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.
© James Travers 2014
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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...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.