About Michael Edwards
Location: Dallas, Texas
Occupation: Knife Sharpener
Bio: I was born in 1518, in the village of Glenfinnan, on the shores of Loch Shiel...and I am Immortal. (cough…cough) (You know, writing a silly origin like this makes me think of the time I was at a Star Trek Convention and saw a balding, overweight guy in a Starfleet Uniform on a stage say, “Hello, I am Captain Hochsteader from the USS Klondike.” I wanted so badly to say, “Noooo, you’re Melvin Goldfarb, Accountant from Plano.”)
Favorite movie: Hmmmm... It's a toss up between Schindler's List and Cabin Boy. (Kinda makes you wonder about my ability to review DVD’s don’t it?). Actually, if I use the criteria I used above of “never get tired of watching…etc…”: The Road Warrior, The World According to Garp, Creator, Terminator 2, Somewhere in Time (If I wanna get reaaallly weepy)
Greatest video game accomplishment: Buying and beating the first ever home PONG game. Haven’t really played much else… Well, there was the time I died on the first level of MediEvil. Or the time I died at the beginning of Resident Evil. Of, course my favorite was dying while playing Tetris.
If you could have any one superpower, what would it be?: The power of Super Speed. There just never seems to be enough time to do everything I want to get done. And I can never get anywhere fast enough. (However, this would have to be combined with certain degrees of Super Agility and Invulnerability so as not to have to wear Band-aid Brand Nuclear Knee-Pads.)
Posts: 427
More from this author
Turning this review for the recent DVD release of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula into a biography of sorts for actor Christopher Lee would end up making it far too large of article to read. I could go on for pages and pages telling you about Lee’s career, but instead I’ll let you look him up on the Internet yourself. If you don’t know who Christopher Lee is, you have no right to even watch movies… ever. I will, however lightly mention that at 85, Lee has an immensely impressive career as an actor having portrayed the famed Count several times in films dating back to the 1950’s as well as enjoying newly found fame playing villains in two of the most highly anticipated Trilogy’s of the last decade.
Today class, we travel back in time to the wonderful year 1970. It is a time that brought the world Black September, the floppy disk, Charles Manson’s conviction, bar codes, and the completion of the World Trade Center. It was also a time where Christopher Lee once again donned the cape of the feared Count Dracula, though not for Hammer Films. This time he was lured by the charismatic Spanish director Jess Franco, who promised a film that would be more faithful to Bram Stoker’s novel than had ever been done before. While this turned out to not quite be the case, Jess Franco’s Count Dracula was at least a little less sexual in nature than his most famous film, Vampyros Lesbos.
With Jess Franco’s Count Dracula, Franco actually pulled together a fairly decent telling of the Dracula legend and utilized a fair number of real castles to help offset the expenses that would have been incurred by building sets. However, it was the lack of budget that also hurt the film by not allowing for decent special effects. Everything from blood to bats to boulders looks pretty bad and detracts from what could otherwise be considered and elegant looking film. The main saving grace of the film is the earnest performances by most of the lead actors. Of course Lee stands out amongst the cast, but I also have to hand it to actors Herbert Lom as Van Helsing and Klaus Kinski as Renfield. Kinski delivers an especially manic performance considering it is all delivered with body language as opposed to dialogue.
Dark Sky Films has recently begun to release ‘classic’ horror as well as cult films that may not have seen the light of day in decades. Jess Franco’s Count Dracula is such a film in that it has only been available in VHS format, with copies that look horrible. The transfer here, while not perfect, is surely the best available. They have also taken the time to collect a few extra features to add to the disc’s value, including a lengthy interview with Franco and a text only feature about actress Soledad Miranda. But the best and easily most unusual extra offers audio of Lee reading passages from Stoker’s original novel. These are read over the video of photos and runs nearly 90 minutes.
Jess Franco’s Count Dracula is far from the best movie ever made about good old Vlad, but admirers of Lee’s body of work are certainly in for a treat if they take the time to drink in this nearly forgotten classic.
