User Reviews

This is a very low budget Spanish version of Dracula that is chock full of breasts--sort of like a nudie version of a horror film. Plus, while I didn't think it looked very realistic, there was tons of fake blood as well. This surprised me, as it was marketed as a horror film presented by Elvira--and usually these are more family-friendly films. So beware when you get this--this is a soft-core horror film with more groaning and moaning than I thought was possible! Oh, and speaking of Elvira, I should point out that if you do get this version, you also get Elvira interrupting the film periodically to make comments. Fortunately, on the DVD you can chose not to see these--this is strongly recommended as they interrupt the flow of the film and really add nothing to the experience.

As for the quality of the film overall, this isn't a particularly bad film for the first half and it does have an interesting plot twist (Dracula finding love). However, oddly, after he and his lady love profess their love, the film continues for some time and seems to drag. However, to make things worse, the original style of the narrative vanishes. No longer do people talk or act, but there is an annoying voice-over during the last half of the film--as if they ran out of money for translating the dialog! Plus, instead of story, the film is full of rather disjointed sadism and blood-letting. In hindsight, it probably would have been best to end the film shortly after he finds love, as up until then it was a rather decent (if "boobified") film.

My final verdict is that this film is too hard-core for most people and the story itself is too convoluted and poor to merit it as a "must see" for people wanting a porno horror film--as a result, it probably won't appeal to many out there.

El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula, or Count Draculas Great Love as it's more commonly know among English speaking audiences is set in 1870 & starts with two hired hands delivering a large heavy wooden crate to an abandoned sanatorium high on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Sensing an opportunity to make some extra money the men open the crate to see what's inside & if it's worth stealing, they discover a coffin & human remains. Not wanting to admit defeat they try searching the sanatorium for valuable items they can steal, before long they are both murdered by a shadowy unknown assailant who obviously doesn't like thieves. Cue opening credits. El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula then introduces the viewer to five companions travelling through the area & passing the old sanatorium by stagecoach. One man named Imre Polvi (Victor Alcazar as Vic Winner) his secret love Marlene (Ingrid Garbo) & three other women Senta (Rosanna Yani), Karen (Haydee Politoff) & finally Elke (Mirta Miller). Unfortunately for them the wheel on their coach becomes loose & flies off down a hill lost forever. More bad luck follows as the coach driver is killed in an accident when a horse tries to bolt. The five friends decide to seek shelter in the abandoned sanatorium, once there they knock the door & an Austrian Doctor named Wendell Marlow (co-writer Jacinto Molina under his usual pseudonym of Paul Naschy) who now owns the sanatorium, answers. After hearing their situation Marlow invites the five travellers to stay as long as they want. As they bed down for the night Karen gets up to close a window blowing in the wind when she is scared by a man watching her from the shadows, Dr. Marlow assures Karen that it was probably a tramp seeking shelter. However the strange, unsettling & unnerving experiences don't stop there as members of the five friends begin to disappear without trace & there is a real air of unease about the whole situation. Why does Marlow only appear at night & never during the day? Why are there so many bear-traps around the sanatorium's grounds? Could the tales & rumour's of Vampirism & Count Dracula that surround the sanatorium really be true? Watch it & find out!

This Spansish production was co-written & directed by Javier Aguirre & I thought it was a really enjoyable Euro sex/gore exploitation film that has a stab at some genuine style & depth under the blood & breasts. The script by Aguirre, Molina & Alberto S.Insua is fast paced, never drags or becomes too boring & maintained my interest throughout. The traditional Dracula & Vampire themes are present but El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula adds a few unexpected twists of it's own & tries to be a little different. I liked the idea of Count Dracula setting bear-traps to catch local people who he then sinks his fangs into as they are immobilised but still alive. I loved the ending as well which in my opinion was a brave decision by Aguirre to have things turn out as they did, Count Dracula sacrificing himself because he has fallen in love with Karen works very well & I was pleasantly surprised about how things turned out for everyone without a happy 'hero kills the bad guy & gets the pretty girl' clichéd ending in sight, with better dubbing, dialogue & acting this could have been a really emotional climax. Which brings me the negative points quite nicely. The dubbing is terrible even for a Euro exploitation film, the dialogue is very stiff, unnatural & at times almost comical. This in turn distracts from the original performances which in all fairness might have been good but not when everyone talks & sounds the way they do. Paul Naschy is a little on the short side but still makes for a good on screen Dracula, there is also a nod towards his Werewolf films when howling is heard in the night & he comments on it. The photography in El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula by Raul Perez Cubero is at times beautiful, the way shafts of light streak through the trees during some dawn & dusk shots as mist swirls past, the lighting throughout the film is also very atmospheric & as a whole the film is a pleasure to watch & has a real style about it. The production design is similarly impressive with the lush detailed interiors of the sanatorium, the dark underground catacombs lit by flickering candles, props & costumes rivalling any period piece Hammer made around the same time. Good solid score by Carmelo A.Bernaola, too. Now to the exploitation elements in which El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula doesn't disappoint either, there is plenty of neck biting & dripping blood (usually on naked women's bodies & breasts), whippings, killings, plus there's plenty of naked female flesh & sex as well. I suppose I write this review as a massive horror/gore/exploitation fan myself & I personally found much to enjoy in El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula, having said that if you don't have a strong tolerance or liking for this type of material then I doubt you would be that impressed with it. Overall I unexpectedly really rather liked it & recommend it to anyone who is considering giving it a go but I don't think I could recommend it in the same way to a casual unknowing viewer. A solid Euro horror with more style & depth than most but certainly not for everyone.

