. This however is not a bad thing. Instead of copying Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, or playing Dracula more faithfully as a furious warlord (which Jack Palance had done few years earlier in another TV adaptation), Jourdan plays Dracula as calm, calculating demon who seduces his victims by offering them power and eternal life, but who is just coldly using them for his own advantages. In fact Jourdan portraits Dracula as a sort of Anti-Christ creature, who is looking for disciples and going against God. In one of the scenes Van Helsing raises his cross against Dracula and starts to enchant a prayer in Latin, only to receive an arrogant comment from the Count of how prayer always sounds more convincing in Latin. Jourdan may not be most faithful Dracula, but certainly one of the best, making Dracula seem far superior to humans." You are exactly correct. In the novel, Van Helsing states that because Dracula has what he attributes to a be mere "child's mind", that he is "slow to make haste". He uses the Latin term: Festina Lente, which means Hasten slowly or as Van Helsing puts it, "slow to make haste".

This however proves to be Dracula's ultimate downfall.

Though Van Helsing also warned Jonathan that "if he (Dracula) dared to use his full array of his powers, he would have been long beyond our (meaning the vampire hunters) reach".

Thus proving his point. And Dracula's arrogance about believing himself to be vastly superior to mere mortals. He thought himself to be so superior, that in the end they finally defeated him. Because he failed to prepare for the fact that humans in the late 19th Century were better able to combat him, than human contemporaries of his 15th Century.

The BBC's 1977 production of "Count Dracula" arguably represents for many Dracula aficionados the finest screen version of Stoker's novel ever likely to be made.

"Count Dracula" probably stands alone by virtue of its very faithful adherence to Stoker's plot, as well as the uniformly stunning quality of the acting performances (who, for instance, could forget Jack Shepherd's "Renfield"?).

But for me, the most outstanding feature of the production is the conscious, studied, Gothic restraint of the female cast, echoing much of what was best about the early Hammer vampire movies before the regrettable advent of the "tits and fangs" genre.

Without the exposure of a single breast, the trio of female vampires at Castle Dracula succeed in conveying an astonishing level of sexual allurement as they coquettishly tease Jonathan Harker with his letter to Mina.

In similar vein, when the (by now un-dead) Lucy Westenra is confronted in the cemetery by the group of vampire slayers, she transforms herself almost instantaneously from a blood-stained Fury from Hell into a virginal Lady of Shalot, and then back again.

How sad that this near-perfect cinematic achievement appears to have been very largely eclipsed by "Dracula" of 1978, as well as Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula"!