"Dracula Père et Fils" was never an excellent film. At the most, it was a sometimes funny vampire satire with good psychological aspects out of the Oedipal conflict father/son and sociological criticisms concerning the immigrants, not so well treated in France.
But to be honest, I admit it was a bit of a deception. The film director Edouard Molinaro himself has lately called it a "failure", despite the fact he had succeeded in hiring Christopher Lee to incarnate ' the Count" (Dracula is never mentioned in the original version) opposing him to a totally different kind of an actor (Bernard Menez, who is actually very proud of this film). The concept here is quite similar to another unfunny vampire comedy "Tempi Duri Per i Vampiri" where Lee was opposed to Renato Rascel.
One should see this movie just to appreciate the almost perfect French accent of the British star who has almost entirely shot it in that foreign language.
Mister Lee has claimed on several occasions he did dub the English version.
I must be one of the rare French moviegoers to have seen the quite different American version and to be able to evaluate the mess they did on the soundtrack.
Most of the dialog has been changed to some ridiculous vulgar trash. The haunting music score by Vladimir Cosma has been misplaced or changed in favor of new music bits, supposedly to speed up the rhythm of the film.
But they didn't hesitate the butcher the editing either: from the 100 min. in its original form, they reduced it to 79. Not only they shortened it, but added some repetition of Lee opening a door and speaking to a concierge with several stupid accents. Not only unnecessary, but very dull! This scene was initially part of the story and is suddenly supposed to be an hilarious illustration of movie shooting. Appalling!
I have heard Roman Polanski had to suffer similar treatments on his masterpiece "Fearless Vampire Killers" (never try to compare this one to Molinaro's flick, by the way!)
Not every one has the talent of Woody Allen to transform a Japonese spy movie into a comedy as he did once (admitting it in a prologue) with "What's up Tiger Lily?".
In conclusion, here are two different films out of the same celluloid: "Dracula Père et Fils" is a not so good film worth seeing however. "Dracula and Son" is just awful and should be placed alongside with the Raymon Burr's version of "Godzilla".
But to be honest, I admit it was a bit of a deception. The film director Edouard Molinaro himself has lately called it a "failure", despite the fact he had succeeded in hiring Christopher Lee to incarnate ' the Count" (Dracula is never mentioned in the original version) opposing him to a totally different kind of an actor (Bernard Menez, who is actually very proud of this film). The concept here is quite similar to another unfunny vampire comedy "Tempi Duri Per i Vampiri" where Lee was opposed to Renato Rascel.
One should see this movie just to appreciate the almost perfect French accent of the British star who has almost entirely shot it in that foreign language.
Mister Lee has claimed on several occasions he did dub the English version.
I must be one of the rare French moviegoers to have seen the quite different American version and to be able to evaluate the mess they did on the soundtrack.
Most of the dialog has been changed to some ridiculous vulgar trash. The haunting music score by Vladimir Cosma has been misplaced or changed in favor of new music bits, supposedly to speed up the rhythm of the film.
But they didn't hesitate the butcher the editing either: from the 100 min. in its original form, they reduced it to 79. Not only they shortened it, but added some repetition of Lee opening a door and speaking to a concierge with several stupid accents. Not only unnecessary, but very dull! This scene was initially part of the story and is suddenly supposed to be an hilarious illustration of movie shooting. Appalling!
I have heard Roman Polanski had to suffer similar treatments on his masterpiece "Fearless Vampire Killers" (never try to compare this one to Molinaro's flick, by the way!)
Not every one has the talent of Woody Allen to transform a Japonese spy movie into a comedy as he did once (admitting it in a prologue) with "What's up Tiger Lily?".
In conclusion, here are two different films out of the same celluloid: "Dracula Père et Fils" is a not so good film worth seeing however. "Dracula and Son" is just awful and should be placed alongside with the Raymon Burr's version of "Godzilla".