"Dracula and Son" is a light and amusing, if sometimes seemingly aimless, vampire comedy. It's the last of nine Dracula-esque movies starring Christopher Lee in the titular role that I've seen, and I think that's all of them. Of the nine, this one strays the furthest from Bram Stoker's novel; indeed, it's only mention of "Dracula" is in the title. Just like Dracula stars Bela Lugosi and John Carradine before him, his career in the role ends in parody. I think Lee comes off a bit more dignified here than Lugosi in, say, "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), let alone the Ed Wood stuff, or Carradine in "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966) and the later "Nocturna" (1979). Regardless, "Dracula and Son" is better than some of the Hammer Dracula movies Lee made, let alone the pathetic 1970 Franco adaptation he starred in.
In this one, Lee's Count sires a son (after, humorously, conceiving in a coffin), who ends up being something of a failure at following in his father's footsteps. Some of the film's best gags spring from the son, Ferdinand (Really, is that the best name they could come up with?), having difficulty learning the ways of the vampire, from his father yelling at him when a child to finish drinking his blood, to donating his own blood as replacement for a vat of plasma he accidentally ruined when caught trying to steal from a hospital. Not that Father doesn't have his own misfortunes, such as when he bites into a rubber sex doll under the misconception that it's a real woman. My favorite jokes, however, are those self-reflexively based on Lee's real-life star image. In the film, after leaving Transylvania, the Count becomes a movie actor in England, and, naturally, it's in the role of a vampire. Unlike in other Dracula movies, the Count in this one is quite photogenic.
Speaking of vampire lore, I like that this film didn't adopt from the Hammer films vampires vulnerability to running water. And, their death by sunlight--something also absent from Stoker's novel--is played out here ad absurdum, with the vampires scouring for sewer entries when without their coffins as daybreak approaches. Another Hammer trademark, a makeshift cross is employed here once in an amusing scene where Romanian communists make one out of a hammer and sickle. Even the reincarnation romance, a device I detest in other Dracula movies (the 1974 and 1992 "Bram Stoker's Dracula" ones, i.e.), works fairly well here. For one thing, it gives the film some much-needed plot development in its later part. And, it develops into a quasi-Oedipus complex with a love triangle involving the Count and his son. More related to Stoker's book, Ferdinand's befriending of other immigrants and minorities in France is an interesting, although somewhat poorly developed, twist on Stoker's xenophobic invasion plot.
By the way, I saw the original version and not the American butchered copy that others have decried. Beware, however, if you're a native English speaker like me, good luck finding translations for the majority French-speaking part of the film (some scenes are in English). I relied on bad auto-translations and two years of university French that I've since forgotten.
(Mirror note: This one is thankfully consistent with vampires not casting reflections, a point that's important in the last of the film's three mirror scenes. The other two scenes are of the mother vampire crying when she discovers she has no reflection and of a prostitute screaming when she discovers Ferdinand to have no reflection in a ceiling mirror above a bed.)
In this one, Lee's Count sires a son (after, humorously, conceiving in a coffin), who ends up being something of a failure at following in his father's footsteps. Some of the film's best gags spring from the son, Ferdinand (Really, is that the best name they could come up with?), having difficulty learning the ways of the vampire, from his father yelling at him when a child to finish drinking his blood, to donating his own blood as replacement for a vat of plasma he accidentally ruined when caught trying to steal from a hospital. Not that Father doesn't have his own misfortunes, such as when he bites into a rubber sex doll under the misconception that it's a real woman. My favorite jokes, however, are those self-reflexively based on Lee's real-life star image. In the film, after leaving Transylvania, the Count becomes a movie actor in England, and, naturally, it's in the role of a vampire. Unlike in other Dracula movies, the Count in this one is quite photogenic.
Speaking of vampire lore, I like that this film didn't adopt from the Hammer films vampires vulnerability to running water. And, their death by sunlight--something also absent from Stoker's novel--is played out here ad absurdum, with the vampires scouring for sewer entries when without their coffins as daybreak approaches. Another Hammer trademark, a makeshift cross is employed here once in an amusing scene where Romanian communists make one out of a hammer and sickle. Even the reincarnation romance, a device I detest in other Dracula movies (the 1974 and 1992 "Bram Stoker's Dracula" ones, i.e.), works fairly well here. For one thing, it gives the film some much-needed plot development in its later part. And, it develops into a quasi-Oedipus complex with a love triangle involving the Count and his son. More related to Stoker's book, Ferdinand's befriending of other immigrants and minorities in France is an interesting, although somewhat poorly developed, twist on Stoker's xenophobic invasion plot.
By the way, I saw the original version and not the American butchered copy that others have decried. Beware, however, if you're a native English speaker like me, good luck finding translations for the majority French-speaking part of the film (some scenes are in English). I relied on bad auto-translations and two years of university French that I've since forgotten.
(Mirror note: This one is thankfully consistent with vampires not casting reflections, a point that's important in the last of the film's three mirror scenes. The other two scenes are of the mother vampire crying when she discovers she has no reflection and of a prostitute screaming when she discovers Ferdinand to have no reflection in a ceiling mirror above a bed.)