Drakula Istanbul'da (1953) Online

I first heard about this (and became sufficiently intrigued by it) over the Internet; it is virtually the only vintage Turkish film to be given reasonable exposure in recent years, apart from the Genghis Khan reworking KIZIL TUG (1952), which I also own but have yet to watch.

This, then, joins the ranks of other foreign-language adaptations of the Bram Stoker horror classic – such as the two German NOSFERATUs (1922 and 1979); two from Spain i.e. Dracula (1931; albeit filmed concurrently with the quintessential Hollywood rendition on the very same sets!) and COUNT Dracula (1969; its director, Jess Franco, even made an updated distaff version in VAMPYROS LESBOS [1970]) and the Pakistani THE LIVING CORPSE (1967; which is actually just as obscure and which it most resembles in the long run, not least in the numerous musical interludes). Unfortunately, the copy I viewed was in very bad shape (which perhaps enhanced the expected pervasive mood of dread and inherent strangeness): an exceedingly dark and splicy print, marred even further by combing issues and subtitles that went out-of-synch for considerable stretches!

While the obvious model for this one was the Bela Lugosi milestone (down to refraining from showing the vampire's ultimate come-uppance…but, then, the camera focuses squarely on the heroine's shapely figure while she changes into 'something more comfortable' soon after!), it proved most interesting in what differed from the usual blood-sucking fare. As for Dracula himself, he is atypically played by a bald-headed fellow (albeit resembling Brian Eno much more than the Max Schreck of the original NOSFERATU!) whose role, once the scene shifts from Romania to Turkey, is so severely diminished that he virtually becomes a supporting character in his own 'star vehicle'(!!) – for the record, he can disappear and manifest himself at will, as well as take any animal form he wishes (though, understandably, we are only ever shown one very brief bat mutation throughout) via a simple flashing of the cape over his face…which, at the end, results in unintentional hilarity, when he loses the emblematic garment and is thus forced to literally run for his life (incidentally, here we also have the very first depiction of the famous moment in Stoker's tale where the Count is seen scaling his castle walls, not to mention an off-screen reference to the equally renowned baby-feeding scene)!

To get back to what is novel here vis-a'-vis the source material and the myriad movie versions before and after: Dracula's properties in Istanbul are amusingly referred to as "kiosks"; the Count's hunchbacked servant back home eventually turns on him, and pays with his life, in an effort to protect the victimized hero (which is not even appreciated by the latter!); most hilariously, the vampire is warded off not by the traditional cross but rather mere garlic (lots of 'em!)…but, then, characters are made to freely bestow blessings upon one another (perhaps a requisite of the country's religion?)!; the 'Mina' counterpart is a blonde "Follies" dancer (the girl is forever excusing herself to perform for some Red Cross benefit activity!), and she is even made to give a private show, under hypnosis, for Count Dracula!!; another unusual setting is the sea-side one reserved for the 'Lucy' substitute's initial attack (later on, however, it takes her boyfriend and the obligatory elderly vampire-hunter three separate visits to her crypt in order to ascertain the girl's return from the dead!).

Given the number of classic films that were inspired by Stoker's original over the years, it is unlikely that this particular version will ever be included in that pantheon – but it is certainly enjoyable along the way and weird enough to withstand more than a cursory viewing from horror aficionados.

I must say I found this movie to be 'cok ilginc' (very interesting!) or verrrrry inetersting as the late, great Vincent Price may have said. I gave it a verrrrry generous 7 out of 10. It is clearly a virtual ripof of Tod Browning's "Dracula," and it does even measure up to Werner Herzog's remake of F.W. Murnau's German classic "Nosferatu." But,as a Turkish-American, I have to thank showtvnet.com for providing this interesting guilty pleasure (sorry no subtitles) which does drag at times, but considering this film was made almost 50 years ago when Turkish film standards were even lower than they were in the 'ala Turka cinema renaissance ' of the '70s (when enormous numbers of bad films were made left and right) this has to be viewed as a noble effort. Along with "SCream Blacula Scream,' and perhaps (I've never seen it) "Billy the Kid Meets Dracula," it has to be one of the more unusual takes on this much-filmed saga.

