At night when Dracula wakes up
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | At night when Dracula wakes up |
| Country of production | Germany , Spain , Italy |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1970 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jess Franco |
| script | Erich Kröhnke |
| production | Harry Alan Towers |
| music | Bruno Nicolai |
| camera | Manuel Merino |
| cut | Bruno Mattei |
| occupation | |
| |
Night when Dracula awakens (Italian title Il Conte Dracula ; Spanish title El Conde Drácula ) is a 1970 horror film by Spanish director Jess Franco . It is based on Bram Stoker's novel " Dracula ". The title role is played by Christopher Lee , who has played the vampiric count in several films by the British Hammer Film Productions . The film advertised at the time to be the most faithful adaptation of Stoker's vampire novel.
action
The prospective London lawyer Jonathan Harker drives to Bistritz and, despite several warnings, seeks out his client, the aged Count Dracula, in order to conclude a property purchase agreement. Harker soon realizes that he is more of a prisoner than a guest, because the count has no intention of letting him go again. At night he is plagued by bad nightmares in which Dracula and three vampire women attack him. When Harker secretly looks around the vaults of the ruined castle, he comes across the stone coffin in which the count, noticeably rejuvenated, sleeps. Harker runs headlong.
In Budapest, in the private clinic of Prof. Van Helsing and his assistant Dr. Seward, Harker comes to. Another patient is in the clinic, Renfield, who - after losing his daughter to Dracula - went mad and feeds on insects. Harker's fiancée Mina Murray and her friend Lucy Westenra come to Budapest from London to check on him.
But Count Dracula is already nearby, he has moved into the villa that borders the clinic's premises. Dracula casts a spell over Lucy and feeds on her blood. As she gets weaker and weaker, he becomes significantly younger and stronger. As Lucy's condition deteriorated, her fiancé, the American Quincey Morris, was summoned. Eventually Lucy dies and returns as a vampire killing toddlers. Prof. Van Helsing sees his fears confirmed and convinces Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris to stake the undead Lucy in order to restore her soul to peace. In the meantime, Count Dracula tries to seize Minas: with a fictitious message he lured her out of the shelter of the clinic and into the opera, where he attacks her. Before he can turn her into an undead too, however, he is stopped by Prof. Van Helsing. Jonathan and Quincey have meanwhile consecrated the boxes of Transylvanian soil in which the vampire sleeps with crosses and thus made them unusable for him.
After this setback, Count Dracula flees first by ship to Varna and then overland back to his castle. Harker and Morris reach Bistritz before him, stake the three female vampires and consecrate all the graves in the castle. Count Dracula himself comes to an end when he is burned in his chest.
production
- Christopher Lee played the eponymous role in Terence Fisher's Dracula (1958) 12 years earlier .
- Jess Franco's first choice for the role of Professor Van Helsing was actually Vincent Price , who was not available due to his contract with American International Pictures . When Franco's second preferred candidate, Dennis Price, was also unable to attend for health reasons, Herbert Lom was chosen.
- Rumor has it that producer Klaus Kinski , who allegedly refused to play in a Dracula film at the time, tricked him into by slipping him a fake script with an entirely different title in order to win him over as Renfield. Jess Franco denied this story.
- Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom never met each other during filming. All Dracula and Van Helsing scenes were filmed separately.
- During the making of the film, Pere Portabella made the experimental semi-documentary Cuadecuc, vampire .
- Producer Harry Alan Towers promoted the film as the most faithful adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel. In fact, at night, when Dracula awakes, according to the template, the progressive rejuvenation shows the count and the behavior of vampires as child killers. Almost all of the dialogue spoken by the Count is taken verbatim from the novel. However, the film differs in many details (not least Dracula's end) from the original. In the foreign versions of the film the action takes place in London (after the opening in Transylvania ), in the German version Budapest is named as the setting.
synchronization
| role | actor | German Dubbing voice |
|---|---|---|
| Count Dracula | Christopher Lee | Ernst Wilhelm Borchert |
| Professor van Helsing | Herbert Lom | Klaus Miedel |
| Renfield | Klaus Kinski | Christian Brückner |
| Jonathan Harker | Fred Williams | Joachim Kemmer |
| Mina Murray | Maria Rohm | Renate Schroeter |
| Dr. Seward | Paul Muller | Friedrich W. Building School |
| Quincey Morris | Jack Taylor | Rolf Schult |
criticism
The reviews of the Lexicon of International Film and Cinema are positive about the film:
“Largely true to the original film adaptation of the well-known horror novel by Bram Stoker. Atmospherically dense and superbly photographed. "
"The diabolical double pack Lee / Kinski makes a good thing."
The Protestant film observer, on the other hand, does not think much of the film: “The price for not using too cheap horror was unfortunately surprisingly boring. From the age of 16 possible without recommendation for everyone who is not disappointed by the comparison with much better predecessors. "
aftermath
Jess Franco made other vampire films during the 1970s, but they only used the original material as a source of inspiration and often changed the setting (including Anatolia and Madeira), such as Vampyros Lesbos - heiress of Dracula , The Night of the Open Coffins , A Virgin in the talons of vampires , Desire Unleashed or The Portrait of Doriana Gray .
Web links
- At night, when Dracula awakens in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Comparison of the cut versions The fourth from 12 - FSK 12 from Night when Dracula wakes up at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ At night when Dracula wakes up. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ At night when Dracula wakes up at Cinema
- ↑ Evangelical Press Association Munich, Review No. 239/1970.