Conde Drácula

It is sad that this film is so often overlooked...it's really a gem. Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula here is probably his best ever (at least in terms of following Stoker's book) as an aging vampire who progressively gets younger (20 years before Coppola's version). In addition, Klaus Kinski is brilliant as the insane Renfield. Lee's Dracula is given more of a human side that is missing in the Hammer films, where he usually barely speaks at all. There are some weak spots, but overall quite good, and a must for Lee fans really gives a different perspective of the Hammer legend.

This isn't a great movie, but probably the single most faithful screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's great story I've ever seen. It doesn't embellish or introduce a whole bunch of characters. It keeps the idea of Dracula being in an old man when we first meet him in Romania and getting younger as he drinks blood. I remember seeing it not too long after I had finished reading the book (the excellent annotated Dracula by Leonard Wolf (no relation)) and was hooked from start to finish. This is kind of an art house Dracula, faithful to story and spirit, short on special effect and expensive lighting. Kind of like Passolini's Gospel According to Matthew.

Filmed in Spain and Germany, Jess Franco's version of the Bram Stoker classic has Count Dracula as an old man who grows younger whenever he dines on the blood of young maidens. This movie is quite faithful to the novel, unlike so many other Dracula films of the period. Starring screen legend Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, it also features Franco regulars Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams, Maria Rohm, Jack Taylor, Klaus Kinski, and Paul Müller. Franco appears in the film (as he does in many of his movies) as a servant to Professor Van Helsing. Franco contributes great direction and a perfectly eerie atmosphere to this low-budget film, which was one of Soledad's most prominent international roles. The talented cast and direction, as well as a fantastic score by Bruno Nicolai, make this one of the best filmed versions of the Dracula story and a great companion to Francis Ford Coppola's version made decades later.

this is an unjustly obscured, great horror film that does more justice to the novel than any of the Hammer versions but maintains their atmosphere perfectly and outdoes "the horror of dracula" by far. christopher lee looks just like the description of the Count in stoker's novel, and far from being 'funny' or 'cheap' as some of the other reviewers here have called it (did they watch the same movie, or what?), you don't doubt it's reality for a moment. the soundtrack is really eerie and appropriate to some of the truly horrifying scenes, such as the poor woman screaming outside the castle at dracula to give her baby back, and the surrealistic scene in which jonathan harker leaps out the castle's window. kinski is superb and utterly convincing (and i'm usually not all that impressed by him) as renfield, and it is really creepy to watch his behavior at times. (especially when he eats bugs and smears the friggin blood on the rubber walls. ick!) in fact, i could find very little wrong with this movie at all, and any true horror fan will revere it. not just a must watch, a must own.

Some of the best things about this version: Basically all the actors, Bruno Nicolai's score, and the fact that this Dracula appeared as Stoker describes him, which is a first.

Unfortunately, what I've heard about the production is that they changed producers in mid-shooting and he cut the budget back, so what could've been a fairly faithful rendition of the book now looks cheap and like the low-budget film it eventually became. This is no reflection of Jess Franco.