Dracula's Widow

Plot synopsis:
The film, situated in Hollywood, or Tinsel Town as the narrator (Lt. Lannon/Josef Sommer) calls it, opens with Hollywood House of Wax owner Raymond Everett (Lenny von Dohlen) receiving a delivery of some valuable antiques from Poenari, Romania. He anxiously takes delivery of a sixth crate even though he was only expecting five. Later that evening at a Jazz bar called The Blue Angel, a sleazy but lonely patron hits on a mysterious dark-haired woman (Sylvia Kristel) who wonders in. Soon after, they leave together and travel to a secluded park where this peculiar woman kills the man. More shenanigans ensue that night when over at the wax museum, two thieves break in while Raymond is upstairs watching Nosferatu. During the robbery, a creature with webbed hands and dagger-like nails attacks one of the thieves. The thief’s throat is ripped open and his blood drained by a long tentacle emitted from the creature’s mouth. The other man escapes. Following this attack, the mysterious brunette from earlier enters the room where Raymond sits unsuspecting. After a very short battle of wills, Raymond is taken possession of (with a bite) and forced to renounce his girlfriend Jenny Harker (Rachel Jones).
The next day, Lt. Lannon and his partner Citrano (Traber Burns) are called to the crime scene at the park. A clue left in the grass leads them to The Blue Angel, in which witnesses are unable to contribute much. Meanwhile, Raymond tries to free himself from the Vampire’s hold but fails; instead, he cleans up her mess before Jenny arrives. Raymond’s girlfriend, who also works at the museum, observes his distress. She tries to comfort him but instead Raymond tries to bite her, unsuccessfully. As night falls, the creature attacks again. This time it is a night watchman who is ironically watching a news report about the park murder at the onset of his death. Summoned by the vampire, Raymond picks her up in his car. She tells him that he must return her to Romania to her husband Count Dracula. However, Raymond informs her of Count Dracula’s death and that van Helsing is responsible. At this moment, Raymond’s girlfriend, Jenny, glimpses him in the car with the other woman. The police receive a valuable part of the puzzle from the frazzled burglar who witnessed his accomplice’s death at the wax museum the previous night. Later, through van Helsing’s aged grandson (Stefan Schnabel), we learn that all vampires were destroyed with the exception of Vanessa, who is the true wife of Dracula. She is described as both beauty and beast. In a sleazier part of town, Vanessa and Raymond encounter a group of hardcore occultists who seem to sense Vanessa’s evilness and welcome her. She surprises them though when she transforms into the beast and slaughters all save Raymond.
The next morning, Jenny angrily confronts Raymond over the phone and then abruptly hangs up. Distressed, Raymond writes a letter confessing his predicament hoping she will forgive him. Back at the wax museum, Raymond is met by Lt. Lannon who casually searches the premises. The lieutenant confronts Raymond with the burglar’s admission, which he denies. However, their meeting is cut short when Lannon is called to another of Vanessa’s massacres. There, Lannon meets van Helsing’s elderly grandson who tells him that vampires not devil worshippers are to blame. To establish his theory, they journey to the morgue where Vanessa’s first victim is located. With a wooden stake and mallet, Helsing makes Lannon a believer as the victim is briefly reanimated at the moment of his true death. Later, Lannon visits Jenny hoping to discover more information about Raymond and gain her trust. Jenny afterwards meets up with Raymond and he gives her a cross to protect her. Night arrives and more murders follow as Vanessa slays Citrano and Helsing. Consequentially, Raymond is arrested and his wax museum searched for evidence, which police discover.
While in custody, officers try to elicit a confession from Raymond that does not involve a beautiful vampire-monster. However, the only cop who believes him is Lt. Lannon. He and Jenny eventually collaborate to locate Vanessa and exonerate Raymond. As night approaches, Raymond is taken to a vacant warehouse by a few officers for a bit of police brutality, but Vanessa intervenes hoping to eliminate Raymond herself. Jenny, via supernatural intervention, discovers the warehouse. Both, she and Lannon are able to distract Vanessa, while Raymond takes the opportunity to kill her thus regaining his humanity.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
Time For a Vampire Turkey!.
The young owner (Lenny Von Dohlen) of a waxworks in Hollywood receives six instead of five ordered chests with Romanian antiques.
He does not know that Vanessa (Sylvia Kristel), widow of Count Dracula, sleeps in the sixth chest.Why does this have such a terrible rank on IMDb?
I have given it double, simply to spite those people who voted it so poorly.
Seriously, people, this 1980s horror-comedy is worlds better than 99% of the films that come out today, and you still rank today's movies above a 5.
