Title aside, Countess Dracula is not a vampire at all. The screenplay is inspired by the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian countess who murdered hundreds of girls in the late 16th century, ostensibly to bathe in the blood of virgins to keep her youth, or so the legend goes. This isn't a faithful retelling, however, but an original take on the legend with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dimension to it. Polish-born actress Ingrid Pitt, fresh from playing the bloodsucker Carmilla in The Vampire Lovers (1970), made her second Hammer appearance as the Countess Elisabeth Nádasdy, though you wouldn't recognize her when she enters the film under ridges of prosthetic wrinkles and old age make-up. She's an aging widow burying her husband (how many Hammer films have so set the atmosphere by opening with a funeral?) and bitter over how he has split the inheritance between her and their daughter Ilona (a very young and innocent-looking Lesley-Anne Down), who had been sent to Vienna years before. There is no mention of why she was sent away--it was ostensibly for her education in the cultural center of Europe--but Elisabeth's disdain for human life (she doesn't flinch when her carriage cripples a peasant in a horse-drawn hit-and-run) and the controlled fury of greed and envy she shows at the reading of the will suggests it may have been for the girl's own protection, just one of the unspoken suggestions woven through the film.
Pitt's reputation has more to do with her voluptuous appearance and frequent nudity than her acting chops but she's really rather effective as Countess Elisabeth, blithely cruel and vindictive as the wrinkled dowager ferocious and renewed with a lusty passion after the blood of serving girl restores the bloom of youth to her shriveled cheek. The serving girl disappears that night, after a visit to the chambers of the Countess, and the next morning a young beauty "arrives" at the castle. Elisabeth has taken over the identity of her daughter Ilona and has arranged for the real Ilona to be kidnapped and held hostage by a mute henchman in a forest cottage. The youth effects are short-lived, of course, so a steady parade of victims is necessary to maintain the transformation, and she's abetted by her loyal nurse (Patience Collier) and Captain Dobi (Nigel Green), the Castle Steward and her longtime lover. It's not just her own youth she desires, however. She's obsessed with handsome young Lt. Imre Toth (Sandor Elès), who served with her husband and was rewarded in his will with horses and the manor stables. So he sticks around, much to the resentment of Dobi (Nigel Green). With the Count's death he expected no challenge to her affections.
The explanation for this crimson fountain of youth is tossed off with some rather unconvincing ancient text discovered by Master Fabio (Maurice Denham), the castle historian. Though little more than a plot device in the script, Denham makes Fabio a delightful character and a respite from the scheming around him. Even better is Green, a grand old character actor whose wounded dignity and bruised sense of honor makes Dobi almost as dangerous as Elisabeth, as well as just a little sympathetic.
Countess Dracula belongs to Hammer's erotic horrors of the seventies that began with The Vampire Lovers (1970) and continued through Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971), among others. And sure enough, there are plenty of moments of topless spectacle. But where those films follow a familiar plotline of bloodlust and erotic awakenings, Countess Dracula weaves a fascinating pattern of complicity, jealousy, and blackmail among the central quartet that gives the routine plotting a fascinating subtext.
Dobi resents the competition of Imre but serves the Countess faithfully nonetheless, securing her supply of young virgins while plotting to undermine the affair. Julie, Elisabeth's personal maid, is even more faithful to her mistress, little realizing that Elisabeth has imprisoned the real Ilona. And when Imre finally learns the truth about the Countess, he's neatly blackmailed into remaining her sexual slave. The four of them keep up the façade of normalcy as bodies are uncovered and the conspiracy is on the verge of collapsing under the Countess' obsessive escalation of killings and increasingly feral bloodlust.
Hungarian-born director Peter Sasdy, the most interesting of Hammer Studio's directors in this era of transition, brings a perverse psychological weirdness to the film, twisting and intertwining conflicting motivations and overwhelming emotional drives into a spiral of self-destructive acts that are far more fascinating than the usual battles of good and evil. He suggests the depraved atmosphere in the opening scenes, as the peasants hiss "devil woman" and "witch" when Elisabeth rides by. And he luxuriates in the Hammer style, with castle sets filled with period detail and color, village locations populated by hearty characters, great costumes, and of course streams and splashes of blood jumping out of the image.
Countess Dracula was previously available on DVD on an Ingrid Pitt double-feature with The Vampire Lovers from MGM. The film was originally cut for the U.S. market and received a PG rating, but it received an X certificate in the UK for the nudity and blood, and that version was restored for the non-anamorphic letterboxed DVD and for the new remastered Blu-ray. (Pitt was dubbed for the film by a British actress, but it's so well engineered that you'll only notice if you compare the voice with Pitt's other film appearances.) The color is strong and vivid and the image clean and sharp, a fine edition that should satisfy Hammer fans.
The disc includes the brief new featurette "Immortal Countess: The Cinematic Life of Ingrid Pitt," a routine but informative survey of her career with the usual suspects showing up as commentators (Ms. Pitt passed away in 2010), and an audio archival interview with Pitt that runs about nine minutes (but doesn't discuss this film). Carried over from the DVD is commentary with director Peter Sasdy, co-writer Jeremy Paul, and star Ingrid Pitt, moderated by Jonathan Southcott, and there is an animated still gallery.
By Sean Axmaker
