#countess dracula

A callous and selfish countess uses blood magic to steal the youth of virgin women in the local village but her secret is becoming conspicuous now that she has taken a lover while pretending to be her own daughter.

All of the actors were of the usual high quality of Hammer movies; even the characters that only had short parts seemed to embrace their roles which made the characters less archetypal. The costumes were all in keeping with the period which gave accurate contrast between the peasants and the excessively rich characters.

The subtext wasn’t kind to the women in the film at all. They were reduced to naive victims or evil. That’s without mentioning the obvious sexual objectification that the male characters aren’t even close to experiencing. Several times it was clearly gratituous including when the characters were dead, in fact then they were portrayed as more exposed.

Some of the plot works as a message againt vanity and sacrificing basic humanity for an extention to life but it’s not the strongest version of it since there are so many actual vampire media that do it far better. The scholar character was probably the most interesting even though his part was short, there was more potential there.

Easily the biggest flaw of the movie was that it’s advertised, an titled, as a vampire film but there are no actual vampires in it. Sure, some of the rules apply like a requirement for blood and someone getting younger, but it’s more of a demonic ritual than an actual horror antagonist. The pace was also rather slow and there wasn’t much resolution for the villagers who lost people.

2/10 -It’s not THE worst, that’s something else. But…-

-There’s an uncredited appearance of Elton John as a gypsy in a white turban.

-The film is listed as cut on most records, however the cuts requested by censorship were denied due to an appeal from the studio.

Countess Dracula

I watched half the movie on the left, and 200-plus episodes of the soap opera on the right, and only made the connection from recognizing her name in the movie’s wikipedia.

It’s not even like anything unusual happened to her face - just mild aging and harsh 90s makeup.

(And mousse. So. Much. Mousse. )