Monster of the Day #1169

Updated on June 18, 2015 By Ken Begg 15 Comments

This really should have been yesterday’s, as this foreign version was made in 1953, five years before Return of Dracula. Like Mexican vampire films made 15 years later, this movie was *cough* heavily influenced by the Universal Dracula films. However, it might be the first film to show a vampire with fangs; indeed, the initial shot of the film is a close-up of a pointy-toothed Count.

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  • Flangepart

    Dracula’s Dentist: “Floss! Have you any idea how hard it is to work around dried blood?”

  • Gamera977

    Renfield! What did I tell you about napping in my favorite recliner?!?

  • CaptNemo

    Terence Stamp always makes that face around people with hair.

  • Eric Hinkle

    It feels odd to see a scene from a Mexican horror movie of this period and not have a masked wrestler sweeping in to pound on the vamps.

  • bgbear_rnh

    We needed a Cuban Dracula played by Desi Arnaz and Lucy could play uh, Lucy.

  • Luke Blanchard

    This is DRAKULA ISTANBUL’DA. I only learned about it a few days ago. I’m watching it now. It seems to be a well-made film, like a 50s French film stylistically.

    Technically, Count Orlock in NOSTERATU is fanged, but not canine-fanged. Did one ever get a good look at the throat wound left by the vampire in pre-Hammer vampire films? A single wound might imply the filmmakers assumed the vampire used his front incisors to make the wound and then sucked the blood. I’ve always assumed canine-fanged vampires draw the blood up through their teeth, like mosquitoes through their stylets.

  • Luke Blanchard

    There’s a 1985 Cuban cartoon called VAMPIRES IN HAVANA. I think I’ve only seen a bit of it. Apparently it’s set in the 30s during the rule of Gerardo Machado. My recollection is it ends with the victory of “the revolution”, but Wikipedia has a detailed summary which doesn’t mention that element of the climax. A sequel appeared a decade ago.

  • Eric Hinkle

    “But Ricky, I didn’t mean to leave your coffin lid open right in front of an east-facing bay window.”

    “I don’t want no excuses, Loosey, tomorrow I’m mind-controlling a Renfield to take care of that from now on.”

  • Eric Hinkle

    So, a Turkish vampire movie? It’d be interesting to see their take on Vlad Tepes.

  • Luke Blanchard

    The film is credited as based on a novel by Ali Riza Seyfioglu called KAZIKLI VOYVODA, which I think means “Duke Impaler”. The novel was apparently an adaptation of DRACULA in which the location of the London part of the action was changed to Istanbul.

    The plot of the film follows DRACULA fairly closely for most of its length – it has the Lucy part of the story, and a sequence where the vampire hunters render the coffins in Dracula’s hideaways in Istanbul unusable – but it drops the asylum/Renfield aspect of the story and goes its own way in its final quarter-hour.

    It’s not very explicit that the film’s Dracula is supposed to be the historical Dracula, but the connection is made a couple of times. In an early scene, when he’s entertaining the Harker-equivalent at his castle, he refers to his ancestor “Voyvoda Dracula Bey”. “Count Dracula” is used in the dialogue in the inn scene.

    The locals in Dracula’s country wear traditional costume and are superstitious. The lady innkeeper and her friend are Christians who constantly cross themselves. The Turkish characters are all modern people.
    I watched the subtitled version of the film at Internet Archive, which I hope is in the public domain. I don’t completely trust the translation as it has spelling errors, including inconsistent spelling of Dracula’s name. There’s a bit where the Harker-equivalent tells the lady innkeeper he has faith in his own God and displays a charm. I think he says “Allah”, and that the charm is a nazar boncuğu. But in the rest of the film Dracula is fought with garlic.

  • Flangepart

    Ah…what would happen to defeat an Islamic Vampire? Hummm…reminds me of the joke in

    The Fearless Vampire Killers. A Jewish vamp crawls through the windo, she holds up a crucifix, and he says ‘Boy, have you got the wrong Vampire!”

  • bgbear_rnh

    Seal Team 6?

  • Luke Blanchard

    I misidentified the charm, and used the wrong term. I thought it was an anti-evil eye amulet, but it’s a muska, a type of triangular amulet that contains a text from the Koran or a prayer. I can’t make out the central design, but I don’t think it’s an eye. A nazar boncuğu is a type of eye-like bead amulet.

    A page I found on KAZIKLI VOYVODA says the characters make use of the Koran in the novel, but I didn’t notice that in the movie. But one can miss details when one doesn’t know to look for them.

  • Rock Baker

    The Dracula actor looks rather like Ray Walston, making this shot come across as a halloween episode of My Favorite Martian!

  • Flangepart

    “These strange earth holidays. Never could see the use of fangs, when a knife and fork works just fine…”