Drácula, Pai e Filho

"Dracula Père et Fils" was never an excellent film. At the most, it was a sometimes funny vampire satire with good psychological aspects out of the Oedipal conflict father/son and sociological criticisms concerning the immigrants, not so well treated in France.

But to be honest, I admit it was a bit of a deception. The film director Edouard Molinaro himself has lately called it a "failure", despite the fact he had succeeded in hiring Christopher Lee to incarnate ' the Count" (Dracula is never mentioned in the original version) opposing him to a totally different kind of an actor (Bernard Menez, who is actually very proud of this film). The concept here is quite similar to another unfunny vampire comedy "Tempi Duri Per i Vampiri" where Lee was opposed to Renato Rascel.

One should see this movie just to appreciate the almost perfect French accent of the British star who has almost entirely shot it in that foreign language.

Mister Lee has claimed on several occasions he did dub the English version.

I must be one of the rare French moviegoers to have seen the quite different American version and to be able to evaluate the mess they did on the soundtrack.

Most of the dialog has been changed to some ridiculous vulgar trash. The haunting music score by Vladimir Cosma has been misplaced or changed in favor of new music bits, supposedly to speed up the rhythm of the film.

But they didn't hesitate the butcher the editing either: from the 100 min. in its original form, they reduced it to 79. Not only they shortened it, but added some repetition of Lee opening a door and speaking to a concierge with several stupid accents. Not only unnecessary, but very dull! This scene was initially part of the story and is suddenly supposed to be an hilarious illustration of movie shooting. Appalling!

I have heard Roman Polanski had to suffer similar treatments on his masterpiece "Fearless Vampire Killers" (never try to compare this one to Molinaro's flick, by the way!)

Not every one has the talent of Woody Allen to transform a Japonese spy movie into a comedy as he did once (admitting it in a prologue) with "What's up Tiger Lily?".

In conclusion, here are two different films out of the same celluloid: "Dracula Père et Fils" is a not so good film worth seeing however. "Dracula and Son" is just awful and should be placed alongside with the Raymon Burr's version of "Godzilla".

Count Dracula had a son, by the name of Ferdinand. He's a shy and a good nature young man, not very happy to be a vampire. He don't want to bite people because he don't want to hurt them. So he bites rats and cats. His father becomes a movie star - playing, of course, a vampire - and fells in love with a young woman who reminds him his wife. But Ferdinand's in love with the girl too and don't want his father to bite the woman. Fun story of black humour, with great Christopher Lee making fun of his famous role of Dracula. But images are a little bit too dark and sometimes there's dull moments. Watch for funny lines like: Ferndinand, finish your blood and go to bed. Or : Ferdinand, don't play bowling with your mothers ashes. Good bloody fun could have been better, but it's pleasant to watch,

"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!

Dracula and Son (1976)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) seduces a woman into giving him a child. As an adult that child, Ferdinand (Bernard Menez) decides to try and live his own life and before long Dracula and son are separated. Dracula ends up landing in London where he's a successful actor. Ferdinand, on the other hand, ends up in Paris where he struggles to make much of a living.

Dracula AND SON is out there in a couple different versions. I watched the uncut French version, which clocks in around 95-minutes and I'm going to guess that this is what most people will want to watch. The film was released in an American version, which apparently ran 79-minutes and featured someone other than Lee dubbing him. Even worse from what I've read is that some of the scenes appear to have been arranged out of order. The dubbing issue is an interesting one since in the French version there's a second done in English and Lee does his own voice.

With that out of the way, this film comes from director Edouard Molinaro who also did the landmark LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. Sadly this film isn't in the same league, ballpark or planet for that matter and it's really too bad because this could have been an interesting idea. This was meant to be a comedy and sadly it's one of the unfunniest that you're going to see on the subject with there only being one great laugh and that's when Dracula goes to bite a woman and then notices that he has bitten the neck of a blow up doll.

The majority of the film really drags at times and I must say that there wasn't a pinch of style to be found and I'd also argue that the film is incredibly lifeless and really doesn't have any energy to it. The direction is certainly flat throughout. All of that is too bad because Lee actually gives a good performance in the role, although one shouldn't be expecting to see the same type of Dracula that he did in his Hammer pictures or his film with Jess Franco. This was the final time he played Dracula on the big screen so that reason alone makes it worth watching. I also thought Menez was good in his role but he honestly wasn't given too much to work with.

It's doubtful either version of Dracula AND SON is going to appeal to many people. Fans of Lee will probably be the ones tracking down copies of the picture but sadly there's nothing overly good here outside of his performance.

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.