Les Charlots contre Dracula (1980)

Blowing the dust off a book, the narrator coughs before beginning his story: “Dracula! The very name is enough to make you tremble… well, almost…” The opening scene introduces Dracula Jr., a badly behaved, capricious little monster who throws a tantrum because his mother refuses to let him drink the contents of a cursed vial. If he drinks the potion, the little brat will be able to develop the vampire powers his father possessed. But Madame Dracula, in a parody of the speech of an old lady waiting for her husband to return “beset by every fear in the world,” flatly refuses. She tells him that if anyone other than her—or someone who looks exactly like her—touches the vial, that person will immediately be turned to stone. Years pass, and 35 years later, Count Dracula, now an adult, still hasn’t achieved his goal. His cellar is now filled to the brim with the petrified bodies of second-rate detectives who failed to find him a woman with the same features as his late mother. To punish them for their failures, the Count tells each of them to go and “fetch that vial for him, over there,” with the consequences you can imagine. One fine morning, however, a detective, Gaston Lepope (Gérard Jugnot), turns up with a photograph of a young Parisian woman who really does look exactly like his mother. Beside himself with joy, the eccentric Count nearly kills poor Lepope when he learns that the young woman is still in France. With a characteristic howl, he orders Lepope to bring her back at once. Lepope then heads to Paris. At first, his direct approach fails: the young woman, Ariane, thinks he’s trying to pick her up. He then pretends to be a customer at the antique shop run by Ariane, her boyfriend Phil, and their friends Gérard and Jean (Les Charlots). There, Lepope manages to knock out her boyfriend, chloroform Ariane, lock her in a wardrobe, and have Jean and Gérard deliver it to the station, bound for Romania. Phil, who has since come to, alerts them, and the three men set off in pursuit of Lepope, boarding the train at the last possible moment. After various adventures, Lepope uncouples the rear carriage, where he has barricaded himself with Ariane. Phil, Jean, and Gérard are then forced to leap into the void from the top of a viaduct. The fall is so long that the three friends have plenty of time to chat, debating how high the viaduct is. Meanwhile, Lepope hides Ariane in a coffin, but Phil finds him and knocks him out. Ariane and the three men flee into the forest, but lose their way. Far from pleased with the revolting dishes Gérard has prepared for them, the four friends are astonished when God himself appears before them and offers them a serving of fries. Surprised that God is Belgian, they are soon chased away by a swarm of bees, furious that Gérard has stolen their honey. Venturing farther into the forest, they are led toward Count Dracula’s castle by a man who is about to hang himself. Ever helpful, Gérard gives the man the little kick he asks for, nudging the stool he is standing on. In a strangled voice, the man thanks them… When they arrive at the castle, the four young people are greeted by the Count and Igor, his all-purpose servant, who turns out to be extraordinarily stupid and unbelievably clumsy. Meanwhile, in the forest, Lepope tries to pick up Ariane’s trail, but one mishap after another befalls him: wolves chase him and force him up a tree; it starts to rain, and finally the branch he is sitting on breaks. At the castle, Phil and Ariane are suddenly separated by a secret-passage mechanism. The Count hypnotizes the young woman and gets her to bring him the famous vial. At last, he can drink its contents and acquire the powers of a vampire, all accompanied by a rather poor sound-and-light show. Imprisoned in their room, the three men escape by tying the bedsheets together and climbing out the window. In the crypt, they nearly get caught by Igor, who has unexpectedly come to gulp down a few swigs of the wine stored there. The three men take advantage of his stupidity, making him believe that the brick he has casually thrown at them is magic by throwing a different one back to him each time. Overjoyed by his discovery, Igor rushes to the Count with his “magic” brick and throws it at a mirror, smashing it to pieces. The Count flies into a rage and summarily dismisses his servant. Having finally managed to rescue Ariane from the Count’s clutches, Phil, Jean, and Gérard bring her out of her hypnotic trance by singing “La Marseillaise.” Pursued by the hysterical Count through a maze of corridors, rooms, and staircases, the four young people—almost as if Scooby-Doo were the only thing missing—escape onto the castle roof. Along the way, we catch a brief glimpse of Igor feeding a Gaston Lepope who has lost his mind. Cornered by the Count, who threatens to throw Gérard off the battlements, Ariane and Les Charlots owe their rescue to the arrival of the police. Jean had called them a few minutes earlier, but at first they had hung up on him, thinking it was a bad joke. At the urging of a frail old gendarme who had evidently had a run-in with Dracula Senior, the lawmen storm the castle, and Dracula immediately falls for a very authoritative woman gendarme. In the end, Dracula and the woman gendarme get married, and all ends happily, in the best of all possible worlds.