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Thursday, October 11, 2007Satanic Rites of Dracula Release Year: 1974Country: England Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Coles, Joanna Lumley, William Franklyn, Freddie Jones, Richard Vernon, Barbara Yu Ling, Patrick Barr, Richard Mathews. Writer: Don Houghton Director: Alan Gibson Cinematographer: Brian Probyn Music: John Cacavas Producer: Roy Skeggs Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us What a long, strange trip it's been for Hammer Studio's lord of the undead, the prince of darkness, the king of vampires, Count Dracula. When first we met him back in 1958, he was a snarling beast, a barely contained force of nature that ripped into his prey with lusty abandon and was explained by his arch-nemesis Dr. Van Helsing in purely rational, scientific terms. Dracula, and vampirism in general (as expounded upon by Van Helsing in Brides of Dracula), was nothing more than a disease, like any other disease, and what we regarded as "supernatural" was really nothing more than an explainable part of the rational world that humanity had simply not yet learned how to explain. As Hammer's Dracula series progressed, however, Van Helsing faded from the picture and was replaced by a procession of forgettable guys named Paul, usually in league with some sort of religious authority figure. In Dracula, Prince of Darkness, we have a monsignor who seems to have some degree of faith in faith's ability to defeat Dracula, but he's far more reliant on his trusty bolt-action rifle than he is on the Lord Almighty. With the next film after that, however, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Van Helsing's assertion that Dracula could be defeated by reason and science was beginning to fade. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is a transitional film, one in which an atheist who would seem to share Van Helsing's belief that vampirism is a virus and not a function of the supernatural, begins to doubt his faith in science just as he begins to doubt his doubt of Christianity. When Dracula is felled by a bolt of lightning, we are left to wonder: is this science -- a metal lightning rod, an explainable weather phenomenon -- or an act of God -- lightning strikes being the most common weather-related act of God, after the rain of frogs. After that film, however, there is no doubt as to Dracula's nature. In Taste the Blood of Dracula, he is recast as a satanic demon, summoned by black mass rituals. This trend of "religionizing" Dracula continued in Dracula AD 1972 despite the return of a Van Helsing to the scene. Where as the Lawrence Van Helsing of Horror of Dracula and Brides of Dracula regarded vampirism as a scientific issue, his descendant Lorimar Van Helsing sees it as a mystical issue of the occult, like witchcraft or devil worship. Dracula is once again summoned by occult rituals (not to mention Caroline Munro's half-clothed writhing), and where you might think that placing the Victorian vampire in a modern setting alongside a modern Van Helsing, would prove an opportunity to revive the concept of Dracula as scientific problem and biological oddity, it never really happens. I think there is one token utterance of, "Vampires? But surely you must be joking, man! This is the 20th century!" but that is quickly dismissed as everyone from Van Helsing to the police are quick to accept the supernatural and rattle on endlessly about the occult. At this point, Dracula is less a vampire and more a full-fledged demon, perhaps even the embodiment of Satan himself.
One would assume, then, that with a title like The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the sequel would follow in the footsteps of turning Dracula into a religious anti-icon. But then, honestly, what more can be done to make him Lucifer incarnate than having him summoned by rituals and pentagrams and strange runes? Are they going to make him don a silky red Danskin and gad about with a pitchfork? Dracula AD 1972 was already a rehash of Taste the Blood of Dracula, and while Hammer's Dracula films have never shied away from rehash, it seemed like the evolution of the count was complete. What was left to do? The correct answer is, "Nothing." Just don't make another Dracula film. Make Christopher Lee happy, and just lower the curtain on the series. It had a good run. A few missteps here and there, sure, but all in all, Hammer's Dracula films were a pretty solid lot, even at their worst. Dracula AD 1972 had been a somewhat desperate attempt to modernize the franchise, and it was met with mixed reactions, at best. So just let the sleeping corpse lie, this time. Christopher Lee was already printing up his leaflets to be dropped from a plane over London, explaining to any who found them that he was never going to play Dracula again, ever. Save the guy some effort, people said, and maybe he'll start talking about something else besides how everyone just talks to him about Dracula, instead of mentioning some of his other classic work, like Circus of Fear. Come on -- Chris Lee and Klaus Kinski? That's a power duo, my friends. But Hammer had nowhere else to go. They couldn't get new stars or new franchises launched. The entire British film industry was in a tailspin, and Hammer was even worse off than most. Not knowing what else to do, they commissioned Dracula AD 1972 writer Don Houghton and director Alan Gibson to make yet another Dracula movie, causing Christopher Lee's eyes to turn blood red as he launched into a furious string of interviews about how awful the Dracula movies were and he sure as hell wouldn't...look, seriously. By this point, you know how this ends, right?
So with "nowhere" no longer being a viable answer to the question of where Dracula goes from AD 1972, what would Houghton do? Could they serve up the same old, same old one more time and get away with it? Unlikely. In fact, it was unlikely they could get away with anything they served up. Dracula was DOA at the box office no matter what they did. This last movie was just going to be a post-mortem nervous twitch. So what the hell? Why not bring the whole thing to its oddly logical extreme, the only place left for Dracula to go? And so, despite the occult title meant no doubt to cash in on the sudden popularity of devil worshiper films (working titles for the film included Dracula and his Vampire Brides and Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London), Satanic Rites of Dracula takes the persistently undead vampire from satanic bogeyman and propels him into the realm of the James Bond villain or, perhaps more appropriately given the quality of the final film and the return of Christopher Lee to the role of Dracula, Fu Manchu. No longer is Dracula a savage beast. No longer is he a biological mutation. No longer is he a ghoul lurking in the overgrown corners of shadowy gothic buildings. No longer is he a demon. With Satanic Rites of Dracula, he becomes a super-villain, complete with a secret lair, henchmen, kidnapped scientists, and dreams of global conquest. That the film really does contain satanic rites is superficial. This movie begins, like Dracula A.D. 1972, with the action already in progress. A determined Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, once again) chases the murderous vampire Count Dracula into a swanky London nightclub jammed wall to wall with zoned-out teens dancing to some nondescript psych-funk like you were wont to find in films from the 1970s that couldn't afford to license songs from established artists. In an attempt to blend in with the youthful revelers and shake his pursuer, Dracula dons a big, bulbous pair of sunglasses and a paisley print cap. Finding himself hemmed in by the revelers, Van Helsing discovers that the only possibility he has of making his way across the dance floor to Dracula is by dancing his way across. And so we get the now immortal scene of Peter Cushing, still dressed more or less like a guy from the Victorian era even though this is the 1970s, doing the Watusi across the crowded nightclub, while dazed ravers look on in admiration and even begin mimicking Cushing's spastic moves.
