Countess Dracula

Countess Dracula

1971

Director-Peter Sasdy

Cast- Ingrid Pitt, Nigel Green, Lesley-Anne Down, Sandor Elès, Maurice Denham, Patience Collier, Andria Lawrence, Susan Brodrick, Nike Arrighi, Leon Lissek

           

     This is a retelling (and maybe the best cinematic adaptation) of the Elizabeth Bathroy legend. If you’re not familiar, Countess Elizabeth Báthory was a 16^th century Hungarian noblewoman. She was accused of the murder of hundreds of young girls. Along with murder, she was accused of torture and cannibalism. The most tantalizing of all of the claims was that she bathed in the blood of young girls to maintain her youth. That claim has become the most memorable part of her legacy and provides the basis for this film.

            

     Ingrid Pitt plays an aging, recently widowed Countess. She has carried on a lifelong affair with her husband’s captain of arms, Dobi (played by the virile Nigel Green who played Hercules in Jason and the Argonauts). Lieutenant Imre, the son her father’s old friend, has arrived to pay his respects and the Countess becomes infatuated with him. Her daughter, Illona (played by a very young Lesley-Anne Down) is also making her way home after being sent off as a child.

            

     The Countess is a cruel and petty woman and is abusive toward her servants. By accident, after beating a servant girl and getting some of the blood on her, she discovers that it has rejuvenating properties. She follows this logic to its conclusion and murders the girl to get more of the blood. This has the effect of totally transforming her, making her young again. She then hatches a diabolical scheme.  She sends highwaymen out to waylay and kidnap her daughter before she arrives at the castle. Elizabeth then goes about masquerading as the recently arrived Illona, and since no one has seen Illona since she was a child, they are none the wiser.

          

       “Illona” tells everyone that her mother is sick and staying in her room. Captain Dobi, who has been loyal to the Countess for years, is looking forward to being with her now that her husband is dead. Much to his chagrin, he finds himself cuckolded. The now youthful Countess (in the guise of Illona) starts to carry on an affair with the much younger Imre.

            

     

    However, unexpectedly she reverts back to her older self, except much older and hideous.  She then has to murder a new girl. What proceeds is a cycle of addiction where she must maintain a fresh supply of blood in order to stay young, fearing that she will turn even more hideous when it wears off.

            

     This is one of Hammer’s best looking productions. It has a bit of a salacious reputation thanks to one famous image of Ingrid Pitt standing naked splattered with blood. I think its reputation has more to do with its connection to another Ingrid Pitt film, The Vampire Lovers. That film, also made by Hammer the year before, has also sorts of graphic nudity. Countess Dracula, while featuring nudity, doesn’t have any more than what was common for films of that era.

            

     A lot of work was spent on the look of the film. The costumes are very good, especially Captain Dobi’s uniform. Most of these “historical” Hammer films took place in fictional settings during an ambiguous time. It does seem like effort was made to make this film look more authentic.

            

     Beyond the look of the film there are also good performances. Nigel Green, as the ignored Captain Dobi, is very believable and the closest thing that we have to a sympathetic character in the film.  He goes about helping the Countess with her crimes. He is perfectly content to have her as an old woman and keeps hoping she will come to her senses, all the while his jealousy builds as she cavorts with his younger rival.

            

     Of course, the centerpiece here is Ingrid Pitt. This film was made during the height of her career. A few years earlier, in 1968, she starred in a supporting role in the excellent Where Eagles Dare and had another supporting role in the also excellent The Wicker Man in 1973. But Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula put Ingrid center stage. Of the two, Vampire Lovers showcased her tremendous beauty while Countess Dracula allowed her to show off her acting.

            

     The early 70’s was a great period for Hammer films. The company’s tried and true formulas had started to lose their potency and Hammer became more experimental. Countess Dracula is a product of that.  Watch it to see one of the horror genre’s most memorable starlets at her best.

Fun fact- Be on the lookout for Nike Arrighi. She was Tannith in the occult thriller, The Devil Rides Out. She has a smaller role here as one of the Countesses victim’s. She plays a dusky, scantily clad gypsy.

