- Dracula (1973 film)
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Dracula 
DVD coverDirected by Dan Curtis Produced by Dan Curtis Written by Richard Matheson Starring Jack Palance
Simon Ward
Nigel Davenport
Pamela Brown
Fiona Lewis
Penelope HornerMusic by Robert Cobert Release date(s) 1973 Running time 100 min. Country UK Language English
HungarianDracula is a 1973 television adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula written by Richard Matheson and directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis.
Contents
Plot summary
Natives in Transylvania seem afraid when they learn solicitor Jonathan Harker is going to Castle Dracula.
Jonathan shows up, and finds the Count abrupt and impatient to get things done. He reacts very strongly to a photograph of Harker's fiancee Mina and her best friend Lucy. After rescuing Harker from the Brides, he forces Harker to write a letter saying that he will be staying in Transylvania for a month. Harker climbs down the castle wall and finds Dracula's coffin, but is attacked and knocked out by one of Dracula's gypsy servants before he can stake Dracula. They later throw him in the lower levels of the crypt, where the Brides attack Harker...
The Demeter runs aground carrying only Dracula and the dead captain lashed to the wheel.
Soon after, Lucy begins to fall ill. Her fiancee, Arthur Holmwood, is perplexed and calls in Dr. Van Helsing. The doctor begins to recognize what might be happening, especially after Lucy walks out of her home at Hillingham and is found, drained, under a tree the next morning. Dracula, meanwhile, has flashbacks about a time when he was alive, when his wife (who is also the dead image of Lucy) lay dead in her bed and men had to restrain Dracula in his grief and rage.
Lucy's mother is in the room with Mina when Dracula comes calling the last time, a wolf shattering the window. Lucy soon rises from the dead, and comes to the window of Arthur's home, begging to be let in. Arthur does so, delighted and amazed that she's alive. This very nearly gets him bitten, but Van Helsing interrupts with a cross causing her to flee. They go to Lucy's grave and drive a wooden stake into her heart. When Dracula comes to the tomb later and beckons to her, he goes berserk upon finding that she's truly dead.
Mina tells Van Helsing about the news story about the Demeter and the boxes of earth, and about Jonathan going to meet Dracula to sell him a house. From these clues, Van Helsing and Holmwood go about finding all but one of Dracula's "boxes of earth" (containing his native soil, in which a vampire must rest). But back at the hotel, the vampire hunters discover Dracula is there, out for revenge. He has bitten Mina, and before their eyes forces her to drink blood from a self-inflicted gash in his chest. All that they love, all that is theirs, he will take.
The tracking of Dracula back to his home commences with Van Helsing hypnotizing Mina. Via the bond of blood, she sees through Dracula's eyes and discovers where he is headed.
At the Castle, Van Helsing and Holmwood find and stake the Brides. Jonathan—now a vampire, rabid and bloodthirsty—attacks Arthur and Van Helsing, but in the struggle is knocked by Arthur into a pit of spikes, and is staked.
The final confrontation with Dracula takes place in what looks like a grand ballroom. The crosses wielded by the two men are something Dracula doesn't seem to want to look upon. Dracula gets the better of them, ridding them of their crosses. But one of them manages to pull down curtains from the windows, so sunlight pours in. Dracula is weakened, finally going dormant long enough for Van Helsing to pierce his heart with a long spear.
They leave him there. Before the portrait of a living warrior Dracula, with Lucy's lookalike in the background, a text scrolls across the screen, about a warlord who lived in the area of Hungary known as Transylvania, and how it was said he had found a way to conquer death—a legend no one has ever disproven. The lord's name is DRACULA........
Cast
- Jack Palance as Count Dracula
- Simon Ward as Arthur Holmwood
- Nigel Davenport as Abraham Van Helsing
- Pamela Brown as Mrs. Westenra
- Fiona Lewis as Lucy Westenra
- Penelope Horner as Mina Murray
- Murray Brown as Jonathan Harker
- Virginia Wetherell (as Virginia Wetherall) as one of Dracula's wives
- Barbara Lindley as one of Dracula's wives
- Sarah Douglas as one of Dracula's wives
Deviations from the novel
- Dracula does not "youthen". Nor is he seen to be able to change his physical form or to have control over the weather.