OK, maybe not, That is not a scene from The Satanic Rites of Dracula. It's actually from a different movie, called Dracula Goes Mad in Chelsea, but since prints of that movie are almost impossible to find, we won't speak any more about it (even Christopher Lee himself has admitted to be unable to find a copy on any format for his personal library). However, given the unintentional camp value of Hammer's Dracula A.D. 1972, one could half expect that, when Hammer announced a sequel film also set in the 1970s, we would get scenes as corny as Dracula in mod sunglasses and an exasperated Peter Cushing doing the mashed potato with some cute young chick as he tries to explain the importance of leaving the dance floor to continue his pursuit of his arch-nemesis. When it was further announced that the writing-directing team of Don Houghton and Alan Gibson would be returning for the sequel, such scenes seemed almost inevitable. It was not the case, however, leaving the scenes of Van Helsing cutting the rug and Dracula smoking a bong to appear in the obscure (and by obscure, I mean "entirely made up") Dracula Goes Mad in Chelsea, which some people refer to mistakenly though not inappropriately as Dracula Goes Mod in Chelsea. No, this film actually begins with a satanic rite, some gratuitous nudity to let us know this is the 1970s, and then an action sequence in which some guy who looks like a cross between Burt Reynolds and Saddam Hussein escapes from a building guarded by bikers with droopy Louis Tiant mustaches and sheepskin vests. They totally look like something out of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula comic book, and in fact much of what happens in this movie seems far more at home in the pages of Tomb of Dracula than it does in a Hammer Dracula movie -- which I guess is the trick. When you keep making Hammer vampire movies, everyone complains about it being just another stodgy old Hammer vampire film. When you switch it up and do something new, everyone complains that it's not enough like a stodgy old Hammer vampire film. Although my initial assumption was that this escaping guy was some horrific experiment concocted by Dracula (possibly with the help of Frankenstein) to combine the iron will and ruthlessness of Saddam with the down home sex appeal and amusing laugh of Burt Reynolds, thus creating the ultimate world conqueror (sort of like Serpentor, but with a big mustache). It turns out that this guy is actually an undercover agent sent in to investigate the mysterious Pelham House rituals, which seem to include a group of the richest, most powerful men in England. The problem is that the head of the group investigating Pelham House also happens to be one of the guys attending the Pelham House rites, thus making an official investigation impossible. So they call in Inspector Murray from the last film, reprised by Michael Coles. Coles, in turn, hears the agent's crazy ranting about rituals and blood sacrifice and devil cloaks and immediately places a call to Van Helsing, played once again by Peter Cushing, who smokes his cigarettes with more intensity than ever. Cushing sure knew how to smoke a cigarette on screen, but he didn't just smoke a cigarette; he smoked the hell out of a cigarette, with lots of clenching and staring at it in quiet contemplation. I think the biggest problem with Star Wars is that they didn't let Peter Cushing smoke on the Death Star. Honestly, you could make a whole movie of nothing but Peter Cushing smoking cigarettes and flipping through books and peering through a magnifying glass, and I'd probably think it was pretty good since he did those things with such conviction and more gusto than most actors would put into an action scene.
While Van Helsing investigates an old colleague who is among the Pelham House acolytes, Murray and Jessica Van Helsing (being played this movie by Joanna Lumley of New Avengers and Absolutely Fabulous fame) go to investigate Pelham House itself. Van Helsing discovers that his old friend has created a super-plague for someone at Pelham House. Murray discovers that the basement of Pelham House is full of half naked vampire chicks. Jessica screams. And of course, we eventually discover that the shadowy billionaire recluse behind the Pelham House plot is Dracula! It seems that even Dracula is getting tired of being revived and has decided that the only way he can end his existence is to end all life on earth. That way he will have no one feed on, and he won't have to worry about cocky mods or Chinese women summoning back up through goofy rituals. Dracula has used his powers of persuasion to control the aforementioned most powerful men in England, and he intends to use them to spread the plague throughout the world and finally put an end to everything. But despite his Fu Manchu aspirations and new corporate benevolent society, Dracula can't entirely let go of the past. Pelham House is an uncomfortable mix of 70s sci-fi stuff and Victorian frilliness, and he still wants to piss off Van Helsing by turning Jessica into Dracula's vampire bride. At least Dracula's final solution is a super-virulent strain of bubonic plague. As far as super-villain super-weapons go, that's a pretty good one. Plus, it's a vampire distributing the plague, and not just some bald guy in a fancy jacket, as is usually the case. It's much better than if Dracula had scheduled a meeting with Van Helsing at the office (which does happen, by the way) and unveiled a new super laser that can blow airliners out of the sky! But still, all this plague talk is far, far away from the expected Dracula territory. He surrounds himself with the trappings of previous Dracula hobbies: the vampire brides in the basement, for example, and floral print wallpaper of questionable tastefulness, but his heart hardly seems in it this time. And yeah, he throws the cape on and appears in backlit mist to scare someone, but he doesn't stick with it throughout the movie. Even his plan to irk Van Helsing by marrying Jessica seems more like something he feels like he has to do than something he wants to do. Just another item on his corporate CEO to-do list.
In a way, I suppose this plays in with the plot of the movie, that Dracula is sick of it all, maybe even sicker of it all than audiences watching his movies, and despite Van Helsing's best efforts, people just keep bringing Dracula back. His resurrection in Satanic Rites of Dracula takes place well before the film begins, but one can almost assume that when it happened, Dracula looked at himself and just thought, "Seriously? I mean, seriously?" There are almost as many ways to bring this guy back as there are to kill him in the first place, and Dracula seems positively suicidal this time around, scattering his house with bits of old wood and such. But ultimately, he knows a stake in the heart will probably just kill him for a little while, so all of mankind must be destroyed so the lord of the dead can get some fucking sleep. Even the final showdown between Van Helsing and Dracula seems suicidal. Dracula is lured into some Hawthorne bushes, which being the thorns that were used to make Christ's crown of thorns, are deadly to a vampire. And Dracula gets caught in the bush basically because Van Helsing stands on the other side and yells, "Hey, come get me!" Surely Dracula knows about the bush. I mean, Van Helsing knows all sorts of ways to kill Dracula, so you'd think that Dracula himself would have researched the subject, although I will admit that every time he dies in a new way, he seems surprised, sort of like, "Are you kidding me? This, too? I can be killed by this, too?" Whatever the case, Dracula plunged headlong into the thorns, which is something most people wouldn't do even if they weren't' prone to turning into a time-lapsed decaying corpse as a result. Despite the fact that Satanic Rites of Dracula was written and directed by the same crew and has largely the same cast of adults, it bears little resemblance to AD 1972 or any of the previous Dracula films. Not just because of the Fu Manchu plot, but also because it entirely eschews the colorful nature of past films and opts instead for an oppressively bleak atmosphere populated by washed out skies, overcast days, and tired looking men in drab flared suits. Like Dracula, like the audience, everyone just seems worn out. Not that they aren't game for another go-round, mind you. This is a solid British cast, after all, and no one is going to do anything but their best. Cushing is as he always is; Lee is the same; Michael Coles is a welcome familiar face from the last film, someone to whom we can relate, and while Joanna Lumley is fine as Jessica, she really has little to do beyond scream and warn people about vampires too late. So I guess it's not so much a tiredness as it is a...let's say world-weariness. I don't want to read more into the film than there is, but it really does give off a sense of the meta, that the threadbare worn-out nature of the series is reflected in the characters.
As a Dracula film, I can't call it a success. Dracula has always been a supporting player his own movies, but here he's less like Dracula than ever before, taking on instead the role of Howard Hughes meets Blofeld (or, alternately, Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever). As a whacked out sort of spy film, it almost works. It's a bit too boring and far too serious to really capture the spirit of that genre, though. Instead, we have a beast that is neither fish nor foul, and not very good at doing much of anything. There are embers of a good movie here, meaning that I can't entirely dismiss it, but you have to blow on those embers pretty furiously to generate any sort of warmth. The initial idea, that of turning Dracula into a tired man whose sole final option is to destroy everything in order to destroy himself, is worth exploring, but where Don Houghton come sup with a great premise, he can't really deliver a great script. It plods along, and there are even more holes and contrivances than usual. I feel like, had this movie been written by someone like Brian Clemens (who wrote Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, and because of his experience working on The Avengers, would have been more at home with the loopier aspect of Dracula-as-Blofeld), it would have had a much better chance for success. At the very least, had it been a bit less heavy-handed and plodding, it could have gotten by on the quirkiness of the premise, maybe even been something like Scream and Scream Again, a film (featuring Lee and Cushing, no less) that mixes espionage thrills, science fiction, horror, and general weirdness far better than Satanic Rites of Dracula. Instead, Houghton's no-nonsense but not well written script doesn't do the high concept justice. If there is a highlight to the film, other than Peter Cushing's emphatic smoking of cigarettes, it's the theme song and ensuing score, which have far more life in them than the movie itself. Following the lead of Dracula AD 1972, John Cacavas contributes a theme song that is even cooler and funkier than the last one. It deserves to be played over a scene where Dracula -- still in his cape and black suit, of course -- fights a gang of drug dealers in slow motion a la Superfly. The rest of the score is variations on this theme, and it's pretty good stuff. Cacavas also wrote the score for Horror Express, one of my very favorite horror-meets-scifi films, also starring Cushing and Lee and released around the same time as Satanic Rites of Dracula, which could have really used Telly Savalas in a big Cossack coat swaggering onscreen and punching out those dudes in the sheepskin vests. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Satanic Rites of Dracula is that it lacks a sense of finality. Given the plot, given Dracula's admittedly effective monologue about wanting to die and watch the whole world burn with him, the final act is sorely lacking. When the end comes, it's pretty much a blase, "Oh, so it's a Hawthorne bush this time then, is it?" It's no different than any of Dracula's other many deaths. I don't expect that Dracula would be allowed to succeed in some way with his mad scheme -- though that sort of cynical conclusion wouldn't have been out of step at all with the current trend in horror films, where the bad guys very often won -- but after all the apocalyptic talk, after the world-weary feeling permeating the film, at the very least what I wanted from the end was something that said, once and for all, it really was over this time. As it stands, Satanic Rites of Dracula ends in a way where Dracula could be getting resurrected yet again a week later, same as always.
