Wolf howls and crashing thunder wake Harker from a restless slumber and he sits bolt upright and sees the innkeeper's wife standing at his door by candlelight. She bolts and Harker catches her on the stairwell. She explains the evils circling around at midnight on St George's day. Off camera, her husband calls her name, "Greta!", and she flees.
Cock crows announce the dawn. Harker confronts his companion from the train about the strange looks that he's receiving from the townspeople.
The coach journey is carried through foggy woods in total silence. The fog becomes more dense at the Borgo Pass. A muffled coach driver in slouched hat appears when Harker's coach has left. He is very chatty, assuring Harker that he is in good hands. He offers wine for warmth and courage, but Harker refuses.
As the coach moves, we begin to see movement through the undergrowth and hear the howling of wolves amongst a cacophony of eerie animal sounds. The driver stops the coach and steps down into an opening in the forest and we see that he is surrounded by German Shepherds masquerading as wolves. The driver flings his arms wide and his eyes glare red beneath his hat. The wolves depart with an orchestral accompaniment of an organ and a jittery flute score.
A shot of the castle signifies Harker's arrival and he knocks on the large foreboding door. An old man opens the door carrying an ornate candelabrum. He introduces himself as Dracula, quoting Stoker practically verbatim. In the castle, the two men discuss the Count's desire to purchase a home in England. The next few scenes describe at least two nights stay in the castle. We see the Count cast no reflection in a mirror and talking proudly about his
Ancestral heritage.
He shows fangs when he speaks.
Harker falls asleep and, outside the castle doors, a native woman screams for the return of her child. Harker wakes and begins hammering on a locked door in frustration, suddenly surrounded by vampire women. They advise that the prone Harker is young and strong:
"There are kisses for us all".
Smiles flash and teeth are bared. Dracula suddenly appears and chases the women away using the ambiguous line:
"This man belongs to me!" In the background we hear the sound of a crying infant.
Harker wakes and discovers two puncture marks in his neck. He scales the wall via a trellis of sorts which takes him to the neighbouring window.
In a stone sarcophagus, he sees the glutted form of the Count. This shock forces him to the nearest window where he throws himself into the night with an anguished scream.
He wakes to Dr Seward, informing him that he is in Professor Van Helsing's private clinic outside London. Harker becomes animated and describes being chased by giant bats with blood and teeth.
A scream is heard at the mention of the name, Dracula. Van Helsing explains that the screams belong to Renfield, an inmate of the clinic. Renfield is promptly seen throwing food at the walls of his padded cell and making Jackson Pollock images out of it with his hands.
He sucks at flies that he takes out of a leather pocket secreted in his cell. He jumps onto a ledge, viewing the house opposite with a longing in his eyes.
Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra are spotted arriving at the asylum by Renfield. Lucy faints at his blood curdling wail off-camera. Van Helsing advises that Lucy should stay at the asylum and has rooms prepared for both women. He also issues a warning about straying around the grounds of the clinic unguarded. The continuing scenes concentrate on Lucy beginning to sleepwalk. Mina follows her and sees her in the clutches of the Count who disappears as a shadow on the wall.
Quincey Morris, a friend of Lucy, arrives and is ordered by Van Helsing to give a blood transfusion. While she slumbers, we hear the Count's voice, as in the previous scenes, whisper "Lucy", in suitably sepulchral tones. She rises from the bed and opens a window that shows the shadow of a bat. Dracula advances on his victim as Mina rushes in. The Count hisses and retreats, again through the window. Quincey finds Lucy seconds later and we hear Renfield scream.
We see Harker beginning to wander alone around the clinic. He comes upon Renfield's cell and peeks in. Meanwhile, Van Helsing explains that the lunatic was once an ordinary man whose daughter was killed by vampires while holidaying at Bistriz. He was found by neighbours and committed to the Sanitarium.
The Professor claims that he has made study of the Black Arts all his life and all his learning has led to one Devil: Dracula. Renfield studies the Count's home from across the way. Inside, we see the Count lying in an open crate looking considerably younger. Around him, we see stuffed animals: a boar, a badger, a kestrel bird, a stoat and a fox. Dracula rises as Renfield becomes agitated. He forces the bars on his window and throws himself from the asylum, landing on a lower ledge, broken, but still alive.
Lucy is again attacked by Dracula. Mina walks in on the scene and Dracula flees as Lucy drops to the ground. Mina screams that Lucy is dead. Van Helsing educates Harker and Quincey about the demon Dracula, giving the vampire eminence alongside the Devil himself. Harker questions why he can't be arrested. A wolf howls and Quincey muses over the possibility of Van Helsing as a vampire.
Lucy is buried and a wandering girl is enticed by her when she rises from the dead. Van Helsing spots the story of a murdered child in his newspaper the next day. The heroes visit Lucy's grave the next night and find her gone. She returns later and is staked. As her head is severed with a spade, Renfield sits bolt upright as if waking from a nightmare. Seward questions Renfield, but the inmate stays mute.
