Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) opens with an excitingly hoky seance conducted by the dour & serious Count Yorga (Robert Quarry). He's a dinner guest among many, but eats or drinks nothing.

Before he leaves, he telepathically commands Donna (D. J. Anderson credited as Donna Anders) to obey him in all things. He'd been the last boyfriend of Donna's mother (Marsha Jordan), who we soon realize is not merely dead, but one of the undead.

Erica (Judy Long) is attacked by Yorga in a truly corny bit. She remembers none of it the next day, but is enemic, & has two bite marks on her neck. What could it mean? Impossible to guess. She's soon bonkers & sucking the blood out of a hapless kitten. Meanwhile Donna's unable to get out of bed.

If any of this really gets Yorga's rocks off, he's more perverted than your average vampire. At his mansion he has other women kept in suspended animation to feed upon, awakening them only when he desires a puppet show or has the urge to see two girls kissing.

The vampire babes are of course the best things here, though that's not saying a hell of a lot. That Yorga purports to be motivated by love for the women whose beauty he preserves, that must be the same reasoning process non-vampire pervs tell themselves about doing their inflatable rubber doll.

Eventually Donna & Erica's slow-witted competing boyfriends begin to suspect Yorga. Could it have been the cape that gave him away?

Doctor Jim (Roger Perry) being a blood specialist believes in vampires & acts as a sort of Van Helsing, though not a very effective example of the type.

Yorga's Igor is Brudah (Edward Walsh) who seems to have gotten his "ugly servant make-up" for 88 cents at a post-Halloween sale. Yorga's own powdery whiteness when in full vampire mood came from grandma's rancid powder puff.

Despite a few entertaining moments, by & large I found it difficult to fathom how this film ends up on lists of great 1970s shlockers. Yorga is the most ordinary sort of babe-biting dufus imaginable & the average Dracula flick from Hammer Studios treats these cliches more imaginatively.

I'd probably have stopped watching this turd before the first hour ended but for the lingering expectation there'd at least be a climax to all this drivelish nonsense. Hope springs eternal.

When Yorga's at last impaled, it's so damned easy that the only reason it happened then & not earlier in the film was because this fiasco had to reach the hour & a half mark. The last guy manages to save only Donna; but, surprise-surprise, she's got teeth. Rim shot, fade to black.

Continue to:
Sucker: The Vampire (1998)

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