HERE'S YOUR ONE AND ONLY CHANCE TO SEE PETER CUSHING PLAY A VAMPIRE! Sort of. LA GRANDE TROUILLE aka TENDER DRACULA aka CONFESSIONS OF A BLOOD DRINKER is a 1974 French horror-comedy (!) directed by Pierre Grunstein (known for . . . . well, he never directed another movie). Peter Cushing plays MacGregor, last of the big time horror stars, who is tired of playing in horror movies and wants to do only romantic films instead. Macgregor retreats to his remote castle in a huff. Or perhaps a minute and a huff. Hey, that was funnier than anything that happens in this horror-comedy (!).
The head of the studio/director/producer tasks two screenwriters (think French comedy duo like the Italian one that torpedoed DR. GOLDFOOT & THE GIRL BOMBS) with going to MacGregor's castle to convince him to make more horror movies. The director also provides the screenwriters with two young good time girls (think the two leads of Jean Rollin's REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE) to go along for . . . . well, who knows why. Logic is not a requirement for anything that happens in TENDER DRACULA. When this goofy quartet arrives at MacGregor's castle they also meet his wife Heloise (played by Alida Valli !) and their brutish mute servant who is constantly (and clumsily) hacking bits of himself off with an axe! MacGregor first appears in Lugosi-like Dracula garb with cape and fangs . . . and it readily becomes apparent that he may in fact be a REAL vampire.
The movie has an early-70's bizarreness and trippy incoherence that, depending on your mood, you might be into. Or not. Character motivations change at the drop of a clove of garlic and the movie has a nightmare logic which should end with it "all having been a dream". But it doesn't. The comedy in this horror-comedy is abyssmal but thankfully it fades away about a third of the way through the film. In fact, the last half hour or so is pretty serious with, at one point, Heloise carving her name into one of the screenwriter's legs with a knife!
God knows what great Italian actress Alida Valli is doing here! The star of SENSO as well as THE THIRD MAN, EYES WITHOUT A FACE, THE PARADINE CASE and SUSPIRIA does her best and provides a typically wonderful performance. And Peter Cushing's presence is probably explained simply by the fact that he was, at this point, burying himself in work so as to ease the pain of his wife Helen's death. Despite that fact, the only truly funny moments in the film are provided by Peter Cushing himself whose charm and witty line delivery elevates his scenes. No way can I recommend this bizarre little misfire except for those who like acid trips in the guise of movies or for Cushing completists only.
ADDENDUM: You will no doubt notice a comment from the nameless proprietor of the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website accusing me of "blanking out" the watermark on the still above showing where I supposedly took the photo from. In the interest of clarity, I'm providing a screencap showing not only that I didn't get it from the aforementioned website but also that the google searched photo is clearly already featuring the "blanked out" black bar.
I would suggest that not only is every photo of Peter Cushing NOT the sole property of the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website but also that it would probably be a good idea to get your facts straight before leaving pissy comments on blogs that are in fact genuinely trying to spread a love and appreciation of Peter Cushing, Halloween and horror films to a wider audience.
Nice of you to blank out the origin of where that rare still came from....
ReplyDeleteYo, society douche, go Google "Peter Cushing Tender Dracula" and that photo shows up. Click the link to photo and the site has it blacked out. Rare still? In fact I have seen it on several sites all with the blacked out part. Chill the hell out lurker and if you're going to comment why not make your profile public. Don't hide! The guy that writes this blog researches his ass off profusely and gives credit when at all possible. But by all means blame him for the part that is blacked out. Which BTW, what exactly would be blacked out there? If it's a still from a movie how does one take credit for it's origin? The movie Tender Dracula IS the origin. Whoever put the mark on the photo can't claim copy-write or ownership. Did you screen cap it and post the first instant of it? If so, did you ask if it was OK for you to do that from the owners of the copy-write? Or is it public domain? So who cares what is even blacked out? You can't take something that already existed that you had nothing to do with and paste the name of your web site on it in order to try to take credit for it. That's theft. So it looks like someone took something from your site and simply took away the fake credit you gave to yourselves but by perusing your site it appears that you place your site address on every still and video you post. Just be a fan don't be a thief and act like you own all the images or videos on your site because you don't. Read the blog and please, shut the hell up.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, Dis Guy, tell us how you REALLY feel LOL. So, after looking again at the post, I'm assuming that the still in question is the final one of the post which I now notice does have a black bar which I frankly never noticed before. You are quite right that I simply googled the image and it was like that when I found it. It is also true that, unless you are the photographer who took the photo or have sought their permission to alter said still by putting presumably your website address on it, then you have indeed used it without permission. A couple years ago, I also received an even more snarky comment from the same site accusing me of having blanked out their watermark which I also didn't do; if there was a watermark on it then it had also been blanked out before I got to it. (In fact, I'm going to add a screencap of the exact photo I google searched which shows it already altered by another website). But in both cases, unless you got permission from the photographer who took the picture in the first place, you have no right to alter said picture and, if a photo comes up in a simple google search, then it is free to be posted by anyone else just as much as it was for said proprietor of the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society to use it for that site.
ReplyDeleteThanks Cerpts for putting it more eloquently than I did. They act all high and mighty like they are some richie from Hampstead or Chelsea but they are really in a council estate with stairwells reeking of piss that is across the street from a halfway house for minors and when the aren't placing water marks on pictures that aren't theirs they are having a wank while watching 16 year old Timmy nod off as he is trying to get the monkey off his back.
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