Tendre Dracula (1974)
Directed by Pierre Grunstein

Film Review

Heaven alone knows what led Peter Cushing to lend his artistic credentials to what has come to be regarded as one of the worst French movies of all time.  Could it have been a long suppressed yearning to play a vampire (something he had so far been denied in his long association with horror)?  Did he see in the film an ironic assessment of his own career and thwarted aspirations?  Or was it simply the once-in-a-lifetime prospect of spanking a sexy nude French actress (Miou-Miou) on his knee?  As Cushing rarely, if ever, commented on his less successful films, we shall never know, but it is nonetheless amusing to ponder what could possibly have induced him to take the lead in the free-format horror abomination that is Tendre Dracula, a.k.a. La Grande trouille.

At the time, Cushing's long-running association with Hammer, the British company that had almost cornered the market in low-budget horror for almost two decades, was coming to an end.  Unable to keep up with more realistic and viscerally shocking horror offerings from the United States, Hammer was in a state of terminal decline and would soon cease its film making operation altogether.  Perhaps realising that he was too closely associated with one company and a dying genre, Cushing (like his Hammer partner-in-crime Christopher Lee) was easily persuaded to try something new.  In some cases, the gamble paid off handsomely.  In others, it didn't.  Tendre Dracula is a good example of the latter.  It was to be one of Cushing's least popular films.

To be fair to Cushing, he may have been expecting something akin to Roman Polanski's Dance of the Vampires (1967), a sophisticated horror spoof that had received critical acclaim.  Unfortunately, comparing first-time director Pierre Grunstein with Mr Polanski is rather like comparing an unruly six-year-old with absolutely no artistic aptitude whatsoever with Leonardo da Vinci.  Grunstein never again wrote or directed a film again after this - and the reason is self-evident - although he did lend his support, in the capacity of executive producer, to an astonishing series of French films, including Julian Schnabel's Le Scaphandre et le papillon (2007) and many Claude Berri productions, such as Jean de Florette (1986).

Grunstein's aptitude as a screenwriter and director may be questionable but Tendre Dracula is one of those cinematic oddities that somehow manages to be more than the sum of its parts and is hard to dismiss out of hand.  True, the plot makes next to no sense and offers but the lamest of pretexts for two attractive young actresses to run around stark naked for at least a quarter of the film's runtime, getting gorily hacked to pieces as and when the need arises.  (After this, you'll swear Jean Rollin is a master of restraint.)  Yet, despite the staggering quantity of ineptitude that impinges on just about every area of the production (the worst atrocity being a number of 'songs' that threaten to cause your cranial cavity to spontaneously implode) there is something strangely fascinating about the film.  It's an exercise in complete, unashamed artistic abandonment, and no one seems to be remotely troubled by the fact that the end result is going to be messier than an explosion in a custard pie factory.

Cushing (who was dubbed by Jean Rochefort in the French version of the film) certainly doesn't seem to be aware that he is festering in a mire of mediocrity.  He positively revels in playing a character with a severe case of identity, unsure whether he is a vampire masquerading as an actor or an actor playing a vampire.  The actor who is so quietly spoken and gentlemanly in his Hammer films is uncharacteristically strident and cynical here.  "The amateur", his character sighs disparagingly when one of his guests shoots himself in the head.  This is not the Peter Cushing we know and love, but his deranged alter ego, the one that takes an obvious satisfaction in spanking French actresses and makes bad jokes about his servants cutting off bits of their anatomy.  "Such a blow to his manhood", he quips.

On reflection, it is somewhat surprising that Tendre Dracula never became a cult favourite, given its abundance of female nudity, bursts of gratuitous sadism and totally off-the-wall humour.  Christopher Lee fared far better with his own Gallic horror fling a few years later, Dracula père et fils (1976), mainly because this film was made by someone with real talent (Edouard Molinaro) and had something which more than vaguely approximated to a storyline.  Whereas Molinaro's film enjoyed some success,  Grunstein's undisciplined monstrosity was just too weird even for a 1970s cinema audience (and this was the decade when cultural weirdness reached its zenith, on both sides of the Atlantic).  Ultimately what saves Tendre Dracula is the fact that there genuinely isn't anything like it.  Imagine, if you can, a Monty Python send-up of a Gothic horror film made under the influence of mind-altering drugs with the Marquis de Sade and Benny Hill acting as script consultants and you will have some idea how totally unhinged the film is.  It's a descent into pure madness.  Fangs definitely are not what they used to be.

Film Synopsis

For over twenty years the actor MacGregor has devoted himself body and soul to the horror genre.  Now, he has decided the time has come for him to try something different.  The star of a popular horror television series, he now wants to try his hand at sentimental romance.  Naturally, his producer is appalled by this turn of events and engages two scriptwriters to visit the actor at his home, in a last ditch attempt to persuade him to reconsider.  Accompanied by two attractive young actresses, Alfred and Boris turn up at MacGregor's remote Gothic mansion and immediately feel that they have walked onto the set of a horror movie, complete with sinister butler Abélard and deranged housekeeper Héloïse.  MacGregor is adamant that he will never play another horror role as long as he lives, and in their efforts to change his mind Alfred and Boris find themselves immersed in the weirdest of horror movie experiences...