Faced with a depletion of virgins in the Transylvanian countryside, a pouty, worried Count Dracula is impelled, at the urging of his spit-and-polish valet, to take leave of his home in search of virgin blood ("But I can't leave my family down in the crypt," he whines). And so he is off to Italy, where Catholicism holds a firm hand over virginity; but unluckily for the Count, at the rundown estate where he alights, the surly, liberated handyman (Joe Dallesandro) has been getting into the maidens' beds and putting radical ideas into their heads ("Don't you know what happened in Russia, you dope? They had a revolution, that's all"). Paul Morrissey's free translation of the staple vampire story, moving draggily through a very talky exposition, plays the same angles as his version of Frankenstein. But in the earlier film the sexual twist to the familiar goings-on was a bit more imaginative than the Count's orgasmic blood-suckings; and the class-conscious political vision of weak, spoiled aristocrats and hardy, abused laborers was allowed to leak out a bit more slyly. In all areas, it's hard to overlook the losses from Frankenstein to Dracula — fewer interesting characters, fewer special effects, and no 3-D. Still, Udo Kier is a consistently amusing actor; and in his grousing, his groaning, his coughing, and his vomiting, he creates the sorriest, neediest, most sympathetic vampire in movies. Co-starring Vittorio De Sica, and briefly, Roman Polanski (undoubtedly as a form of tribute to this director's own vampire comedy, The Fearless Vampire Killers). (1974) — Duncan Shepherd
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