Terrible directing... too many zooms!

I certainly agree with that sentiment. The very poor direction, third rate camera work, and an incoherent script drag it down. So much so that I think it offsets the positives this movie brings to the table (mainly the cast and wonderful Bruno Nicolai score) and in the end makes it a mediocre adaptation of Dracula.

FINALLY got to see a Jess Franco film after seeing his name pop up in many horror discussions over the years, and it was a huge letdown. If this is typical of his work then I won't go out of my way to find more considering his poor direction seems to be my biggest issue with the movie. He certainly doesn't endear himself to me with the way he runs down the Hammer Draculas in the DVD supplements either.

As far as the radical zooming and close-ups, I'm thoroughly convinced much of that style stems from Sergio Leone's films and the spaghetti western boom that immediately followed it and was still quite active in 1970 - a large portion of which were Italian-Spanish co productions filmed in and around Spain. The intensity is genuine in many of those films as it was basically an invention of necessity. Extreme close-ups photographed very well in the Techniscope format and it was quite an effective technique. It was basically a cinematic trademark for movies like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In this instance though, it's just horribly copied and overused for a 1.37 aspect ratio film process not even close to being Techniscope.

Welcome to the world of Jess Franco. I've yet to see this one, but in past films the zoom ins and out of focus shots are a tad bit annoying. Early on I wonder if it were intentional or accidental? He does that enough that I'm sure it was intentional, but who knows if it started off that way.

This is on my list to see. I'm not a huge Franco fan, but have warmed up to his offbeat style. Have you ever seen the Awful Dr. Orlof? IMO its one of Franco's better films and doesn't really feature some of the camera work he was known for. I actually quite enjoyed it. Too bad he didn't make more films like Orlof. It is rough around the edges, but generally better made than the bulk of his work

I like Franco's zooms. The movie has a spaghetti western aesthetic.

Some directors especially back then used that zoom technique. It really looks silly today with a closeup of dracula's teeth.
Otherwise the film is pretty good version.

I disagree, I thought the directing and cinematography were quite good considering the budget. Like the person above stated, zooms were quite common at the time, and I thought little of them aside from finding a few rather effective. How is the script confusing or bad? When compared to most of Hammer's Dracula films, the script shines (although that's not saying much ha ha).

I love Franco's Spaghetti Western zooms. He wasn't as good as Sergio Leone but he tried.

That's like saying "terrible music, too much electric guitar".