Going in to 1970’s Count Yorga, Vampire, the thing to remember – and the reason why it sometimes flies under an alternative title, The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire – is that it was originally destined to be a vampire movie of a softcore persuasion, at least as much about tits as teeth.
It explains odd moments when the focus shifts from the matter at hand – an update on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story, in all the key essentials – and on to female flesh. There isn’t that much of it, to be fair to the film, which took its swerve away from the carnal early in the production process, at the point when Robert Quarry came on board as the Count. Nipple-hounds will have to suckle elsewhere.
Director Bob Kelljan gets things up and running with opening shots at the LA docks, where a large crate is being craned out of a ship’s hold and on to a pickup truck before being transported down the freeway to an eventual destination in the hills around Los Angeles. From here the Count will launch a familiar campaign against pretty young women in the vicinity.
He does this by offering his services as a leader of seances, and has soon drummed up a following in Erica (Judy Lang) and Donna (Donna Anders) and their partners, Paul (Michael Murphy) and Mike (Michael Macready).
Much as in the Stoker story, the women are the prey while the men are the disbelieving onlookers whose loved ones eventually fall victim to the Count’s predations. Here, the men turn for help to a local doctor, Jim Hayes (Roger Perry), who in turn is being advised by a Doctor Schteingarten. Schteingarten is a Van Helsing figure we never see whose offscreen-only presence probably reflects a nervousness about copyright infringement.
Kelljan, a TV director who’d go on to have many a Starsky and Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard and Charlie’s Angels on his CV, starts us off, in the opening moments at the docks, with the suggestion that he’s going for a handheld, crash-edit French New Wave vibe, before an efficient, TV style of directing takes over. By the end, disappointingly if you found the original style refreshing, things have have changed again and become a lot more gothic – crucifixes, candles, bits of plush velvet, a lot more Hammer.
The Count is similarly trad – urbane, pale, hair swept back, elongated canines, red-rimmed eyes. And a cape – “I brought a cape” he says to his hostess as he’s preparing to depart the séance where we first meet him, a line Quarry delivers with an amused and amusing deadpan. He makes a good vampire.
It’s an American International Pictures production, an outfit that essentially made movies for drive-ins. So the budget isn’t massive. This actually works in the movie’s favour when it comes to atmosphere. As Paul and Mike are repeatedly told by Dr Jim that vampires exist and that they should all be heading off to the Count’s lair to stake the vampire through the heart, the meat-and-potatoes everydayness of the shooting style puts us more on side with disbelieving Paul and Mike than with the good doctor. Kelljan also uses his budget well, too, using silence here and there as a way of building up tension, though Bill Marx’s slinky soundtrack of discordant strings really helps up the intensity at key moments (fun factoid: Marx is the adopted son of Harpo Marx).
There’s not much in the way of special effects. Some prosthetics on the face of the Count’s Igor-alike lumbering henchperson Brudah (Edward Walsh), a bit of white powder for the Count’s face, some fake teeth and more prosthetics for neck wounds, it’s clear a whole lot of money has not been spent.
That is the charm of it, the way it punches above its budget. And the way it could so easily have been a lame, smutty Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice Meet the Vampire but then decided to go down the horror route instead.
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
