Countess Dracula

Countess Dracula is a curiously dull and understated little costume drama starring the luscious young Ingrid Pitt as a cinematic stand-in for Elizabeth Bathory, the seventeenth-century Hungarian vampiress who killed around six HUNDRED commoner wenches so she could bathe IN THEIR BLOOD (cue blood-bathing theme music). She died around the year 1614, reputedly after being walled up alive in a room of her Castle Csejthe. Her servants, underlings, accomplices, and whatnot (those who actually perpetrated the hideous torture killings) fared far, far worse, I can assure you.

Lizzie Bathory, like Lizzie Borden hundreds of years later, would go on to become a cult celebrity, a real-life Queen Boogeywoogie, the stuff of legendary fairy tale nightmares. Whether any of the legends about her, or the subsequent accusations, trial, and punishment, were, in the strictest sense, true, is a whole other enchilada. Perhaps a bloody one.

This movie, a Hammer Horror Unhit (or maybe it was), was released on a double bill with Vampire Circus, another curious British vampire flick from the same era, and one not much more memorable, if at least substantially more entertaining.

Pitt stars as Countess Elizabeth, whose husband dies in the war, and who is angered at not inheriting all the land in his legacy. She is also tiffed about the natural progression of time, and when she discovers that by dousing herself with a little blood, she can regain a semblance of her youth, she sends her daughter Ilona (Lesley-Anne Down) off to be tormented by peasants and then gets right down to perpetrating the many murders her historical inspiration is credited with.

Captain Dobi (Nigel Green), a dashing, Cossack-like martinet with a beard and a curled saber, who looks as if he was popped from the bottom of a Christmas tree and relieved of the duty of his position cracking walnuts, aids her in this undertaking, as does Julie (Patience Collier). Fabio (Maurice Denham), a historical scholar and alchemist and bearded old Wise One who bears a striking resemblance to Nostradamus, suspects the weird vampiric witchy-poo but doesn't come into the picture until about the middle of the film when it's rather too late to stop the helter-skelter. Imre Toth (Sandor Elès), a dashing young lieutenant in the army, begins an affair with the Countess, who, in her young and comely form, passes herself off as her own daughter. Daughter, we remind you, is being held hostage by peasants in the haunted, corpse-strewn forest.

The movie is deadeningly slow-paced, and I've seen mold spring to the surface of a cheese Danish left on the counter for a month faster than the pace, plotting, or whatnot that infuses this picture with half a volt of energy. It's talky and lethargic and seems to take forever to get from point A to point Z. Do you want a fun, frolicking fright fest, fam? This exercise in celluloid boredom ain't what you're looking for.

Oh, I suppose the costumes are top-notch. The sets are wonderfully authentic-seeming, and the cinematography is, for the era, up to snuff. The dialogue is adequate for its purposes (but nothing stands out), and the sight of Ingrid Pitt's twin globules of dirty delight bathed in coursing rivers of karo syrupy red and brown stage grue is rather, well, stimulating. (Also, the whore Ziza, played by Andria Lawrence, has a couple of the most mountainous mammalian mams I've seen outside of the era of silicone implants.)

The scenes where Elizabeth grows back into her wretched old self when the blood-fix wears off are not nearly as frequent and grotesque as they should be. (Although the makeup job does make her bear a passing resemblance to my favorite AI-powered humanoid robot, the very lovely Ameca, who looks and sounds, despite the assurances of her designers to the contrary, like a white English woman.)

The ending has a shocking, lingering, haunting, and dream-like feel; nasty and wicked. But on the whole, the film seems like a monotonous nightmare. It was directed by Peter Sasdy, from a script by Alexander Paal and Jeremy Paul, based on an idea by Gabriel Ronay, and adapted from an uncredited book by Valentine Penrose. Jeez Louise, Sailer. Someone should have told these guys that too many cooks spoil the soup, no matter how churning and bloody the cauldron of broth. This particular slop smells as foul as the warmed-over corpse of a serving wench.

Countess Dracula (1971)

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