Hammer's Countess Dracula: Streaming Review

[@travisrygg3317]

R. I. P. Nigel Green, gone too soon and I only ever knew you from Jason and the Argonauts. I'm so glad to learn more from Dark Corners, thank you.

[@mooveeluver]

He was also good in The Impcress File with Michael Caine.

[@eddysgaming9868]

Same here. Classic film.

[@ajivins1]

Neyland Smith in a Fu Manchu, too. Plus one of those awful Dean Martin Bond rip-offs.

[@behindthescenesphotos5133]

Little John in Sword of Sherwood Forest

[@SamuelHandsaker]

He's great in Zulu

[@sb7984]

A better old age makeup than a lot of modern movies!

[@spennybullen2178]

Ingrid Pitt's commentary on the Network Blu-ray is well worth a listen.

[@theelvisguru9490]

I had the pleasure of meeting Ingrid Pitt . She was a class act and a lovely person

[@shannondore]

I love this flick. Anything with Ingrid Pitt is a winner in my book. She was stunning.

[@GutMuncherZero]

Ingrid always stands out, too. I loved the title sequence - wish they had enacted those images in the movie itself.

[@reignfire85]

I still remember learning about Bathory from an old book on real-life murderers throughout the ages (I always liked the blurb about the king hearing of her alleged witchcraft against him and losing his temper on her cousin before marching an army on her castle).

[@captainape6807]

I have read both pro and anti- stances on her. I can't really say that I know what to believe. However, I've sort of adopted a somewhere in the middle approach, that she was probably bad but had her deeds greatly exaggerated. The same goes for Gilles De Rais. There are opposing views on the guy. So basically I've read a lot and come away not really knowing anything.

[@thhomasppp]

SOUND OF HORROR '65 is an obscure Pitt/Soledad Miranda horror film w. an invisible monster. Pitt made another obscure one which I love: The OMEGANS" 1968

[@andrewyoung2796]

Thought s on where eagles dare?

[@thhomasppp]

@@andrewyoung2796 Fine film; the guy who jumped out of the plane at the end was the judge in BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW & the top Nazi general was the vampire in R Polanski's vampire film.

[@Randall1001]

Holy %$#@ I never realized Ingrid Pitt was in "Sound of Horror." That movie used to pop up on Monster Movie Matinee every once in a while when I was a kid back in the 70s. I had a strange liking for it then. Maybe it was Ingrid. :-) It's not a very good movie, but it warrants a re-watch now and then.

[@varanid9]

@@Randall1001 I could make a more professional looking movie with my phone today, but, in spite of its ludicrous ("no way we can afford a decent looking dinosaur") premise, it's a seige movie that manages to create some effective tension, rather like the (relatively) better "The Killer Shrews".

[@varanid9]

@@Randall1001 I never realized Ingrid Pitt was in it either, until now. Now I will have to rewatch it.

[@thehashisheater]

crazy you guys upload this today, I just watched it for the first time last night. it's probably the only watchable film based on Elizabeth Bathory!

[@andrewyoung2796]

I bet Robin was saving this for autumn

[@JamesBurrTV]

"Daughters of Darkness" was a good movie, which also featured Bathory, I think? Also reviewed by Dark Corners at some point.

[@briang9581]

You missed an opportunity to ask your dad if drinking the blood of virgins can return someone to their youth. It's actually you dressed as him sitting in the kitchen. You look into the camera and say, "Nooo!"

[@Bigbadwhitecracker]

Maybe yes?

[@eddysgaming9868]

Ha-ha. There's a missed opportunity.

[@moose6509]

I´d watch Ingrid if she was reading the shipping forecasts......

[@helenj4902]

I have never heard of this movie but so excited to watch it now!! 🍿🍿🍿

[@JeffreyDeCristofaro]

Ingrid Pitt and Nigel Green - what a team-up!!!

[@char1737]

After your review I also found it on Tubi along with quite a few hammer films

[@robertchamberlain3481]

I always enjoyed Nigel Green's performance in "The Ruling Class" (1972), and he has a fine, scenery-chewing performance as the villainous Count Massimo Contini in "The Wrecking Crew" (1968), fortunately the last film in the Dean Martin as Matt Helm series that butchered Donald Hamilton's novels. But "The Wrecking Crew" at least includes Elke Sommer, Sharon Tate, Nancy Kwan, and Tina Louise as well as Chuck Norris in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him part for his first film role. (Norris has quite a good part in the subsequent "The Way of the Dragon" in 1972.) I have not yet seen Green's final film, "Gawain and the Green Knight" (1973), but I just learned it is on KZbin.

[@Philbert-s2c]

I've been wanting to watch this for a while. Guess I'll give it a shot this week.

[@txlyons2937]

I loved the gypsy belly dancer in the tavern. You could tell she really knew what she was doing, and she had some great moves.

[@MorristheMinor]

Have to say Nigel Green was excellent in anything he did, I remember him mainly from his appearances in The Avengers.

