The late great Paul Naschy had his chance to step into the role of Count Dracula, and scripted this weird variation on the vampire. Five tourists, one man taking four lovely ladies on a tour through the Carpathian Mountains, when their horse carriage loses a wheel and one of the steeds kicks the driver in the head killing him. They make their way up to a castle once ran as an asylum, and are greeted hospitably by a doctor living on the residence, Dr. Wendell Marlow(Naschy). Before this story's set-up we see two deliverers dropping off a casket to the castle, both falling prey to, we presume, Dracula of the title, one bitten on the throat, another taking a hatchet to the noggin, falling down a flight of steps. The deliverer bitten takes a bite out of Imre(Víctor Alcázar), the man of the group staying with Marlow, and it sets of a chain reaction where by film's end, practically everyone is a vampire. Dracula and the sole survivor, Karen(Haydée Politoff)fall in love and this makes his prospects of using her(..and a village girl virgin)blood to reawaken his dead daughter who has been resting for centuries. Everything seems to go according to plan(..added to the script is the act of flogging the virgin village girl as part of the ceremony!)but Dracula finds it difficult to have Karen sacrifice herself to give life to his beloved daughter once again. The other girls who become Dracula's vampire slaves to do his bidding include, the luscious, voluptuous Senta(Rosanna Yanni), Marlene(Ingrid Garbo), and Elke(Mirta Miller). What Dracula eventually decides when Karen decides whether or not to be his undead bride, is stunning to say the least(..it's certainly unusual for this type of film and rather tragically romantic!).
I won't lie, this is very slow to start, hitting it's stride right around the 45 minute mark, as the boobs and bloodletting commence. The script does more than establish the characters and director Javier Aguirre has plenty of time to milk the castle setting and the area around it. Shooting it a lot at night or daybreak, you get a good sense of foreboding, and eventually your patience pays off when the girls go on the attack, fangs expressed, blood slowly dribbling down throats and across the mouths of the vampires. Naschy even gets to evoke Bela Lugosi, doing his best imitation, methodically approaching a girl from her window, closing in like a midnight intruder. There's plenty of devious activity to make up for a leisure first half, with flesh wounds on display including a dagger cutting across skin, and the vampire girls drawing into the bloody gashes on the back of the village virgin girl, bound, after being whipped. You even get a very lengthly 'deterioration" sequence at the end where the sun is shown slowly coming up as a vampire fades into skeletal remains. The print I watched, on the Elvira DVD, was rather ghastly.
Taking the liberties afforded to him, Naschy's script allows for vampires to slowly disrobe their female targets, as they enjoy their bloody neck meals, the lips steadily moving down the breasts and chests of the women victims. Such as example is Dracula's major attack scene near the end, where he confronts his female victim, pulling down the sheets to reveal her breasts..a luxury, Lugosi didn't have in his day!
I won't lie, this is very slow to start, hitting it's stride right around the 45 minute mark, as the boobs and bloodletting commence. The script does more than establish the characters and director Javier Aguirre has plenty of time to milk the castle setting and the area around it. Shooting it a lot at night or daybreak, you get a good sense of foreboding, and eventually your patience pays off when the girls go on the attack, fangs expressed, blood slowly dribbling down throats and across the mouths of the vampires. Naschy even gets to evoke Bela Lugosi, doing his best imitation, methodically approaching a girl from her window, closing in like a midnight intruder. There's plenty of devious activity to make up for a leisure first half, with flesh wounds on display including a dagger cutting across skin, and the vampire girls drawing into the bloody gashes on the back of the village virgin girl, bound, after being whipped. You even get a very lengthly 'deterioration" sequence at the end where the sun is shown slowly coming up as a vampire fades into skeletal remains. The print I watched, on the Elvira DVD, was rather ghastly.
Taking the liberties afforded to him, Naschy's script allows for vampires to slowly disrobe their female targets, as they enjoy their bloody neck meals, the lips steadily moving down the breasts and chests of the women victims. Such as example is Dracula's major attack scene near the end, where he confronts his female victim, pulling down the sheets to reveal her breasts..a luxury, Lugosi didn't have in his day!