By Hank Reineke

One of the more fascinating aspects of the Spanish horror film is that the country’s most famous exports were produced during the near forty year dictatorial regime of Falangist leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In interviews conducted following the passing of the repressive dictator in 1975, actor Paul Naschy (the so-called “Lon Chaney of Spanish horror”) often expressed bemusement regarding the restrictions imposed by Spanish censors on his films. Naschy’s horror films were (arguably, I suppose) of either very modest or completely non-political in their design - if not their subtext.

Paul Naschy (aka Jacinto Molina Alvarez) was greatly influenced by the celebrated cycle of gothic horror and mystery films produced by Universal Studios in the 1930s and 1940s. The primary difference between these monochrome films and those Naschy would lens beginning 1968 is unmistakable: most of his films, including the colorful Count Dracula’s Great Love (1971), owed more to the more contemporary themes and style of Britain’s Hammer Studios. Spanish implementation of less discreet on-screen sexuality and a seemingly limitless supply of blood plasma packets pushed even Hammer’s edgiest offerings to the tame, more modest borders of exploitation cinema.

Nevertheless, the horror films released in this otherwise repressive environment were neither produced under the tightest of restriction nor designed in an effort to avoid offending the sensibilities of right-wing prudes. As anyone who has ever enjoyed a Paul Naschy or Jess Franco film can attest, Spanish horror offerings of the 1960s and 1970s are suffused with gory imagery, eroticism, savagery, envelope-pushing scenarios… and generous dollops of female nudity.

Unlike most censorship boards, the Spaniards didn’t seem terribly concerned with flashpoints involving on-screen immoralities or scenes of sickening violence. Their primary concern was simply that film characters demonstrating unwholesome peccadilloes or otherwise satanic non-Christian traits not be identified as being of wholesome Spanish heritage. So a werewolf bearing the Eastern-European the Slavic surname of Daninsky was permitted, as were godless Hungarian vampires and Prussian hunchbacks. Those in the Spanish film industry were more than happy to ring international box-office cash registers with their appropriations; the atheistic commies of Eastern Europe were welcome to the authorship of the malevolent creatures spawned from their decadent folklore.

Javier Aguirre’s Count Dracula’s Great Love (original title El Gran Amor Del Conde Dracula) was Paul Naschy’s only on screen appearance as Brom Stoker’s legendary vampire Count Dracula. The actor would in his long career assume the roles of practically every vanguard monster of the “classic horror” pantheon. In a lengthy series of Spanish-European co-productions, Naschy would don the makeup and costumes of vampires, mummies, hunchbacks, werewolves… he even tackled the dual role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Well regarded by filmmakers and contemporaries as a hard-working, earnest actor-writer-director, he was also remembered as a humble, modest man. His greatest pride was when horror fans whispered his name with the same reverence reserved for the greatest icons of the genre: Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, and Price.

Count Dracula’s Great Love opens, more or less, as nearly every other Dracula film. Following a violent breakdown of the horse-carriage somewhere near Hungary’s mountainous Borgo Pass, a group of five travelers - one gentleman and four buxom beauties - seek temporary help at the supposedly derelict sanitarium of Dr. Kargos. The good doctor is nowhere to be found – at least, not yet – but the castle’s new tenant, the soft-spoken, candelabra carrying Dr. Wendell Marlow (Paul Naschy) soon answers the door of what’s rumored to be the ancestral home of the Vlad (“The Impaler”) Tepes, the bloody historical Prince of Wallachia.

At first sight Marlowe is no cruel Vlad Tepes. Naschy’s Marlowe is a supposed Austrian aristocrat and an apparent softie: he’s a thoughtful and gracious sort, self-effacing, and unrelentingly polite. In fact, when the stranded travelers are brought into the anteroom, they’re not only immediately welcomed with courtesy but offered accommodation and meals for the week. This is necessary, he explains, as there are no hotels in the area; he owns no transportation modes and his forthcoming order of supplies are seven days away.

The four blond girls at first don’t seem terribly grateful for the Dr.’s generous hospitality. One whispers a complaint almost immediately, moaning her displeasure that the castle is a dreary, gloomy sort of a place. If director Aguirre wanted to convey a palatial sense of doom and menace to match that description, he was clearly let down by his art department. The castle interiors are generally bright and immaculately clean save for the odd cobweb or two drooping forlornly from lighting fixtures. The castle’s cellar, where the delivery of a wooden crate of human-length proportion arrives at the film’s beginning, is a bit more atmospheric: here we find the stony labyrinth passageways, the moss covered walls, the rat-infested rooms we might expect.

One of the stranded travelers finds the genial Dr. Marlowe a physically attractive specimen. That said, she’s reminded by a friend that her tastes in men are her own. The friend prefers a man “slimmer and taller.” (Naschy was hardly a cadaverous Count, a muscular man of stocky build and approximately only 5’ 8” in height). With little alternative the girls choose to make themselves at home, now resigned to their unplanned stay at the castle. By day two they’re making the most of it and immodestly sunning their naked bodies in the estate’s opaque pool. Though the castle grounds are in disrepair and in serious need of some landscaping, they discover the wooded acreage is nonetheless conducive to long negligee-garbed walks in the moonlight.