Despite its B-movie status I have coveted this Hammer Horror title for two years. All I needed was one chance to make it mine. It first came up for sale on the 8mmforum a couple of months ago, but I had two concerns. First, the print was priced higher than it has been in the past. Second, the sound was in German! This meant I'd have to re-record. Since I don't yet possess this skill, paying $$$ for the English remix would escalate costs! WTH, I went for it.
The print reached the remix expert in Los Angeles, from Germany. Just when the seller, me and the remix guru thought all was good, my luck changed. Where a naked-eye-visual-inspection had revealed a good pre-triped print, audio tests on the GS-1200 revealed an inferior, flaking and most likely post-striped magnetic tracks. I was told to expect a poor remix with "rumbles" in the audio, so my ears prepared for thunder. All that money, and I wasn't going to get a good print.
But there is such a thing as a 'happy ending'. I transfered the print from two 800-footers to one 1600-footer, this means I don't have any reel changes. How is the sound? It is .... now what's a good adjective to use to describe sound mixing .... hmmm ... let's use the standard American one .... the sound is amazing! The 'rumbles' were hardly thunderous. And, there were fewer 'rumbles' than I'd anticipated. And, the rumbles didn't mask any dialogue. This is the best audio in my film collection, maybe 'Goldfinger' is slightly better, ah, 'El Cid' had good audio too.
How is the movie? We'd recently watched F. W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' so the story was fresh in our heads. Sometimes slight deviations from the familiar are good news, so we were happy to see a few "liberties" being taken. Where Murnau gave us a Count we felt sorry for, here Hammer creates an evil Count. Where Orlock dominates screen-time, here Dracula plays second-fiddle to Dr. Van Helsing. Several beautiful women appear in brief but pivotal roles, so the various female characters actually move the story forward. And, the 82-minutes run-time keeps the movie rolling along. What fun!
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