Cheap Countess Dracula / The Vampire Lovers (DVD) (Peter Sasdy) Price

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Customer Reviews of Countess Dracula / The Vampire Lovers

excellent in every way!!!!
MGM has done an amazing job of remastering these great films from 1970. These two films belong to the era when Hammer Films was trying to update their image by featuring nudity and more violence in their films. Both of them star sexy, enigmatic Ingrid Pitt. "Vampire Lovers" is the superior movie with good suspense sequences, very sexy scenes with Ingrid and Madeline Smith and a great cameo by the wonderful Peter Cushing. The transfer on this movies is amazing. It has never looked so good. It also restores a deleted scene cut by AIP that features full frontal nudity by Ingrid Pitt.
"Countess Dracula" is also a good Hammer Film. It is loosely based on the legendary Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory. It is less explicit both in terms of violence and nudity. It could easily carry a PG-13 rating today. It's worth seeing for some great supporting actors including a very young Leslie Ann-Down. The sets are very lavish for Hammer standards since they were left over from "Anne of a Thousand Days".
The DVD features some very interesting commentaries by directors and scrrenwriters. I'm usually bored by these commentaries, but I wasn't by the ones here.
This DVD is a true Hammer lover's dream and for such a low price!!!!!! Thank you, MGM!!!!!!!!!!!!

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High quality late-Hammer.
The under-rated Vampire Lovers is one of the better late Hammer films. Strong direction from Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit, Asylum) and a sterling performance from Ingrid Pitt combine to make this adaptation of LeFanu an eerie and sexy vampire film. It's much better than the previous Lust for a Vampire, which was sniggeringly directed by Jimmy Sangster, a great screenwriter but a lame director.

Countess Dracula was directed by the brilliant Peter Sasdy, the helmsman of the masterpieces Taste the Blood of Dracula and Hands of the Ripper. It seems that this film runs afoul of some rather superficial modern viewers who are amazingly impervious to its refined performances (Pitt is even more impressive here than in Vampire Lovers), intelligent script, and artistic and captivating direction: there are those who accuse both these films of possessing bad scripts, antiseptic cinematography, and perfectly awful acting. (Some viewers judge performances based on how believable the accents are. They must gush over Meryl Streep.) The measured pace may also throw some horror fans for a loop: for much of its running time, the film is more of a drama than a horror movie. While I don't rate Countess Dracula quite as highly as the Encyclopedia of Horror does, I have seen it only once and so I'm not in a position to compare it to the other two Sasdy films. That said, it is still the best movie meditation of the Elizabeth Bathory legend I've seen.

In short, this inexpensive DVD is a must for Hammer admirers.

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The best, such as it is, of Ingrid Pitt's Hammer films
The commonality between these two Hammer films is that they both star Ingrid Pitt, which means they are both driven more by eroticism than horror. "Countess Dracula" is really a metaphorical title because we are not talking about a true member of the Dracula family (or even a vampire for that matter) but rather a figure clearly based on the historic figure of the Countess Elisabeth Bathory, a 16th Century noblewoman who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth and whose legend is frequently cited in the historical basis for vampirism. In this 1970 film set in medieval Europe, the aging Countess Elisabeth Nadasdy (Ingrid Pitt), is a cruel ruler who discovers that when she washes in the blood of young girls it makes her young again. So she orders her lover, Captain Dobi (Nigel Green) to go out and find more of them. However, when the Countess starts pretending to be her own daughter, Ilona (Lesley-Anne Down), so she can go out and enjoy the company of the younger Imre Toth (Sandor Eles), Dobi gets jealous. Then the Countess discovers that her rejuvenation requires the blood of only virgins, and Dobi's job gets a lot more difficult.

The truth is that the main attraction here is Pitt's countess giving herself a bloody sponge bath, but there is a rather good moment involving a hairpin that stands out in terms of the Hammer films (this DVD package was temporarily withdrawn because "Countess Dracula" was erroneously rated "PG" and you can only wonder how many children were exposed to Pitt's self ministrations). How much you like this film will have to do with what you think about the makeup job on the Countess, because she keeps bouncing back and forth. The subplot with the young lovers Imre and Ilona generates no chemistry and therefore no real interest. In the end, what we keep coming back to is the bloody sponge bath, which becomes the raison d'etre for this film from director Peter Sasdy. This film has nothing to do with the Hammer Dracula series, but that hardly matters to those who like this film.

Much the better of the pair, "The Vampire Lovers," directed by Roy Ward Baker in 1970, is the first in the Karnstein trilogy of Hammer films, all based quite loosely on Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's story "Carmilla." The Karnsteins are a clan of vampires, represented in this version by a bunch of scantily clad women. Pitt stars as Carmilla, who also goes under the anagram names of Mircalla and Marcilla at various points in the story (yes, there is a story). The last of her clan, Carmilla is trying to rebuild, turning first to Laura (Pippa Steele), the daughter of General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing) and then Emma (Madeleine Smith), the daughter of Roger Morton (George Cole). Along the way she turns Mademoiselle Perrodon (Kate O'Mara) into a sexual slave. In the great tradition of Dracula and most other vampire films, Laura dies before anyone recognizes the marks of the vampire and then the goal is to save poor Emma from the same fate.

There is a lot in "The Vampire Lovers" that never makes much sense. Who is the countess (Dawn Addams) who travels with Mircalla? What is up with the black-clad vampire (John Forbes Robertson) who keeps hanging around? Supposedly Mircalla is the last of her clan, but maybe not. Mircalla keeps saying she loves her victims, but they all end up dead, which certainly does not help out her clan much. In the end it is clear that Hammer, aided and abetted by American International in this instance, was making a flat-out lesbian vampire film. As such, I can honestly say that you are not going to find a better one out there. Ironically, "The Vampire Lovers" ends up being more erotic than the vast majority of films featuring heterosexual relationships between the undead and their victims.