[@goodowner5000]

Nigel Green was great! I've read that he was in serious contention for the role of Rasputin in the Sam Spiegel/Franklin J. Schaffner epic "Nicholas and Alexandra", I love what Tom Baker did with it ultimately but would've loved to see Green's take. The two films were around the same time- I wonder if the scheduling was the conflict?🤔

[@MorristheMinor]

@@goodowner5000 Interesting point, because if Tom Baker hadn't been in Nicholas and Alexandra, would he has been cast in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad? Because it was that film that Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts, who ran Doctor Who, saw him in and decided to ask Tom to a casting secession for the role of the Fourth Doctor. Now what would have happened if that didn't take place??????

[@CreightonChaney-io4xv]

Love Ingrid Pitt I remembered doing a report on the Blood Countess in high school and I passed with flying colors 🖤

[@Katia_Targaryen]

I've watched this movie 3 x or more. I love the sets and costumes. Gothic just the way I like it. 🖤🖤🖤

[@anthonysarkis1422]

I actually like the Countess Dracula, one of my favorites 70s hammer films

[@fredbergstrom4866]

I think Hammer was making great original stuff in the 70s

[@iDEATH]

I watched this one earlier this year, and it really is the cast that makes it worthwhile. In the end I quite enjoyed it, due to those players, despite it's shortcomings in other areas. It felt a bit like it couldn't decide if wanted to be something like a character study or not, maybe?

[@heidifedor]

Geneviève Bujold was the original Captain Janeway for like a day.

[@mcdent6034]

Love this one, thanks Robin

[@connorbrennan4233]

I absolutely agree about the film needing more horror. The inclusion of the love story feels so much like the film is just sticking to formula.

[@HotDogRock]

I loved this one. I love when gothic horror is costume drama with lots of excellent acting. Great vibes.

[@BigSlimyBlob]

More bloodhounds? I know a guy.

[@travisrygg3317]

And garlic?

[@BigSlimyBlob]

@@travisrygg3317 I also know a guy... but he keeps his garlic in unsanitary places.

[@rynehall9990]

I saw this on Chicago TV around freshman year 77 thereabouts.

[@Jim_Stark]

i thought it was an entertaining movie. anything with Ingrid Pitt is worth checking out.

[@eddysgaming9868]

It's Hammer. Meaning great sets and casts!

[@ItsRMFL]

Ingrid Pitt is a giga babe and underrated in horror history. Also "sound of horror"

[@thrashpondopons8348]

Sound of Horror! (Thank you IMDB!)

[@DarkCornersReviews]

Correct!

[@ashleys9397]

If I'm not mistaken (or am I?), the lubricious Ms. Pitt appeared in the '65 Spanish-made THE SOUND OF HORROR, which featured an invisible prehistoric monster. It was noisy.

[@DarkCornersReviews]

Correct!

[@TheRealNormanBates]

it was invisible, but not inhearable.

[@ashleys9397]

@@TheRealNormanBates Invisible, yes. But still freakingly funkadelic.

[@rickdrais9737]

Well, even though Hammer could run the exploitation route, it’s to their credit that they didn’t try to make her into an actual vampire in the film.

[@ssatva]

This feels like a stealth "The Substance" tie-in

[@janetcraft]

Thank you for this review :)

[@itowmyhome797]

Thank you

[@artamussumatra6286]

Ingrid Pitt rules.

[@thrashpondopons8348]

So essentially 'Leech Woman' with an Historical backdrop!

[@ethanreynolds3522]

This is better then Leeth Woman.

[@danielgehring7437]

Which is kind of ironic, considering Leech Woman takes obvious inspiration from the original story, which is hundreds of years old.

[@thrashpondopons8348]

@@ethanreynolds3522 indeed!

[@thrashpondopons8348]

@@danielgehring7437 good point!

[@LaDracul]

I am not surprised this all happened after everyone made disparaging comments about her looks...

[@georgecoventry8441]

That looks like a pretty good one!

[@MrBartleby451]

Nigel Green was brilliant in The Ipcres File and in The Face of Fu Manchu

[@buzzawuzza3743]

I understand her frustration with having her voice dubbed by another. I've been threatened with the same thing as my friends and I plan our first film. They want me to sound like Charleton Heston but my natural speaking voice is closer to Gilbert Gottfried.

[@euansmith3699]

I would love to hear your rendition of, "FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!!!"

[@TheRealNormanBates]

Now I desire to see a fan dubbed *Planet of the Apes* where Cheston sounds like Gilbert Gottfried. "Somewhere out there, there has to be something better than Man."

[@seanb.6793]

Damn! Gonna start paying for virgin blood! 😂

[@euansmith3699]

Apparently, Gary Rich (Radar O'Reilly in M.A.S.H.) played the role of 2nd Boy in this film. It is a shame that Nigel Green couldn't stick around for at least a couple more decades; he was fairly magnet when on screen.

[@dngillikin]

Radar O'Reilly was portrayed by Gary Burghoff, not Gary Rich.

