Count Dracula is a
British television adaptation of the novel
Dracula by
Bram Stoker. Produced by the
BBC, it first aired on
BBC 2 on
22 December 1977. It is among the more faithful of the many adaptations of the original book.[citation needed] Directed by
Philip Saville, it starred
Louis Jourdan as Count Dracula and
Frank Finlay as
Van Helsing.
Lucy Westenra's sister
Mina bids farewell to her fiancé
Jonathan Harker, who is leaving for a business trip.
Harker, a solicitor, is travelling to Count Dracula's castle in
Transylvania to expedite his purchase of
Carfax Abbey and other properties in
England.
At the door of the castle, Count Dracula himself welcomes
Jonathan.
Abandoned by superstitious locals, Harker was forced to accept a lift there from an anonymous passing coachman. Jonathan agrees to stay for a month to help the
Count with his
English. Dracula is urbane and gracious, but also vaguely sinister, and casts no reflection. After a series of disturbing events, Harker explores the castle, finds the Count asleep in a coffin, and tries (ineffectually) to kill him with a shovel.
In England, Mina and
Lucy go to the seaside town of
Whitby. Among their friends are Quincey
Holmwood (
Lucy's American fiancé), and
Dr. John Seward, who owns a local asylum. Among Seward's patients is the madman
Renfield, who worships and fears Dracula. Mina and Lucy witness a storm in which the foreign ship '
Demeter' goes aground, and later a local is found dead. Mina follows a sleepwalking Lucy to the local graveyard and glimpses Dracula holding her in his arms. Lucy thereafter grows pale and weak; at night in her bedroom, Dracula drinks her blood. Jonathan meanwhile turns up delirious and weak in a convent in
Budapest.
Seward calls on his friend
Abraham Van Helsing for help with Lucy's strange illness. Although Van Helsing recognizes the symptoms and protects her bedroom with garlic, a wolf shatters the room's window; the shock kills Lucy's mother, and Lucy is found pale and nearly dead.
Seward and Holmwood both accompany Van Helsing to Lucy's grave. A bloodied Lucy approaches, and attempts to entice Holmwood, but is forced to flee from Van Helsing's crucifix.
Later in the tomb, Holmwood drives a wooden stake into Lucy's heart. Van Helsing fills her mouth with garlic and cuts off her head.
Harker, Van Helsing, Seward, and Holmwood all go to Carfax Abbey to sterilize Dracula's refuges - boxes of native earth - with
Christian artefacts. Renfield realizes Dracula is now visiting Mina, and seeks to warn her and Dr. Seward. In revenge, Dracula kills Renfield, who just manages to warn the others. They rush to find Mina in her bedroom, drinking blood from Dracula's chest. Dracula vanishes as they enter. Van Helsing touches and sears the hysterical Mina's forehead with a piece of communion wafer, which scars her until Dracula dies
.
In the United States, the film was shown as part of
PBS's
Great Performances anthology series.[1].
Critical reaction to the film has been mostly positive. Writing in
The Guardian,
TV critic Nancy Banks-Smith stated it was "A nice plushy production
with much galloping off in all directions and sulphurous smoke effects, a pleasant sensation of space and time and money.
Something of a
hole in the middle though, like a vampire after remedial treatment." She was less positive about the casting and performance of Louis Jourdan, however, which she felt "
...emphasised the lover at the expense of the demon. It makes a change. Though, I would say, for the worst."[3]
Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV said that "Count Dracula remains one of the best-ever adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel" despite a "couple of missteps", remarking that "the cast is excellent", in particular praising the performances of Frank Finlay and Louis Jourdan, whom he calls "especially good."[4] Critic
Steve Calvert agreed that Count Dracula was "one of the better versions" of
Stoker's novel, calling it "perhaps even the best." He felt that "few actors have ever played the role [of Van Helsing as] convincingly" as Frank Finlay, that "without doubt, [
Jack Shepherd is] the best on-screen embodiment there has ever been of the fly-munching Renfield", and remarked of Jourdan's performance, "[His] Dracula ... exudes a quieter kind of evil. A calculating, educated evil with a confidence and purpose all of its own.
- published: 15 Nov 2015
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