Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Unusually authentic, and effectively scripted, for a filmed work from a written work. Some unusually good choices such as a handsome and charming Count which leads to other useful, relevant choices of desire vs terror.But... it is 1977 BBC. Video interiors, film exteriors. Hideous VFX. Strange musical cues, and long stretches with no audio. Oh the posterizing! It's horrible! Oh, and pretty poor sound quality, with no subs on the DVD I got, so often hard to tell what anyone is saying. If I didn't already know what was up, would be hard to watch.Would love to see this exact script remade by someone. In the current TV era, it seems like it would go awfully well. Stretch to 4 hours or so and make a week of it, or a streaming binging series.

LOUIS JOURDAN, for all his charm and elegance as an actor, does nothing to increase his acting reputation with his lackluster portrait of the evil vampire count. Moreoever, despite the attempt to tell "all" of the Bram Stoker tale, the end result is bound to disappoint any fan of Dracula expecting real Gothic horror or suspense.The production has the sort of trimmings you'd expect from a BBC made-for-TV movie produced in the late '70s, but it plays more like a stuffy Victorian melodrama without a sharp focus on the heart of the tale, the count himself. Instead, it treats all of the subsidiary characters to a close inspection (including Renfield), and gives us a Dr. Van Helsing who is unabashedly overplayed by FANK FINLAY in the worst sort of "watch my acting" way. Not since Paul Muni hammed up the role of Chopin's tutor in A SONG TO REMEMBER ('45) have I seen the camera hogged by such a big slice of ham. Furthermore, JACK SHEPHERD plays Renfield with wild-eyed histrionics that defy any sort of reality the weird and unsettling character should have, possibly a fault of director Philip Saville. By contrast, Jourdan's Count Dracula is a study in subtlety.The cast is merely adequate, going through their paces without much flair or style, and the result is a tepid, passionless thriller which is supposed to be fraught with Gothic chills. After a promising opening full of the proper atmosphere, this is a sleep-inducing version which wanders too far and wide from the main thrust of the tale with a talky narrative that never really comes to life the way vampires are expected to.

This 1977 BBC miniseries, written by Gerald Savory and starring Lois Jourdan, is indeed most faithful version of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. However, the excellent story is told with all the anemic dullness of BBC Jane Austen adaptation. Sets, costumes and photography are dull and despite small budget, this lacks even camp charm - just like Judi Bowker's pale Mina , everything is decent but lifeless. 1992 version told the story with sumptuous imagery of Victorian and Gothic and (no pun intended) full-blooded life, so did Hammer's 1958 masterpiece, 1979 version was stylish and fun, and both Universals 1931 classics, English and Spanish, had atmospheric beauty. This pales in comparison to all of them.

When this PBS version of Dracula first was shown on TV it contained a scene in Dracula's castle where the "brides" were about to attack Jonathan Harker and Dracula walked in and stopped them. In place of Harker he offered them an infant to feast upon. At this point Jordan, as the Count, opened up a sack and withdrew a real, live infant, which he held up over his head and offered to the vampire brides to feed upon. All subsequent showings of Count Dracula had this scene edited out. This was part of Stoker's novel but, I suppose, censorship dictated that the scene should be omitted. I don't know if there is a full,uncut version of this PBS version, but, regardless, if you want to know what the original Stoker's Dracula was all about, attempt to get a copy of this PBS version.