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Dracula's Curse

Dracula's Curse

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: INTERESTING VARIATION
Review: DRACULA'S CURSE is a made for European TV updating of the classic Bram Stoker novel. Director Roger Young has some imaginative sequences and in spite of a rather mediocre cast, the film modernizes the novel interestingly enough and it provides few scares but an interesting cerebral horror experience. Hardy Kruger Jr. (son of Hardy Kruger of "Hatari") is a little wooden as Jonathan Harker, but his performance is earnest. Patrick Bergin isn't compelling enough as Dracula, but he's not horrible, he's just had so many other actors to compare with. The rest of the cast (other than International favorite Giancarlo Giannini) is made up of unknowns (at least to most American audiences) but the guy who plays Quincy is interesting, and the young lady who plays Lucy is beautiful and quietly seductive. All in all, not a bad rendition of this overkilled vampire.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A contemporary telling of Stoker's tale.
Review: Dracula's Curse, while by no means a great film, is a reasonably laudable attempt to put a contemporary spin on Bram Stoker's classic story. This Italian television production retains all the main characters of the novel, but switches the main action from England to Budapest. A group of young friends led by Jonathan Harker (Hardy Kruger Jr. who strongly resembles his actor father) encounter the enigmatic Vladilov Tepesh (Patrick Bergen)who solicits Harker's help in discreetly procuring a house in Budapest for his "uncle" Count Vladilov Tepesh. Harker travels (by sports car!) to the uncles castle in Romania to complete the deal. At this point the film follows the events in Stoker's novel fairly closely. Harker is met by a mysterious coachmen and taken to the castle where he meets the elderly Count, an "old world" aristocrat who is revealed to be a centuries old vampire (along with his three "brides"). From here the events move to Budapest where the now younger Count Tepesh (it's now apparent that the Count and his nephew are one and the same) vampirizes first the luscious "wild girl" Lucy (Muriel Baumeister), then the moral "good girl" Mina (Stephnia Rocca). Lucy becomes one of the undead and the group, led by Dr. "Vallenci" (a neat word play on Van Helsing, played by Giancarlo Giannini) hunt her down, then go after the Count - whom Dr. Vallenci informs the group is known by another name: Dracula! I won't go into the rest of the film, so as not to spoil it for those who wish to see it. I will say that Patrick Bergen's performance is rather effective, particularly when he's the elder Count. In closing I thought this was a generally solid version of the classic story - given that it's a television production with that mediums limitations.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Truly wretched
Review: I've now placed this "film" on my personal Top 10 worst list. If horribly slow dialogue and bad acting stimulates you, then you might enjoy this excrement. The stiff who plays Harker (Hardy Kruger Jr.) is so excruciatingly bad, he makes Keanu Reeves look like Sir Laurence Olivier. And then there's Dracula himself (Patrick Bergen). Someone should have maybe suggested to the casting director that the vampire should be scary. This particular Count was actually starting to remind me of the guy who played Larry on Three's Company. Of course, the special effects were typical B-movie caliber as well. What a surprise there. This drivel is enough to make horror fans begin to study the films of Julia Roberts. Stay away.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Truly wretched
Review: I've now placed this "film" on my personal Top 10 worst list. If horribly slow dialogue and bad acting stimulates you, then you might enjoy this excrement. The stiff who plays Harker (Hardy Kruger Jr.) is so excruciatingly bad, he makes Keanu Reeves look like Sir Laurence Olivier. And then there's Dracula himself (Patrick Bergen). Someone should have maybe suggested to the casting director that the vampire should be scary. This particular Count was actually starting to remind me of the guy who played Larry on Three's Company. Of course, the special effects were typical B-movie caliber as well. What a surprise there. This drivel is enough to make horror fans begin to study the films of Julia Roberts. Stay away.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Truly wretched
Review: I've now placed this "film" on my personal Top 10 worst list. If horribly slow dialogue and bad acting stimulates you, then you might enjoy this excrement. The stiff who plays Harker (Hardy Kruger Jr.) is so excruciatingly bad, he makes Keanu Reeves look like Sir Laurence Olivier. And then there's Dracula himself (Patrick Bergen). Someone should have maybe suggested to the casting director that the vampire should be scary. This particular Count was actually starting to remind me of the guy who played Larry on Three's Company. Of course, the special effects were typical B-movie caliber as well. What a surprise there. This drivel is enough to make horror fans begin to study the films of Julia Roberts. Stay away.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Interesting modern update of Stoker's Novel
Review: Originally aired on Italian TV as IL BACIO DE DRACULA (The Kiss of Dracula) as a mini-series, this truncated TV movie version is still worth a look for fans of Bram Stoker's novel.

The CGI effects and hit and miss acting are liabilities, but I found seeing several well known set-pieces from the novel updated to modern times quite interesting. There is also some beautiful location work.

Don't miss the deleted scenes section; the material shouldn't have been cut from the film and will delight those who know the novel well.

I'm unsure how much additional footage was cut from the mini-series version, but this movie does seem a bit disjointed at times so I'd like to see the intact mini-series sometime.

Dracula fans will want to pick this one up, despite its flaws.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not Just Dracula's Curse If You Buy This...
Review: Patrick Bergen plays Dracula, that should have been enough of a warning. Basically, its the same story that you have seen a bajillion times, set in contemporary Budapest.

The production values are low, the special effects are boring, the sound is bad and so is the acting. Very little blood is spilled so there is nothing here for gore fans. I'm giving this muck 2 stars because I think it was an honest attempt at making a movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent movie
Review: Since this is getting bad reviews, I wanted to share my opinion
This is not the typical dracula movie, and I agree with the other reviews that the acting could have been better, but I liked this one better than Dracula itself. The "scenery" was awesome, and the players beautiful. It's worth watching just to look at one of the main characters over and over. I thought it had a great story line, and wonderful ambience. And though it probably was a lower budget film, it didn't give off the "b" movie vibe to me.
This is definitely a movie I will watch over and over.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent movie
Review: Since this is getting bad reviews, I wanted to share my opinion
This is not the typical dracula movie, and I agree with the other reviews that the acting could have been better, but I liked this one better than Dracula itself. The "scenery" was awesome, and the players beautiful. It's worth watching just to look at one of the main characters over and over. I thought it had a great story line, and wonderful ambience. And though it probably was a lower budget film, it didn't give off the "b" movie vibe to me.
This is definitely a movie I will watch over and over.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: This is the 'short' version...
Review: This film is a fairly well-made and up-dated version of the classic "Dracula" - featuring excellent sets/locations with quite a few imaginative camera angles throughout... but to fully enjoy this production you really should seek out the full-length 3 hour (TV mini-series) version available in Europe.


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