Count Yorga Vampire

Amazon.com The Dracula legend gets a suavely competent makeover in this 1970 bloodsucker, bringing vampirism to present-day Los Angeles with a harem of semi-clad females and the sharp casting of Robert Quarry in the title role. The film's original title ( The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire) is perhaps more fitting, since it's really about how Quarry--posing as a Bulgarian psychic medium--seduces his female clients into neck-bitten submission. The victims' abandoned boyfriends (including Michael Murphy, who costarred in M*A*S*H the same year) recruit a vampire-hunting doctor (Roger Perry) to track Yorga down (with wooden stakes made from a broomstick, no less), and the body count rises predictably. Dry performances and tepid dialogue don't help much, but the then-modern setting and intelligent plotting make Count Yorga worthy of its 1971 sequel. It's not as stylish as Christopher Lee's Hammer films, but it's certainly not anemic. --Jeff Shannon