Original UK airing
Hey...was the original UK airing all in one night, or was it cut up into different nights?
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MovieChat Forums > Count Dracula (1978) Discussion > Original UK airing
It was cut into two.
shareIt was shown in three 50 minute episodes.
shareNo, it wasn't. It was shown in one night. I think there may have been a brief pause for the news.
shareI think it was split into 3 parts to be fair. I saw none of the segment in Transylvania but remember vividly the TV trailer showing Dracula climb the walls like a bat - my mum and dad didn't let me see that part (I was very very young) but I saw the other two bits. The reason I can say for sure that it could not have been shown in two parts is that I recall the scene of Lucy being seduced by Dracula in the cemetery and also the scene where the Count's hairy hand comes out of the coffin and those two parts happen in the first half of the feature, or part one of the two part American release.
shareIt was originally shown in one night at Christmas to great fanfare in the Radio Times. I believe there may have been a break for the news. That is why there are two parts on the DVD. The freeze frame is Lucy waiting for the Count to come in through the window. It was then later repeated in two parts. This is the broadcast I taped and the version I watched for years. It was then finally shown in three parts, possibly three nights in a row.
So overall I believe it was shown three times by the BBC.
Does anyone know in what year it was last broadcast on the BBC? I'm trying to add information to a libary catalogue entry for it.
It was shown just over 20 years ago in two parts I believe the dates were 5th and 8th of April. I can remember it as my mother had taped the first part for me and told me that as long as I was well behaved that she would tape the second part for me which was on that night. I was only 8 years old!
I loved this version and was genuinely heartbroken that Lucy couldn't be saved. I tried to read the book around about this time but was far too young, this became the story for me until I read the book when I was a teenager.
I found the dates it was aired online somewhere a few years ago, I couldn't find the website but did find this.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00tjfhs
I'm so grateful to my mother for recording this for me, I was obsessed with Dracula as a child and got Coppolla's version the following christmas but hated it!! Coppolla's film is IMO dreadful when compared with this far more faithful albeit much lower budget BBC version.
The original showing was all in one night, on BBC-2 on Thursday 22 December 1977 at 9.30pm and finished at 12.05am. It was repeated twice in 1979, the first time on BBC-2 in January and again on BBC-1 in December, and on both occasions it was split into three 50 minute parts shown on three consecutive nights. Another repeat showing on BBC-2 in April 1993 was in two parts.
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