Dracula father and wire

Dracula father and wire is a French film of Edouard Molinaro carried out in 1976.

It is about a film parody of vampires with Christopher Lee in the role of the Count, Bernard Menez in that of the son, Marie-Helene Breillat (then, Mrs Molinaro) and her sister, the future director, Catherine Breillat. One also recognizes there, in more episodical roles, the popular actors Gerard Jugnot, Raymond Bussières and Jean-Claude Dauphin.

Analyzes

Inspired of the novel Paris Vampire of Claude Klotz, the film of Edouard Molinaro forever claim to ensure a continuation, even parodic, with the adventures of the Count Dracula as under consideration by the productions Hammer. Neither in its appearance, nor even in its name, the character played by Christopher Lee referred there. Against the opinion even of the actor, the production Gaumont judged commercially more judicious to leave film with the title Dracula father and wire , under which, of the remainder, the novel will be republished later on.

Playing on the same comic spring as a preceding film parody of vampires with Christopher Lee, These are difficult times for the vampires (1959) of Shorthand writing, where the Count was also confronted with a less noble part of his family, Dracula father and wire chooses the subsidiary confrontation simply. In the role of the sad offspring, Bernard Menez renews his service of weak-willed kid of its preceding film, education in love with Valentine (1975). An inevitable oedipien power struggle is not long besides in taking shape, when father and wire become rival in love near the same young woman, played by Marie-Helene Breillat, itself double of the mother (played by his/her own sister, Catherine Breillat).

Registered in a geopolitical context specific to the years 1970, the scenario puts its heroes vampires in position of political refugees. Romania, " mother-patrie" of all the vampires according to the legend, and since fallen to the hands from the Bolsheviks, does not constitute to them indeed any more a very favorable framework, forcing them with expatrier. The film is thus delayed on a critical comment of the fate reserved to the immigrant workers, automatically compared to " parasites" (from where a symbolic system to be perhaps drawn precisely from this image of " vampires"). Paradoxically, France, famous " ground of accueil" , shows itself here hospital: whereas the father, accosting by chance in the United Kingdom, becomes movie star, the son, unloading on a French coast, falls into the marginality and suffers worst humiliations. However its manifest lack of character and ambition weighs much less in its reverse of fortune that an overall hostile economic situation and a population. In the passing, the painting of a underprivileged Maghrebian community is not without dividing, by moments, the blackness of a social chronicle such as Elise or the true life of Michel Drach (1970).

If some scenes of pure comedy strews film, a light bitterness dominates in fact the overall tone. The myth of the vampire, put at evil by an environment protestor and antitraditionnalist, seems here to turn a page, to melt itself in a normality personified by the son, Ferdinand. Disgraced by its condition of vampire, this last will find its safety indeed only by giving up its nature first to become " Mister everyone ".

Critical

Repudiated by its realizer, who qualified it even " film raté" , Dracula father and wire are however not as bad as one could say it.

Admittedly, esthetic qualities cannot compete with the style specific to the productions Hammer (the forest of Rambouillet will never pass for a Transylvanian decoration!). In the same way, the rate/rhythm is irremediably lacking. However, some remarkable scenes of comedy regularly manage to start again the interest, such this passage where Ferdinand tries to bite a prostitute, or this other, when father and sons undertake the purchase of a coffin to the undertaking.

But the true quality of film remains the meeting, rather single, of two schools of cinema, with the antipodes one of the other, and personified by the actors Christopher Lee and Bernard Menez. Seemingly incompatible, these two personalities telescope with the wonder in what constitutes, all the same, most improbable, and tastiest of confrontations.

Around Film

  • It is the very last time that Christopher Lee incarnates a role of vampire to the cinema.
  • Before this film, Bernard Menez had already appeared in another French film parody of vampires, Tendre Dracula (1973).
  • Gerard Jugnot will appear in another French film parody of vampires, Charlots against Dracula (1980).
  • After the Hands D' Orlac (1960), it is the second film entirely made in French by Christopher Lee.
  • Although having ensured the Postsynchronization film in English language, Christopher Lee will be doubled by another actor for the copy diffused in the United States. The assembly of the latter will be moreover tiny room to 75 minutes (against 100 minutes in its original copy), appreciably deteriorating its tone and its intrigue.
  • One counts three other comedies in which Christopher Lee incarnates a vampire: These are difficult times for the vampires (1959), Magic Christian (1969) and One More Time (1970). Do extracts of the film the Scars of Dracula appear moreover in the fantastic comedies Vampire, you said vampire? (1985) and I married extraterrestrial a (1988), without the actor not being mentioned with the credits. It appears on the other hand with that of Innocent Blood (1992), semi-parodic variation of the myth of the vampire, for an extract of the nightmare of Dracula used in film.

Data sheet

  • Scenario: Alain Godard, Claude Klotz
  • Images: Alain Levent
  • Musique: Vladimir Cosma
  • Decorations: Jacques Bufnoir
  • Costumes: Jacques Fonteray
  • Assembly: Robert and Monique Isnardon
  • Sound: Daniel Brisseau
  • Production: Alain Poiré

Distribution

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