The idea to get Jess Franco to direct a by-the-book version of DRACULA seems odd. I mean it's those odd quirky things that Franco adds to his films that make them so interesting in the first place. You do get the trademark zoom lens shots here and some other odd camera placements but that's about the only Franco touches present. The idea to get Klaus Kinski to play Renfield is a good one, since he seems bat-shit crazy in real life anyway, but he's kinda wasted here just hanging out in a jail cell and jumping out of a window. In fact the whole cast here is pretty awesome on paper with Christopher Lee in the tile role and Herbert Lom from MARK OF THE DEVIL as Van Helsing. It's too bad none of these stars were actually in any scenes together(although they do try to fool you with Lee & Lom) since ol' Jess seems to have had them all shoot their individual scenes on different days. This isn't the worst version of DRACULA out there but it's also not very good with very little blood on display and a pretty boring feeling to the whole thing. Franco would go on to make DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN a couple of years after this and that one's filled with his unique vision of what a monster movie should be and is way more entertaining as a result.
No comments:
Post a Comment