October 7th
Count Dracula (1977)
This BBC adaptation is the perfect remedy to yesterday's tepid Dan Curtis production.
The casting is uniformly excellent. Frank Finlay is perhaps the definitive Van Helsing and Louis Jourdan perhaps surprisingly has just the right amounts of menace and dark sensuality to portray the Count and most interestingly, he feels right in the role without even the slightest bit of camp in his performance. One defining moment is his seduction of Lucy. As he's biting her and she's clearly in orgasm, you can see the blood mixed with spittle on his mouth and her neck and it all looks a little bit too realistic. The other stand out is Jack Shepard as Renfield who peels back the histrionics and portrays the character with sympathy as a tortured soul in some cracking scenes with Seward. Judy Bowker as Mina, and Susan Penhaligan as Lucy are also delightfully played.
Part filmed at Whitby, this tv version is beautifully atmospheric and features some genuinely chilling sequences - Van Helsing fighting off the vampire brides whilst trying to protect Mina, borders on the terrifying and there are several other unsettling scenes throughout which i won't spoil for anyone wishing to give this a go. The sets and settings feel just right too, from the creepiness of Castle Dracula to the windswept graveyards of Whitby.
As far as the story goes this is i feel the most faithful to Bram Stoker's novel and all the better for it. At two and a half hours it's long, but i thought it flew by - the opening hour felt like 20 minutes - and the more i think back about the production the more i feel just like with the tv version of Frankenstein (2004) - starring Luke Goss - that this may be the best Dracula to date.
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