Geez!Sadly, Sylvia Kristel (who you may know from multiple Emmanuelle films) passed away recently (October 2012).
She really tears it up in the titular role.
But Lenny Von Dohlen is no slouch, either, adding the necessary comedy bits.
(You hopefully know him from "Twin Peaks" -- and if not, you should.).
Mildly amusing piece of trash..
"Dracula's Widow" features a 70's soft core sex symbol Sylvia Kristel,who plays the true wife of Dracula.She is something of a monster herself and upon arriving at the Hollywood House of Wax sets about dispatching various lowlifes and Satanists before tracking down Van Helsing's great grandson in order to wreak her revenge."Dracula's Widow" is directed by Nicolas Cage's brother Christopher Coppola.The film is loaded with huge plot holes and there is plenty of cheesy gore to enjoy.The acting is pretty bad and the script is nothing to write about,however if you want to see Sylvia Kristel in her only one horror film you can give this one a try.Unfortunately she doesn't provide any nudity in "Dracula's Widow".5 out of 10..
Fun B-movie.
The owner of a wax museum receives a crate containing the titular character.
She makes him her slave and starts to massacre various idiots throughout town.
A hard-boiled cop slowly catches on and tries to take the fiend down.I don't get all the hate for this one.
Sure, it's no masterpiece.
But as a fun monster flick it works well.
Good pacing and suspense.
Plenty of gore and cool creature effects.
I also loved the cinematography, particularly the use of colored lights.
So while it may be a b-movie, it sure wasn't boring.
I was entertained from beginning to end.
The only bothersome problem in my opinion was the plot, which should've been more cohesive.
A better outfit for the vampire widow could've helped to as she looked more like Lois Lane rather than the bride of Dracula..
I saw this film some years back and it scared the crap out of me.
I mean this movie is a real fright of a film to watch.
It flipped me out totally.
The whole atmosphere of the movie is dark, wet and dreary and then along comes Dracula's Widow and then things go Red. This is a very scary film and is not well know.
If you are here then i recommend picking this one up along with Salem's lot and another film called Vamp.
This is really truly scary.........
............by the way all my friends have said that the most scary movie of all time is one called 'The Woman in Black' and was made for T.V in 1989.
It is supposed to be totally off it's game..
Silly "horror" Movie that doesn't live up to R rating.
The only reason I am commenting on this dumb '80s B-movie is because this is the first R-rated movie I rented at the video store when I was 14 back in 1990.
It wasn't the first R-rated movie I saw in my life, but I remember this was the first one I rented and got away with renting at 14.
So I will always remember this stupid piece of filth.
I was hoping for loads of nudity and plenty of sex scenes back at that age.
I spent the whole time fast forwarding to "the good parts", but alas there really weren't any.
There is very BRIEF nudity in here and ZERO sex.
Oh yeah, the story sucks too and its not scary or interesting in the least bit..
Amusing Piece Of Crap.
I saw this film back in 1989 and bought it at a video store for $1.00.
I feel the same way about this film as I did back then: it's craptacular!The SFX is crappy (ESPECIALLY the make-up)and a lot of the plot is garbage (If Vanessa was so much in love with her husband, how could she not know that he was dead?)and the acting is just HORRIBLE!!!
(Sylvia Kristel is just BAD!!!).Still...It makes for a fun evening!
Just great for a horrible horror movie fest!.
Pointless and forgettable.
When a film is titled "Dracula's Widow", and we see the title character seducing and killing a guy within the first 5 minutes, what's the point of having nearly half the running time taken up by a police investigation that can only eventually lead to what we already know from the start?
Also, I thought that getting bitten by a vampire wasn't enough to make you a vampire, you also had to drink blood from the vampire that bit you.
Ah, never mind, it seems that every movie in this genre is making up its own rules.
Sylvia Kristel is pretty bland in a role that a better actress could have done MUCH more with, wears an awful wig, and doesn't provide any nudity either.
The special effects are mostly terrible - when Kristel is in full-beast mode, she looks more like a werewolf than a vampire!
The lovely Rachel Jones, as the hero's girlfriend, is one of the film's few bright spots.
a lot of gore and blood but not frightening.
Only 8 reviews here online and that for a movie made by Nicholas Cage his brother Christopher Coppola.
I give him some credits because this was his first attempt.
I really enjoyed the movie because I was surprised by the amount of gore that was in it.
But the flick sadly is ruined by Sylvia Kristel.
I just couldn't believe her acting.
She holds her hands just like Nosferatu (1922).
Once she's between a vampire and herself the make up is really laughable but luckily once she's a bat that worked out very well.
You will only see it at the end of the movie but that part was really great.
