Word: transylvanians
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...same voice of protest is speaking in Rumania, where Transylvanian-born Dumitru Radu Popescu relived a teenager's view of the smooth transition from fascism to Communism in his haunting short story, The Blue Lion. To escape the heavy hand of the censor, Polish writers such as Zbigniew Zaluski have resorted to 19th century allegories that discuss in grave detail the positive qualities of Polish uprisings against the Russians 100 years ago-a theme with sledgehammer relevance in Poland today. The Eastern Europeans are also encouraged by the occasional sounds of independence they hear from Moscow, where Aleksandr Tvardovsky...
...foothills of Rumania's Transylvanian Alps 35 miles from Bucharest, Ploesti was called by Winston Churchill "the taproot of German might." From its oil refineries came one-third of the aviation gasoline, benzine and lubricants that kept Adolf Hitler's military machine running. To protect Ploesti from air at tack, the Germans had made it into a colossal land battleship. A ring of heavy antiaircraft guns formed a perimeter around the refineries that circled the city; lighter flak guns were concealed in hay stacks and groves, mounted on factories, bridges, water towers and church steeples on the target...
...sensitive young psychiatrist who knows he is unable to understand or mediate the deeper workings of the mind. And above all is the towering tragic figure of Countess Elesca-Dracula's daughter-swept along like a bit of ash in a wind to her final agony in the Transylvanian castle where her heart is pierced by a deadly wooden shaft...
...this film, cheap horror is carefully avoided, and the blood-sucking scenes are all tactfuly done. The great theme is illustrated with an assembly of vivid episodes mounting in tension to the Transylvanian crescendo; the total effect is terrifying in the way an Aeschylus tragedy is terrifying. A representative scene is that in which a team of surgeons tries in vain to save the latest victim. "He has died of an unnatural loss of blood," says one over the corpse, and then after a chilling silence come the ominous words: "If only we knew what caused those two puncture marks...
...certain excess of irrelevant gaiety which distracts one from the somber business at hand is the film's only defect. One wonders if it is really essential to spend so much footage on the Transylvanian folk festival when what we really want to know is how things stand in Dracula's castle above the town. But this is at most a minor flaw in a generally excellent production. Dracula's Daughter, in short, makes fine entertainment, and tomorrow night's WNAC presentation - The Mad Ghoul-promises to be equally rewarding...