Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973)

 ☆ ☆

Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) – J. Aguirre

I know there is an untapped world of exploitation/cult/trash cinema out there and I freely admit that I am afraid of it.  My tender sensibilities might be easily affronted.  In particular, I’m not interested in torture porn or other sadistic (ultraviolent) films, though I sometimes stumble into them. Ironically, I do enjoy supernatural horror films!  The problem is where spooky & gore converge (I look for the former but want to avoid the latter).  There is no doubt, too, that horror films often target girls and women as victims – and exploitation films might therefore contain sexual violence too (even more repugnant).  Not sure if this is made up for in the subgenre of “rape revenge” films but I usually eschew them too.  To make matters worse, Euro-horror of the seventies is often boring and badly acted – if there are any chills to be had, you need to wade through some tedious scenes to get to them.  Such is the case with Count Dracula’s Great Love, starring Paul Naschy.  I haven’t seen too many Naschy films but I bought a used DVD years ago (La Noche de Walpurgis, 1971) and although it isn’t “good”, it has a certain quality of forbidden out-of-bounds low-budget horror (not unlike some parts of Videodrome) where you can feel like it is so poorly made that it has to be “real” (notwithstanding the fact that we are talking werewolves and fake blood). Unfortunately, the current film falls into that well-known genre that sees some stricken wayfarers (well-endowed starlets, of course) wind up stranded at the Count’s castle.  However, the twist here is that the Count falls in love with one of the women and offers her the chance to be his eternal bride (all of her friends and companions have since been turned into vampires already). She turns him down, so he somehow turns everyone else back to human and kills himself with a wooden stake through the heart.  A bit of a surprise ending!  However, really, the film holds little real horror (save for just one or two scenes that evoke the “uncanny” in the way I mentioned above) and moves at a snail’s pace with terrible dubbing, some sleaze, a little gore, and look, it isn’t something I would recommend to you.  That said, it didn’t really offend my tender sensibilities either – it is all rather tame. Unfortunately, this was a version hosted by Elvira (so I had to fast-forward through her schtick).