Count Yorga, Vampire was originally conceived as a soft core porno horror film under the title The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire. The script was by Bob Kelljan with Michael Macready serving as producer and co-star.

Robert Quarry, a friend of actor George Macready (best known as the husband of Rita Hayworth in Gilda, 1946), was visiting the actor in 1970 and recalled that his son Michael wanted him to read something. "Michael gave me the script to read, not really wanting me to play the part at the time. So I read it and said, 'This is a neat little horror film. Why don't you cut out the soft porno sh*t and just do a straight horror film. And that's when he and his father George said, 'Okay, we'll do that if you play the lead role." And I said, 'Sure. Just cut out the porno sh*t.' They still left a couple of 'unexplainable' scenes just in case they couldn't sell the film as a straight horror movie. Like there was a secretary with Roger Perry [Dr. Hayes in the film], and if the film didn't work, they could cut to a shot of her bopping her buns off in the outer office, with a lesbian or a male client."

Quarry was making the Stuart Rosenberg film WUSA (1970), starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Anthony Perkins, at the same time he was making Count Yorga, Vampire. Recalling that time, Quarry remarked, "Well, Paul [Newman] always quit at 6 o'clock, and since we were shooting Yorga on location, and as vampires only 'work' at night, we could only shoot when the sun went down right up until it came up. So I was shooting Yorga from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. on weekdays and weekends."

During an interview with Steve Biodrowski for the Hollywood Gothique website, Quarry stated that "I quit the first night. They called me at 12:30 in the afternoon. We were on location in Agora [a fairly isolated area northwest of Los Angeles], where it was about 110 degrees. So I got there and put on all that vampire drag. I sat there, and waited, and waited. They said , 'We can't shoot you until the sun goes down.' I thought, 'Well, why did you call me at 12:30?' So I sat there patiently and ate some cold pizza. Around four o'clock in the morning, I was called to come on the set. The first shot that I did was where the kids were in the station wagon or whatever you call it, and my feet walk across the grass. The director said, 'Cut, that's a print. That's it for the day.' I stormed off into the night – I was making a lousy exit, was what I was doing. I got out into the night, and I got lost. They came by in a car and said, 'Do you want a ride?' I said, 'No, I'm quitting this movie! I'm going home and I'm never coming back.' They said it was a mistake, so I said, 'Okay, you get your act together, and I'll come back.' Once I got off my high horse, we got to working together. But it was hard work. We had just four crewmembers – that's it. They were all happy on plum wine and grass! There was one make-up man and a few guys with little arc lights. You say the film was 'dark and mysterious' – the film was dark and mysterious because we didn't have enough lights."

Quarry related another anecdote for the Hollywood Gothique website interview concerning his accent. "When we first discussed the picture, I asked if they wanted [me to sound like Bela Lugosi saying] 'Ah, the Children of the Night...' I didn't want to do that, but I could get some kind of European thing going. So I learned the whole part with an accent, with a dialect, and then just took it out. As a kid from California I had worked very hard with a good voice coach to learn that 'transatlantic' accent, so I could play something besides Kansas City or Brooklyn. I started with a voice in a register up [high], and I had to get it lower to work on the thing. Christopher Lee is still working on it."

In terms of making Count Yorga, Vampire, "The hardest thing was being put in that coffin and having the lid lowered down on my face," Quarry confessed. "That was really tough, because I'm a little claustrophobic. Boom, down came the lid, sitting on my nose, and I thought, 'God, get me out of here!'"

The character Brudah, Yorga's manservant, was of some concern to Quarry as well because of his disheveled, tattered appearance. "Here we are in this house all done up, and there's this incredible looking thing over there," the actor said to interviewer Steve Biodrowski. "I kept telling the director, 'Can't I take him to Sears for a new suit? We'll all chip in and dress him up a little bit.'"

Although Quarry was initially embarrassed by the rough cuts of the film, he changed his mind when the movie was previewed. "I'll never forget the first test screening I went to at the Fox Wilshire Theatre," he recalled. "I was hiding in the balcony. But when the movie was over, the theatre goers were saying to each other how good this guy Quarry was and there I was, right in the middle of the crowd! But not a soul recognized me. It's very funny when you do something like that; it becomes your identity. And because it's a make-believe character, people don't think anybody human could possibly do it."

In an interview with Steve Ryfle for Maniac Stuff, Robert Quarry was asked if he had any fond memories of the two Yorga films and he replied, "Yes, the second Count Yorga, because Mariette Hartley is a dear friend and a very fine actress...she's really one of the funniest ladies around. In the first [Count Yorga] movie, there was a line where I looked at the mother and said, 'Thoon we will be together, and thoon I will thuck from your veinth the thweet nectar of life.' Because with those fangs on, I couldn't talk; they made you lisp. They cut it [the line] out of the first movie, but they brought it back for the second one. Mariette was laying on the bed, and I come around quietly in the dark, and I say the line: 'Thoon I will thuck from your veinth the thweet nectar of life.'...It took 37 takes to get that scene, for me to say that line, and they cut it out of the movie, because it was such a terrible line! I can't remember a line of Shakespeare. But forever imbedded in my memory is 'Thoon I will thuck from your veinth the thweet nectar of life,' sounding like Porky Pig!"

Interview with Steve Ryfle, Maniac Stuff

Quarry also noted in the Hollywood Gothique website that he "enjoyed playing Yorga. The fun of making movies is the fun of getting outside yourself. I had been playing heavies all my life, but there were more real – just with or without a mustache. So it was fun to use some of the --what I hope were-skills I had developed by this time."

Compiled by Jeff Stafford

SOURCES:
Psychotronic Video Number 33, "Robert Quarry – Count Yorga Rises Again!," Interview by Anthony Petkovich
Video Watchdog No. 116, Count Yorga, Vampire & The Return of Count Yorga reviews by Richard Harland Smith
Cinefantastique Winter 1971, film review by John R. Duvoli
Hollywood Gothique, "Count Yorga Speaks" by Steve Biodrowski, hollywoodgothique.bravejournal.com/
IMDB