[.ca] "Count Yorga, Vampire (Widescreen)"

From Amazon.com:
The Dracula legend gets a suavely competent makeover in this 1970 bloodsucker, bringing vampirism to present-day Los Angeles with a harem of semi-clad females and the sharp casting of Robert Quarry in the title role. The film's original title (The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire) is perhaps more fitting, since it's really about how Quarry--posing as a Bulgarian psychic medium--seduces his female clients into neck-bitten submission. The victims' abandoned boyfriends (including Michael Murphy, who costarred in M*A*S*H the same year) recruit a vampire-hunting doctor (Roger Perry) to track Yorga down (with wooden stakes made from a broomstick, no less), and the body count rises predictably. Dry performances and tepid dialogue don't help much, but the then-modern setting and intelligent plotting make Count Yorga worthy of its 1971 sequel. It's not as stylish as Christopher Lee's Hammer films, but it's certainly not anemic. --Jeff Shannon

The start of modern vampire cinema in America !!:
It was no secret in the early 1970's that American International Pictures were grooming Robert Quarry to take over the mantle of their number one horror star, from the ageing Vincent Price. Price was none too happy about the treatment he received from studio executive's and made his feelings felt on several occasions. One well known story has it that during the filming of "Dr Phibes Rises Again", Price heard someone singing Gershwin and looked around the corner to see Quarry in full voice. Quarry turned to Price and remarked "Vincent, you didn't know I was a singer !". To which Price replied "Well, I knew you weren't a ******* actor." However, Quarry did make a pretty decent vampire on three occasions in "Count Yorga", "The Return of Count Yorga", and the lesser known "Deathmaster"....all films being made virtually back to back ! "Count Yorga" started out as a concept from writer / director Bob Kelljan to make a soft porn style vampire film, however when he recruited Robert Quarry to play the lead, Quarry convinced him to play it straight for thrills. Keeping in line with the new age, hippie influenced culture of the 1970's, the film sees Count Yorga posing as a psychic medium and leading unsuspecting & naïve guests into his vampire clutches ! The film saw a departure from the more Hammer influenced style of vampire movie where the female underlings to Christopher Lee were buxom, attractive women. In "Count Yorga" however, the female servants of Yorga are haggard, disheveled harpies from the grave that mercilessly carry out the evil biddings of their master. Additionally, the film was noticeably more violent than Hammer's Dracula series, and shifting vampires to a contemporary setting ( as opposed to Hammer's Carpathian Mountains of the 1900's ) became the standard for vampire film's for many years to come, and definitely revitalized the declining movie fan's interest in blood suckers. Kelljan does a pretty good job of keeping the plot ticking along, and Quarry does provide some solid scares....especially the shots of him bearing down on his victims in slow motion, arms outstretched and fangs bared. Well worth a look, "Count Yorga" is an interesting piece of vampire cinema that provided the genre with much needed fresh blood.

ROBERT QUARRY IS AWESOME!!!:
I love watching Robert Quarry act,especially his two Count Yorga movies.He's great as he matches wits with his foes.Roger Perry who's another actor I like,plays Dr.Hayes,a blood specialist.The doc is called in by friends when one is missing and another has bite marks on her neck.The doc and friends try to get anwsers from the Count and he's too cool,as he brushes each question off.On the other hand,when he gets mad,his face turns white and he charges people.The Counts mansion is very gothic and you could get lost in it.No happy ending here.This is scary stuff.

Mildly entertaining:
Having picked up this movie and its sequel cheaply, I decided that I would treat myself them on a Halloween. What I found was a standard early 1970s horror movie that had its good points but overall was not spectacular. Essentially, this is a retelling of the Dracula story. Count Yorga has come from Bulgaria to Los Angeles, where he starts seducing and vampirizing women. He has a Renfield-like sidekick and is opposed by a Van Helsing-like doctor. Yorga is a super-suave vampire, acting the part of the nobleman to gain access to his victims and intelligent enough to toy with his hunters. This movie has a definite '70s look to it. Beyond the fashions and decor, the directing itself has a '70s feel to it. In particular, the scenes showing two men walking through the city in conversation, showing them only at a distance, seems very reminiscent of the time period. This winds up being a relatively routine horror movie, with only a couple minor twists to set it apart. If you are roped into watching this, it won't be an awful waste of time, but if you never see it, your life will not be the poorer for it. This is basically a movie for vampire movie fans who aim towards completism.