For Lee, this really was the end, but it's hard to claim he finally made good on his boasts. More than likely, had Hammer made another Dracula film, he would have shown up, under protest no doubt but present never the less. Instead, Hammer went out of business after allowing Satanic Rites of Dracula in 1974 and To the Devil...A Daughter in 1976 to effectively kill the company off. Like Dracula, they deserved better at the end, but if they'd had better, it probably wouldn't have been the end, so what can you do? Cushing reprised the role of Van Helsing one more time, returning to the Victorian era but this time to China for the completely nonsensical but still fun Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. That film does feature Dracula, but since he transforms into a Chinese guy at the beginning of the film, and since the film itself doesn't really jibe with the continuity of the previous film, it's not really part of the Dracula series and instead plays out like an alternate universe take, similar to The Evil of Frankenstein. Both Cushing and Lee would go on to make much better horror films than this one, as well as few that were much worse. It's not a great way to end a series that gave us so many wonderful films. With the relatively poor performance of Dracula AD 1972 at the box office, distributors suddenly weren't interested in Satanic Rites of Dracula. It took years before it found its way to American screens. Where as a Dracula film starring Cushing and Lee would have been a simple sell even a few years earlier, by 1974 it was all over, and the quality of Satanic Rites of Dracula is a perfect example of why. It's too bad the series couldn't muster a better send-off, because while the concept isn't bad and the idea was good, the final execution simply lacked the sophistication, energy, and magic that the film deserved.  Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Series: Vampires in the 70s, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1974 posted by Keith at 3:38 PM | 19 Comments Monday, October 08, 2007Dracula A.D. 1972 Release Year: 1972Country: England Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Stephanie Beacham, Christopher Neame, Caroline Munro, Marhsa Hunt, Michael Coles. Writer: Don Houghton Director: Alan Gibson Cinematographer: Dick Bush Music: Michael Vickers Producer: Josephine Douglas Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us And so we enter the dire straights of Hammer Films in the final throes of a long, drawn-out death much like those experienced by Dracula himself. As has been detailed elsewhere and will be summarized here, by the 1970s, England's Hammer Studios -- the studio that pretty much defined and dominated the horror market through the 50s and 60s -- had fallen on hard times. The old guard had largely retired or died, and the new blood was flailing about, desperately trying to find the direction that would right the once mighty production house. The problem was that everyone felt like they needed to update their image, but no one actually knew how. In retrospect, though they may have seemed painfully antiquated at the time of their release, many of Hammer's releases during the 70s were quite good and often experimental (by Hammer standards, anyway). This movie isn't really one of them, but it's still pretty enjoyable in a completely ludicrous way. Unfortunately, even Hammer's good films in the 1970s simply weren't in step with contemporary trends in horror films. No one wanted to see a gothic horror anymore, not in this new era of slasher movies and stuff where devil worshipers listlessly chant about Satan and then hassle Warren Oates and Hot Lips Houlihan.
Hammer tried to launch several new properties that were variations on their old themes, and several of these showed considerable promise. Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter was a spectacular horror-adventure film that mixed classic Hammer atmosphere with a more playful, swashbuckling tone. Although Twins of Evil is best remembered for the prominent assets of its two Playboy Playmate co-stars, underneath the cheesecake nudity is another very good film. And Vampire Circus was one of Hammer's most experimental vampire films, integrating a hallucinogenic, dreamlike state into Hammer's formerly all-business approach. But these films either didn't perform well at the box office, or studio executives didn't have any faith in them. In the end, Hammer decided to return to the same-old, same-old, and audiences got new Dracula, Frankenstein, and mummy movies. With each of these, Hammer tried something different. The mummy movie, 1971's Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, was adapted from a Bram Stoker novel and deals with a mummy's curse but contains no actual mummies. 1974's Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was roundly lambasted for its ridiculous monster make-up (a hairy caveman design featuring a face mask where the lips don't move when the actor talks), but if one can get past that, it's an exceptionally well thought-out final entry for the series, completing Baron Frankenstein's journey from slightly cold man of science on the verge of a miraculous breakthrough to completely disconnected butcher engaged in pointless, crude retreads of his old experiments. And then there was Dracula. Hammer's Dracula series started out with a promising entry, 1970's Taste the Blood of Dracula. The original idea behind that movie had been to, as with Brides of Dracula so many years before, make movie in which Dracula is an ever-present force and invoked name but not an actual on-screen character. Distributors balked at the idea of a Dracula-free Dracula movie, especially when there was no name star onto which they could hook their wagon as an alternate. Brides may not have featured Christopher Lee as Dracula, but at least it had Peter Cushing reprising his role as Van Helsing. Taste the Blood, on the other hand, revolves around young Ralph Bates, an actor Hammer had hopes of turning into their next big thing, though it never really happened. And so Hammer somehow convinced Christopher Lee to sign on yet again for one absolutely final appearance as the count. The result is a great entry in the Dracula series, and sensing that there was still some gas left in the tank, Hammer decided to give it another go. Scars of Dracula is a pretty bad movie, a major step backward after a good movie, showcasing Hammer filmmaking at its most profit driven, but it also stands out as the only film where Dracula is a major character, with lots of screentime and lines. It was enough to do the trick at the box office, and so to the well once again -- but this time, Dracula was gonna get funky!
In 1970, American International Pictures -- a studio that built a franchise of horror films based loosely on the writing of Edgar Allen Poe by copying Hammer's gothic horror films -- released a movie called Count Yorga, Vampire. It was an attempt by AIP to transfer the feel of their gothic Poe films into a modern setting, and a vampire -- given its longevity provided it can stay away from Peter Cushing -- was the perfect creature for the experiment. You could still deck his pad out in all sorts of frilly Victorian hoo ha, but you had a reasonable explanation for why he was still hanging around in 1970, listening to his old Edison Cylindrical Phonograph device and complaining about how modern music was crappy and modern fashion was ridiculous. Count Yorga also had the good sense to turn poke subtle fun at the idea of this out-of-touch Victorian style character dropped wholesale and unchanged into what was then modern time, as if the intervening hundred years or so hadn't caused the vampire to change in the slightest. But what do I know. I'm writing this review win 2007, and I'm listening to the same music I listened to in 1987. What's another eighty years? Yorga, no doubt with some help from Hammer's early 70s vampire output, sparked a bit of a vampire revival that really came to a boil in 1972. Marvel Comics released their outlandishly ridiculous but imminently enjoyable Tomb of Dracula comic book, in which modern-day descendants of Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and Dracula himself team up to battle a revived Count who would explain his entire life history every time he got a word bubble to himself. Only Doctor Strange showcased the potential to ramble on and spew as much purple prose. The comic book was a whirlwind of bell bottoms, tweed blazers, and jumpers, not to mention vampire hunter Blade's bizarre combo of lab goggles, a raincoat, and some swashbuckler boots. When they updated him for the movies, it's a shame they didn't keep the original outfit and afro. And if Dracula's flowery long-windedness, punctuated as it often was by the phrase, "Foolish humans!" and "I, Dracula..." was a little much to swallow, wait until you get a load of Blade running around calling the count a jive turkey and "baby."
