Dracula on the Discovery Channel

Elba · 26th October 2001, 02:26 PM

Last night, I was watching the Discovery Channel on a short Documentary about Dracula. They were showing some scenes from some vampire movies but not one of Christopher Lee! I took offense to that because one of the scenes was on the one cheesy film with Louis Jordan playing the role of Dracula!!! Of all the actors, Louis Jordan! Dont get me wrong he's an OK actor but not compared to Christopher Lee!!! They were explaining how Dracula came to be and how it became the book. They spoke of Vlad Tepes-but even then they did not show Mr. Lee as Vlad. Did anyone else see this?

Juan Aneiros · 26th October 2001, 02:47 PM

I'm sure Mr Lee will be grateful for that:D

Elba · 26th October 2001, 03:01 PM

I have to give credit where credit is due! :frostyang

Old Soul · 27th October 2001, 01:34 AM

I have see other documentaries on Dracula, on the History channel and on the learning station, they always had Mr. Lee in those.

Maybe they were looking for a different approach.

Old Soul

Elba · 29th October 2001, 02:18 PM

I guess they were... but still, it's nice to see scenes from Mr. Lee's movies to be shown in these kinds of documentaries.

**John Farrell** · 29th October 2001, 07:51 PM

It might be the very prosaic reason that the documentary producers either couldn't get rights to shows scenes from the Hammer films--the rights to them have, if I'm not mistaken, been picked up by new distributors for VHS and DVD--or they wouldn't because of cost considerations.

This, of course, does not excuse their pathetic lack of variety in their scenes...

Best,

John F

cutshaw · 30th October 2001, 08:34 PM

I have to take issue with the assertion that Louis Jourdan's performance as Dracula was inferior. I don't know how many of you have seen the BBC's 1977 version of COUNT DRACULA in which Jourdan played the title role and Frank Finlay was Van Helsing, but personally I consider it to be one of the finest versions of the story yet filmed and certainly the most faithful. In fact, Jourdan gave a very good performance and I recommend the production to anyone who is either interested in the character or simply intelligent, literate horror/drama. I think just because we are fans of Christopher Lee this should not lead us to dismiss other works out of hand. Obviously in a documentary about Dracula you would expect Mr. Lee to feature, but sadly the Louis Jourdan version is far closer to the source material than anything Christopher Lee has appeared in (including Jess Franco

**John Farrell** · 30th October 2001, 09:57 PM

This is true. I in fact I have a 3/4" Umatic copy (in 3 reels) of the Jourdan Dracula from when it aired on PBS in America back in 1978.

It's an underrated performance. At first, I didn't like Jourdan--but his presentation does have a lot of force.

As you say, Cutshaw, the version as a whole is much truer to the novel than anything else that's been done--and with the great asset of a world-class Van Helsing played by the superb Frank Finlay (who starred with Mr. Lee in the Musketeer films).

Judy Bowker, whom I saw on the London stage in 1986, is a superb Mina Harker. Unfortunately, I found Susan Penhaligon's Lucy over the top--and the actor who portrayed Jonathan Harker was also surprisingly weak. But these are minor quibbles.

Just to point out how close it was to the book, recall the excellent scene where Van Helsing and Mina are surrounded by the 3 wives of Dracula in the woods. An awesome scene altogether.

Best,

John F

Elba · 31st October 2001, 02:23 PM

Don't get me wrong, I am not being biased but I just didn't think Louis Jourdan didn't do the role of Dracula justice. I have seen other actors portray Dracula and Mr.Jourdan's portrayal was weak to me.....but that's just my opinion.

**Jacob Remery** · 31st October 2001, 02:57 PM

I hope this isn't going to become a discussion about which actor played Dracula better or not.
Or worse, a Dracula forum.

Last year in December this message board looked more like a Vampire message board than a Christopher Lee one.
The website was almost shut down because of this. :(
Things went way out of hand.
I myself don't want this to happen. And I'm sure others, who were here at that time wouldn't want this to happen either.

Nothing wrong in discussing vampire movies in general, but there are better places for that.
I'm sure there are many message boards on the internet where people are happy to discuss these movies.

Regards, Jacob.

**Maria Silbermann** · 31st October 2001, 03:27 PM

Personally, I believe Louis Jourdan has great sex appeal, and I'm happy to see him in any production. It would be interesting to see him in a film with Christopher Lee.

**Susan Pitcher** · 1st November 2001, 10:18 PM

When there is an annual Halloween program about Dracula on the Food Network, that's when I throw in the towel :D !!!

Saw it before (and that means the show and the information therein). Nothing spectacular in the show, but then all the cable networks feel compelled to try something, so I give them E for effort. . . .