Drakula Istanbul'da (Dracula In Istanbul) is adapted from the 1923 Turkish novel "Kazikli Voyvoda" (Vlad the Impaler) which basically was a turkified version of Bram Stoker's legendary Dracula. The film basically has the same plot as in Stoker's novel, except for some changes such as the characters' names and the fact that there is Istanbul instead of London. Although shot with a pretty small budget, it's still relatively well made and aside from the excessive darkness in the film (probably resulting from a bad lab work on the original shot) is pretty successful in creating atmoshpere, something most other Turkish films of the era rarely touch upon.
Like in most other films the budget shortage and the lack of technological means called for originality and practical solutions, like the entire crew smokink cigarettes under and around the camera to create the effect of fog. Although the acting is not really good (and results in the usual hilarity, especially in the scene where Jonathan Harker/Azmi loses it after discovering that Dracula is a vampire) except for the charismatic Atif Kaptan who plays Dracula and some of the technical tricks they tried to employ end up backfiring (the bat transformation scene involving a small toy bat and a man dressed in a huge bat-like costume inside the darkness), Dracula In Istanbul still manages to be a well made film by the standards of the era and while it won't offer anything new on Dracula, it's an interesting small piece of history.
Two interesting things about it is that it is apparently the first Dracula film to feature the Count with pronounced canine teeth, and also the earliest, or one of the earliest, depictions of the wall-climbing scene of the book in film.