It's weird but every time I saw Sylvia I thought, nudity time because she was best known for Emanuelle (1974 - 1993)but here she kept her clothes on, the other females do strip their upper parts.
I would recommend it to watch it with friends to start off an excellent horror night..
Dracula and Coppola Never Seem To Be A Good Combination.
I didn't expect a masterpiece in "Dracula's Widow" of 1989, but I was still somehow disappointed.
Directed by Nicholas Cage's brother Christopher Coppola and starring 70s sex icon "Emanuelle" Sylvia Kristel, "Dracula's Widow" may not look like a promising Horror film as such, but at least I expected an entertaining sleaze and gorefest.
My humble expectations were not reached, however, since the film features hardly any sleaze and the gore is existent, but not to an extent that would make the movie worthwhile.
The performances are amateurish, of course, but that was to be expected, so I don't regard the lack of acting talent as a flaw.
Nothing in the movie really makes any sense, and it is only the joy of seeing Sylvia Kristel as a lady vampire, as well as some pretty funny parts that make the 86 minutes endurable.
My favorite character is an old antique dealer who happens to be Dr. Van Helsing's grandson.
In the funniest part of the movie, the old fellow, who looks like a friendly grandpa, takes out a hammer in a morgue, driving a stake through a corpse's heart with the words "In the name of my grandfather, I destroy you".
Moments like this (and Sylvia) make the movie bearable, but it is definitely quite tiresome, even though it's not even 90 minutes long.
This was the first "Dracula" attempt by a Coppola family member, Christopher's famous (and usually brilliant) uncle Francis came along with a kitschy and over-hyped mainstream Dracula film in 1992.
As far as I am concerned, the Coppolas would be well advised to keep their hands off the Prince Of Darkness in the future.
"Dracula's Widow" is only recommended if you really have nothing better to do..
Lacking in Several Areas.
This film begins with a young man named "Raymond" (Lenny Von Dohlen) preparing to display a new exhibit for his wax museum in Hollywood.
Having ordered five crates worth of merchandise from Romania he is surprised to learn that another crate has been added.
Since there isn't much he can do about it he signs for the shipment and then proceeds to turn out the lights and retire to another part of the museum as he has already worked for quite a while.
Meanwhile, upon noticing that the lights in the building have been turned off, two burglars decide to break into the museum to steal anything of value.
What they don't count on, however, is that a vampire named "Vanessa" (Sylvia Kristel) has awakened from her slumber in one of the crates and is quite thirsty.
And not long after disposing of one of these burglars she then ventures upstairs to find yet another victim of sorts-Raymond.
Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that, although this film certainly had some potential, it failed to capitalize on it and was lacking in several respects.
For starters, although the horror was aided by some adequate special effects, there really wasn't that much suspense.
Additionally, the humor wasn't very sharp and the script needed significant improvement as well.
That being said, I didn't think that this was a very good film for the most part and have rated it accordingly.
Below average..
An underrated horror classic.
It has a great story line.
It also has great acting.
It also great special effects.
It is one of the scariest movies ever made.
This movie is scary then The Exorcist and that is not easy to do.
This is a sequel to Dracula.
It is very scary.
It is very scary.
It a true horror classic.
Sylvia Kristel was a great actress.
Josef Sommer is a great actor.
Christopher Coppola is a great director.
This movie is great.
This is one of the best horror movie of all time.
It will scary you out of your mind.
Lenny v.o.n Dohlen is a great actor.
Marc Coppola is a great actor.
Stefan Schnabel was a great actor.
See this movie..
See this movie..
See this movie..
Can you do Wid or Widowd Dracula's Widow?.
Could this have been the very film that inspired the director's uncle, Francis Ford, to make "Dracula" some three or four years later?We're supposed to ignore other reviewer's comments, but I can't resist mentioning another opinion in these hallowed "comment" pages, where the film viewer sounded scared out of his wits.
Fear is a relative thing, isn't it?
The shock moments were awkwardly handled for the most part, in this film; note the guard who's sitting by a window, and the monster uses the old "crash through the window" trick (Argento, for example, used this trick a little more effectively in "Tenebre" six years earlier) to make the guard wish he had a guard.
How could you crash a window and dig long vampiric fingernails into the victim's neck at the same time?
I've tried it, and believe me, it takes some doing.Then there's the create havoc with over a dozen devil worshippers scene.
Talk about one uninspired montage of creating havoc.A friend lent me this, along with a few other vampire films...
he loves vampire films...
and I happened to see "Midnight Kiss," another obscure film about bats.
As it was made a few years after "Dracula's Widow," perhaps it was Dracula's Widow that inspired it (since Uncle Coppola may have been inspired by Dracula's Widow, why shouldn't the makers of Midnight Kiss?), but I was struck by some similarities.
