Count Dracula

Faithful to the novel, magnificently performed in every way. This mini-series showed how well a classic novel should be adapted. Coming only 2 years before Langella's performance, Louis Jordan showed how sexy a middle aged man can be in this role.

Thirty-five years after I first saw it, most of it sticks in my memory as the greatest adaptation of Bram Stoker's timeless novel. From the opening scenes as Jonathan Harker makes his way through the Carpathian Mountains to the final scenes as the heroes converge on the Count, this took the approach of being presented in a mini-series format to tell the long story that Bram Stoker conceived.

Lucy's slow transformation from dying waif to lusting vampire is the most memorable scene and may actually be too intense for some viewers.

Far better than Francis Ford Coppola's version of the early 90's. Definitely worth watching annually on Halloween.

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"!

One of my favorite horror movies of all time. I saw this movie on PBS when it first premiered back in '77 or '78. I recorded it a couple of years later and have watched it almost every Halloween since. My kids have grown up with this as a tradition. Sometimes we skip a year or two but always come back to this classic.

For me the movie captures the essence of the book. Several of my favorite scenes are not necessarily the most important. In the opening while Jonathan is riding in the carriage and they pass the woman praying at the roadside shrine. Waiting all alone at the pass in the dead of night. The arrival of the Count's carriage. The late dinner with gold table service. The great scene of Jonathan shaving and the Count's sudden appearance unreflected in the mirror and his comment "The problem with mirrors is they don't show enough" as he nonchalantly drops the mirror out the window. Jonathan's growing horror as he begins to realize he's trapped. His escape to the decrepit chapel were he finds the blood stained vampires entranced in their coffins. The dreamy waltz like nightmares of Lucy's seduction. The rose pedals falling. Professor Van Helsling's scene where he's making cocoa; handing the first cup to his guest, joined by another he hands his next cup to him and then again until he's eventually made cocoa for everyone. The scene in the woods with Van Helsling, Mina and the three brides of Dracula (especially the terrorized horses bolting). The return to castle Dracula in the light of day.

Dracula is portrayed as both supernatural and human (never melodramatic or campy), very European, very Old World and of course, very tragic. He even is Biblical in his comments that "I make this world my domain" like Satan going to and fro, to and fro in the world.

For me great stories always have a feeling as if they were going on before we arrived and will continue after we leave. This story is like that. I feel as if the story does indeed go way back. And though it has a logical ending it seems as if it will go on. Truly a classic.

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!