Dracula (1973)

Dracula

1973

Director- Dan Curtis

Cast- Jack Palance, Nigel Davenport, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner, Simon Ward, Murray Brown, Sarah Douglas, Virginia Wetherell, Barbara Lindley

            
     Sometimes called Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula or Dan Curtis’ Dracula ,this was a made for TV movie for CBS. If you doubt its bona fides, it was directed by Dan Curtis, the master of TV horror, who created both Dark Shadows as well as The Night Stalker and the screenplay was by Richard Matheson, author of I am Legend and screenplay writer of about hundred movies and TV series including The Devil Rides Out, The Raven, and episodes of The Twilight Zone.

            
     Curtis had a firm grasp of ambiance and it shows in this. A very unsettling scene that stands out is Van Helsing finding Lucy’s freshly drained corpse, sitting upright, eyes wide open, recently shed tears drying on her cheeks. It also has a moody score by Bob Cobert who had previously worked on Dark Shadows himself.

            
    It is reasonably faithful, at least in so far as tone. Its excises quite a bit from the book. Quincy and Seward are nowhere to be found and Renfield is conspicuously absent. Harker appears but only in the beginning. It does maintain the horror of the book and resists the temptation to turn it into a romance though it does have a romantic twist.

    

        
    The movie ,despite its quality, has fallen into relative obscurity, relative to other adaptations that is. However, it is quite important because of the impact it had on later versions of the story. It was the first Dracula movie to directly identify the vampire as the historical Vlad the Impaler.  This was done,20 years later, to great effect,  in the Francis Ford Coppola’s version. Another element in this version that would also appear in Coppola’s version is the idea of a reincarnated romance, though in this version, it is Lucy, not Mina that is the reincarnation of Dracula’s lost love. There are other elements of the Coppola film that I can’t help but feel were inspired by the Curtis version. The soundtrack features a sad music box style movement that is very similar to some of the music in the Coppola version. There is also a scene where a wolf (well a German Shepard really) bursts through the window of Lucy’s house, very similar to the Coppola version.

            
    But how is Jack Palance as Dracula? Jack Palance was one of the most charismatic actors to ever grace a screen so I was worried that he would be chewing up the scenery and not be able to hide his, well, Jack Palanceness. On the contrary, he reigns it and instills his Dracula with some tragic sadness. He doesn’t seem evil as much as he seems desperate and alone. An interesting note, though this film wasn’t the inspiration for the Marvel Comic’s Dracula, Jack Palance was. When Ernie Colon saw Jack play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he imbued his vampire with Jack’s features.

           

   Sadly, though Dracula could resist the forces of good and the passage of the centuries, he couldn’t resist the forces of politics. The movie was originally scheduled for broadcast in October 1973 (just in time for Halloween) but was pre-empted by Richard Nixon announcing the resignation of Spirow Agnew. It wouldn’t be broadcast until February of the next year. Maybe this had something to do with the movie drifting into obscurity, maybe not. At any rate, it has climbed out of its grave now and can be found on blu-ray. Not the best version of Dracula, but it has a lot of ambiance and will help put you in the Halloween mood (Nixon willing that is).