Let's see...
vampire bites victim, and victim takes a few days while the vampire virus goes to work.
Meanwhile, victim has to wear sunglasses and be tempted to feast on animals.
There was even a "morgue" scene, where recent victims get served stake, coming to life as soon as they got the point.Sylvia Kristel did a credible job as the widowed Dracula, conveying an otherwordly and monstrous power pretty effectively.
Raymond, our hero-turned slave (or is it slave-turned-hero?) played by Lenny von Dohlen, reminded me of a Jon Stewart-ish Harry Langdon...
the helpless child trapped in an adult's body.
He even had silent film star Langdon's eye make-up.
My favorite performer was Stefan Schnabel, who played the grandson of Dracula's famous nemesis, Van Helsing.
Boy, what a great ham!
He was like a combination of Burgess Meredith as "The Penguin" from the old Batman TV show and Gilbert Gottfried.
Josef Sommer was also very solid and watchable, as the police hero.
As far as sweet girlfriend Jenny, played by Rachel Jones, at least we get to see her topless in a bathtub scene..
A Minion Journey -- Character Spoiler Alert.
When people focus on the character of Vanessa in this movie, they are actually missing the point of the film.
This isn't about vampires, this isn't about sex or gore, this is about what it is like to become the enslaved servant of a vampire.The main male character Raymond, is the owner and operator of a wax museum preparing for a new display about Dracula and vampire in folktales, legends, and popular culture.
He accepts an extra shipment of boxes and soon finds himself in the thrall of Dracula's wife, Vanessa.
Played by Lenny von Dohlen, Raymond is confused, enchanted, terrified, aroused, and even giddy at various times in the movie.
He clings to his humanity by clinging to love of his girlfriend, Jenny, as he struggles in pure Renfield fashion to resist his own blood lust.With so much romance about vampires in our literature and films, it was a nice change to see a truly horrific vampiric creature and her nevertheless strong hold over a main character.
Too often female vampires are belittled as sexy or subordinate but Vanessa is a real monster and she holds Raymond in her hand, using mental powers on him even while she sleeps, and forcing him to witness her murderous rampages.While not the best vampire film ever, this hardly qualifies as one of the worst either.
If you step back and look at Raymond in the film you may appreciate it on a new level..
I like the vampire woman in "Dracula's Widow".
I rented the video "Dracula's Widow" in October, 1989 and I enjoyed watching that video.
I am not really sure why I like that move; it may be because I like the cinematography, the atmospheric music, the fact that the vampire woman Vanessa portrayed by actress Sylvia Kristel is not a lesbian and yet a strong heterosexual woman..
Vanessa's victims are males and her male companion is the character Raymond portrayed by actor Lenny von Dohlen.
I have read other reviewer's comments and most are critical of the video "Dracula's Widow." Yet, I enjoy watching "Dracula's Widow." I think seeing a strong woman on film may intimidate some male viewers.
The story line, the cinematography, atmospheric music, a strong woman vampire, a helpless victim being a male, and a girlfriend fighting to get her boyfriend back help makes the video "Dracula's Widow" exciting for me to watch..
Has Potential.
Francis Ford Coppola did a great job with Bram Stoker's Dracula so I was looking forward to this one directed by Francis Ford Coppola's nephew, however let me say this was Chris Coppola's first feature, and this was filmed before Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The plot is relatively simple enough, which is a good thing if you ask me.
When an eccentric owner of a small wax museum in Hollywood receives an extra crate which has Dracula's wife, Vanessa in it, all the problems begin.
If you like gore, there is quite a bit of it.
I'm personally not into that, if the gore was there to show some kind of dynamic between how sensual she is and how violent she can be, it would have been much better for me, but I didn't feel that kind of relationship.
The main problem though I have to say is with Vanessa herself.
The 80s business suit she walks around in the entire duration of the film seemed like a waste of wonderful possibilities.
With Dracula's wife, they could have had historical costumes to something along the lines of fantasy and so on.
Her personality was also unattractive, with someone like Sylvia Kristel they could have explored a sensual/dominatrix style character, Dracula is a sex symbol, you would assume that his Queen is similar.
The yelling and tantrum like parts were not attractive.
The scene with the Devil worshippers was memorable and I wish it was explained a bit better.
Always nice to see a Van Helsing in a Dracula film, the part where he is reading an old book about Dracula's wife and acts like it's the first time he's ever read that made me raise my brow.
Nice to see the main character's GF sleep walking, for some reason I like seeing sleep walking in vampire films.
All in all, it had potential, I would like to see a remake!
-2 (for senseless gore and Vanessa)