Daughter of Dracula 1972

 Ok, so the credit for my new favorite era of Jess Franco apparently is owed to his producer Robert de Nesle. Nesle, a Frenchman, hired Franco to produce films based on mature comics from America and Italy and shot the film mainly in Portugal. This explains the loose, stylized, surreal horror storytelling and the murky forest atmosphere.

These include: 3 Naked Women on Robinson Island, A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Dracula Contra Frankenstein, Daughter of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Lovers of Devil's Island, A Captain of Fifteen Years, Intimate Diary of a Nymphomaniac, Dolls For Sale, How To Seduce a Virgin/ Pleasure For Three, The Other Side of the Mirror, The Perverse Countess, The Lustful Amazons, The Erotic Exploits of Maciste in Atlantis, Les Chatouilleuses,  Sexy Erotic Job, Les Emmerdeuses, Celestine, Lorna the Exorcist

Daughter of Dracula was a great sleepy horror movie. Its closer to Virgin's atmospheric and emotional mystery than it is to Curse's balls-out, tongue-in-cheek experimentalism. This is for the lovers of early Bava-style giallos or the more realistic Gothic vampire tales that and Hammer was producing. Its very serious. I really want to compare it to Dark Shadows in look and feel and I expect it is a light remake of Franco's Count Dracula, which is regarded as being the most faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's vision.

There's such a sweet balance of the procedural mystery/crime drama and the supernatural thriller. It has a violent body count, lesbian sex and some of the most foreboding and suspenseful shots Franco has done, but then it shocks you with a painful love story (with Jess delivering a great little acting job as a cuckold Van Helsing character).

Its not amazing because the plot is basically Vampire 101 aka Dracula. The vast majority of Franco's scripts were cliched and thin because the man was producing almost 10 a year! But it doesn't matter with films like this where the acting, visuals and production design are all wonderful. Daughter is evocative and painlessly sucks you for its short running time.

Special shoutout to the trio of actresses who hold this together dramatically: The sullen and statuesque Britt Nichols stars in her biggest role as the vampire lead and is paired in a lesbian angle with the solid Anne Libert. A gorgeous pair with underrated acting chops. The third woman is Cochita Nunez, a fine actress with a very sad mug who adds a lot of breath to the movie and I hope she pops up again in my Franco marathon.