Cinema's First Cynical Hipster Vampire

Count Yorga simply just *cannot* with you humans

Vampires weren’t very popular in the 1970s, and Count Yorga reacts to this by rolling his eyes and pointing out that you weren’t very popular with him, either. Clad in his ironic vintage wear, Yorga sneers at the suburban world that has sprouted around him, lighting candles and most likely journaling about how fake and plastic everything has become. Had it been made 30 years later, Yorga would be lecturing you about how homemade grenadine is superior to the store-bought swill, CDs just don’t capture the warmth of vinyl, and Americans don’t know how to make real coffee. Debuting in 1970’s Count Yorga, Vampire and sticking around long enough to appear in a sequel, Robert Quarry’s version of a legendary bloodsucker is a bored snob who has seen it all and finds everyone tiresome. Count Yorga, Vampire is a movie about a hipster vampire that is beloved by hipster fans of vampire movies. I love it like I love fancy cheese shops, expensive tinned fish, waistcoats, and obnoxiously obscure albums by regional psychedelic jazz-funk bands that were only together for five months.

I don’t consider myself cynical (though like most likely cynics, I claim “I’m just a realist”), and I don’t think I’ve ever liked anything for the sake of hilarious irony. While I’ve certainly been exhausted, I don’t think I’ve ever been jaded, and I’ve certainly striven my whole life to be welcoming and inclusive—a gate opener, not a gatekeeper. I’m enthusiastic about things and generally positive and, I think, pretty earnest in what I love, leveraging for myself Langston Hughes’ description of Alain Locke as “a gentleman of culture, happy to help others enjoy the things he had learned to enjoy.” Otherwise, however, my Venn diagram otherwise intersects pretty heavily with one defining a typical Gen X hipster (and I always found the jaded and ironic characteristics associated with hipsters to be exaggerated; you don’t learn to churn your own butter because it’s funny). Even when hipster became a derogatory term in the 2000s, it didn’t bug me. Yeah, man, whatever. I’m cool with it, even if my hipsterdom was always a little outsider. Like, sure, I lived in Williamsburg—but on the Hasidic side, by Flushing Avenue. Then again, what’s more hipster than living in the non-hipster part of a hipster neighborhood???

Anyway, those who were still clinging to vampires in a decade that was fast-shifting to “the devil’s little kid” and possession movies were at least trying to figure out something new they could bring to the subgenre. A big part of that ended up being transporting the vampire from the comfortable trappings of the Victoria and Edwardian era and into modern times—but not just modern times. After all, 1931’s Dracula was set in what were then “modern times” (as I suppose was the original novel, for that matter) but modern times with all of the associated outlandish pop and youth culture that came to characterize post-World War II society. What makes the “modern times” of the vampire films that would hit screens in the 1970s is their indulgence in youth-driven pop culture and trends. Dracula may have been contemporary in 1931, but it wasn’t really, not in the way the “modern vampire” movies of the 1970s would be. Dracula still hangs out in creepy old-school places for the most part. Even films with more overtly “contemporary” settings, such as Dracula’s Daughter (1936) with its stylish outfits and Return of the Vampire (1943) with the London Blitz going on around it still isolate their stories from whatever pop trends may have been happening at the time.

Now if Bela Lugosi’s Dracula had met Lucky Luciano and been confused by Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher,” then maybe. Alas, no one put Bela in a zoot suit.

One of the first vampire films to take advantage of the juxtaposition of what we expect from a vampire tale and what the modern world looked like was Return of Dracula (1958), which transplants the famous vampire to a midcentury modern American suburb. As opposed to Lugosi’s version, in which Dracula doesn’t seem all that incongruous in then-modern London, Return of Dracula (with the lead role played by Francis Lederer) takes advantage of our tendency, by the 1950s, to associate vampires with “old times,” especially since vampire movies had not been particularly popular for most of the decade. The last time Dracula was contemporary had been over 25 years prior, and to many Americans (especially American teenagers—we’ll get to that) in the late 1950s, the 1930s were as old-fashioned looking as the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The idea of Dracula in a sack suit, strolling down the sidewalk of a neighborhood full of Studebakers, little kids in cuffed jeans playing baseball, and housewives in cocktail dresses waving at him was unsettling—which was the point of Return of Dracula, which could also be interpreted an allegory for the infiltration of Communism into mainstream suburban America.

