In the early 1970s, everyone, it seems, was trying to separate the vampire from his traditional Gothic milieu and transplant him (and it was invariably the male vampire that got this treatment, rarely the female) into a contemporary urban setting. Hammer dragged Christopher Lee into the swinging seventies for Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973); Blacula (1972) and its sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973) gave the vampire lord a Blaxsploitation overhaul; Marvel Comics published 70 issues of Tomb of Dracula between 1972 and 1979 which relocated the Count to the margins of the Marvel Univers; and the small screen was awash with contemporary vampires, appearing in everything from The Night Stalker (1972) to the Starsky & Hutch (1975-1979) episode The Vampire (1976).
One of the earliest and best was Bob Kelljan’s Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), itself followed by an inferior sequel, The Return of Count Yorga in 1971. Initially planned as a softcore sex film (there are still a few moments where its roots show through) and supposedly changed into a straight horror film at the insistence of star Robert Quarry, it was shot under the title The Loves of Count Iorga, the title which now appears on the Region 1 DVD release.
Despite some lengthy passages where people sit around talking about what’s happening instead of showing us, Count Yorga, Vampire is an effective low budget re-thinking of established vampire lore with its fair share of genuinely shocking moments and memorable images. Quarry, already well into a long and varied career and recently graduated from mainly television appearances, is excellent as the eponymous vampire, alternately menacing and charming, suave and bestial. His sudden appearance at the window of a camper van may be too well signposted but a later sudden appearance in his castle to attack the hero is a truly scary jolt. The rest of the cast far less well but are given inferior material to work with in Kelljan’s script.
Kelljan does his best to give his film some unique wrinkles – a trio of vampire slayers at Yorga’s home with no better plan, for instance, than keeping him talking until the sun rises – and makes a good job of transferring the anachronistic vampire legend to the less than Gothic milieu of 1970s Los Angeles. He misses the mark occasionally (Yorga’s brutish manservant Bruddah (Edward Walsh) is entirely superfluous, some of the dialogue is clunky (particularly Dr Hayes’ (Roger Perry) assertion that vampires could exist simply because no-one has proved that they don’t) but for the most part he’s on target and Count Yorga, Vampire paved the way for the slew of updated vampire films that appeared in the coming years.
The film shows some evidence of post-production tampering. Initially, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) were split on how to rate the film, seeing it no fewer than six times as they tried to decide whether the film warranted an ‘R’ – or even ‘X’ – certificate while distributors American International Pictures held out for a more commercially viable GP rating. AIP won the day but the MPAA ratings board demanded several minutes of cuts to more violent and sexual material. For years, the only versions seen on television and video had a sex scene in the camper van mostly removed, was missing a scene where Erica (Judith Lang) fondles her breasts while waiting for Yorga and a much reduced version of the infamous cat-eating scene and there’s evidence that further footage was also cut and not restored even in the extended DVD release: there’s talk near the beginning of the film of a baby having been found drained of blood, a baby we never see though stills surfaced at the time of the film’s release showing actress Marsha Jordan posing with a prosthetic baby.
But what matters is what remains and although it has it flaws, Yorga remains an entertaining piece of 70s low-budget ingenuity. The set pieces are hard to forget – Paul and Mike bursting into Erica’s apartment to find her eating a kitten (a horribly convincing moment); York and Bruddah killing off Paul; the oft-repeated (not least by the film’s own sequel) last minute twist in which the hero finds he’s not quite as victorious as he thought he was. All great moments in a film that has stood the test of time well (though it must be said that you can tell how much times and attitudes have changed when vampire-hunting GP Doctor Jim lights up a cigarette in his office and continues to chain smoke throughout the rest of the film!)
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