Vampiress Review: "Count Dracula"

The Gist: A mini series produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation based on the Bram Stoker novel.

Clarification: Same story just spread out to last nearly 3 hours to be shown over a number of days on television.  Since this was made for television in the 1970's it is a very PG adaptation replacing many of the more sexual aspects of the story with edgy camera tricks (for the time) and lots of random visions.  The acting is very soap opera like.

Selling Point:  Probably one of my favorite performances of vampire Lucy

Female Vampire Factor: First you have the brides (Susie Hickford, Belinda Meuldijk and Sue Vanner)

Thanks to the made for TV movie aspect of this film the role of the brides has been pretty much scaled down to where they are there but not really significant.  No sexuality involved in their scene with Jonathon Harker (it's more playful teasing) and they only show fang briefly during that scene and a subsequent scene where Jonathon finds them in their coffins.  There vampire side is not visited at all again after that.

  The one thing that sets this film apart is that once Dracula first trades blood with his victims they immediately grow fangs that stay out so both Lucy (Susan Penhaligon) and Mina (Judi Bowker) both have fangs without having to die.

Mina's fangs showing

Mina never even really hints at ever vamping out in the film but as mentioned above Lucy's time in the film is downright primal after meeting Dracula.  The scene in which she first vamps out when everyone comes to her deathbed is especially unique in this film compared to others with her taunting Quincy down to flicking her tongue at him.

This versions Lucy also growls A LOT.  In both the above scene and especially after she finally passes away and rises from her grave she is very animalistic.  Basically this makes the movie for me almost making up for the flaws (IE lack of vampirism) everywhere else.

To be honest the film is hard to watch in one sitting (though it wasn't meant to be) just due to the amount of detail they put into every aspect of every scene to pad the run time (meaning it takes what seams like forever to get to the good stuff) but vampire Lucy is enough for a Vampire Beauty Rating of 4 out of 5.