In the pre-credits scene for this Paul Naschy vampire flick, two men deliver a large crate to an old abandoned sanatorium which has recently been sold to a mysterious doctor. Taking the crate to the cellar as instructed, the men allow curiosity to get the better of them and find a coffin inside. As the men try to leave in a hurry, one of them is attacked by a vampire and the other has an axe planted in his skull (a nice spot of bright red '70s gore). The credits roll as the axed man is shown repeatedly falling down a flight of stone steps in slow motion, the axe falling free, allowing the viewer to clearly see the semi-circular 'cut-out' in the blade where it fitted over the actor's head. We're most definitely in cheesy Euro-horror territory...

The film starts proper as a coach carrying five passengers -- Imre Polvi (Victor Barrera) and four attractive young women -- loses a wheel, and the very unlucky driver gets kicked in the head by one of his horses. Forced to continue their journey on foot, the five travellers seek refuge at the sanatorium, now home to Dr. Wendell Marlow (Naschy), the guests unaware that their host is actually Count Dracula, who proceeds to put the bite on them during the night. However, the Count becomes smitten with the prettiest of the girls, virginal Karen (Haydée Politoff), and becomes torn between using her to bring his daughter back to life, or keeping her at his side as his bride.

Javier Aguirre directed two Naschy flicks in 1973: Count Dracula's Great Love and Hunchback of the Morgue. The latter is a thoroughly enjoyable horror romp full of demented silliness, easily my favourite Naschy flick so far; Count Dracula's Great Love is less satisfying, the plodding pace and weak story (by Naschy) making it a mediocre effort at best, despite plenty of topless nudity and a smattering of reasonable gore (a vamp is thrown out of a window and impaled on a metal railing and one of the female bloodsuckers is staked, resulting in lots of blood). The very silly ending sees a despondant Dracula staking himself (vampire suicide!!) having been unable to convince Karen to renounce her human existence.

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've been seeking out a bunch of Dracula movies since reading Bram Stoker's novel. After viewing this Spanish B-picture, "The Great Love of Count Dracula," it's clear to me that I've looked too far. I've seen other vampire movies that aren't Dracula movies, per se, but still rework similar themes from Stoker, from the unauthorized adaptation of "Nosferatu" (1922), to the WW2-era "The Return of the Vampire" (1943), to the blaxploitation "Blacula" (1972). "The Great Love of Count Dracula" has a character named Dracula, but nothing else to do with Stoker, and it doesn't do anything interesting beyond blood and nude breasts--and blood on nude breasts. Besides the lesbian licking scene, there's not even that much more nudity than can be found in the mainstream 1992 "Dracula," either, for instance. And, blood splatter hasn't been uncommon in vampire films since the Hammer series began in 1958.

I watched the terribly-dubbed English-language version. It includes a lot of voiceover narration in the later part, to try to explain the nonsense on screen, which includes whipping, using blood as a kind of ready-mix solution for a vampire skeleton (which is similar to Dracula's resurrection in Hammer's "Dracula: Prince of Darkness" (1966)), chained female vampires screaming under sweltering sunlight and other outrageous spectacles. Between this schlock are pathetic artsy attempts with scenes involving black-and-white photography, negative-looking images, slow-motion and reverse-motion photography. At least all of this is preferable to the exposition-heavy opening scenes, where characters tell much of the story rather than showing it. We learn, for instance, that it takes place after Van Helsing and company allegedly killed the Count, and that they're going to a Seward-like sanitarium since abandoned. I'm still not sure why there are four women with one man comprising the travelers... well, OK, I do know why, but I don't recall them explaining it within the story. Anyways, their carriage breaks down, and the film turns into an old-dark-house type of horror movie before the weird voiceover-narrated stuff starts happening.

Dracula is portrayed by a short and stocky man--an oddity that's even pointed out by one of the ladies, who says she prefers her men tall and slender. Apparently, he's weak now, and he needs the voluntary love of a virgin--or something--to regain his powers. Dracula sets animal traps for some reason. Vampires have laughably white-painted faces. Dracula kills all of them, including some drawn-out fist fights with the other male vamps. Then, when the virgin rejects him, he performs hara-kiri on himself with a wooden stake. An exasperatingly-extended crosscutting sequence between sunrises and Dracula's decomposing face/skull, which is essentially a rip-off of Hammer's type of effects, plays us out.