Fangs For The Memories:
Somewhere between the "giant step for mankind" and Watergate Hotel breezed in this little independant feature that cost the investors about 80 grand--and returned, according to it's lead player, 100 times that amount in the first weekend of release--which, remarkably enough, brought a respectability to the modern vampire story. More amazing is the fact that, three years later, Hammer Films couldn't as successfully pull off the same feat with its "Satanic Rites of Dracula," complete with all time horror greats Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and, presumably, a much larger budget. The film opens during a then-trendy seance with Robert Quarry playing suave, arrogant Count Yorga--a sort of dilletante who wears a cape, is twenty something years older than his hosts, and probably was the sort that hung around those sorts of early adulthood gatherings during the seventies because he wanted to slide up to some young body(ies). In this case, however, sex isn't on the older mans mind--his interest lay (as it were) in leaving his mark--two of them, to be precise--right in the neck. The film's credit must go in large part to veteran actor Robert Quarry, whose performance as the Count was wonderful, and to Bill Butler (cinematographer) and Bob Kelljan (director)...The rest are merely bit (as it were!) players... Great fun throughout and, although a bit choppy at times, holds its own even thirty years later.

Cat, the other white meat...:
Written and directed by Bob Kelljan, who later directed episodes on various 70's TV shows like Starsky and Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard, and Charlie's Angels, Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), aka The Loves of Count Iorga (not a misspelling), did extremely well when it opened. The movie starts off with a scene of a large cargo ship sitting at a dock off some California coast, and a large, coffin shaped crate being loaded on a truck. As the truck drives away, we are treated to voice over that sounds like a mix between Ricardo Montalban and Harvey Fierstein talking about the vampire mythos. The truck continues until it comes to a secluded driveway with a large gate. Next we go to a séance in progress, being conducted by Count Yorga, who, if you're familiar with the title of the movie, is a vampire. He ends up secretly putting the whammy on one of the women present, and then gets a ride home from a couple in their VW minibus...I have to say, it was kind of funny seeing this young couple and the aristocratic Eastern European (we learn that the Count came to America from Bulgaria) and very sophisticated Count crammed into the front bench seat of a minibus. Anyway, the couple drops the Count off after declining his offer to come into his home, and they get stuck in some mud along the Count's long driveway. This starts a five-minute discussion about mud. Where did the mud come from? How did we miss it come in? How come the rest of the ground is dry? Blah, blah, blah...it's scenes like this that really dragged this movie down. I guess, among the Count's other supernatural powers, creating wind and lighting, manipulating objects with his mind, mind control over animals and humans, super natural strength, he can also create mud. After hearing a wolf howl, the couple decides not to trek back to the Count's house but to spend the night in the minibus, and after a little lovin' in the back of the van, they are soon visited by a dark stranger (two guesses who). As the movie progresses, the Count takes a couple of women (Count Yorga needs women!) in the way vampires do, and the men begin to suspect something is wrong, and whatever it is, it's directly linked to Count Yorga. They start throwing around the theory of vampirism, with some willing to believe once offered proof, while others refuse to accept even the possibility as they think the idea is purely a work of fiction. After much goofy dialogue, two of the men decide to take matters into their own hands and try to sneak into the castle and convince themselves that Count Yorga is a vampire. They take along a female character, as they fear to leave her alone (great idea, take her into the lair of a suspected vampire). If they are able to confirm that Count Yorga is a vampire, they intend to kill him, and their friends who have been turned, as there is no cure for bloodsucking other than a wooden stake in the heart...the last twenty minutes or so things the pace picks up pretty well, as the two men confront Count Yorga and his brides from hell. And how could I write a review about this movie without mentioning Brudah, the Count's mostly mute, brutish servant? Oh man, he is good for a few laughs...he walks around the entire movie looking like a transported cavemen in a bad sport coat and tie. I kept injecting my own lines for poor Brudah when he had none...I imagined when he spoke, each sentence would be preceded by his own name..."Brudah want woman"..."Brudah drive car"..."Brudah need shave".... The dialog throughout the movie is rather clunky but oddly realistic at times. The actor playing Count Yorga, Robert Quarry, was the highlight of the movie, really getting into the part creating a truly believable and scary character. I vaguely recognized him, but then remembered seeing him in Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). The direction was passable, but got annoying at times, especially during scenes with conversation, as the director would make many needless cuts back and forth between characters, sometimes showing the back of a character who was speaking... there was some blood and one scene in particular, with a cat, that was pretty ugly. The one actor most will probably recognize in this film is Michael Murphy, who played the mayor in Batman Returns (1992) and has been in a few Woody Allen movies like Manhattan (1979) and The Front (1976). The scares were mostly of the cheap kind, things popping out at the viewer accompanied by a loud sound effect or startling music. The film has a 90-minute run time, but I thought some trimming would have been useful, and would have quickened the pace. The presentation on this disc looks really great, and special features include a trailer for the film and a neat reproduction of the original movie poster on a little card on the inside of the case. Age hasn't been kind to this movie, as the dating is very apparent in the wardrobe and hairstyles of the various actors, but I think the movie is worth looking into if you are a horror movie fan, mainly for Quarry's performance. A sequel was released a couple of years later titled The Return of Count Yorga (1972). Cookieman108