The Gothique Film Society presents Dracula (1973) and They Have Changed Their Face (1971)

About The Gothique Film Society presents Dracula (1973) and They Have Changed Their Face (1971)

Founded in 1966, the Gothique Film Society specialises in double bills ‘for the connoisseur of the macabre’.

We are delighted that acclaimed author, critic and broadcaster Kim Newman, who ‘cut his teeth’ at the Gothique Film Society, will be joining us to introduce two rare ‘Dracula’ adaptations.

Dracula was presented by the Canadian Broadcasting Company in its Purple Playhouse series, which also included adaptations of Victorian melodramas such as Sweeney Todd and The Bells.

Indeed, this positions Dracula as a theatrical piece, with the count sporting enormous fangs and an English accent, and made up to look like Bram Stoker’s mentor, barn-storming stage actor Henry Irving. Inevitably, the one hour cut-down loses several key characters, but it does add a few interesting thoughts, such as whether the biting of Mina was Jonathan Harker’s doing, after he had been transformed into a vampire in Transylvania.

They Have Changed Their Face is amongst the oddest adaptations of Stoker’s novel, though it takes cues from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and has a crossover with Hammer’s weirdly modish The Satanic Rites of Dracula whereby a wealthy industrialist lives in an isolated mansion (all ‘crumbling horror movie location’ outside but ultra-Moderne all-white inside).

Adolfo Celi, best known as the villain in the Bond film Thunderball, plays the suave industrialist who beckons unsuspecting employees to his ‘lair’. The point that rich and powerful people are like vampires isn’t new, but director Corrado Farina makes it in an unusual way, depicting a Gothically corrupt world which now has a certain retro appeal.

We hope you enjoy these rare and unusual adaptations of a much-told story.