Film Review
The film career of Les Charlots, one of the most successful musical
troupes in France in the 1970s, was definitely on the skids by the late
1970s and the commercial failure of their silliest film of the decade,
Les Charlots contre Dracula, was
very nearly the final nail in a pretty well-worn coffin. With
Dracula: Dead and Loving It
(1995), Mel Brooks showed how a vampire parody should be done
(essentially by ribbing everything that had gone before, but with
style), and next to this the Charlots' ramshackle comedy just looks
facile and cretinous. If there is any joy to be found in the film
it is only thanks to the inspired casting of Gérard Jugnot (as
the start of his career) as an evil but deliriously funny private
detective. In the early 1970s, Les Charlots had been box office dynamite,
attracting an audience of 7.5 million with their second film
Les Bidasses en folie (1971),
but by the end of the decade their appeal had waned considerably.
After their anaemic vampiric encounter, they made just three more
films.
Dora Doll, a popular habitué of French B-movies in the 1950s
(at her best in
La Rose rouge (1951) and
L'Envers du paradis (1953)),
springs up right at the end of the film for the predictably asinine
punchline - she is as wasted as Andréas Voutsinas, one of the
blandest Draculas cinema has so far given us (although, interestingly,
his appearance is much closer to Bram Stoker's original description of
the Count than the more familiar horror movie interpretations).
Amiable as they were, the Charlots were never very funny but here they
just look like a pathetic bunch of middle-aged men trying desperately
to get a laugh. Despite their best efforts,
Les Charlots contre Dracula manages
to be sporadically funny in places (hilariously so in a couple of
scenes) but, saddled with an idiotic plot that moves as fast as
one-legged zombie in the film's second half, it is a pretty bloodless
affair - maybe because no one involved in its production had any idea
what was at stake...
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
The son of the vampiric fiend Count Dracula is keen to follow in his
father's footsteps, but he can only do so if he drinks a magic potion
given to him by his doting mother. When the latter dies before
she can accomplish this task, the would-be vampire sets about finding a
double to take her place. To that end, he engages the services of
a private detective, Lepope, who finds a suitable candidate for
Dracula's substitute mum in Ariane, who runs an
antiques shop in Paris with her fiancé Phil and his friends
Gérard and Jean. Once Lepope has succeeded in abducting
Ariane, her three enterprising rescuers set off on a long train journey
to Rumania, arriving finally at the castle of Count Dracula...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.