Vampira

David Niven has a role that is clearly beneath his stature (in his first scene, he is reading a Playboy magazine), and Clive Donner's direction is almost embarrassingly crude (the dreadful copy I saw made it look even worse than it is, but it's crude nonetheless). Still, the movie has some unexpectedly clever lines (Dracula's assistant to his master: "I cross my fingers, sir" - Dracula's response: "I'd rather you didn't"), and (don't crucify me for this) I really found it more enjoyable than Polanski's overrated "Fearless Vampire Killers" - mainly because it has no pretensions of greatness. (**)

Someone, please, bite THEM and put them out of their misery....really bad acting, really bad plot, yuck, yuck, yuck! yucky! This one is just so bad I can't believe that David Niven even lent himself to starring in this. He must have been short on cash to star in this dog. Oh, and the music! It's this music that is really trying to be hip and disco, don't forget, this was made in 1974, the start of the disco era. There are not enough words to say how bad this movie is, but I keep having to say them because IMDB will not let me post unless I have 10 lines! Please, if you see this advertised on TV, do not watch! It is a big waste of your time. Unless you are stoned or something and then maybe you would laugh your head off. Otherwise, stay away! On a scale of 10, I give it a 0!

David Niven's career hit rock bottom when he played the one and only Count Dracula in Vampira. Niven's dapper English charm is truly put to the test her and it fails.

Times are tough in Transylvania and Castle Dracula is now being rented out as a tourist attraction. The money's good and one can take an occasional bite out of a tourist. But Niven's real mission is to find the right blood to revive the Countess who's been asleep since the Roaring Twenties.

He finds the right blood from one of the tourists, but lo and behold the countess wakes up and turns black into someone that looks a whole lot like Teresa Graves. What to do, Niven's a most conservative Dracula and apparently interracial marriage is frowned on.

The rest of the film is spent on Niven trying to find a cure for Graves. And listening to Graves calling Niven such things as 'jive turkey' with both of them wondering where she's pick up the latest slang.

A few years earlier Godfrey Cambridge did Watermelon Man which laid a giant ostrich egg with the same kind of humor. It's not any funnier with Teresa Graves.

And David Niven should have been ashamed of himself.

The movie is just not all that funny - you would expect a comedy to give more laughs than this film gave us. It has a few moments worth of giggles but not bust-a-gut laughter like one wants from a comedy.

All the actors are fine - really good. It's just a terrible story with very few laughs.

I have to agree with other reviewers that Dracula's problem is not that she's black but that he wanted his wife, Vampira, the way he remembered her - he just wanted his wife back. He felt he was with another woman because she acts different and looks different.

It's such a shame the comedy wasn't funnier and the storyline a bit better because this film had the potential to be really comical if better written.

3.5/10

Though it has been several years since I saw this film, I recall enough to wish I could find it on video..or better DVD.

I happen to like David Niven and found this film rather enjoyable. I would expect that one would need to be able to grasp some of the subtle humor that a good number of Britcoms are known for to really enjoy some of the more funny bits.