It kept most of the characters of the novel accept they did change the names of the supporting characters for Turkish audiences. This is the first Dracula film to show Dracula climbing down the walls. The Mina character was given a different name and a dancing career. The male characters with the exception of Dracula were given a name change. The story takes place in the 1950's instead of the 1890's. Film starts out with the renamed Harker character being taken by a cab driver to the Borgo pass equivalent and picked up by the Count disguised as a coach driver. Then he goes to the castle where he meets Dracula who rather forcibly insists that he stays and he is almost attacked by Dracula's one wife (3 in the novel)and then Dracula intervenes. The one wife was used later on in the fine 1958 Hammer film with Christopher Lee.This version has its Whitby and Dracula's repeated vampiric attacks on the Lucy character. Lucy becomes a vampire is forced by the equivalents of Harker,Seward,Van Helsing,Holmwood and Morris down and staked. A real weird Renfield character and Lucy's Mother are also in this.I also appreciate that this version kept in the fact that Lucy was a brunette and Mina a blonde.The women are rather exotic. This is a wonderful version I liked it a lot better than the German versions of 1922 and 1979 called Nosferatu which also used Bremen and Weimar as locations for the Dracula story. The 1922 version of Dracula changed Dracula to Count Orlock, Harker becomes Hutter,Mina becomes Ellen and Lucy becomes Annie and Renfield Knock. The 1931 Spanish version of Dracula based on the Broadway play and the Stoker changed the Mina character's name to Eva. The 1980 Showtime TV teleplay Passion of Dracula with soap opera veteran Christopher Bernau as Dracula changed the Arthur character's name to Gordon.The 2002 Italian version with Patrick Bergen as Dracula changed the Van Helsing character's name. What I am getting at is this isn't the first time that characters in a Dracula movie have been given a name or location change. For any real fan of Dracula films this version is a keeper and enjoyable to watch. It is hard to find sometimes Ebay or Amazon will have it available. For fans who can't find it on either it can be viewed on You Tube in 11 parts. Come to think of it I don't think Romanians would be very fond of this version the real Dracula Prince Vlad Tepes Dracul was a Christian Romanian national Hero who hated and fought and protected his country from the invading Turks of the Ottoman empire. Dracula as a young man and royal hostage of the Turks picked up a few cruel torture habits from the Turks such as impalement which Drac used to full advantage.One minus about the film it isn't dubbed in English at least the version I have isn't but if one of you film lovers has a friend who is Turkish or is of Armenian,Bulgarian or Kurdish and is bilingual please ask them if they would translate this into English for you. Enjoy the film.

A Turkish version of the Dracula story. How absurd and obscure this sounds. But truth is, I was really digging the movie for its first 15 minutes or so. Unfortuntaly after that the movie very rapidly started to become incredible bad and lackluster.

It was very obvious to me, that the film-makers had carefully watched the 1931 movie "Dracula", directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi. It's not only a scene-by-scene remake at times but the movie even tries to look exactly like a 1931 movie. I'm still in doubt whether or not this had to do with financial issues or if it was an artistic choice but either way, I was really liking this. It give the movie a truly great atmosphere and I actually liked it that this was a 1953 movie, trying to be like an '30's movie, with its look and overall style.

But somehow, something went terribly wrong with its story. For some reason it is starting to take its own approach and seems to be making up its own story, as the movie goes along. Problem with this is, it just really isn't anything interesting or exciting to follow. The movie gets really lackluster after its fine start, which was a bitter disappointment.

Almost the entire middle part of the movie is more than enough reason to skip on this movie. It's incredibly poorly done, without any excitement or imagination and the movie also really starts to drag at this point, which will totally make you loose interest in it.

