I Have Been Remiss...

Monday night, I watched the new FOX tv show Terra Nova...

I didn't HATE it, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be. The CGI wasn't top-notch and I've seen it compared to LOST, although LOST was much better, even in it's pilot episode than Terra Nova. I like the actors, especially Stephen Lang, who is very good at seeming to be a great guy, but you just never know what's going on behind those eyes...

Last night I watched Jess Franco's IL CONDE DRACULA aka COUNT DRACULA aka, etc., etc.

It's a 38 yr old film that if it had actually had it's biggest stars in scenes together, it would have been better and if the scene of the taxidermied animals was removed and it weren't so slow, it might have been great!

Christopher Lee has said that it's his favorite time playing Count Dracula.

He did get to portray Dracula much more accurately, as Bram Stoker had written the story, appearing as an old man at first, gradually growing younger and younger-looking as the movie progresses and he consumes more blood (although why he wasn't a lot younger by the time he got to London by boat and had killed all the crew, I have no clue, although that part of the story wasn't really discussed and Jonathan Harker just mysteriously got back to Professor Van Helsing's mental hospital in London and was being treated by Dr. Seward who was in Van Helsing's employ at the hospital, after Harker was found lying in a stream near Bucharest??? Ooookaaay...) and Renfield, played by the ever-creepy Klaus Kinski was in a huge, padded room (did they even HAVE padded rooms in mental hospitals the 1800s???), with a toilet-looking nook in the wall where he kept a small decorative box that he kept his dead flies and other bugs in so he could eat them at his leisure... ICK!

Griping continued... Lee & Lom weren't even in the same scene even though they looked as if they were, sorta, kinda... they filmed the scene as if they were interacting, but were acting with other people standing in for each other. Klaus Kinski was never in a scene with Van Helsing or Dracula...

Dracula's speech in the castle to Harker was very good, with quite a few other things in the castle being either totally accurate to Stoker's novel or doing a good job conveying that same feeling and Dracula growing younger through the movie was very much following the storyline.

Women in the 70s though, just killed me always fainting and gasping and being so naive.

Both ladies were lovely (portraying the Mina and Lucy characters) and the men were handsome (portraying Jonathan and Quincy).

Christopher Lee, as always, has a wonderful speaking voice and did a terrific job with the lines he was given.

Herbert Lom did a wonderful job as Van Helsing also. He has always been a favorite actor of mine. He is regal and can also be kind. His voice is also absolutely wonderful IMHO.

Klaus Kinski was very creepy as Renfield, without a lot of dialogue and although he was supposed to be screaming through a lot of the movie, you never SAW him screaming. The screaming was always off-camera.

I am glad that I saw the movie on rental dvd and to have heard in the extras the reading/acting out of a shortened version Bram Stoker's DRACULA was worth the rental on it's own!

I also enjoyed seeing and hearing Jess Franco himself in the extras, telling about the making of the movie.

Franco also played Van Helsing's servant in a role that was dubbed by someone with a cockney accent, but it was wonderful to see a director in a relatively large role in his own movie, not just in small cameo roles as Stephen King tends to do often in movies based on his books and as Hitchcock did, among other directors/writers, etc.

Well, I think I'm done for the day.

Creep out!

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