[@euansmith3699]

@@dngillikin 😲 That'll teach me to do more research 😄👍

[@NGMonocrom]

Honestly, back when it was made, this film was a mild reflection of the horror that awaited attractive young women. Nowadays we call it Hitting The Wall. And, if made today it would be anything BUT mild. It would be a horrendous reflection of what awaited all of the young, privileged, party-girls of the current generation who do whatever they please, treat people almost as cruelly as the main character of the film does, and have no care in the world as long as men fawn and drool over their looks. Basically, things have gotten much worse since the film was made.

[@bpark222]

Man those hammer women, and yes, sound of horror, it was just on one of those local horror hosted shows, it was like an Italian production. And poor Elizabeth Bathiry, her infamous legacy created by apocryphal tales created by her political enemies.

[@tskmaster3837]

If Carmilla is based on the historic story of Bathory, except with added lesbian vampires then why did Hammer do a supernatural version of the Bathory story, without lesbian vampires... in the middle of their lesbian vampires phase? My brain hurts.

[@julietfischer5056]

_Carmilla_ is a vampire story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. It's not based on Bathory.

[@tskmaster3837]

@@julietfischer5056 And Dracula isn't based on Vlad Tepes. It's based on the historic story of the man, son of Dracul. But it'd still pretty damn weird for Hammer to do a supernatural Vlad Tepes story in the middle of their Dracula cycle, right? Called "Son of Dracul"?

[@julietfischer5056]

@@tskmaster3837- Not sure of your point, unless it's 'all fictional characters are 100% based on identifiable real people' or that Le Fanu was incapable of imagining a woman as vampire without Elizabeth Bathory as an example. It's not as though people had told stories of vampires and other night creatures of both sexes, right? Yeah, couldn't be that. Stoker changed his character's name from Count Wampyr when he found the sobriquet 'Dracula' during his research on Transylvania, and may have added a few bits from Vlad's life to the novel. That's the _only_ reason people try to link the Wallachian prince to the fictional count. By your logic, _The Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ is the fictionalized story of Ed Gein.

[@varanid9]

"Sound of Horror", (coulda sworn it was "Terror") a Spanish film from the early '60s, I believe. Always thought the title would have been better for a slasher film about a deranged Julie Andrews running around the Swiss Alps butchering beer wenches.

[@DarkCornersReviews]

I think it goes by a few titles but Sound of Horror is the one we reviewed it under.

[@jim40135]

I think it was called, "Ingrid and the Invisible Dinosaur"... 🤔

[@fredbergstrom4866]

I always liked this movie. Most Hammer fans rate it very low.

[@franzferdinand2]

I do still have a soft spot for 70s Hammer, even if you could palpably feel the desperation for a success.

[@louisduarte8763]

I won't complain if this movie has nudity in it. It did come out during Hammer's Hotter and Sexier period.

[@majingojira]

THE SOUND OF HORROR! I only know this because I spent the Covid lockdown watching every Dinosaur movie and documentary I could. That one was pretty bad. But even so, I kinda want to see a subtitled version.

[@DarkCornersReviews]

Correct!

[@noahbody9747]

I've seen the movie a couple of times and yes the title is totally misleading. Someone saying 'Countess Dracula' does not a vampire film make. And really, did anyone call her that when she was caught (of course all films about real people are tweaked by the film makers).

[@dannystaton5386]

Greetings 🎉

[@CassandrashadowcassMorrison]

The Sound of Horror

[@DarkCornersReviews]

Correct!

[@beedubs230]

A rare misstep from Hammer in that era.

[@skylx0812]

Puff the Magic Dragon Doobie. ...an that came from my own brain and because the 60s, I guess ✌

[@wadeheaton123]

I LOVE me some Ingrid Pitt! 😈

[@notshapedforsportivetricks2912]

All of the yellow and blue in the thumbnail made me think that it featured Marge Simpson.🙃

[@calvinfranklyn5499]

This currently has 666 likes. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but please no one else like this. 😈

[@toddgault]

Was the film Sound of Horror?

[@DarkCornersReviews]

Yes it was

[@andrewyoung2796]

"' she may ask for special favors"'-irony

[@danthsmith]

Pitt is brilliant but it's a weak Hammer. Vampire Circus is a good one from the Hammer experimental phase

[@DanDoty-i5n]

CD is a good movie, I'm in no way putting it down. But the plot reminds me of THE LEECH WOMAN.

[@RavenHouseMystery]

Would that film be Sound Of Fear? When it comes to Countess Dracula, I do find the film to be underwhelming. Thanks to your review, I have a much better idea why it was.

[@DarkCornersReviews]

Yes it would be.

[@midwestmonster9886]

The village woman calling Elizabeth "Countess Dracula" makes no sense. The historic Dracula was not a blood-drinker / blood-bather and the novel Dracula would not be written until after Bathory's death. It's just shamelessly tacked on to justify the title.

[@richardjones4466]

One of Hammer's dullest horror films!

[@MephProduction]

the voice dubbing is really distracting

[@FailSonOfAnarchy]

2:52 Jumping off points for bloody ser pieces are tight!

[@Inpreesme]

Thank you