Quality wise this also really isn't the best movie. The sound at times is simply missing and the editing has some awkward cuts in it at times. It all makes it obvious what an incredible cheap production this must have been to make and also makes it obvious that most people involved really had no real idea what they were doing.

It's still not a completely horrible movie. I mean, if you are really into Dracula or vampires in general and want to see a fresh and unusual take on the story, done by a totally different culture (there are no crosses in this movie for instance because it's an Islamic movie), this movie is still worth checking out.

5/10

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Based on an abridged version of Stoker's novel, "Dracula In Istanbul" remains one of the best foreign adaptations of the famous tale. Essentially "Dracula" with a Turkish twist, the film is notable for being the first proper horror film to come out of Turkey.

The film has it's place in horror history because it contains sequences that were absent both in the Universal classic as well as in the Hammer horrors that would begin in 1958. This was the first adaptation to show Dracula scaling down his castle walls and the first to contain the controversial sequence in which Dracula feeds a newborn baby to his female companion (a scene present in the Pakistani "Zinda Laash" as well).

The influence doesn't end there. This movie was also one of the first to show Dracula's canine fangs - a feature completely ignored in previous versions - and it can be partly credited for the craze of vampire films in the 50's. Not bad for a film that did not even get a mainstream cinema release.

'Dracula in Istanbul' deserves credit for an honest title, at least. This Turkish-made film sticks fairly close to the original plot of Bram Stoker's novel (greatly simplified), apart from moving the action to Istanbul in the present day (1953), presumably as a budget-saving device and in order to make the film more 'relevant' to its target audience ... much as the Hollywood version of H.G. Wells's 'War of the Worlds' moved the action to modern Los Angeles.

Dracula is played here by Atif Kaptan, who was apparently (I'm told) a horror-film veteran in Turkey, somewhat equivalent to Peter Cushing. He plays Count Dracula in impeccable (modern) formal dress: white tie and tails. He is also completely clean-shaven and slap-headed, looking vaguely like a cross between Max Schreck in 'Nosferatu' and Kojak.

The English characters in Stoker's novel are Turkish here, with appropriate name changes. The most significant change in the storyline is the conversion of demure ingenue Mina Seward into a fleshly cabaret dancer named Guzin, erotically depicted by Annie Ball. She gives an intriguing performance, turning me on more than somewhat, but this alteration weakens the story. Much of the horror in Stoker's novel comes from the contrast between the virginal Mina and the profane unholy nature of the undead. In this Turkish film, the Mina character Guzin is already depicted as a 'bad' girl, so somehow it doesn't seem quite so shocking when Dracula threatens to recruit her into the undead's legions.

This film was made on a laughably low budget, only a bare notch above the Ed Wood level. Yet the lighting and photography impressed me, and the Turkish locations are very interesting. I wish I could say I was impressed with the actors' performances: perhaps Turkish cinema audiences actually prefer a more stylised acting technique than I'm accustomed to viewing. I'll rate this Turkish delight 4 points out of 10.

"Drakula Istanbul'da" is a fun and interesting Turkish adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula." Despite changing Dracula's destination to Istanbul instead of England, as well as updating the story to 1953, it's relatively faithful to the book. Despite the obviously- automatic translations on the poor-quality transfer I saw (including the Turkish word for "mail" being anachronistically translated as "email"), the film is easy to follow if you've read the novel—or have seen enough movie adaptations to be familiar with the story. The alterations that are made tend to be tactful, too.

The biggest one being the absence of Christianity, except for, appropriately, an early scene at a Transylvanian hotel where two women make the sign of the cross. This makes sense since Turkey is predominately Muslim; yet, there doesn't seem to be any mention of Islam in the film, although characters, apparently, refer to God frequently in their greetings and farewells. Instead, to ward off vampires, characters resort to the non-denominational option from the book: garlic… lots and lots of garlic. Also, the "Harker" character (except for Dracula, the film changes the names) displays an amulet once or twice, and he refers non-specifically to his "faith." (Of course, again, I suspect the translations I read weren't the best, so I may've missed nuances.)

