Count Dracula 1970

This is how Dracula should have looked like, all the time! At least according to Abraham Stoker. Black robe, silk hat. Heavy moustache.

I have seen most of the Hammer Horror Dracula-movies, but they make me quite sad, to be honest. At least the later ones. Horror of Dracula is of course an exception. Dracula has Risen from the Grave is OK as well. That was the first Dracula I ever saw and I was scared to death!

Count Dracula 1970, on the other hand, was at least an attempt at including some of the original great scenes from the book, for example Harker's and Dracula's conversation in front of the fire, the bag with a child brought back to the castle (I have never seen that in any other film before, perhaps in Bram Stokers Dracula from 1992?).

Anyway, in this film, Lee's Dracula is not that whitefaced, blackandcrimson-cloaked redmouthed devil, but more true to Stoker: The man that goes to London to disappear in the crowd, rather than standing out from it.

It is still sensual in the "kissing"scenes. How could it not be??

According to Lee himself the film is only "a shadow of what it should have been." There were great difficulties at the set as well. The director and Christopher Lee apparently had some great difficulties in agreeing. In the film featurette that follows with the film above, Lee is referred to as cold and distant. "The problem with Christopher at that time was that he wanted to be a Shakespearian actor, and he is not, " Jess Franco says.

I do agree that some things in this film is peculiar. But in many ways it is better than the 1958 version.  In my humble opinion.