Possible SPOILER (if you've never seen a vampire flick before!)
The fact that this movie was made by semi-professionals on a shoestring budget is apparent from the start, but don't let that put you off: let the poor acting and by-the-numbers plot do that.
Actually, I'm probably being a little unfair. While I was watching this movie, I was trying to name earlier vampire flicks based in a contemporary setting, and came up blank. I'm probably wrong, but if I'm not, COUNT YORGA can at least be credited with inventing a sub-genre.
It has to be said that, apart from Robert Quarry as the urbane, sophisticated Count, the acting is pedestrian throughout, and the story is merely a hoary old Hammer Horror dressed up in modern clothes (although torches still burn on the walls of the Count's mansion), with a touch of DC comic's visuals thrown into the pot. While subsequent contemporary vampire movies (NEAR DARK, THE LOST BOYS, etc) have gone for the jugular with a pop-culture style and vicious, visceral bloodletting, here the concentration on the sexual/sensual blooding of the vampire's female victims is another indicator that COUNT YORGA is more a rebellious grandchild of horror movies of old than the great-grandfather of the modern-vampire movies that would eventually follow in its wake.
The climax to this movie is all wrong. Yorga's fate, while predictable, is poorly executed vampire's shouldn't die so easily; this guy, after boasting of all the centuries of wisdom that have made him so superior to mortals, practically runs into the hapless hero's stake.
The fact that this movie was made by semi-professionals on a shoestring budget is apparent from the start, but don't let that put you off: let the poor acting and by-the-numbers plot do that.
Actually, I'm probably being a little unfair. While I was watching this movie, I was trying to name earlier vampire flicks based in a contemporary setting, and came up blank. I'm probably wrong, but if I'm not, COUNT YORGA can at least be credited with inventing a sub-genre.
It has to be said that, apart from Robert Quarry as the urbane, sophisticated Count, the acting is pedestrian throughout, and the story is merely a hoary old Hammer Horror dressed up in modern clothes (although torches still burn on the walls of the Count's mansion), with a touch of DC comic's visuals thrown into the pot. While subsequent contemporary vampire movies (NEAR DARK, THE LOST BOYS, etc) have gone for the jugular with a pop-culture style and vicious, visceral bloodletting, here the concentration on the sexual/sensual blooding of the vampire's female victims is another indicator that COUNT YORGA is more a rebellious grandchild of horror movies of old than the great-grandfather of the modern-vampire movies that would eventually follow in its wake.
The climax to this movie is all wrong. Yorga's fate, while predictable, is poorly executed vampire's shouldn't die so easily; this guy, after boasting of all the centuries of wisdom that have made him so superior to mortals, practically runs into the hapless hero's stake.