BY HANK REINEKE
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of Calvin Floyd’s
documentary In Search of Dracula is
the third hard copy to find its way into my collection. I no longer own a copy of that first edition,
a VHS tape of dubious origin and purchased at a convention. That was jettisoned when an authorized copy on
DVD was issued by Wellspring Media in 2003. Truth be told, I’m not sure a manufacture of a Blu-ray for this
particular film is necessarily merited. But it’s here now and will likely displace the DVD sitting on my home
video shelf. The circle of life, I
suppose.
This quirky and occasionally interesting documentary would
make its debut on the small screen, initially produced for exclusive broadcast
on Swedish television. But it was a
popular and professional enough effort to be later telecast in Great Britain on
the B.B.C. The film would make the
transition as a genuine cinematic property in 1975 when Samuel M. Sherman’s
Independent International Pictures Corporation bought the U.S. distribution
rights. The producer would pad the
program’s running time to feature-length with a sprinkling of non-essential bits
and pieces here and there.
The film was released theatrically in the U.S., playing
the New York City metropolitan area in May 1975. This NYC-area engagement lasted little more
than a week, mostly playing drive-ins and second-run cinemas throughout the city’s
outer boroughs, Long Island and the wilds of New Jersey. Sherman’s ballyhoo newspaper advertising was purposefully
misleading. It highlighted Christopher
Lee’s participation in the production and referenced “An Open Letter to the
Descendants of Count Dracula.†Subsequent
ad copy coyly disguised that the film was actually an historical documentary
rather than a new Dracula feature.
In any event, the film was not strong enough to stand
alone as a potential draw, so it was paired with an appropriate co-feature,
albeit movies of previous-release and exhibiting some mileage and history. These co-features would include the like of
Hammer’s The Mummy (1959) with
Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Al Adamson’s bargain-basement cheapie Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967) with John
Carradine. (This second feature made some strategic sense as Sherman was
co-producer of the latter film). Sherman is listed here in the revised opening
credits of In Search of Dracula as “production
consultant.†With all due respect to Mr.
Sherman, Floyd’s original documentary was inspired by consulting Raymond T.
McNally and Radu Florescu’s best-selling tome of the same title (New York
Graphic Society, 1972). The film, to the
best of its ability, attempts to touch on many of the same subjects more thoroughly
detailed in that book.
Unfortunately, it does so with only mixed success as director
Floyd’s somber narrative tends to meander. The film certainly starts promisingly enough, advising viewers that it
was photographed not only “on location†in Transylvania itself (we’re told “Transylvaniaâ€
translates to the “land beyond the forestâ€), but also in Austria, Germany,
Switzerland and Sweden. “All film
locations are authentic and historically accurate†a title credit promisingly
brags. Indeed, the travelogue snippets
of green fields, the Carpathian Mountains, broke-down castles, and small-village
folkways are amongst the film’s strongest assets. We’re also treated to somewhat tangential footage
documenting a colorful performance by the Romanian Folklore Dance Company and
the so-called “mysticism†of a Greek Orthodox Church ceremony.
The real masterstroke of producer/director/composer Floyd
was his ability to bring in a favorite cinematic Dracula, Christopher Lee, to
narrate and guide viewers through this fractured history lesson. The fact that he was able to convince Lee to do
so is surprising in itself. Lee had walked away, somewhat disgruntled, from the
Dracula character following his appearance in seven mostly beloved – and mostly
profitable - films for Hammer Studios… and an eighth, if less celebrated Dracula
movie, for Spanish director Jess Franco (1970). Lee proudly boasts here near the film’s end that his Horror of Dracula (1958) made “eight
times its production costs!†for Hammer. For the record, Lee hadn’t totally abandoned his cloaked on-screen
vampirism, having also appeared as an ersatz
Dracula in such mostly forgotten continental productions as Italy’s Tempi duri
per i vampiri (1959) and France’s Dracula Père et Fils (1976). Lee provides narration throughout but also appears
on screen - surprisingly “in character†- in several brief vignettes. He’s seen here, in silent footage, as both
the (Stoker-described) mustachioed Count Dracula as well as the character’s presumed
historical forebear Vlad Tepes (aka “Vlad the Impalerâ€), the one-time Prince of
Wallachia.