Harker blames himself for the Count's arrival. There is talk of cases being transported. Harker and Quincey are both given a crucifix. Mina suggests to Van Helsing that she may be able to shed light on Renfield, who collapses after emitting a strange shudder. Quincey and Harker break into the Count's home and find evidence of his coffins or crates, now gone.
The animals, now joined by a stuffed swordfish, seem to come alive at the Count’s command. Quincey fires his gun but to no avail. The Count suddenly appears again, younger looking than before. Skip to Mina and Renfield. The Count hisses, "Kill!" and Renfield takes her by the throat but releases her just as suddenly.
Harker and Quincey decide that the Count's home must be sanctified. Renfield is put into a straitjacket. Mina takes a box seat at the opera. We see Dracula walking through the streets wearing a top-hat and tails. Harker spots the Count and informs Quincey that he has grown younger.
Van Helsing is having meetings with the Home Secretary. The doctor is wheelchair bound now and blames a slight stroke. Evidence is found to say that Mina has been invited to the opera by a mysterious letter. Dracula sneaks up behind her and bites her. She is found by Quincey who shouts for a doctor in the house.
We witness Dracula, in top hat again, approach some sailors and order passage on the Czarina Catherine for Varna. He has to bribe them when they refuse the trip. Cut to Seward again questioning Renfield, who whispers "Varna".
Van Helsing studies the route to Varna on a map. He orders Harker and Quincey to follow the Count and to sanctify graves while claiming that he will guard Mina with his life. Looking over large tomes, Van Helsing is visited by Dracula who confirms that:
"You have learnt much, you will achieve nothing".
Dracula makes his way to Mina's prone form as Van Helsing burns a giant cross into the floor. Dracula flees. We then witness peasants carrying a large crate and burning torches through the streets. Harker and Quincey reach Castle Dracula armed to the teeth. They find and destroy Dracula's three brides. Only one bleeds and sends a spurt of blood in Quincey's eye. Harker utters a silent prayer to sanctify Dracula's empty stone sarcophagus. Another scene shows us that Van Helsing is walking again as Mina inquires about the hunt.
The gypsies carry the large crate and are sent packing when Harker and Quincey hurl boulders at them from atop the castle. Harker forces open the crate, now aboard a horse and cart. Dracula opens his eyes and leers mockingly. Quincey sets fire to the demon that melts into a corpse. Then the whole burning conflagration is hurled over the
side of the castle wall.
Review
I really wanted to like this film and it has a kind of cockeyed charm. The above synopsis is as close as I could get to achieve a coherent viewing. There are only flashes of Stoker, and most of these are taken up in the first half that retells Harker's persecutions in the Castle. The editing jumps are hilarious, wooden brides who seem more catatonic when they are healthy.
Overused zoom lenses, chilling screams and staccato music punctuate action that never happens. The actual credits on my particular version look to have been adhered to the film with sticky tape and only credit one writer, Peter Welbeck (a pseudonym for Harry Alan Towers), as being responsible.
Actually, there were five writers in attendance. And, indeed, it does look like an extreme case of too many cooks. Scenes don't follow in any chronological order and conversation is carried out that conveys no type of chemistry from one individual to another. The pace is as funereal as Lucy's burial, showing none of the pulse-racing action that Stoker describes in the novel that this film credits for its inspiration.
Had it been touted as a Dracula movie to be enjoyed munching pizza while being totally inebriated or drugged, it would have succeeded exceptionally. But these gentlemen blatantly inform us that they are not kidding around. The legend alongside the credits testifies to this:
An accurate depiction of Bram Stoker's timeless tale of the macabre.
Christopher Lee plays the Count for the fifth time, discounting his token guest spot as Baron Rodrigo in the comedy Uncle was a Vampire (1959). It is claimed that he made subtle differences to his performance in this film to avoid confusion with his Dracula character. Having already resurrected Sax Rohmer's anti-hero, Doctor Fu Manchu, for Producer Towers in the mid sixties, it was perhaps an obvious step to continue with Stoker's ageless satyr.
That he is happy to be doing the film is so evident that he shrugs aside the idea that there may be anyone else acting with him and seemingly prefers to carry on undirected. Parading around in dark frock coats and sporting a grey drooping moustache, he does resemble the Count's description to an uncanny degree.
His resonant voice booms through the large mausoleum that doubles as his authentic-looking castle, as he accurately relates his bloodthirsty history to the wild-eyed Harker. Unfortunately, delivering his lines like a proud child exhibiting himself in front of his parents in his first school play, he comes across as incredibly camera-conscious in some sequences. This, coupled with the input of excruciating editing, robs his Count of the powers that had served him so well four times previously.
Gone is the tigerish ferocity with which he attacks his enemies. All we get are static glares with red contact lenses and a sibilant hiss. When the peasant woman beats on the Castle doors for the return of her baby, he never calls the wolves from the forest to have a midnight snack as is told in the novel. Even his sexual proclivities are dumbed down to an infinitesimal degree.
