The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 358

DRACULA MOVIES GET A SHOT OF FRESH BLOOD BY JOHN M. WILSON hat madness hath Frank Langella wrought? Since his starring performance on Broadway last year CAT LOS ANGELES TIMES A I 1 -A 'I TO i i 1 1 i wf Jf'4, agent-producer named Daryl Marshak, who tried to peddle a Bela Lugosi project to all the studios and ended up shooting his own X-rated version of the Dracula legend in seven days. "It sounds egotistical," said Marshak, "but I feel like I started a Dracula craze in this town. I did drum Dracula into the ears of Ken Russell (who has written a screenplay for his own film version) and Mike Gruskoff (producer of the new "Nosferatu," another vampire variation). Don't get me wrong, I don't feel ripped off.

Dracula is in the public domain. But, in my opinion, it was when I was representing the Bela Lugosi estate and pounding the walls about a Dracula project that this whole Dracula craze got started." Indeed. But what about the other speculations on this grave matter? Robert Kaufmann, writer of "Love at First Bite," a comedy version starring George Hamilton as a contemporary count: "I don't know why the Dracula craze. It's not a conspiracy. I thought of mine at the same time as the others.

We were in the swimming pool at 4 a.m. at Leslie Bricusse's (rented) house in Acapulco. George and I were swimming around, doing Dracula imitations to each other. We thought, wouldn't it be funny if Dracula came to New York in the 1970s, and New York terrorized him. Everybody laughed.

That's how movies are born. Thank God we were ripped." The evil influence of alcohol, then! George Hamilton: "Dracula represents the ultimate romantic figure, and we're so in need of romance. Dracula and I both agree that women do like manners; they want men to care about them and treat them like ladies. I think today's man does not know what to do, how to stand up for himself, give orders. Most American men feel henpecked, Please Turn to Page (and this) in the sumptuous and romantic-erotic production of "Dracula," no less than a dozen Dracula or vampire movies have been completed or announced for filming, several of them major projects.

As the count rises, it takes the most careful typing to sort out all the variations of the legendary neck -romancer, a fictional character doomed to a living death who must suck the blood from innocent victims for sustenance. Created by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel, "Dracula," which has never been out of print, the bloodthirsty count has also sucked millions of dollars from the pockets of willing movie patrons in more than 200 feature films worldwide, at least two dozen of them in the English language. The most famous, of course, is the 1931 version, directed by Tod Browning for Universal, and starring Bela Lugosi, reprising his earlier stage role. Now, in 1978, Langella himself has moved from the stage to star as Dracula in Universale new film, adapted from the play by W. D.

Richter. And, by and large, Langella is being credited with a hypnotic Broadway performance that has sparked a Dracula revival. "I don't know if it all was caused by the success of the play," said Langella, on the phone from the film's location in Cornwall, "although a number of people involved in the other films have been to see the play many, many times." But is it really the suave, alluring Langella who should get the credit or bear the responsibilityfor mesmerizing Hollywood? What mystery lurks behind this sudden specter of Draculunacy? Is it possible that the Dracula derby was actually instigated by Dr. Donald Reed, tireless president of the Count Dracula Society, who flits nervously about town in black cape and thick spectacles? "I was the founder of the Count Dracula Society more than 17V years ago." said Reed. "I was really the one responsible for renewing the interest in Dracula." Aha! But then there is a brash, 23-year-old 'DEER HUNTER' A PALSHIP GOES TO WAR BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN SPOTLIGHT The three dashing chefs from Gas-cony.

Lois Dwan interview. Page 124. The times and trials of Robin (Mork) Williams. Page 4. Queen's new album, "Jazz." Robert Hilburn review.

Page 85. The hard rock women with Heart. Dennis Hunt interview. Page 92. "Seven Artists in Israel" at the County Museum.

William Wilson review. Page 117. Dan Sullivan, on his trip to the White House. Page 82. On the road with the itinerant violinist.

A log by Endre Balogh. Page 85. Book Review is printed separately from Calendar in today's Times. are in fact brilliant. The American lives that will be affected by the war are drawn from a Pennsylvania steel mill town, an ethnic (Russian) enclave of gritty streets, hard work, desperate pleasures and tight horizons.

(See John M. Wilson interview with Cimino on Page 46.) It continues to be an extraordinary year for the camera, and Vilmos Zsigmond has caught the mill town at its late autumn bleakest, the dank streets and matted leaves and warning winds, the semis snarling past and the diesel switchers rumbling by on the elevated tracks above the frame tenements 9 Ihe Deer Hunter," which opens I Wednesday at the National in JL Westwood, playing one week to qualify for Academy Award consideration, is an extremely ambitious and important film on a crucial theme the impact of the Vietnam war on American lives. In a year in which too few movies have tried to do more than divert and pacify, "The Deer Hunter" aspires to be unique and demands to be measured against the classic uses of the screen to illustrate the way we live and die. The best passages of Michael Cimino's film and the saloon whose neon signs are warming beacons in the early darkness. The combat sequences, too, have a numbing authenticity, providing a brief but horrifying taste of the merciless and indiscriminate village warfare, and making My Lai comprehensible and therefore all the more dismaying.

In all its excellences and its aspirations, "The Deer Hunter" chooses to be an extended metaphor, in much the same way that Dalton Trumbo's limbless, eyeless, speechless soldier in "Johnny Got His Gun" was an extended metaphor for the futility of war. Please Turn to Page 47.