Another step was taken in 1965. The British vampire film Devils of Darkness resisted the pull of Hammer Horror that was so popular at the time and so committed to keeping its famous monsters in Victorian/Edwardian settings, and instead was set in the modern era and in identifiably modern places. The vampires in Devils of Darkness (who deliver a lot of bang for your horror buck by also running a Satanic cult) circulate among bohemian artists and hipsters. Their leader, Count Sinistre (subtle), is erudite and cultured, and just a little bit aloof. A few years later, the US studio American International Pictures (AIP) took the idea of a modern vampire preying on hipsters, swingers, and wife-swapping suburbanites and turned it into Count Yorga, Vampire. The big difference between Sinistre and Yorga is that, while Sinistre may have been a bit of a snob, Yorga is flat-out condescending. This vampire has been around the block several times, and he is just so over it all.

Count Yorga, Vampire may not have been aimed at teenagers, but AIP’s skill at adapting to the changing times (however corny the final results may have been) and the whims of teens certainly made them agile. AIP decided the vampire film might still have some life in it. Their initial idea for updating the vampire tale was to make it a saucy softcore film. There are many reports that the original version of Count Yorga, Vampire—bearing the title The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire—was meant to be a porno film. Not so, though it was meant to flaunt the bare breasts and other things you could get away with thanks to the loosening of restrictions on cinematic sex and violence. Hammer, incidentally, had come to the same conclusion around the same time, and manifested it into The Vampire Lovers, a beautiful, poetic, heartbreaking adaption of the classic vampire tale, Carmilla. Count Yorga would be like Carmilla’s sneering cousin, so contemptuous of her romantic heart.

Whatever state Yorga has been in when AIP picked up the independently produced film for distribution, they demanded that the sauciness be trimmed to achieve a more teen-friendly GP (PG to you youngbloods) rating. Some remnants remain, at least in the current version of the film (which is slightly longer than the original theatrical version), but there must have been a considerable amount lost in a cutting room somewhere, though some production stills of some unused scenes remain in circulation. With increased sexiness out, Count Yorga’s next idea for updating the vampire film was to approach it with a more cynical attitude. All of these movies have to feature a variation on the, “Vampires? You must be joking! This is the 20th century!” line, but Count Yorga takes the line to heart. You really must be joking. A vampire, cape and all, in 1970s California? Ridiculous! And Count Yorga’s attitude is basically, “Yes, isn’t it?” even as the film is biting you on the neck. It’s a tricky tightrope act, to both poke fun at and respect the classical vampire film, but what makes Count Yorga special is that it works.

We meet Yorga, played with acerbic perfection by Robert Quarry, as he presides over a seance attended by jaded young couples. As with Sinistre in Devils of Darkness, the long-lived vampire can adapt to modern times and fit in by traveling in small circles where quirkiness and strange behavior are easily dismissed. Yorga himself is a bit of a prick, though it’s entirely understandable given the fact that the guy has been alive for hundreds of years and probably had to suffer all manner of fools. Quarry is great in the role, mixing this biting sarcasm with a world-weary melancholy to create a character that is undeniably a villain yet oddly sympathetic. Hammer later attempted to inject this same sort of world-weariness into Dracula in The Satanic Rites of Dracula, but they didn’t study Yorga’s game plan close enough to quite pull it off. Christopher Lee’s Dracula was always a presence but rarely an actual character, even when he was on screen. Yorga is more complex and more human, and his attitudes are more relatable, especially in an American exhausted by years of war and social upheaval. His disillusionment with pretty much everything in the “normal” world is an interesting counterpoint to the same disillusionment the modern couples have with the seance they’re attending despite their mockery of it. “What a bunch of pointless nonsense,” both sides seem to be thinking.

Nonsense or not, the supernatural bears its fangs when one of the couples gives Count Yorga a lift. The movie’s humor is subtle, very dry, and best characterized by things like a vampire having to bum a ride home after a seance or Yorga’s wonderful, “I believe I had a cape” line as he prepares himself to leave. These moments aren’t entirely played for laughs, and the film doesn’t scream at you and point out things that are supposed to be funny. It’s really up to you to decide whether or not you think it’s amusing. It is.