The Van Helsing-authored book in Dracula's library is probably the closest thing to something intelligent in this film, although other vampire films have had a vampire book, authored by Van Helsing or not, within their narratives.

(Mirror Note: Dracula's lack of a reflection is revealed through a mirror shot in one of the film's numerous make-out scenes.)

Call it El Gran Amor del Conde Dracula. Call it Cemetery Girls. Or Dracula's Great Love - the title I saw the film under - or Dracula's Virgin Lovers or The Great Love of Count Dracula. Whatever title you prefer, you're about to savor a nonsensical odyssey through Spanish vampire madness, a world where someone can fall down the steps for what seems like hours, all women dress like Disney princesses and a girl can step on a beartrap and only get a small scratch.

We start in an old sanitorium, deep in the Carpathian Mountains as two delivery men arrive with a large, heavy man-shaped crate. Of course, you know that that crate has Doctor Wendell Marlow (Naschy) inside it. But right now, this scene is all about these movers casing the joint and trying to steal something, only for one to get hit with an axe and the other to get his throat ripped out and sent tumbling over and over and well, over.

Then, a stagecoach with four women - Karen, Marlene, Senta and Elke - breaks down and forces the girls to stay at Marlowe's mansion.sanitorium. One by one, the girls are bitten and become part of Dracula's army of the undead, all with the goal of the head vamp resurrecting his daughter Radna and convincing a virgin - hi Karen - to love him forever before he sacrifices her.

By the end, Dracula has tired of this lifestyle and decides to kill all of his brides with sunlight. Then, he realizes that he loves Karen and can't use her to further his monstrous aims, so he kills himself with a stake.

If you're a fan of female vampires being female vampires - which mostly means them licking blood off of one another and whipping - then Naschy has exactly what you're craving here. There was a Spanish version of the film that has the actresses remaining modest, while international cuts of the film feature abundant full monty shots of the brides. And there's also fifteen minutes of footage that no one can locate that supposedly goes even further!

Amazingly, Naschy made this movie, Hunchback of the Morgue, Curse of the Devil, Horror Rises from the Tomb and Vengeance of the Zombies all in the same year.

With Paul Naschy's passing, I've decided to bust out his features I own but have never watched. This is sort of a semi-sequel to Dracula as the main characters mention the likes of Jonathan Harker and Mina. Dracula (Naschy) moves into an old sanitarium and adopts the geeky name Dr. Wendell Marlow. Dinner arrives at his door in the form of 4 hot young ladies and their male companion when their carriage loses a wheel. This will work out great for ol' Drac because he needs a virgin to resurrect his dead daughter. Pretty atmospheric, this sees Naschy giving another unique turn as a classic monster. Director Javier Aquirre knows how to build the mood with nice slo-mo and smoky passageways in a huge country estate locale (watch for anachronistic water pipes in their pool). Aquirre teamed up with Naschy again a few years later for HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE, one of my favorites. What surprised me the most about this film was the ending, something I don't think has ever been done in a Dracula film before or since. See, Dracula is truly in love and, rather than resurrect his daughter, he commits suicide by driving a stake into his own heart. Now that is truly a tragic romance angle that you won't see in TWILIGHT.

Paul Naschy is best know for his roles as Count Waldemar Daninsky, who turns into the Wolf-man. He takes a break for this film and play Count Dracula. Naschy fans will enjoy the film, even if it was rudely interrupted by the unfunny Elvira.

Four gorgeous babes (Haydée Politoff, Rosanna Yanni, Ingrid Garbo, & Mirta Miller) and their male companion (Víctor Alcázar) end up in an old sanatorium after their carriage breaks down.

After they bed down for the night, Imre Polvi (Alcázar) quickly moves to Marlene's (Garbo) bed, while Karen (Politoff) get a scare in the hallway. Sneaking down the next night, he falls victim to the evil about. Poor Marlene now has her sumptuous breasts covered in blood when he visits her.

Senta (Yanni) catches her leg in a bear trap while walking. Of course she is hoping for some tender loving care from Dr. Marlow (Naschy). She catches him later that night and has him explore the rest of her body for injuries. Unfortunately for her, she fails to meet the requirement to be the great love of Dracula - she is not a virgin. So, she becomes a meal for the other two girls.

Dr. Marlow/Dracula has to fight off the growing number of vampires to protect Karen for himself. He cannot use his powers to win her; he has to do it the old fashioned way.

He tortures an innocent girl (Julia Peña) to mix her blood with Karen's to bring his daughter back to life.

But, his love for Karen causes him to do the unthinkable in an unusual twist on the vampire tale.

This film is one of the classic Spanish vampire tales, starring Paul Naschy as Count Dracula. This is considered to be his best performance as a vampire - Naschy having played vampires in other movies. The setting of an old sanitarium is very atmospheric, together with the strange things which go on there. Four unwary young women end up having to spend the night there, three become vampires, the fourth becomes Dracula's lover. The supporting cast is strong, although the ending is a little unusual, with Dracula committing suicide on a stake. See this if you can, it's better than most European vampire films of the 70's.