- Jonathan Harker is turned into a vampire. (The same fate befell this character in the 1958 version of Dracula.)
- The characters of Quincey Morris, Dr. John Seward and Renfield are cut altogether.
- Van Helsing seems to be English rather than Dutch.
- Dracula believes Lucy to be the re-incarnation (or at least the physical twin) of his lost love. He is enraged when she is killed.
- Upon rising, the undead Lucy immediately seeks out Arthur.
- Dracula is killed by Van Helsing with a lance. Mina does not accompany Van Helsing and Holmwood to Dracula's castle, but she does accompany them to Transylvania.
Production notes
- Several plot elements of this adaptation were also present in the storyline about Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, specifically that Lucy was Dracula's lost love reborn. A similar idea was used in Bram Stoker's Dracula, but then it was Mina who became the reincarnation.
- The initial broadcast in October, 1973 was pre-empted for an address by Richard Nixon on the resignation of Spiro Agnew. Instead it was broadcast in February, 1974.
- Jack Palance also worked with Curtis in a television production of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which co-starred Denholm Elliott who also played Dracula in the BBC production of Dracula (1968).
- The production re-used music from the Dark Shadows series as well.
- Fiona Lewis also played a vampire victim in The Fearless Vampire Killers
- Jack Palance admitted to being glad once the film was completed. A method actor, he felt that he was "becoming" Dracula more than he wanted.
- According to the featurette on the DVD, Jack Palance had been offered the role of Dracula several more times after his first performance, but he turned them all down.
External links
- Online Review
- Transcribed Script online
- Dracula at the Internet Movie Database
- Dracula at AllRovi
Films directed by Dan Curtis 1970s House of Dark Shadows (1970) · Night of Dark Shadows (1971) · Dracula (1973) · The Night Strangler (1973) · Scream of the Wolf (1974) · Trilogy of Terror (1975) · Burnt Offerings (1976) · When Every Day Was the Fourth of July (1978)1980s The Long Days of Summer (1980)1990s 2000s Saving Milly (2005) · Our Fathers (2005)Richard Matheson Novels I Am Legend (1954) • The Shrinking Man (1956) • A Stir of Echoes (1958) • The Beardless Warriors (1960) • Hell House (1971) • Bid Time Return (1975) • What Dreams May Come (1978)Short stories "Born of Man and Woman" (1950) • "Blood Son" (1951) • "Button, Button" (1970)Screenplays The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) • House of Usher (1960) • "The Last Flight" (1960) • "Nick of Time" (1960) • "A World of Difference" (1960) • "A World of His Own" (1960) • Master of the World (1961) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) • "The Invaders" (1961) • "Once Upon a Time" (1961) • Night of the Eagle (1962) • Tales of Terror (1962) • "Little Girl Lost" (1962) • "Young Man's Fancy" (1962) • The Raven (1963) • "Death Ship" (1963) • "Mute" (1963) • "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963) • "Steel" (1963) • The Comedy of Terrors (1964) • The Last Man on Earth (1964) • "Night Call" (1964) • "Spur of the Moment" (1964) • Fanatic (1965) • The Young Warriors (1966) • "The Enemy Within" (1966) • The Devil Rides Out (1968) • De Sade (1969) • Duel (1971) • The Night Stalker (1972) • The Night Strangler (1973) • The Legend of Hell House (1973) • Dracula (1973) • The Morning After (1974) • Trilogy of Terror (1975) • The Martian Chronicles Mini-Series (1980) • Somewhere in Time (1980) • Jaws 3-D (1983) • Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) • "Button, Button" (1986) • Loose Cannons (1990) • The Dreamer of Oz (1990) • Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994) • Trilogy of Terror II (1996)Adaptations
by others"And When the Sky Was Opened" (1959) • "Third from the Sun" (1960) • Cold Sweat (1970) • The Omega Man (1971) • The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) • What Dreams May Come (1998) • Stir of Echoes (1999) • "Dance of the Dead" (2005) • "My Ambition" (2006) • I Am Legend (2007) • I Am Omega (2007) • The Box (2009) • "The Splendid Source" (2010) • Real Steel (2011)Categories:- 1973 television films
- British television films
- Dracula films
- Dracula television programs
- English-language films
- Films directed by Dan Curtis
- Screenplays by Richard Matheson
- Vampires in film and television
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