Tender Dracula (1974)

1974 was a busy year for Peter Cushing who, at this point in his career, was showing no signs of slowing down his prolific output, appearing in no less than seven films that year.  With three films apiece for Hammer and Amicus, it might have seemed that Britain's horror movies - and consequently Cushing's future in the genre - were in robust health.  But it was his seventh film that year, Tender Dracula (1974), which more accurately points to the future, with the rapid collapse of UK film production increasingly forcing Cushing into taking roles in European productions, often of dubious quality and patchy distribution.  An obscure French production - to English speaking audiences, at least - this bizarre and often ramshackle feeling concoction is a curious beast: a would-be horror comedy that, at times, crosses over into sex comedy territory.  Its basic idea is promising enough: Cushing is a horror star renowned for playing monsters who has just declared that he wants to turn his back on the genre and focus on romantic leads, instead.  His understandably upset producer summons a pair of hapless writers who are currently behind a top-rated romantic TV series and orders them to kill off their current lead, replace him with Cushing and re-jig the show to have a more horrific slant.  (It is entirely possible that the script has in mind the US daytime soap Dark Shadows which, after Dan Curtis took over as producer, rapidly shifted from Gothic romance to full on Gothic horror, with vampires, werewolves and witches turning up).  They are dispatched, along with a pair of actresses, to Cushing's home - a remote castle - for the weekend, where they are to try and sell the idea to him.

Naturally, Cushing's home turns out to be a typically gloomy and crumbling Gothic pile, complete with the requisite hulking and largely mute manservant and their host's apparently deranged wife.  The wife, it is explained was previously married to the manservant, until he had a nasty accident with his axe while chopping wood - 'A terrible blow to his manhood', confides Cushing to his guests.  After which she divorced the handyman and married Cushing.  A series of bizarre experiences for the four guests ensue, some of which are obviously faked (at least one by one of the writers, while others may, or may not, be of supernatural origin, with the implication that Cushing might not just be an actor who plays vampires, but possibly a vampire who works as an actor.  Some of the strange goings on are amusing, others disturbing and macabre - Alfred, one of the writers, being pursued by the disembodied lower half of one of the girls is particularly disconcerting.  All of this is punctuated by various episodes of bed-hopping as the writers try to get off with the girls, all of which involve copious amounts of nudity, in the style of a sex farce.  At the same time, Cushing's character is busy lecturing anyone who will listen about his concepts of romance and why it is now the only path for him, occasionally shouting to make his point heard. 

It's a strange combination of elements that never quite gel, with the film's denouement giving the impression that the writers ultimately had no idea where to go with it: the handyman goes berserk and apparently kills one of the girls with an axe, the other girl and one of the writers are trapped by Cushing and his wife in the dungeon and threatened with torture, before Cushing apparently dies, then comes back to life.  During all of this a group of 'ghosts' clad in white sheets with eyeholes, who have been roaming the castle's corridors, are revealed to be the producer and a film crew, who proceed to get involved in and film an orgy instigated by the 'dead' girl who isn't dead, while the other girl and the writer are released by Cushing and get it on in the dungeon while Cushing waxes lyrical to his wife about his love for her.  It's an absolute mess that barely makes any kind of sense.  To be fair, there is some amusing dialogue (even in translation), with Cushing ecstatic when dungeon girl tells him she's a virgin, making her ideal to bear his children, asking her if she's sure, to which she replies that she's 'mostly a virgin', as she's always cast as an ingénue and, in film, they are always virgins.  Some of the production design is also very effective, particularly the main dining hall in the castle, with its giant sculptures and the castle location used to stage various sequences is deployed to good, atmospheric effect, with good use of lighting and camera shots.  The film's biggest strength lies in its cast, headed by Cushing, in a role that one might have thought better suited to Vincent Price.  But he gives a very engaging performance, characteristically charming, with sudden turns into menace.  His delivery of the gags he is given is excellent and his final scenes with his wife, as he lays bare his inner most feelings of love for her are, well, tender.  Indeed, I can't help but feel that the emotions did come straight from the heart for Cushing, with him channelling the grief and love he had felt for his own late wife, who had died only a few years previously.

The rest of the cast contains a number of familiar faces from European film, with Italian actress Alida Valli as Cushing's wife, her characterisation evolving from a mildly demented crone early on to a full on vengeful banshee later on then, finally, loving wife in the face of Cushing's overwhelming romance.  All the while, her appearance subtly changes to match this evolution.  Alfred is played by Bernard Menez, a familiar face from French comedy films, and is suitably hapless and confused in the role.  Most interestingly, the part-time virgin Marie is played by the lovely Miou-Miou, seemingly an obligatory fixture in French films of every genre during the seventies and eighties - often playing an ingénue.  (She is very much the archetypal French movie 'type' when it comes to young female leads - waif-like and vulnerable-seeming, but actually quite uninhibited under the right circumstances).  Overall, there was something about Tender Dracula that reminded me of one of Cushing's other 1974 films, the AIP/Amicus co-production Madhouse.  Not in plot details, but in that both feature a lead character who has been defined and trapped by the horror characters they play and are desperate to escape them.  (The idea of characters being trapped in roles they are no longer comfortable with is echoed throughout Tender Dracula, in particular with one of the writers who is moved to return to his former profession of a make-up artist, which he realises that he found more fulfilling).  In Madhouse, this is Vincent Price, who can seemingly never escape his character Dr Death - who was created for him by Peter Cushing's screenwriter (whose character has a seemingly weird and deranged wife).  I thought that, perhaps, I was imagining the resemblance, but I've found that other reviewers have also noted it.  

So, was Tender Dracula a worthwhile watch?  I have to say that I could never classify it as a good film - it is far too much of a confusing mess for that, undisciplined and flying off at tangents at every turn.  It is, however, a beguiling film, with the cast doing their best to rise above the messy script.  Cushing, in particular, succeeds, against all odds, in delivering a warm and engaging performance which, alone, is worth sitting through the film for.  I have to say, though, despite its short-comings, Tender Dracula has secured itself a place in my heart.  If you are a Cushing completist, or you'd simply be intrigued to see a film that includes such scenes as Peter Cushing spanking Miou-Miou, or a castle blasting off into space, then Tender Dracula could be for you.