In the same year, AIP released Blacula, a blaxploitation twist on the Count Yorga theme which, despite the jokey title, turned out to be a remarkably good and thoughtful film that managed to deliver vampire thrills and make comments on race relations, ghettos, and drug abuse without it coming across as overly heavy-handed. Plus the character of Mamuwalde (Blacula, to you) was an exceptionally complex villain/hero inhabited by a great actor in William Marshall. Once again, a movie got to play with the idea of a Victorian era character revived in the modern era -- with plenty of light jokes about fashion. Lucky for the vampires, the early 70s were such a jumbled mish-mash of outrageous fashion trends that even a guy running around in a vest and opera cape didn't really stand out, though he could often be mistaken for a pimp. In a classic example of "student becomes the master" flip-flopping, Hammer looked to AIP for inspiration and released their own "vampire in modern times" movie in 1972. The idea was hatched that Hammer, too, should make a modern day vampire tale, one that would easily lend itself to integrating modern settings with classic the Hammer gothic trappings. And since Hammer already had Count Dracula hanging around in the shadows, he was the most obvious choice. Of course, there remained one problem: Christopher Lee was absolutely, positively, entirely unwilling to do another Dracula movie for Hammer, not when he was having so much fun making high quality films for Jess Franco, like Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion, all those Fu Manchu films, and...oh hey! What do you know! Jess Franco's Dracula. I doubt anyone at Hammer was actually worried that they wouldn't be able to get Lee to reprise his role as Dracula. After all, he announced after every single Dracula movie that they were awful and he'd never make another one in a million years. And then a few years later, there he is again, donning the cape and red contact lenses for another go round which, upon completion of principal photography, he would run to the press and complain about, announcing that he would never do another shitty Dracula film again. Blah, blah, blah, Chris. And you know what? He still complains about it. Dude, no one thinks you're Dracula anymore. The only people who bring it up are a few cult movie fans and you. Everyone else thinks your Saruman or whatever the hell your name was in those awful Star Wars films. I've theorized in past reviews of Hammer Dracula films and Lee's whining that the entire thing was a ruse devised by Hammer and Lee to drum up controversy and business. After all, if your star is out there bad-mouthing his own film and saying stuff like, "Well, the last one may have been gory and tasteless, but this one is so much worse that I can't stand it!" is going to do wonders for getting folks interested in seeing the movie.
The other option is that Christopher Lee is just pompous and annoying. And I say that as a guy who enjoys Christopher Lee's work. But while I may love many of the films in which he's been in, there's no denying that his filmography has considerably more "worst film ever made" candidates and parts in it than anyone short of Michael Caine. But, like Caine, Lee gets the British Actor's Golden Pass -- that coveted ticket that allows a British actor to emerge unscathed from a career of mostly utter garbage and still have people think they are incredible. I mean, Tom Cruise has one flop, and his career is pronounced over. But Michael Caine? He gets to be in Jaws IV, Blame it on Rio, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, and The Swarm, and he comes through like he's coated in Teflon. Similarly, while Christopher Lee was busy bitching about the lack of class in his Dracula movies, he found time to make The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, To the Devil...A Daughter, and Chuck Norris' An Eye for an Eye, yet he remains one of the most revered actors of our time. Not even Vincent Price, who was far more talented and made just as many great films (and just as many crummy ones) commands the respect that Lee gets. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it. What I'm saying is, Chris -- shut the hell up about Dracula. You made a lot of really awful films to go with your good ones, so quit picking on Dracula, the character that made your career. You should be more like Michael Caine. He shows up, does his job, and then moves on without running to the press to bitch about the last job he had or how everyone only things of Carter or Harry Palmer or ol' Peachy or whoever Michael Caine is typecast as. I think he's actually typecast as Michael Caine. All of Christopher Lee's complaining, still going on to this day, coupled with the fact that no matter what he said, he always went back and did another Dracula film, means that, if this wasn't a clever marketing ploy by Hammer and Lee, then Lee is just sort of a...you know. If I ever meet him, I'm going to call him Dracula non-stop. Great. You know, among my goals when I started Teleport City, I never counted "talk shit about Christopher Lee" to be among them.
So whatever the case, after swearing he'd never do another one, Christopher Lee was never the less coaxed back into the series, perhaps because of the promise that, for the first time since 1958's Horror of Dracula, he and Cushing would be teamed up as Dracula and Van Helsing. Also, I'm sure they threw some money at him, and a couple rare editions of Shakespeare books or whatever the hell Christopher Lee likes more than making Dracula movies. There are, of course, sundry other problems facing Dracula A.D. 1972, but we shall address each of those as we come to them in the course or this article. The pre-credit opening sees us joining the finale of a film that was never made, but looks like it was pretty good. Dracula (Lee) and Van Helsing (Cushing) are locked in mortal combat atop a carriage that is careening out of control across London's Hyde Park. Remember that Cushing and Lee hadn't been paired together as Van Helsing and Dracula since the very first film back in the late 1950s, so seeing them together again should have been a big deal, at least bigger than a pre-credit sequence that feels like, "We now join our regularly scheduled vampire fight already in progress." But we'll let that slide, because it really is a fantastic opening, and one that can fool you into thinking Hammer's Dracula is back with a vengeance. After both Dracula and Van Helsing keep over dead, a mysterious third man rides up and scoops some of Dracula's ashes into a little glass vial and takes Drac's signet ring. Then, at Van Helsing's funeral, the guy dumps some of Dracula's ashes into a little hole in some far-off corner of the graveyard, and plunges the stake that killed Dracula into the ground. The combination of seeing Van Helsing and Dracula together again after so many years and the high-energy action of the scene is really fun, and like I said, perhaps they should have just made this movie instead. Given that Taste the Blood of Dracula sees the Count transported for the first time to London, a movie in which Van Helsing and the ace bloodsucker tangle with one another one last time on Hammer's home turf would have been a movie to get excited about. And I guess technically, that is what Dracula A.D. 1972 is, in a weird, convoluted way. After Van Helsing dispatches Dracula and keels over dead himself, we get the funky Dracula A.D. 1972 theme song by Michael Vickers. And here is where Hammer lost a good many of the remaining traditionalists that were hobbling on their walkers out to the theaters, no doubt trailing their colostomy bags behind them, to see Hammer productions. Up until this point, every Hammer Dracula theme song had been written by James Bernard, the man who defined the Hammer score the same way Hammer itself defined the gothic horror film. Bernard's scores were bombastic and powerful, with the conductor explaining that in every song you could hear the syllables of the movie's title (and it's true). But with Dracula A.D. 1972, Hammer was trying to create an amalgamation of their past glory with something new. With Lee and Cushing serving as the links to the past, Bernard's theme writing services were not tapped. Instead, Michael Vickers turns in an attempt to blend classic Hammer horror music with a more modern film theme sound, something more along the lines of Lalo Schifren or Roy Budd. The dramatic shift from the thoroughly old-fashioned Hammer opening to this theme song full of horns and wah-wah guitars jarred many people, though they are lucky I didn't make the movie because I would have accompanied this completely bad-ass theme song with shots of Christopher Lee -- wearing a black flared-leg suit and platform shoes (and his cape, of course) high steppin' down the street with a magic cane, using it to turn fat women thin and bring dead people back to life in front of grieving relatives. That's right, people. You should be thankful Hammer's movie is what it is, because if I had my way, it would have been...well, it would have been Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, but with Dracula. Which just makes me think that we really should have had a movie where Dracula is revived, hisses out his token line, "Who dares disturb the sanctity of Dracula?" only to have Rudy Ray Moore step in with a Thompson machine gun and say, "Dolemite, mother fucker!"
