High stakes

Count Dracula

(1977)

I don't as a rule blog made-for-TV productions, but this has been a Grail for me for 30+ years, since I first saw it as a PBS Halloween import. And while I confess that it has a thicker rind of '70s BBC cheese than I would like--many of the visual effects, most of the music, and all the musical effects are pretty awful--I'll stick with my initial assessment that it is the best dramatization of the story I've ever seen, with the best and sexiest Dracula (Louis Jourdan), the best Van Helsing (Frank Finlay), maybe the best Mina (Judi Bowker), one of the best Lucys (Susan Penhaligon), and the only Renfield for whom the adjective "subtle" is even remotely appropriate (Jack Shepherd).

It also features the best and sexiest--damn near pornographic--feeding scenes, and a couple of brilliant sequences, one that appears in the novel (Van H defending Mina from within a circle of crumbled consecrated Communion host from the three sister vamps) and one that doesn't (the Count confronting Van H & Harker and engaging them in a brief but toothy philosophical debate in which he implies that those who would not be vampires must embrace vegetarianism) not dramatized elsewhere.

It was, in short, worth waiting what seemed like several undead lifetimes to get my hands on a video version.