It’s unfair to expect an eighty-two minute film to adequately
convey the contents of a 300 page book, and director Floyd (along with writer Yvonne
Floyd) tries their best to condense and impart information in an educational and
entertaining manner. Unfortunately,
there’s just not enough running time to discuss any item to satisfaction. We are offered some teachable, if rushed
along, informational tidbits along the way. We learn that Bram Stoker, who would first publish his novel Dracula in 1897, never actually visited
Transylvania prior to writing. Despite
this, Lee ensures, the novelist was “remarkably accurate†in his descriptions
as he had studied period maps and guidebooks in careful preparation. There’s a discussion of the origin of vampire
legends which, we’re told, originated in Asia before migrating westward to
other far-flung places. Stories of
vampires eventually traveled to Eastern Europe where they seamlessly filtered into
and intertwined with local folklore beliefs. It was in Eastern Europe that tales of vampirism and “the undead†would appear
most common.
The film also treats us to tangential, thumbnail case
studies and psychological profiles of other infamous - and terribly real -
“vampires.†These include Countess Elizabeth
Báthory of Hungary (aka Countess Dracula) who, legend has it, bathed in the blood of
virgins in an attempt to stay youthful. Then there was the awful Peter Kürten,
the “Vampire of Düsseldorf,†a
sexual deviant and serial killer who reportedly cannibalized and drank the
blood of several of his victims. Another
addition to this unpleasant rogue’s gallery was John Haigh, the so-called
“Vampire of London.†The delightful Mister Haigh treated his victim’s to acid
baths and claimed to have drunk their blood as well.
It’s almost a relief when, somewhere around the
sixty-minute mark, Floyd – in a head-scratching manner - segues into an odd
sidebar regarding the origins of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Its inclusion here
is almost totally out of place in this particular documentary but, in hindsight,
it did foreshadow Floyd’s next and more ambitious project. This would be the director’s attempt at a dramatic
telling of the authentic and original Shelley text “as written.†This feature
would subsequently be released to European cinemas in 1977 as the Terror of Frankenstein.
Though no classic, Floyd’s take on Frankenstein – unseen by many until the home video boom made the
film more available – is often lauded as the first faithful attempt to follow the
novels genuine and more complex storyline. This declaration wasn’t entirely true. In 1973, NBC-TV would broadcast their three and a half hour television
drama Frankenstein: The True Story in
two parts. So that television production
had gotten their first and, quite frankly, did a better job of it. In any event, Calvin Floyd’s Terror of Frankenstein is certainly
worth seeking out by film scholars, if only for its oddity.
Unfortunately, Floyd’s In Search of Dracula begins to fall apart near the end as we pass
through brief mentions of the nineteenth century literary legacies of such
“undead†figures as Le Fanu’s Carmilla
and Polidori’s Vampyre. As we enter the age of cinema, we’re treated
to an over-long, but time-chewing, excerpt of the public-domain silent classic Nosferatu. Since clips from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr and Tod Browning’s Dracula (the latter featuring the iconic
1931 performance of Bela Lugosi), were under copyright protection, we’re
treated only to a few production stills and a lengthy, and not terribly relevant,
excerpt from Lugosi’s appearance in the non-protected 1925 silent drama The Midnight Girl.
In any event, I’m guessing that fans of Sir Christopher
Lee and students of the Dracula legend will be compelled to add this film to
their collections: as someone who has triple-dipped on this title I completely understand. Others less-obsessed might find the film an
outdated celluloid relic, best forgotten. While I’m certainly glad that the film has been made available once again
for those interested, I would be dishonest to deem it as an essential study.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray of In Search of Dracula has been
transferred from a new 2K master, in a ratio of 1.37:1 and in 1920p x 1080p
with DTS monaural sound. The set also
features an audio commentary track supplied by film historians Lee Gambin and
John Harrison. The set includes a few
bonus trailers for other Christopher Lee films available from the Kino Lorber
library: The Crimson Cult, The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again, Arabian
Adventure, and House of Long Shadows.