Review of Count Dracula (1970) by Orlok W — 20 Mar 2013

Jess Franco's Count Dracula is by no means a worthy Dracula film, despite Christopher Lee being in it. It's a fairly faithful adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, but what it lacks is style and something to get your blood pumping.

It's fairly dull, despite being sort of gritty in style. Not gritty in blood and gore mind you, but in texture and feel. It seems to me that they just picked out locations, chose basic costumes and shot the thing.

It's certainly low budget, but the Hammer films are much slicker and have more production value to them by comparison. All of the actors seemed bored in their roles, even Klaus Kinski, who plays the supposedly psychotic Renfield.

He more or less just lays around during the entire movie. Christopher Lee is also uninteresting most of the time. It's a decent try at it, but it just winds up being a big snooze in the end.