Count Yorga, Vampire
June. 10,1970 PG-13Sixties couples Michael and Donna and Paul and Erica become involved with the intense Count Yorga at a Los Angeles séance, the Count having latterly been involved with Erica's just-dead mother. After taking the Count home, Paul and Erica are waylayed, and next day a listless Erica is diagnosed by their doctor as having lost a lot of blood. When she is later found feasting on the family cat the doctor becomes convinced vampirism is at work, and that its focus is Count Yorga and his large isolated house.
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Wonderful Movie
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
Another Dracula film in all but name, "Count Yorga, Vampire" was one of quite a few early-1970s reworkings of Bram Stoker's novel. 1970 alone includes two Dracula sequels from Hammer Films, a Jesús Franco Dracula and a Dracula-esque picture called "Jonathan." "Count Yorga" doesn't distinguish itself in any interesting ways from this pack. A low-budget production, it updates its bare-bones reworking of Stoker's story to the then-present of about 1970 and resets the action in Southern California. That's preferable compared to Franco's pitiful attempt to remain faithful to the source despite a lack of funds.Although made and set during the Sexual Revolution, the film is more misogynistic than Stoker's Victorian-age novel, as the film treats women as victims, and men perform the action and do most of the talking. One of the women goes on for a while about how much she likes the Count and is defensive about the size of her posterior. Another one becomes hysterical during a séance, and then she's hypnotized by the Count into submission. The producers also submitted the film to several cuts to receive a more favorable MPAA rating, and the result is a film that is tame in blood and sex compared to its contemporaries, including the Hammer series and Franco's films, especially, as for sex, his tellingly-titled "Vapyros Lesbos" (1971).The dead cat scene, however, has been restored, and it may be the best part here. Erica is essentially the Lucy character from Stoker's novel, in which Lucy, after turning into a vampire, feasted on children. A cat gets the same point across, and it's one of the more disturbing depictions of Lucy's vampiric behavior ever filmed. The lesbian scene while the Count watches and the implied rape by Yorga's servant are cut too short to be as shocking.A blood transfusion, like in the novel, is also performed. The doctor here plays both Stoker's Seward and Van Helsing types. Roger Perry's performance is off-putting. He plays with Erica's hair in her medical appointment with him, but he's not otherwise presented as creepy or perverted in the way, say, Anthony Hopkins's Van Helsing is in the 1992 Dracula movie. And, he's otherwise conceited and stupid. When arguing for the possibility of the existence of vampires, he haughtily shouts, "But can you prove that vampires don't exist?" I don't care if he smokes a lot and has some naked, randomly-introduced and quickly-forgotten clingy chick in his bed, he's not cool. Meanwhile, Robert Quarry's Count is almost too suave in the tradition of Bela Lugosi (as opposed to the more anti-social Dracula from Stoker's book); his disdain for rudeness nearly prevents him from avoiding the sunrise in one scene.Instead of any wolves, there's Rin Tin Tin, although it's not laughable as with the use of German Shepherds in the more faithful adaptations of Franco's 1970 film and the 1974 TV movie by Dan Curtis. The audio includes some bad ADR, including an extensive sequence of long shots where two of the guys walk the streets talking. Worst of all is the candle-lit, non-explicit erotica in a van. It's even worse than the love scene in the 1979 dime-romance-novel "Dracula." The ending isn't bad, though. Although the Count isn't as smart as he pretends, and he's weak for a vampire, at least crosses are less effective here than in the Hammer series; the Count laughs maniacally when the Doctor tries to hold him off with one.
It's good to see Count Yorga again after years of no see. It's a better film than I remembered it to be. A GOOD Vampire film - fun to watch.Count Yorga is playing a spirit medium to help a girl speak to her recently deceased mother. She brings a group of her friends to help with and to be witness at the séance Count Yorga is conducting. What they don't know but will find out the Count is a good hypnotist and eventually suspect him of being a real Vampire! This one I would recommend to fans of horror and Vampires. It's a makes for a great late night film. It's got enough eeriness and jump scares strategically placed to have you leery of the shadows on your walls.9/10
There's something compelling about this vampire movie that I find kind of hard to explain. One reason for that is that in some significant ways the movie isn't very good. The rock bottom budget is really evident in a number of scenes, from the lighting to the sloppy camera work. It's also kind of slow and surprisingly dry with its tone. Yet here and there one can find some competence, some of which is intriguing enough that you keep watching the movie despite its shortcomings. Actor Robert Quarry, for one, makes a pretty good vampire, giving his character intelligence and elegance while at the same time showing he is a formidable threat. The climax is also pretty memorable, and there are a few other scenes (like when the protagonists try to keep Yorga around for sunrise) that come across as pretty original. While I wouldn't call this a classic vampire movie, it does have enough offbeat touches to make it worth a look for B horror fans.
1970's "Count Yorga" is one of those movies that some how manages to be both cheesy and yet, spooky at the same time. The film opens with a coffin being unloaded from a ship, onto a truck and I think anyone who's seen these types of movies before knows what that means. From there, we meet Donna, her friends, boyfriend, and the mysterious Count Yorga, who possesses great power and knowledge concerning the occult. Eventually, our characters find out that Yorga is no mere mortal, but instead one of the undead. From there it just gets better and better, as our heroes realize they must destroy Yorga before he turns Donna into the undead. The movie has plenty of cheese in it and as such there are scenes where you can't help but burst out laughing. Yet, the movie has a lot going for it as well, like the capable direction and writing of Bob Kelljan, the certain charm that the overall look of the movie has, despite the low budget, and some creepy and disturbing scenes like the woman who, after being bitten by Yorga, decides that eating her cat is a good way to get some iron. But the thing that really makes the movie so good is Robert Quarry's performance as Count Yorga. His presence is so strong that he is able to rise above what ever flaws there are of the film and portrays Yorga as someone who is charming and intelligent, but underneath is something that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. Also, its interesting to see the first vampire movie that was able to successfully update the vampire to a modern setting like Los Angelos. If you love vampires like I do, I highly recommend this movie for your collection. And remember, as the narrator says in the beginning of the movie, "if one is superstitious, even on a small, seemly insignificant level, one must be vulnerable to all superstitions, conceivably even those of vampires".