After our funky theme song, the action jumps a hundred years to the groovy, mod setting of London in the swingin' sixties. Except, you know, it's 1972 and all. A bunch of groovy young mop tops are skulking about London, holding "freak outs" and the most tame "horribly out of control" parties I've ever seen -- and I've been to some really tame parties. Leading this merry band of pranksters is one Johnny Alucard, trotting out the Alucard "puzzle" for the millionth time. We get it! Who, by this time, doesn't get the Alucard thing? Imagine if Frankenstein had tried that instead of just cleverly calling himself Dr. Frank or Dr. Stein whilst incognito. Actually, I guess Nietsneknarf isn't any worse than many actual German words. Johnny happens to be the owner of Dracula's ring and some of his ashes, passed on we assume from his nefarious ancestor from the beginning of the film. And one of his friends happens to be the grand-daughter of the latest Dr. Van Helsing. And if you think they're all going to end up in an abandoned churchyard summoning up Dracula, then you don't really earn yourself a prize. Actually, Johnny Alucard is less a reincarnation of Dracula than he is a cheap knock-off of Malcom McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. In fact, many of the sets and situations in this movie feel cribbed from Kubrick's film, which is only fitting, I suppose, considering the outfits Malcom McDowell wore in A Clockwork Orange. So OK, now my movie has a jive walkin' Christopher Lee as Dracula (with a magic cane, remember...and a big floppy pimp hat) battling Dolemite and trying to possess Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Seriously, why does no one ever give me development deals? How does Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave get funding, but my Dracula/Dolemite/Malcom McDowell movie languishes in limbo, alongside my ideas for Cobra-Shark vs. Croco-lion and Great White Squid, a movie about Wings Hauser fighting a genetically engineered giant squid that has great white sharks for tentacles. Somewhere, my friends who bother to read this site are going, "Oh God, is he on about the Croco-Lion thing again?" Johnny (Christopher Neame) convinces the gang that what would really be fun would be to hold a black mass. Having nothing better to do, the gang agrees, in some cases reluctantly so. It is at this point we learn that one of the groovy gang is Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), great grand-daughter of Lawrence Van Helsing, slayer of Dracula, and current grand-daughter of Professor Van Helsing -- played by Peter Cushing, because in movies no one thinks it's weird when you look 100% identical to one of your distant relatives. Genetics tells me that I should look less and less like my relatives the further removed from them I get, but in movies, people are always the spitting image of some great grandfather or third aunt or whatever, and no one ever thinks that is weird. Hell, the mummy built his entire career of resurrections on randomly stumbling across women who looked exactly like their ancestor from thousand of years ago. No surprises here when Johnny summons up Dracula during their black mass ritual -- which takes place in a desanctified church that happens to be the same place Lawrence Van Helsing and Dracula were buried. You'd think that, given that the current Professor Van Helsing has a portrait of his grandfather in his study, collected all the man's books, and remains himself an expert on the occult, that he would know where his idol and close relative was buried. But whatever. All that's important is Dracula is back and he's going to...well, he's going to hang around the church and send Johnny out to kidnap Jessica Van Helsing, because Dracula knows how to hold a grudge. Meanwhile, as members of the gang disappear -- including the lovely Caroline Munro (Captain Kronos, Starcrash) and the equally lovely Marsha Hunt (you may recall her hairy werewolf boobs from Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, also starring Dracula) -- the police become increasingly convinced by Van Helsing's tendency to blame the murders on a vampire. There are a few things people tend to harp on when criticizing this film. The first, most obvious, and dumbest argument is that the film is dated. I think I may have said before that "it looks dated" is one of my most hated complaints about any movie. It's cheap, ignorant, and shallow, and it has no merit as an observation. That a film is a reflection of the time in which it was made hardly strikes me as anything inherently negative, and I utterly detest whenever someone trots out that hoary old cliche and expects us to have any respect for their opinion. Oh, so Dracula AD 1972 contains slang and crazy fashion. Big deal. I look at those things as assets more than as detriments. So if your complaint is that the movie is dated looking, well we may still be friends, but I'm certainly going to regard your opinion on any film from here on out with a tremendous degree of suspicion. The second most common complaint is that Dracula is hardly in the movie at all, and when he is, he does nothing. I can understand this complaint a little bit more, but honestly, if at this point in the series, you are mad that Dracula isn't on screen and doesn't do very much when he is, then you haven't watched any of the previous films in the series, except perhaps Scars of Dracula, which is the only film where he has anything approaching substantial screentime or more than two lines. Not to say that it isn't disappointing. One can't help but want scenes of Dracula cutting lose in modern London, even if those scenes don't involve him dancing down the street with a magic cane or fighting machine0gun toting kungfu pimps. Still, it would have been nice if he did a little something more than stand around in the desanctified church. Dracula's confinement to the church is representative of Hammer's difficulty with updating their image. They want to figure out a way to enter the modern era, but in the end, they imprison their title character in a Victorian set and don't ever figure out exactly how to bring him out.
Previous Dacula films have always relied on the rest of the cast, with Dracula looming in the background as everyone's motivating factor. Unfortunately for Dracula AD 1972, it's a pretty weak supporting cast, comprised primarily of inexperienced young actors who aren't bad but don't really contribute much that is memorable. They spend most of their time either sitting around being bored, or sitting around talking about how they are concerned, then most of them head off to a party and are never heard from again. Stephanie Beacham as Jessica Van Helsing obviously has a more substantial role, but only if you consider substantial to be screaming, then being put into a trance. As the menacing Johnny Alucard, Christopher Neame is all right -- equal parts spooky and pathetic -- but he's basically playing Malcom McDowell, as I said. Dracula AD 1972 is more or less a remake of Taste the Blood of Dracula, complete with the bored circle dabbling in the black arts, the mysterious outsider spurring them on and summoning Dracula, the vial of Dracula remains, the kidnapped woman, and so on. But Ralph Bates was a much more charismatic actor, and Taste the Blood of Dracula had a much more compelling cast of older character actors to propel it forward in between scenes of Dracula showing that he can count to four or five. Dracula AD 1972 lacks that, and although the young cast is perfectly acceptable, the characters they inhabit just aren't interesting. Plus the jackass who wears the monk's cowl around the whole time was intensely annoying and yet escaped death. Shame on you, Dracula! Shame on you for not killing the odious comic relief. Caroline Munro has a small but memorable part as one of the gang of youths seduced by Johnny Alucard's ability to mimic what he's seen in A Clockwork Orange, but she would quickly become one of the most beloved cult film actresses of all time. She got her start on the horror scene playing Vincent price's dead wife in the Dr. Phibes films, though I'm not sure lying there dead for every one of your scenes earns you a whole lot other than other parts where you do nothing but lie there. She at least gets to talk, writhe, show off heaving breasts, and get blood dumped all over her in this film. Her career took off shortly thereafter, and she has a much more substantial role in Hammer's superior Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, as well as major roles in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, At the Earth's Core, the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and of course the infamous classic Starcrash, featuring what was no doubt her most memorable outfit. She was still working, albeit only occasionally, up until 2006, and if you've seen her lately, in her late fifties, then you know she's still ridiculously gorgeous and awesome. A shame she doesn't have more to do in this film, but even a little Caroline Munro is worth watching. As the current Van Helsing, it's great to see Peter Cushing back in action, and naturally he goes at the role with absolute conviction. Unfortunately, the character is written as Van Helsing Lite, and most of his scenes are pretty dull. He spends a lot of time tracking down clues to the one thing he already knows. Everyone knows where Dracula's base of operation is, and yet Van Helsing spends half the movie trying to track down clues to the location of Dracula's hide-out, which he already knows! And once again, he decides to go fight Dracula at night, instead of swinging by and staking the bloodsucker when Dracula is asleep in his coffin. Why oh why are vampire hunters always waiting until dark to go fight vampires? I guess a movie where vampire hunters swing by during the day, stake Dracula, then head down to the pub to celebrate wouldn't be as long, but it'd be a nice change of pace. Other than that, Cushing is always Cushing. He comes in and does his job well, or as well as he can with what he's given. The final common criticism of this movie, then, is that it's not very good, and I guess that's a fair assessment. The script needed more work. You can tell the hip young lingo was written by old men who didn't really know what they were doing. The plot is a bit of a letdown, especially considering that it's the first time Van Helsing and Dracula have been on screen together since the first movie. And despite all that, I really quite like Dracula AD 1972. I like the young cast. I like the awkward attempt at being hip. I like the outlandish counter-culture fashions. I like the attempts at freak-out cinematography. I think the movie is fun regardless of its faults, though I recognize that I may be in the minority here. By no means is this the film to save Hammer, and by no means is it as good as the previous film it rips off, Taste the Blood of Dracula. But it's not an entirely bad effort and has much to recommend in it, at least for me.
