Yesterday, I finished watching another of the Saturn Award winners for Best Horror Film, and this time around, it was 1979 winner, “Dracula.”
This movie was released in on July, Friday the 13th, 1979 and is based on Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” and the stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. (Unless you’ve lived under a rock your whole life, you know the basic story of “Dracula,” even if you haven’t read Stoker’s novel, so I’ll skip a synopsis of the movie. After all, I’ve heard it said more than once that there have been more movies made about Dracula than another other subject in history. Think about it.)
This movie was very good, and in my mind comes in only second to “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” which came out in 1992 and starred Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins.
The 1979 version was remarkable for a number of reasons. Frank Langella plays Count Dracula. At the beginning of the movie, I thought he was a lame choice for the role, but by the end of the film, I thought he was awesome. (I guess he was considered very handsome for late 1970s audiences, but his hair cut kept making me think of Scott Baio from “Charles in Charge.”) Most notable about Langella’s performance was his uncanny ability to make his eyes dance almost imperceptibly during scenes in which Dracula has to fight the urge to drink blood. I’ve honestly never seen another actor pull it off as Langella does.
Langella was one of several big names associated with this movie. Laurence Olivier played Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Donald Pleasence (the doctor from “Halloween”) played Dr. Jack Seward, and John Williams composed the movie’s musical score.
There have been many vampire movies made over the years, and this one is the first one that I can remember watching in which the vampire hunters (the good guys) use a horse to find the grave of a sleeping vampire. They turn the horse loose in a cemetery, and the horse sniffs out the vamps grave and marks the spot by trampling the fresh eart. I’ve read Stoker’s 1897 novel, and I don’t remember that scene being in the book.
In the end, this was a good movie. Have any of you seen it? What did you think about it?
From here, it’s on to the 1980 Saturn Award winner, “The Howling.” This is another one of those movies that I’ve seen bits and pieces of over the years, but I can’t say with any degree of certainty that I’ve seen the theatrical release. Thanks to the good folks at NetFlix, it should arrive in my mailbox in a few days.
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