Rollin doesn't waste any time with a plodding back story. Instead, the film hits the ground running as we join a Van Helsing-like professor and his eager apprentice hiding in the shadows of a graveyard, waiting for a macabre ritual to unfold before them as a midget tucks in his vampire lover for the night.

This diminutive servant of the underworld is their first unwilling informant who sets them on the trail of the fiancée of Dracula himself.

Dracula's lover, Isabelle, is being held captive by The Order of the White Virgin, an order of nuns who watches over her estate and keeps her from the clutches of Dracula and his servants.

And what servants he has! The midget and his lover, the vampiress! The scarlet-clad She-Wolf! And my personal favorite, the Ogress -- a vacant village idiot by day, a seductive vamp by night who preys on the flesh of the innocent, eagerly devouring offerings of newborn children.

Years spent under Dracula's distant telepathic influence have left Isabelle quite insane. Her condition seems to be contagious. As one nun remarks, anyone who spends time in her presence loses a bit of their own sanity. Each of the nuns displays some form of dementia: a nun obsessed with a cup and ball game, a mother superior whose cigarette lighter is a crucifix that plays "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", and a pair of nuns obsessed with smoking (Sister Cigar and Sister Pipe).

The professor is no ordinary man himself. We learn through the story that he is a hypnotist and a medium.

Unfortunately, with this colorful cast of characters, there is very little character development. There seems to be no link between the She-Wolf, the Ogress, the midget and the vampiress other than their master, Dracula.

There seems to be no clear motive as to why any of them are set on this path of darkness. Who is the midget? How did he become the lover of a lithe vampiric vixen? The She-Wolf is a bigger mystery. She arrives, she kills, she leaves. It is unclear if she is human, vampire or something else entirely.

The Ogress is stranger still. While an intriguing character, living two lives at once, we never really find out exactly what she is or how she came to be. Why does the village tolerate her presence in the tower when the only food she can stomach are their babies? Does no one realize the connection between the infanticidal Ogress at night and the village idiot of the day?

The movie itself is slow, and plodding. While I understand that this is not an action film and that the director is trying to paint a picture of romantic, gothic horror, he failed to hold my attention. The tension and the drama were poorly constructed and the potentially most exciting scenes fell short, resulting in several anticlimactic disappointments.

Perhaps, I am simply not the type of movie fan that Rollin had in mind when making this film. However, I am a fan of classic horror and I was really hoping Rollin would deliver a film true to the most appealing traits of vampire lore. I was really looking forward to a seductive, sexy (though not garish or pornographic) vampire romance. Instead, what I saw was plodding, mechanical and -- dare I say it? -- boring.

I know Rollin has many die hard fans. I was hoping to become one of them, but it's not going to happen with a snoozer like Fiancée of Dracula.