Screenwriter Don Houghton didn't have a terribly deep resume at this point in his career, his primary credit at the time of this movie being a stint as a writer for Doctor Who. And in fact, he had very little in the way of a career after Dracula AD 1972. He went on to write The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and two of Hammer's co-productions with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio -- the crummy Shatter and the pretty good if sloppily written Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, in which Peter Cushing reprised his Van Helsing character one more time, this time on a trip to China to stop Dracula from raising an undead army. Despite the appearance of Dracula in the movie, Christopher Lee did not sign on, possibly because he was to busy making the James Bond film Man with the Golden Gun. Or The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Houghton was in his early forties when he wrote the screenplay for Dracula AD 1972, and while that's not really all that old, it is a little too old to be trying to write hip teen lingo. I'm only thirty-five right now, but I wouldn't consider myself adept at writing slang-heavy dialog based on modern teens. They say...what? Like, "sweet" and "cuckoo,man, real cuckoo" right? Despite the faults, Dracula AD 1972 managed to turn a profit, which meant that Hammer was going to make another one, even though Christopher Lee swore this was the worst movie ever and he would never play Dracula again. That follow-up, another film set in the 1970s, was The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and if you want to see a genuinely awful film, that is the one you should be watching.  Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Series: Vampires in the 70s, Stars: Caroline Munro, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1972 posted by Keith at 6:16 AM | 7 Comments Saturday, January 15, 2005Scars of Dracula Release Year: 1970Country: England Starring: Christopher Lee, Patrick Troughton, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Michael Ripper, Michael Gwynn, Christopher Matthews. Writer: Anthony Hinds Director: Roy Ward Baker Cinematographer: Moray Grant Music: James Bernard Producer: Aida Young Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us And we were doing so well! Most movie studios can't sustain the quality of a film series beyond two films -- and quite a few have problems even getting that far. It was no small feat, then, that Hammer managed to produce not one, but two consistently good series. Their Dracula and Frankenstein films set the benchmark for quality horror during the late fifties and throughout the 1960s. And you know, they almost made it to the finish lines with both of them. The Frankenstein series featuring Peter Cushing as the titular mad doctor lasted six films, with only the third film being a misfire - and not a very bad misfire at that. By the time Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was released, it was clear that the series was at its end, both creatively and financially. Still, it managed to go out with a dash of class, and the final film features the second worst monster in the series (the honor of worst, in my opinion, goes to Kiwi Kingston's shrieking slapdash Karloff wannabe from Evil of Frankenstein) but one of the best stories and finest performances from Cushing. Even if the final film was not a financial success, everyone involved could hold their heads up high and be proud of all six movies. And then there was the Dracula series starring Christopher Lee.
Like Frankenstein, Dracula started strong and managed to maintain the course for five films. Had they stopped with Taste the Blood of Dracula, it too would have retired a successful and respectable series. It was clear, in fact, by the fourth film that no one had much of an idea left regarding what to do with the character of Dracula. Another film in which a group of travelers end up at Dracula's castle and are preyed upon for the remainder of the film just wouldn't cut it. With Taste the Blood, Hammer tried to go in a different direction and make a movie where Dracula was a presence without being an actual character. American distributors, however, refused to buy a Dracula movie that didn't have Christopher Lee skulking about in an opera cape, and so the Count was forced into the story in a rather awkward fashion that gave him very little to do beyond stand in the shadows and count. And that's not what his title is supposed to mean. Still, Taste the Blood was quite a good film even if Dracula's physical presence has little to do with the plot. Like I said, had they wrapped it up with this one, everything would have ended on a positive note. But where as the financial failure of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell sealed its fate as the final film in the Frankenstein series, Dracula had the artistic misfortune of scoring yet another box office hit with Taste the Blood. And so it was that a sixth Dracula film was to be made, regardless of whether or not anyone had anything interesting to put forward. Scars of Dracula isn't an abominably bad entry into the series (they'd save that for the final two films). It's just completely derivative and pointless, falling back onto the tiresome "doomed souls visiting Castle Dracula" and trying to set itself apart by giving Christopher Lee's vampire count more lines in this one movie than he'd had in all the others combined. They don't fool anyone, though, and while Scars boasts some memorable moments, the gestalt experience is one best forgotten. We have yet another Paul in this film, as well as another Klove (Patrick Troughton, best known to sci-fi fans as the second Dr. Who, or the hobo Doctor as I call him). I think that's two Kloves to four Pauls, and add them to the three or four Hans's from the Frankenstein movies. Okay, two Kloves is one thing, but what's the deal with Paul? Didn't someone look back and realize they'd named the last three stiffs (you can hardly call any of them heroes) Paul, and thus they should go for a different name this time out, like Steven perhaps, or Beauregard? Well, by the time this series is over, a preponderance of Pauls will be the least of our concerns.
The movie wastes no time in letting us know we're in for a bumpy ride as we go immediately to the lamest Dracula reincarnation yet. Now, if you recall the final film, Dracula was transported to London, then disintegrates in an old church, leaving nothing but his trademark little pile of dust. When this film begins, however, Dracula is lying in his coffin back at Castle Dracula. A floppy giant rubber bat wobbles awkwardly into the room on visible wires and proceeds to drool a little of blood onto Dracula's dust. Voila! The prince of darkness rises again! Now you know, even ignoring the horrid continuity between this and the previous films (which went to great lengths to connect itself logically to the end of Dracula has Risen from the Grave), there's no way to ignore that the ragged-looking bat prop is one of the single worst special effects in the history of Hammer horror. Someone wanted lots of bats in this movie; the least they could have done is check to see if anyone at Hammer could create them in a remotely believable manner. No hyperbole here - this thing would be embarrassing in a teenage goth's shot-on-video horror short. How it managed to flop and wiggle it's way into an actual professional production is a mystery to me. Maybe if they'd stopped at one bat, things wouldn't be so bad. But we're going to get lots of them, and each one will somehow manage to be more pathetic looking than the last. Astoundingly, the scene manages to get even worse as Dracula (Christopher Lee, undoubtedly doing the film under protest yet again, as he would so frequently remind people) sits up and the bat begins squeaking at him while Dracula nods his head and listens intently. I expect this sort of thing in a Lassie movie, maybe even in a tender scene shared between Godzilla and Anguilas, but Dracula? "What's that, lad? You say a busty wench is down in the churchyard? Let's go!" I mean, yeah, they stop short of having Dracula jump up, yell "Alakazam!" then shrink down to action-figure size so he can ride the bat around, but I'm sure if it had occurred to them, that would have happened too. Well, Dracula gets his busty wench kill in for the day, but this angries up the blood of the local peasants, and for once they don't just sit around in the tavern staring ominously at each other. In fact, one almost has hope when Michael Ripper, appearing as "Angry Barkeep" for the nine thousandth time, decides they should round up a good old-fashioned torch-wielding mob and kill Dracula off once and for all for the fifth time. Now, this is all right! A torch-wielding mob of peasants within the first ten minutes of a film? That's something I can live with. Unfortunately, they prove to be the most incompetent torch-wielding mob of peasants in the history of horror films, as they proceed to storm angrily up to Castle Dracula and knock on the door. I mean, they do it firmly and with stern looks on their faces, but if you're going up the mountain to kill a murderous vampire and burn his castle to the ground, stopping to politely knock on the door sort of undercuts your entire message. It gets even worse when, despite the fact that they must be aware that Dracula and/or his hairy servant Klove noticed the huge mob of torch-wielding peasants coming up the road, Michael Ripper knocks again and says, "Open up! I'm quite alone!" Since Dracula is asleep, I assume this all takes place in the day time, so really, brandishing the torches angrily in the air probably lost some of its effect as well, but when you're the kind of mob that can be stymied in the rage by a butler who refuses to open the door, torches in the day time are the least of your concern, though you should probably be concerned regarding the efficacy of trying to burn down a stone structure. When they do gain access to the castle (I can't remember if Ripper pulled the old "Okay, I guess I'll leave then," and made fake footsteps like he was walking away so that Klove would let down his guard and open the door), Klove doesn't seem especially upset. He may be a hairy hunchbacked servant, but even he knows that trying to burn down a stone castle with torches may damage a few tapestries, but that's about it. Still, the mob seems to consider it a job well done even though both Klove and Dracula survive. And, umm, the castle is still standing, too. Bravo, gents! Now let's all go down to the tavern for a pint!