There's at least one other interesting point regarding this adaptation's relocation. Stoker's "Dacula" is an example of a xenophobic genre of invasion literature, which was popular in England at the turn of the 20th Century. A soulless, bloodsucking body snatcher from the East, Dracula embodied the threat of a foreign invasion of the West and its Christian values. In turning Dracula East, the foreign invasion threat in "Drakula Istanbul'da" has some significant historical resonance—recalling the many past conflicts of East and West, Islam and Christianity in the area. Unlike prior "Dracula" films, this one mentions and adds to the connection, originally made in the novel, between Dracula and the historical Vlad the Impaler. This real-life Prince of Wallachia had thousands of Turks killed and impaled during his wars with the Ottomans. In the film, Dracula mentions that Prince Vlad is his ancestor, a fact underscored by the armor found throughout his castle. So, the vampire-descendant of a man who impaled the heads of thousands of soldiers from your country returns. Now, that's a horrifying invasion.

Another inspired twist on the familiar story is making "Mina" a belly dancer. In her first scene, she fights off the advances of the all-too-ordinary-sort of male predator, which foreshadows nicely the later advances made upon her by Dracula, who puts her in a trance and forces her to dance for him! And this is after a scene where he interrupts her taking a bath. Clearly, these filmmakers took good advantage of the lack of the Hays Code, which prevented Universal from coming anywhere close to such "scandalous" scenes in its Dracula series.

Speaking of Universal monster movies, "Drakula Istanbul'da" features a hunchbacked assistant at Dracula's castle. Such a character is nowhere to be read in Stoker's novel, but hunchbacked assistants were a frequent supporting character in Universal's films (although not for Dracula). Partly, the hunchback here replaces the absent Renfield. Axing Renfield is arguably preferable to the expansion of his character at the expense of Harker, as was done in the 1931 "Dracula" films. On the other hand, "Drakula Istanbul'da" swings a bit too far the other way by enhancing their "Harker" to the point that he alone chases Dracula through city streets to a graveyard, where he drives the stake through Dracula's heart, cuts off his head and puts garlic in his mouth. When "Harker" returns home, and informs his compatriots of his heroism, "Van Helsing" basically shrugs, and the gang all retire home just as fast. The film's final scene of "Harker" tossing out in disgust the garlic he and "Mina" had decorated their home with to protect themselves is another light and humorous moment.

"Drakula Istanbul'da" was obviously a small-budget production, but considering that, it makes decent use of locations, there's camera movement, well-paced montage, and its simple visual effects (mostly stop-substitutions – a simple editing technique invented back in 1895) are charming. For early-cinema fans like myself, imagine if Georges Méliès were a vampire, and you'll get an idea of this elusive and illusive Dracula, who, like Méliès, is also fond of dancing girls. I especially liked the effect to show that Dracula was, indeed, the carriage driver, because I wasn't sure otherwise. They also adapted the scene of Dracula scaling his castle walls. I don't even mind the impractically-tusked fangs. And the addition of "Van Helsing" as an author of a book on vampires, for which Dracula tore out the pages on how to kill them, was a brilliant touch. If only the big-budget Hollywood adaptations had such charm and creativity, we could've had the definitive Dracula.

Over the years, I have seen several incredibly campy Turkish films from the 1970s and 80s, such as knockoff versions of "Star Wars" and "Captain America". However, I've never seen an older Turkish film until I stumbled upon this version of "Dracula" (1953) floating about on YouTube. It does have subtitles but in some ways is much better than the newer films I've seen. Yes, the production values are at times very bad....but the acting is pretty good and the film does provide a few frights...and it's not as campy as the other films I mentioned. Now I am not saying it's good....but at least it's not terrible.

The story is generally that which you'll see in other Dracula stories with only a few major exceptions. It's set in contemporary times and instead of Dracula buying a manor in England, this one decides to move to Istanbul--which makes a lot of sense considering there aren't that many crucifixes there to dissuade him (you see none in the film)! As for Drac himself, he's a weird looking one with teeth that go out at 45 degree angles--which makes you wonder HOW his bite can penetrate ANYTHING!! Predictably, when Drac begins sucking Sadan dry, her family bring in a Van Helsing-like old bearded guy to help them put a stop to all this.

