by JIM WNOROSKI
The last place you’d expect to see anemic nemesis of all red-blooded Americans, would be a court of law, yet, that’s just where you’ll find the old Count lying around, these days. Instead of Transylvanian sod, it’s bureaucratic red tape which hides him from the light of day, as the most authentic and horrifying version of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” ever filmed is kept there, hidden from the eyes of the American monster-loving public. Let’s let MONSTER TIMES contributing editor, Jim Wnoroski shovel all the graveyard dirt about what’s been happening as…
Bureaucracy coupled with legal ineptness and red tape has hit almost everything these days – from paying your taxes, to bringing that pair of red flannel underwear you got for Christmas back to Macy’s return counter.
And now after a long time without any of this bumbling or harassment, bureaucracy has come to monster filmdom, in the form of a lawsuit – a legal matter that may prevent moviegoers from seeing what could be the horror classic of the decade.
It all started about two years ago when England’s Tigon Studios producer Harry Allan Towers (THE CRIMSON CULT) commissioned Italian director Jess Franco to film the definitive version of Bram Stoker’s famous novel DRACULA, to be issued by the now-defunct Commonwealth United Releasing Company.
Franco and Towers brought together such international stars as Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Klaus Kinsky, and the inimitable Christopher Lee to portray Dracula. Using original Balkan settings and locations, the film company set many of their interiors in the original castles and courtyards that still stand today – places that like certain courts of law – still yet may be haunted by ghosts and demons from the past.
I was lucky enough to see this film, entitled THE NIGHTS OF DRACULA (LA NUITS DE DRACULA), over the past summer while on vacation in Paris, where it played to packed houses along the Champs-Elysees; the French capitol’s equivalent to our own 42nd Street.
The picture could aptly be Tabeled a masterpiece of atmospheric horror. Director Franco sticks closely to the Stoker novel for the first half of the film, bringing to life on the screen all the livid and almost indescribably feelings of terror – right down to the servant wolves baying to the blue lights of the shrouded Transylvanian forest.
Although the film bogs down somewhat in the later scenes, it is hard to shake the unnerving emotions one gets from seeing actual living bats swarming around a misty fog-enshrouded castle that you know is NOT the product of some Hollywood set designer. The sky that’s always gray, the buildings lifeless and lacking luster, and the damp and dripping darkness all seem to encompass and possess every act; making the motion picture’s dreary yet strangely fascinating subject matter come to total life in the dark theater.
But NIGHTS OF DRACULA (or simply COUNT DRACULA as it is called in Italy) will remain for a long time within the bounds of those two countries where it was co-produced.
Why? you may be asking yourself.
The answer is not all that simple, but the crux of the matter lies in American-International buying out Commonwealth United after it folded. Under the contract arrangements, all negatives in Commonwealth’s possession were to be turned over to AIP for release in the Continental United States; but Commonwealth did not come through with everything in their vaults – and among the films withheld for some unexplained reason was (you guessed it) NIGHTS OF DRACULA, along with several other foreign-made horror films with Christopher Lee, such as THE BLOODY JUDGE.
And so as the courtroom battles rage on ad infinitum and the red tape builds up to the Nth degree, horror enthusiasts sit around deprived of what is already considered to be a classic by most European fantasy film aficionados.
The question we raise here is simply this: “Why must the public continually suffer the torrent of grade “Z” cinema fare, when such fine films as THE NIGHTS OF DRACULA are just waiting impatiently in the wings – waiting for the tedious American court procedures to reach a final conclusion? The answer we hope will be forthcoming! As should be NIGHTS OF DRACULA.