Count Dracula's Great Love and Burial Ground Blu Ray Releases

My two most recent Blu Ray purchases just arrived in the mail a couple days ago:  from Vinegar Syndrome, there is Count Dracula's Great Love, directed by Javier Aguirre and starring the late-great Paul Naschy.  And then, from Severin, the Italian madness known as Burial Ground, from director Andrea Bianchi.


Paul Naschy is most remembered for his Hombre Lobo movies, playing the ever-doomed Waldemar Daninsky, but he made so many movies in his life that it is doing the man a disservice to overlook his other roles, such as Alaric de Marnac in one of my personal favorite Naschy movies, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Gotho (aka the Hunchback) of Hunchback of the Morgue (which deserves a good Blu Ray release as well), and, of course, Count Dracula himself from Count Dracula's Great Love.

Naschy was heavily influenced by the classics of the golden age of horror and it shows in this movie, from the moody sets and locations to the look of Dracula.  Naschy took these influences and mixed it with some modern sensibilities (such as shooting in color, with plenty of blood, guts, and boobs).

The opening of Count Dracula's Great Love is quite memorable, with two men delivering a crate to a remote old house that was once a sanitarium, then getting the not-so-bright idea of looking around for items of value to steal.   They naturally pay with their lives, leading to the unusual opening credits, which feature one of the would-be thieves falling down a flight of stairs after taking an ax to the head, over and over again, at ever slower speeds.

The story focuses on a group of friends who get stranded in the middle of nowhere and end up taking refuge at the sanitarium, which is, naturally, also in the middle of nowhere.  Their host is Dr. Marlow (Naschy), who is actually the most recent incarnation of Dracula-- I don't think I am spoiling anything by saying that.  This movie establishes the idea that Dracula's physical existence can be destroyed, but he always comes back in a new form.  However, to reach his full power, he needs a woman to fall in love with him and give herself to him freely.  This will also help him resurrect his daughter.  This is similar to the idea in his werewolf movies where it requires a woman who loves Daninsky to kill him, thus freeing his soul from his lycanthropic curse.

As most of the friends succumb to vampire attacks, joining the ranks of the undead themselves, Dr. Marlow and one of the friends, Karen, grow closer and she inevitably falls in love with him.  I will stop there to avoid ruining the movie for anybody who hasn't seen it.  Besides, a full plot summary is easy to find with a quick Google search.

This release features a rather nice-looking transfer of the movie, which is a big upgrade from the DVD copy I have (the Elvira edition from the early '80s run of Movie Macabre).  There is also a trailer, a commentary track with Naschy himself featuring subtitles in English, an interview with actress Mirta Miller, a booklet featuring liner notes by Mirek Lipinski, and a reversible cover.  Not to mention, there is a DVD version included for those who don't have a Blu Ray player.  This is certainly a recommended release for any Naschy fans or fans of old Eurohorror.

Once upon a time, Italy had a really amazing and prolific film industry, giving the world many classic Westerns, action-crime movies, horror movies, amazing giallo flicks (which do often cross over into full-on horror territory, but not always), post-apocalyptic barbarian movies, and so on.  During that wonderful period, there came a movie that I really think only the Italians could have made: Le Notti del terrore, aka Burial Ground.  My first exposure to this movie was the old Vestron VHS edition, which I rented just because the cover artwork was so good (thankfully, Severin preserved this artwork for this release with an alternate cover on the reverse side, in addition to some new art by the great Wes Benscoter on a cardboard sleeve-- more on that later).  I really did not expect the movie that tape contained.

To a large extent, it is a straightforward zombie movie: a group of people in a house try to fend off a horde of zombies.  Despite this, Burial Ground is not just another old zombie flick.  This movie was made pretty cheaply, to be sure, and it does show in many places, but it has charm and it is just plain weird, making it one of the more obscure classics of this era of horror, resting somewhere between Lucio Fulci's iconic Zombi 2 (aka Zombie, Zombie Flesh Eaters, and various other titles) and Bruno Mattei's Virus - l'inferno dei morti viventi (aka Hell of the Living dead,  Zombie Creeping Flesh, and so on).

The setting of Burial Ground is a large mansion, which looks quite amazing, and is located near some old ruins, among which an archaeologist accidentally revives the dead, who then terrorize the people staying in the house.  

One of the main things everybody remembers about this movie is Peter Bark (aka Pietro Barzocchini).  He doesn't seem to have been in many movies and Burial Ground appears to be the only one is actually credited in, so it would appear it is his only substantial role in a movie.  Though in his mid-20s at the time, Bark plays Michael, the young son of one of the women (played by the lovely Maria Angela Giordan, aka Mariangela Giordano) visiting the mansion, and he loves his mother very much.  Very, very much.  I won't go into any more detail for those who haven't seen the movie.

Being a zombie movie, I need to mention the zombie makeup.  As I said before, this was a cheaply-made movie, so some zombies look much better than others.  Some utilize masks, while others are makeup.  Even the cheap ones are still pretty fun though, and there are plenty of worms wriggling about on many of the zombies.

Severin has done a rather nice job with the movie.  It looks quite good and, as I generally prefer older cover art to new art created specifically for a DVD/Blu Ray release, the way Severin handled the artwork is perfect: there is some excellent new artwork, but you don't miss out on the classic artwork (unlike Paramount's multiple re-releases of the first eight Friday the 13th movies, always coming up with some new uniform-style computer-rendered bland artwork, rather than the classic artwork from the old VHS releases).  As mentioned before, the new artwork for the outer sleeve was done by Wes Benscoter, who should be a very familiar name to anybody who is a fan of metal, particularly death metal, as he created so many classic album covers for bands like Deceased, Mortician, Embalmer, Autopsy, Hypocrisy, Sinister, Vader, and others.  His style has a rather distinct look, so you can almost always look at one of his pieces and tell it is his.  I must clarify that I do not mean his work all looks the same, rather that it is the way he shapes objects and people, something in his technique that leaves a unique stamp on each piece.  Put simply, I really like the new artwork, but very happy that classic design is there as well.

The extra features on the disc are mostly interviews, but it also has the trailer and piece about the mansion used in the movie.  This is a really great release of a rather unusual, but extremely enjoyable film.  Another excellent job by the folks at Severin.








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