A few things to note. First, although this was filmed in a Muslim nation, it was at the time officially a secular state and seeing some of the women wearing very little still surprised me a bit. Second, the print on YouTube is in terrible condition and I have no idea how else to find this film with subtitles. Third, while the IMDb trivia section says the word 'vampire' does not appear in the film, it is in the English language subtitles and in many ways it stays very close to the original Bram Stoker novel.

Overall, not even close to being a must-see film. The camera-work is often sketchy (especially on closeups), the 'castle' is an obvious painting and the entire production looks pretty cheap.

Atrocious picture quality made this one nearly unwatchable, with innumerable breaks in the film, some scenes are blown out almost completely white, (unintentional?) double exposures, and even visible fingerprints.

This is another fairy faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's original novel, but inept on all other departments, from bland acting, to its depiction of Dracula as nothing more than a bald old man, to uninspired directing, and no budget sets, which really look like someone's redressed cellar. The film looks nearly comical, like a (lame) William Castle flick.

Perhaps I'll give this a second chance, if I can ever locate a better copy of it, otherwise, I would have a difficult time recommending this to even the biggest fan of Dracula, even Pakistani Dracula was an improvement.

Despite the relocation and the update to a contemporary setting (cars and neon signs are seen), Dracula IN ISTANBUL seems to be a fairly faithful retelling of the famous Bram Stoker story, albeit with the addition of a few new characters - namely a creepy hunchbacked servant who appears to be based on the Renfield character. Horror fans are familiar with Universal's Dracula (and, to a lesser degree, the Spanish version filmed at night on its sets) and the sequels that followed, and then Hammer's Dracula in 1958. But Dracula IN ISTANBUL is a film which seems to have slipped from public scrutiny, like most Turkish movies, and can only now be evaluated in an international, Internet-using world.

The movie has a stagy feel to it, due to the fact that it was basically the first genre movie ever made in Turkey at the time and the budget meant the movie was set-bound at all stages. However, the settings and occasional matte shots of a spooky castle are more than enough to give the movie an appropriate and authentic feel to it. The contemporary setting is a bit jarring at first but makes for some fun changes. For instance, the fragile Mina in the book - the main thrust of Dracula's attractions - here becomes a nightclub dancer played by Euro-beauty Annie Ball (I love the bathtub scene in which the camera shyly zooms into her legs at an appropriate moment). The acting appears stilted at times but is adequate for the production, with kudos going to Atif Kaptan who makes for an eerie, alien-looking Dracula. The extreme close-ups of Drac's madly staring eyes are a highly effective portrait of evil.

Speaking of eerie, horror-wise the movie succeeds in working up a few gentle chills, as is the norm for movies made in that period and watched in today's light. Favourite scenes include a hollow-eyed painting from which smoke weirdly billows, a graveyard exhumation, and a midnight walk through a creepy wood (day-for-night filming always looks better in black and white). The music is appropriate and helps to contribute to the atmosphere of the piece. My only complaint is that the lighting is far too dark in some sequences, and combined with the typically poor quality of Turkish movies in today's world, some bits are impossible to fathom.

The special effects used are simplistic in the extreme, with simple tricks like levitating coffin lids, offscreen howls, jump-cuts to make Dracula seem like he appears from nowhere, and fog billowing on to the screen (allegedly the result of a number of crew members frantically smoking just offscreen due to there being no budget for a dry ice machine!). The fact that Dracula has fangs here and walks down the outside of his castle wall, as per Stoker's novel, is a fine touch. This isn't brilliant by any means - it's badly dated and there are one-too-many nightclub dancing interludes. However there are enough elements to make this of interest to intrepid genre buffs and a minor classic of Turkish fantasy cinema.