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I’ve not seen a great deal of Spanish horror films, but if this film is any indication, sign me up! 

Directed by Leon Kimovsky, The Dracula Saga ( La Saga De Los Dracula) takes place in Transylvania, where Dracula (Narciso Ibáñez Menta) has invited his pregnant granddaughter Berta (Tina Sáinz) to visit.  Berta seems to have no clue about her grandfather Count Dracula’s reputation, though she does experience a twisted dream on the way to the castle, in which she finds herself menaced in the castle corridors by a human-sized bat.

When the superstitious townfolk refuse to take them directly to the castle, Berta and her husband Hans (Tony Isbert) are forced to stay in the village overnight.  During a walk in the woods they run find a partially clothed woman, passed out and weak with bite marks on her neck and chest.

Hans romances the chambermaid, who also bears the same bite marks as the woman in the woods, and the next day Count Dracula’s servant Gabor (J.J. Paladino) picks them up and takes them to the castle.  Berta insists on visiting the family crypt to pay her respects to her dead grandmother immediately, and is quite distressed to find crypts bearing the names of not only grandmother but Count Dracula and his two nieces as well.

The meal that the couple are served consists of a bloody rare steak and wine that looks like the typical Giallo style tempera paint blood of the 70’s, none of which appeals to the increasingly unsettled Berta. 

All appears well the next day when all of the family appears, Count Dracula and his new wife Munia (Helga Liné) and the two nieces Irina (Cristina Suriani) and Xenia (María Kosty), though all of them appear very pale and pallid in their complexion.  Berta continues to have nightmares even as Hans finds himself sneaking away to the passionate embrace of Munia, as the rest of the family watches from the stairwell.

The nieces seduce and attack the already unhinged local clergyman, and Berta realizes that she’s lost her husband to the dark family secrets, and we’ve not even touched on the strange guest in the upper room of the castle yet.

This was an enjoyable little Gothic take on Dracula, and the European flair for the vivid colors is very evident, the palette being similar to many Giallo films of the same time period.  There is one hilarious moment that I’m sure is meant to scare the audience as well as Berta; the typical horror film cliché of the cat jumping out and yowling loudly, but the cat is pretty obviously tossed onscreen from off camera, landing backwards on a table in a scene that had me re-winding to see if that really just happened.

The DVD presentation of The Dracula Saga boasts the most complete and un- cut version of the film ever available, though there are a few small issues here and there with picture quality, evidently an issue with the source material and nothing that distracts terribly from the film.  The bonus content includes censored versions of several scenes that eliminate nudity (created for the original theatrical run), but the film itself is intact.  The special features are rounded out by a selection of trailers from The Spanish Horror Collection of which this film is a part.

This was a great little film, though not scary at any point, it’s quite atmospheric and inventive with the traditional Dracula story, and a great call for fans of 70’s Italian cinema.

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