When they return from their glorious triumph of getting a few walls slightly sooty (Klove will be scrubbing them for days to get the clean again), they discover that Dracula took the opportunity to send more floppy fake bats down to the town to massacre every last woman and child. This sort of puts a damper on their gaiety for the evening, and one has to wonder how a trio of floppy bats managed to massacre so many people and pull out so many eyeballs. The story then shifts to another town, where the movie solidifies its place in the pantheon of bad films by featuring a wacky comedy sequence in which the philandering Paul (Christopher Matthews) gets chased around by the angry burgomaster after being caught in bed with the burgomaster's daughter. Thankfully, the film stops short of piping in Benny Hill music, but then maybe this entire painful sequence would have been better if they'd thrown in a little "Yakkity Sax," sped the whole thing up, and allowed Paul to pause for a second to pat an old man on the head. The Scooby-Doo style chase eventually leads to the birthday party of young Sarah (Jenny Hanley), who loves that rascally Paul even though his far nicer, less whorish brother Simon (Dennis Waterman) loves her. Eventually, Paul ends up at Castle Dracula, and yes, we realize we're going to get another one of those "Whatever you do, don't go to the castle" movies where everyone goes to the castle. And that's just the first third of the film. It doesn't get any better from there despite the fact that Christopher Lee gets so much more screen time than usual. He hisses and seethes and screams and snarls his way through a series of unmemorable lines as he engages in all manner of brutality, including branding Klove with a hot poker, stabbing someone with a sword, impaling people on pointy light fixtures, and going nuts with the whip (once again on Klove). In fact, this is the first Dracula film where you expect the Count is more likely to just haul off and punch someone in the face than flash his mesmerizing red eyes at them and bite them on the neck. He seems to forget for most of the movie that he actually has vampire powers, and instead acts like a schoolyard bully, albeit a schoolyard bully with a tendency to wear a big cape for no discernible reason. This means Scars of Dracula has more gory action in it than any of the previous films, but none of it has much of an impact. Where's the fun of watching Dracula slap Dr. Who around? Okay, maybe that sounds a little fun, but it's really not. Dracula also stabs a female vampire with a dagger. For some reason, this kills her. At this point, though, I don't even care. I guess if Dracula isn't going to bite people like a normal vampire should, then other vampires can be killed with daggers and so forth. I guess some vampires fear a wooden stake, and others fear a wiggling rubber dagger. On the hero front, what can you say? This film gives you a milquetoast lead in Simon, and a standard issue cowardly priest (Michael Gwynn, who played the "monster" in the far superior Revenge of Frankenstein). You keep waiting for the priest to rise to the occasion and stop collapsing in his pew aisles and weeping, but that's about all he ever does. The Dracula series had been following an interesting trajectory, starting with Van Helsing's explaining Dracula in purely rational terms as a social disease to an increasingly supernatural demon to be combated not with science and reason, but with faith. Here, however, even that is chucked out the window in favor of having Dracula be nothing more than some asshole who happens to command a fleet of shaky rubber bats.
Simon sort of drifts from one scene to the next until he eventually finds himself standing on the roof with Dracula, about to be killed until a bolt of lightning shows up to do his dirty work for him. Boy oh boy, we're a long way from Van Helsing, aren't we? Patrick Troughton's Klove is every bit as over-the-top as Lee's Dracula, and both of them are more laughable than they are sinister. I did say that this film had some memorable moments, didn't I? I mean, memorable because they're good, not because they're so unbelievably awful. I guess what I meant to say is there's the one scene worth remembering. One of the most notable sequences from the Bram Stoker novel involves Jonathan Harker observing Count Dracula entering and exiting the tower of Castle Dracula by crawling up and down the wall like a spider. For one reason or another, this scene had never been included in any theatrical version of the story, so scriptwriter Anthony Hinds and director Roy Ward Baker figured now would be as good a time as any. It does show, if nothing else, Dracula has learned the benefits of putting his crypt in an impenetrable tower with no entrance or exit save for the one window way up high that only a guy with spider climbing abilities can get to. It certainly makes more sense than keeping it on the ground floor with an unlocked door, as was his practice in previous films. Of course, once Christopher Lee went crawling up and down walls, there was no stopping Dracula. Frank Langela did it in hazy slow motion with billowing cape and romantic string music playing. Gary Oldman did it all herky jerky while wearing a big red robe. It just goes to show you that a scene of Dracula scurrying around don the wall may be cool, but it can't save the whole movie. Even the trademark Hammer look isn't on display here, as cheap budgets make for cheap sets. Fire damage explains away the spartan appearance of Dracula's castle, but that doesn't make it interesting to look at. More than ever, the people who made fun of horror movies with cardboard characters and cardboard sets had plenty of ammo for their attacks. It can be fun, but you never once forget you're watching a dreadful movie. There's a reason this emerged as the goriest of all Dracula films, and one of the goriest Hammer films, period: they had to cover up the threadbare production with something. Scars of Dracula isn't quite a disaster, but it's everything bad about Hammer films, and everything that critics unjustly accused Hammer films of being - only this time, there was no defending the product. Hammy acting, clumsy comedy, wretched special effects, weak characters - heaving bosoms is about all this one has going for it, and you can get those in any Hammer film, even the good ones. 1970 was simply not a good year for Hammer, with this, the awful Horror of Frankenstein (not part of the actual Frankenstein series, and not starring Peter Cushing), Creatures the World Forgot, and Lust for a Vampire overshadowing the studio's two good films from that year: the wonderful Vampire Lovers and the acceptable Lady Bathory exploitation film, Countess Dracula. Scars of Dracula ends up being a highlight reel for anyone who ever wanted to showcase the lowest common denominator Hammer film. Hinds was a good scriptwriter, and Baker was a more than competent director. So what went wrong? It can only be that, in the end, no one but the accountants gave a damn about making another Dracula movie. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. Scars of Dracula once again made money, which meant that, impossible though it may be, yet another Dracula film would inevitably be made. Fans grew hopeful when they heard Peter Cushing was back in the game as Van Helsing. They grew suspicious when they found out Dracula would be visiting the year 1972. Their suspicions, it would turn out, were well founded. Dracula, A.D. 1972 would show everyone who thought Scars of Dracula was the worst Dracula movie Hammer had made that they hadn't seen anything yet.  Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1970 posted by Keith at 4:04 PM | 0 Comments Tuesday, December 14, 2004Taste the Blood of Dracula
1970, England, Starring Christopher Lee, Ralph Bates, Geoffrey Keene, Linda Hayden, Michael Ripper, Peter Salas, Ilsa Blair, John Carson, Martin Jarvis. Directed by Peter Sasdy. Available on DVD (Amazon).
Last time we saw the prince of the undead, he was impaled on a cross and turned into that pink sawdust bus drivers sprinkle on the floor when kids throw up. For just about anyone, even the common vampire, that would signal the end, once and for all. But this is Dracula we're talking about, and if Dracula Has Risen from the Grave proved to be a financial success for England's Hammer Studio, then you could bet good money on the fact that they'd find yet another way to bring the Count back from the dead, even if he'd been impaled on a cross and even if series star Christopher Lee was back out on the streets again telling anyone and everyone who would listen that the Dracula movies were awful and he would absolutely, positively, under no circumstances ever play Count Dracula again. Anyone who knows the cycle knows that means that the next film in the cycle, Taste the Blood of Dracula, stars Christopher Lee as the titular count, and that in turns means we'd have to read even more quotes from Lee about how he was practically forced to do this film, but that he'd sure as heck never do another one. There are two common paths of thought regarding Lee's frequent and increasingly irritating complaints about Hammer's Dracula movies. The first is that, well, Christopher Lee is just whiny and annoying. The second is that he made these statements with the full blessing of Hammer and with every intention, despite what he was saying, of reprising the role so long as the movies proved profitable. Having the star of a film out there talking about how horrible it all is and how he never wants to do another one is a surefire way to get people curious. Certainly Hammer seemed to have suspiciously peculiar luck with convincing Christopher Lee to go back on his bold proclamations. So either Lee is an obnoxious talker who never lives up to his own assertions, or he's just a cog in a clever Hammer marketing ploy, or Hammer has some bundle of pictures or other bunch of material that they use to regularly blackmail Lee.
