Vampire films are usually very attractive: some of them are masterpieces ("Nosferatu", "Dracula" (1931),"Dracula" (1992)); others are cult, like the Hammer productions, "Near Dark" and "The Lost Boys"; others are only entertaining. But they always have audiences of fans to worship the different stories and versions of the vampire, the supernatural being created by Bram Stoker in his novel and brought to the cinema by F.W. Murnau for the first time.

Unfortunately, "La fiancée de Dracula" is probably the worst vampire movie ever made, with a combination of exploitation with a terrible screenplay recalling Jesus Franco films. There is no development of the characters or situations and the viewer sees a mysterious professor (that physically recalls Christopher Lee, only physically) and his awkward assistant Eric performed by a ham actor hunting down Dracula. In-between there are crazy nuns, breasts and naked bodies exposed in a senseless story. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): Not Available (fortunately)

The fifth Rollin film I've watched naturally features a good deal of nudity and gore: it's bizarre and incoherent, to put it mildly, but undeniably fascinating for all that - even if, unfortunately, the TV reception got messed up during the first few minutes of the film!

Coincidentally, it emerges as yet another "Nunsploitation" film (which followed my first-time viewing of SATANICO PANDEMONIUM [1973]!; see review above) - apart from being an esoteric vampire (and zombie) flick!! We also have here an interesting depiction of the effect which the chosen (but unbalanced!) vampire bride-to-be leaves on the order of nuns who harbor her. These, then, have been given silly names pertaining to their idiosyncracies, like Sister Pipe and Sister Cigar (given their smoking preferences) or Sister Funnel (which is what one of them unaccountably keeps on her head)!; likewise, there's a (cave-dwelling) ogress and a (horse-riding!) she-wolf on hand - but these carry no make-up whatsoever, save for the latter's talons!!

As for the Dracula figure (who uses an old grandfather clock as a teleporting device!),however, he's as under-developed here as he had been in Jess Franco's comparable (and almost identically-titled) LA FILLE DE Dracula (1972)! The film's climax - featuring Rollin's beloved seaside setting - is totally wacky, with mad nuns attacking Dracula's horde of disciples (including a couple of old crones and a love-struck dwarf-jester!) and the ogress (a veritable female zombie but a sexy one!) feasting on a naked vampire, before the latter is eventually fried by the oncoming sunlight!!

While the flat digital shooting manages, for the most part, not to obliterate the typically dream-like mood created for the film, its cast includes a comeback to Rollin territory for Brigitte Lahaie as the she-wolf I mentioned above (by the way, I should be watching her first horror film for him - THE GRAPES OF DEATH [1978] - soon) and Bunuel regular Bernard Musson(!). Rollin's latest offering is the only one I've watched from him of recent vintage; while not exactly a good film, it's certainly unique for these times - and, frankly, I'm more interested than ever now to watch a contemporaneous Franco effort (if anything for comparison's sake)...

Out of all the movies involving the character of Dracula, this has got to be one of the most uninteresting ones I have ever come across.

I'm somewhat familiar with the director Jean Rollin and his other movies and it seems to me that this movie is very different from most of his other work. The movies I had seen by him were all very straightforward horror flicks, involving blood and gore and a revenge from the death type of plot. Not this movie though.

Seems to me that this movie was more trying to be a drama, rather than a horror. This is not necessarily a bad thing of course but it is when the story is just so incredibly odd and uninteresting and offers you absolutely nothing thought provoking or entertaining.

It's still something that could had worked. I mean, just look at any random Werner Herzog horror/thriller. I think this movie was also going for a same sort of approach with its style and approach but it just never worked out, at least not for me. The movie is lacking in style. Basically it is a very cheap looking one with nothing in it that impresses. Same goes for all of the characters and the story really.

Don't even ask what the story was all supposed to be about, since it was all such a big mess. The main plot is not that hard to follow and it's very simply written but it are all of the plot lines and characters surrounding its main plot that makes this movie such a confusing mess and also a totally uninteresting one to follow. Parallel worlds, a circus dwarf, killer nuns. Did this movie really thought it was being clever, by simply throwing in as much non-sense stuff as possible? It certainly seemed to me that way but I really wasn't fooled by all of it. I could see through this movie so easily and could see it for what it truly was; A poorly made mess of a movie, that tries to make sense and be clever by being as silly as possible. Now, that just doesn't make any sense to me.

You can't even really regard this as a Dracula movie, or a horror in general. It takes a totally different approach, that unfortunately just isn't much good.

4/10

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