Yorga chews his way through the women in this circle of friends as the men struggle to come to grips with the idea that there really could be a vampire praying upon them and their girlfriends. This culminates in a bout of verbal sparring in which our principal heroes, Michael (Michael Macready) and Dr. Hayes (Roger Perry), visit Yorga at his estate and attempt to engage the count in one of those battles of double entendres and “I don’t know what you really are…or do I?” conversations. Yorga is visibly bored and irritated by these two fools who doubtless think themselves terribly clever. The confrontation ends just before sunrise, with Yorga basically doing nothing more than kicking the guys out of his house. The proper finale follows shortly thereafter, in which Yorga’s home is raided in an attempt to recover the kidnapped and hypnotized Donna (Donna Anders), and Michael and Dr. Hayes discover a bit too late that Yorga’s pad is crawling with hungry vampire ladies.

The film is limited to a few sets, revolving mostly around Yorga’s mansion and creating a feeling of claustrophobia and timelessness despite the intrusions of modern trappings like vans and telephones. Yorga is keen to control his environment and keep himself in a setting over which he can exercise more effective control. There are no scenes of Yorga hitting the town or going to a club. His world is necessarily small. It enables him to survive in modern times but also surround himself with comfort items from his past, like an old man sitting in his den listening to Sammy Davis, Jr. records. Yorga can survive because he has learned how to shrink the modern world into a controllable sphere where he can exist on the fringes, writing his strangest behavior off as simple eccentricity, plucking a victim every now and then but generally remaining below the radar of modern society. He relies on the jaded nature of modern people; obviously, a vampire is utterly preposterous. Like all vampires in these movies, though, he eventually screws up and picks on a group of people who are slightly more open to supernatural possibilities and also happen to have one of those doctor friends who knows a lot about the Occult.

Not that the movie is entirely comprised of guys sitting around debating vampirism. This is a low-budget horror film distributed by AIP, after all. So in between the soul-searching and pondering and Yorga sneering at the mortals around him, you get a woman eating her own cat and plenty of vampire attacks. It’s just that ultimately you come for Robert Quarry’s performance. Everything else is just dressing. Sweet, bloody dressing. Quarry was a successful television actor before being cast in the role of Yorga, and he shines. Yorga has an abundance of life (or afterlife) experience. When Quarry plays Yorga as a long-lived and jaded vampire, he can lend the character the appropriate sighing surrender mixed with annoyance.

Although scrubbed somewhat for a friendlier rating, there are several remnants of Count Yorga’s previous incarnation as a sexploitation film. Our eternally disappointed bloodsucker whiles away boring nights by sitting on a throne in his basement, watching his vampire brides make out with one another—a scene that was probably longer in the original vision of the movie. There’s also a make-out session in a van, because what else are you going to do when you get your van stuck in the mud on someone’s private property if not go at it in the back? I mean, that’s what you got a van for in the first place, right? Ultimately, despite erroneous claims that this was originally going to be a porno, I’m willing to bet The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire would have ended up looking more like one of Hammer’s saucier ‘70s vampire movies, like Twins of Evil or The Vampire Lovers. It wouldn’t have harmed the film, but the final film is a really good movie, low-key and mellow of pace but hypnotic, charming, and occasionally creepy and disturbing, just like Count Yorga.

Writer/director Bob Kelljan, whose only directing credit before Count Yorga was Flesh of My Flesh (he had previously been an actor in both television and low-budget drive-in fare), crafted a tightly framed horror classic that manages to be well-paced despite the dearth of action. He became a successful television director, working steadily until his death in 1982. Count Yorga, Vampire was a solid money-maker for AIP, so a sequel was commissioned with a slightly larger budget. Kelljan and Quarry returned, as did some of the rest of the cast, even though the original’s downbeat ending pretty much leaves everyone dead. The Return of Count Yorga is more or less the same movie, only with Craig T. Nelson as a cop. It’s still quite enjoyable. Count Yorga’s greater effect was to launch a mini-revival of vampire movies that saw everything from Hammer’s two modern-set Dracula movies (Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula), Marvel Comic’s Tomb of Dracula, and two Blacula films, one of which was directed by Kelljan.

Yorga is a sinister little film that never sacrifices its downbeat atmosphere and general creepiness in the pursuit of comedy and yet manages to produce several, if not outright funny, then certainly wry moments. It’s wicked, and at times, it’s even kind of scary, especially if you’re watching it late at night. Which, you probably are, on some long out-of-fashion home media format, as you sip a craft beer while Count Yorga stands behind you, telling you that modern beer is nothing like the beer they made in the 1400s and oh, can you pick him up a couple of those $40 tins of sardines at the Leatherapron’s Dry Goods and Provisions—you know, that new shop that opened in the old porno theater they converted into an international food court.