 

Dagon

Dagon

2001

Director- Stuart Gordon

Cast-   Ezra Godden, Macarena Gómez, Raquel Meroño, Francisco Rabal, Birgit Bofarull, Brendan Price, Ferran Lahoz

From Spain

            

      Paul (Ezra Godden) is a tightly wound nerd on vacation with his girlfriend Barbara (Raquel Meroño) and their friends Howard and Vicki. They are out sailing and get caught in a storm. The ship hits a rock and Vicki gets pinned. Paul and Barbara go ashore looking for help. What they find is an insane town of murderous freaks.

            

     The seaside town of Imboca was once a fishing village. Generations ago, a mysterious sea captain appeared one day and promised the people riches in exchange for the worship of a strange god, Dagon. The fisherman summoned Dagon and soon gold, in the form of alien idols, began to wash ashore. The townsfolk became rich, murdered the local Catholic priest and converted the church to the worship of Dagon.

            

      But their faith came at a price. With each generation the townspeople mutated and degenerated, become fishlike; webbed fingers, bulging eyes, gills. Now they stay hidden, coming out only to waylay travelers. They skin their victims and wear the faces so that they can still pretend to be human.

            

     

    Paul has had dreams and visions of an exotic, beautiful girl (Macarena Gómez who also starred in the horror-comedy Witching and Bitching). He meets the girl in this town. She is indeed beautiful, but also touched by the town’s curse.  She is a member of the town’s aristocratic family but also the High Priestess of their church. Just as Paul has dreamed of her, she has dreamed of him, and wants him as her lover.

            

     Paul tries to save his friends and avoid this seemingly preordained fate, but there is little that he can do. It has all been written in the stars.

            

     Stuart Gordon always had a fascination with HP Lovecraft. His most famous work, and the one that people will still be watching a hundred years from now is Re-Animator. He also directed its spiritual sequel, the Lovecraft inspired From Beyond. Both are fun, and Re-Animator is a landmark film, but Dagon, I think, is his crowning achievement in terms of artistry.

           

     H.P. Lovecraft is very hard to adapt to film, but Dagon does a better job than any other movie I’ve seen (Color out of Space comes close but still not as good as Dagon).  Despite the title, the movie is not based on the Lovecraft story of the same name. Rather, it is an adaptation of the story The Shadow over Innsmouth ( Imboca, the name of town in the movie is a bit of a pun, “boca” being Spanish for “mouth”). It’s a reasonably faithful adaptation, capturing the important parts of the story. But more than accuracy, it captures the feel of Lovecraft; the doubting of one’s sanity, the paranoid conspiracy, the ancient, alien gods.

            

    

    The acting is solid. Ezra Godden turns in a convincing performance as the story’s protagonist. I think it’s especially good when you realize how early in his career it was. Francisco Rabal almost steals the show as Ezekiel, the one normal human left in the town. Francisco had an acting career that spanned 60 years and his talent was obvious here.

            

     The make-up and effects were very good as well (there was only one instance of that terrible looking turn of the century CGI). The make-up is subtle at the beginning of the film, with the townsfolk only looking a little fishy. But as the story progresses and their secret becomes known, we see progressively more horrible forms.

           

     Dagon is a fast paced, intense movie that progresses quickly and doesn’t leave many opportunities to come up for air. The production values are far above what one would expect for this type of movie. Watch Dagon if you are a Lovecraft fan and want to see a pretty faithful (and entertaining) adaptation.

   

View Master Dracula and Frankenstein

      If you were a kid in the 60s, 70s, or early 80s, you didn’t have video games at home (or if you did it only had 2 colors) and you sure didn’t have a VCR (unless you’re family was rich and even then you probably didn’t have any movies to watch on it). Before cable TV (and definitely before the internet) the best way for a kid to see something really cool was through a View-Master. For those not acquainted with this marvelous stereoscopic toy, it was very simple. The kid put circular slides in the front and the pull of a lever rotated the slide to the next picture. No battery. No electricity. All you needed was a light source to look toward.

View Master slides ran the gamut of interests ; nature, cartoons , geography, history, TV shows, the Bible, movies and more. They even made slides for the US military to train service members in ship and aircraft identification! My favorites were the ones based on the classic monsters. Each picture is a work of art in itself. Modelers would have spent weeks putting together everything for one tiny picture, and it shows!

Below are the slides for Dracula and Frankenstein. A Wolfman slide was also made, but as it was in 3-D, I haven’t been able to find any good pics on the internet. I had all three of them as a kid. I don’t know where they, or my old  View Master, are now. Maybe you had these too.