There is no preliminary nuzzling. The scene with the wolves is dampened because of the fact that the wolves themselves are actually German Shepherds, a case that has had reviewers unkindly guffawing at for years, as it is Lee's best managed scene in the entire movie. The whole performance, which, conversely, still dominates most of the film, turns involuntarily to a parody of his earlier successes in the role. It amuses me that the video packaging for this film actually shows Christopher Lee as Dracula in stills from Hammer's 1958 version on the cover!
Herbert Lom is an interesting choice for Professor Van Helsing. Looking suitably intellectual with a disarmingly handsome demeanour, he looks to be amalgamating two previous roles, Captain Nemo from Mysterious Island (1961), and Dr Roger Corder from his successful TV series, The Human Jungle.
Had the script followed a psychiatric approach, we might have been treated to a new angle that would have preceded later psychological studies of vampirism like George Romero's ground-breaking Martin (1977). But all threads in that direction are dashed when Van Helsing begins to ramble morbidly about being involved in the study of the black arts, placing Dracula at the top of his list of devils.
He is in charge of the local sanitarium that seems to house only one prisoner, Renfield, and cajoles his guests to stay overnight for the slightest of reasons. He then goes on to warn them in grave tones that there are areas in the clinic where they should not venture alone. Surely, that is the Count's job in the novel, concerning the evil elements in his Castle? The warning goes unheeded as in practically the next scene, Jonathon Harker proceeds to do exactly that.
The doctor also enjoys watching Mina laying prone on his sofa.
When handing out instructions to Harker and Quincey, he seems to be in a state of perpetual bewilderment concerning the entire plot and doesn't even get to stake any vampires, preferring to give orders from his office like a seasoned General:
"She's dead!" exclaims Mina.
"But you are still alive," retorts the Professor. "It is a sign for me to act."
Had he acted earlier, one supposes, Lucy might still be alive.
It has been said, that Lom and Christopher Lee were in the same scenes, but actually in different countries at the time of filming! That excuses some jump cuts and answers trivial questions concerning awkward compositions of other scenes.
What is hard to fathom is having Van Helsing plonked into a wheelchair the size of a small tank, gained as the result of a slight stroke, though some reviewers have missed this explanation halfway through the film. Bram Stoker never crippled his own champion for good.
Not only that, the Doctor actually loses the wheelchair only a few scenes later, and fervently brands a burning cross into his own carpet to ward off Dracula.
And, when did Van Helsing take his fears to the Home Secretary?
A truly magnetic actor of the British cinema, Lom’s career sporadically dipped into the horror genre, most notably in Hammer's gothic romance The Phantom of the Opera (1962). One would have liked to have seen Herbert Lom repeat the Van Helsing role in a more professionally executed movie.
The next performance to merit attention in the film is that of the patient, Renfield. Klaus Kinski gives one of his better scene stealing performances and would go on to play Dracula in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and its sequel, Vampire in Venice (1988), a dismal assault to the senses, directed by Augusto Caminito and Kinski himself.
As Renfield, Kinski remains mute throughout the film, except to utter the word "Varna", in a choked whisper. Renfield also provides the screams that punctuate most of the action in the sanitarium. However, after such a scream, the camera comes upon Kinski and he looks playfully contented, making pictures in discarded food or inspecting his collection of flies. At the Count's command, he does make a violent grab for Mina's throat as she questions him - probably about the absurdities of the plot. It isn't made clear why she has to see him in his cell at all. He releases her just as easily and then dismisses her presence in the room altogether.
We see an intense longing on his face when, hunched into the frame of his barred window, he scrutinises the Count's new home. Seemingly, at the Count's behest, he frantically breaks through the bars and tries an insane death plunge to the ground below.
Kinski, by his own admission, spent ninety days as a psychiatric patient. It is evident in every shot that he's in that he is drawing on those experiences. The only problem is that he appears to be in a totally different film to the rest of the cast.
Frederick Williams and Jack Taylor are billed as the Stoker characters, Jonathon Harker and Quincey Morris. Arthur Holmwood seems to have forgotten where the film set is as he never makes an appearance - a major gaffe when one considers the importance of the filmmakers’ claims.
William's Harker follows his literary counterpart to the home of Dracula. Increasingly paranoid before he reaches the Borgo Pass, he witnesses first hand the incredible power that Lee's Count displays over the film crew as the vampire steals every scene. After hearing the Count rave about his historical pa
st, he is bitten by the three vampire women but doesn't succumb to the curse of vampirism. He tries to escape from the film by hurling himself from the turrets of Castle Dracula, landing squarely in Dr Van Helsing's mismatched London Sanitarium for the pathologically insane. Not learning anything from his recent ordeal at the Castle, he ignores Van Helsing's warnings and begins sneaking around and peeks into other patient's cells, realising with horror that the clinic only has one other guest. Renfield.
The Romance of Dracula; a personal Journey of the Count on celluloid Page 9