David Niven has a role that is clearly beneath his stature (in his first scene, he is reading a Playboy magazine), and Clive Donner’s direction is almost embarrassingly crude (the dreadful copy I saw made it look even worse than it is, but it’s crude nonetheless). Still, the movie has some unexpectedly clever lines (Dracula’s assistant to his master: “I cross my fingers, sir” – Dracula’s response: “I’d rather you didn’t”), and (don’t crucify me for this) I really found it more enjoyable than Polanski’s overrated “Fearless Vampire Killers” – mainly because it has no pretensions of greatness. (**)
