Dracula padre e figlio

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)!

If you enjoyed FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS probable will like this similar flick based in a homonymous French novel wrote by Patrick Cauvin/Claude Klotz about a comic story of Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) and his half-hybrid son Ferdinand (Bernard Menez) set in 1770 at Transylvania when he was born feeding by blood, nonetheless never bite anyone until nowadays, turns out that they are spelled from Romania, Ferdinand ends up on France and Count Dracula in England.

They meet again when Count Dracula became a famous movie star, meanwhile Ferdinand survives with immigrants on France on lowest jobs, everything going upside down when both compete for same gorgeous girl Nicole (Marie-Hélène Breillat) although by opposite proposals, Ferdinand looking for a girlfriend and Dracula for a mistress of night.

Many funniest gags are scattered along the picture, often floating in Ferdinand's character in astonishing instances like as he has to give blood, trying bit corpses at morgue or working in a slaughterhouse aiming for feeding by beef's blood, once only Ferdinand bite an animal, a fluffy cat which was a tasty snack, actually it was a Christopher Lee's Dracula departure for good, underrated black comedy.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

"Dracula and Son" ("Dracula père et fils") is a very, very frustrating movie. There is much to like about it but the film also frustrates to no end and could have been so much better...especially to Christopher Lee's fans.

During the course of this film Lee and his son, Ferdinand, are never called Dracula...though in reality, it's pretty obvious Lee is the title character. Early in the story, Drac (Lee) decides he wants a family, so he finds a bride and they have a son, Ferdinand. Dracula has very bad luck with wives and soon she is dead...and the boy is raised by his monstrous father.

The story then shows young Ferdinand's development over the years...from a budding young sociopath to a rather ineffectual adult who is phobic about blood and killing people. So, Dad is forced to procure 'food' for the young man and they live a reasonably happy existence...until Romania is overrun by Communists and the pair are forced to leave.

On the ship, the two are assumed to be dead sailors in their coffins and the pair are tossed overboard! Ferdinand ends up in Paris and Dad ends up in London. Ferdinand's life is a mess....as he's hungry but too timid to actually bite anyone. As for Dad, however, he lands on his feet and makes a fortune playing vampires in horror films!! What's next? Unfortunately it's a slow, slow descent into a confusing finale and the laughs begin to dwindle when they meet again.

This film looks almost like it was written by two folks who never consulted the other or read each other's scripts. In one, it's a cute comedy. In the other, it's a horror film with a weird Oedipal angle...one that just never works. According to IMDB, this is because the film was severely edited down for the English language version and as a result of ham-fisted editing is a mess....when it SHOULD have been amazing. The bottom line is that I wanted to love the film, and did love a few portions. But the overall effect is confusing and dull...and should have been so much better.

By the way, one neat thing about this French film is that Lee not only played the part in French (one of languages with which he was fluent) and dubbed himself into English!

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.

Possibly the worst dubbed film I have ever seen, miserable acting to boot makes this one of Lee's worst Vampire attempts. Skip this film in English, maybe the original language version redeems. Catch Love at First bite for a better attempt at satire. good luck.