In fact, Taste the Blood of Dracula was originally scripted by Anthony Hinds on the assumption that Lee would make good on his boasts and refuse to appear. Much like Brides of Dracula before it, Taste the Blood of Dracula was going to employ the threat of Dracula and his disciples without actually featuring the bloodsucker himself. As originally written Taste the Blood was going to be a showcase for Hammer's great young hope, Ralph Bates, the man they hoped would serve as the banner star for a new era of revitalized Hammer output. It seems like a good idea. Christopher Lee was becoming more difficult by the day, and one has to assume that despite the man's marquee value, Hammer would be happy to just move on without him for a spell. And Ralph Bates was certainly an able man around which to structure the faltering studio. Where as Cushing and Lee and the previous generation of Hammer actors had represented an older, more distinguished presence, Bates was young and handsome and would appeal, Hammer hoped, to the younger kids who were fast becoming the bread and butter of the movie industry. Bates was one of the studio's first attempts at a matinee idol (Oliver Reed could probably be considered their first). As the studio entered the 1970s, they were beginning to feel the weight of a faltering British film industry, a dearth of ideas for new movies that would keep Hammer fresh, and most of all, the feeling that Hammer films were simply outdated and old-fashioned. Behind the scenes, Hammer was rudderless and without any real leadership or idea of where the studio was going. As a result, Hammer's output during the 1970s was notoriously uneven, though several high points managed to rise above the widening pool of substandard Hammer fare. One of the keys to Hammer succeeding in the 1970s involved a serious update of the stodgy and old-fashioned reputation. This meant, among other things, more daring scripts, less naïve looks at life, and above all, some new blood in the acting department that would appeal to existing horror fans as well as those shaggy-haired hippies and burn-outs with their bell bottoms and their Sergeant Pepper albums. Unfortunately Warner Brothers, who distributed the films in the important US market, wasn't going to buy any of this. They didn't know who Ralph Bates was, and more importantly, they didn't care. If Hammer wanted their Dracula film distributed in the United States, then it damn well better have Dracula in it. American audiences wouldn't put up with a bait and switch, and if Warner couldn't have Christopher Lee in the film, then the film couldn't have distribution in the United States, at least not from Warner Brothers. Hammer scrambled to appease Lee in the same way but for much less money than the producers of the James Bond films begged and bought Sean Connery back into the Bond series (at roughly the same time. Diamonds Are Forever came out in 1971, but given the speed with which Hammer films were made versus the more liberal schedule of a Bond film, it's likely this sort of desperate buying back of established stars was happening at around the same time). With Lee on board again, under protest as he couldn't stop reminding people, a hasty rewrite of the script was in order so that Dracula could actually appear in the film to see who it was that going around tasting his blood. Taste the Blood begins with a clever intro that signals the film's intention to put more work than usual into the process of reviving Dracula. A merchant traveling via coach with a couple of your standard issue gruff, superstitious villagers is bragging about the rare wares he has acquired during his recent antiquing sojourn through the Carpathian hills. While he may be proud of his knick-knacks, the villagers aren't as impressed, and when the merchant mentions a certain village, they just haul off and kick him out of the coach. Stranded in the woods at night, the merchant begins to hear the standard "stranded in the woods at night" sound effects. Owls, scurrying, and a howl that may or may not be Oliver Reed from Curse of the Werewolf. When a blood-curdling shriek fills the air, the merchant realizes that some seriously foul things are afoot in this cursed forest. By and by he falls off a ledge and comes face to face with the thrilling climax of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Once that movie finishes up, the merchant twists up his courage and sneaks down to collect the remaining artifacts, which include, as the title suggests, the blood of Dracula, or at least the powdered "just add water" variety we're used to seeing once Dracula finishes dying. Some time later, we meet three upstanding citizens of Queen Victoria's England, and as you can guess, all three of them aren't nearly as pious as they pretend. Ring leader William Hargood (Geoffrey Keene, who appeared in Cromwell every James Bond films beginning with The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 and concluding with The Living Daylights) is the most despicable of the bunch as he beats and berates his daughter for smiling at a boy and engaging in other acts of harlotry while, the very same night, gathering his cronies together for a night of exotic pleasures at the local brothel. Hargood and his fellows form sort of a mini Hellfire Club, though their indulgences in the forbidden pleasures of the world consist almost entirely of going to same brother every month under the guise of "charity work" and then sitting in a room, drinking liquor, and watching foreign women dance naked. I'm not saying that isn't a fine night out on the town, but as far as experiences the taboos from the farthest reaches of the globe go, it's pretty unimaginative, pedestrian stuff. Hargood seems to realize this, and their boredom with their panty-waist sin leads them to seek out eccentric dandy Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates), who is one of those broke counts who gads about town in the finest high society frippery, scamming free meals from expensive restaurants and mooching off exquisite looking women of loose morals and poor judgment as he twirls his walking stick, doffs his top hat, and snaps his hankie about. In other words, a perfectly fine role model. Courtley is rumored to have dabbled in the black arts of Satanism or voodoo or something sinister, and so the three upstanding gentlemen seek out his company, though they never stop insulting him - which seems to me a poor way to treat the madcap young fop you're asking to initiate you into the next level of debauchery. Courtley sees in the gentlemen the perfect opportunity to get enough money to do something he's always wanted to do: namely, visit that merchant from the pre-credit sequence, buy Dracula's stuff, and mount a ritual to return the count to life. Reason? For the hell of it, it seems, which is as good a reason as any, I suppose.
As one would imagine, the ritual goes awry when Hargood's friends balk at actually guzzling down the thick, foaming blood of Dracula milkshake with which Courtley presents them. The ensuing argument results in Courtley's murder as he thrashes and writhes about after drinking the blood himself. Hargood and Co. high tail it out of the ruined old building in which the fun was taking place, and Courtley, not surprisingly proves to be just the vessel Dracula needs to return from the dead once again to wreak his unholy vengeance upon those who murdered his assistant, which doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense when you remember that Dracula has no idea who Courtley is, and that Courtley's death was necessary for Dracula to return to the land of the living. But what do you want when the script gets rewritten at the last minute? The remainder of the film sees Dracula (Christopher Lee) gaining control over the sons and daughters of the three men against whom he bears this grudge, so that he can have them murder their own parents, which frees Dracula up to stand nearby in the shadows and count down the number of people against whom he has successfully extracted his revenge. Considering there's only three of them, it's not much of a countdown. One of the things that sets this film apart from previous Dracula films is that Dracula, like Godzilla, is arguably the hero of the film. Though we still have to see him destroyed in the end, there's little doubt that he's no more vile than the men he's hunting. When he manipulates Hargood's battered daughter Alice (Linda Hayden, Blood on Satan's Claw) into smashing her wretched father's head in with a shovel, one almost feels like cheering, especially since this comes after a grotesque scene in which a drunk and leering Hargood viciously beats his daughter and looks on the verge of flat out raping her. Previous Dracula films have had gray characters - the self-righteous blowhard Monsignor from the last film springs immediately to mind - but those characters always had redeeming qualities. Hargood possesses no such qualities. He is despicable from beginning to end, and the audience has no problem feeling that he got what he deserved. The only thing wrong with his death, as I see it, is that it's the first, leaving the other two far less revolting characters to carry the plot when, if you ask me, Hargood's death should have been the climax of the story. Instead, we get Dracula hunting down the remainder of Hargood's cabal while milquetoast Paul (yet another Paul - nearly as many of these in Dracula films as there are Kloves, or Hans's in the Frankenstein movie) tries to save the soul of his beloved Alice Hargood and, in the process, send Dracula back from whence he came. Taste the Blood represents a more savage critique of Victorian society than any previous Dracula film. There has always been an undercurrent in the films of the ongoing struggle between enforced morals and repression and the wild animalistic abandon represented by Dracula. But in previous films, the scripts always came down on the side of society, preferring its ordered repression to the lust and passion of Dracula. Here, however, the tables are turned and if Dracula's lifestyle isn't exactly championed, it's at least shown as being no worse than the hypocrisy and deceit of modern society. The point is made in rather a heavy handed fashion, but so it goes. Although a more counter-culture, youth-friendly message about freedom triumphing over repression was nothing new in 1970, Hammer was still a relative neophyte studio when it came to tapping into the anti-authoritarian trends that had defined and all but escaped Hammer during the 1960s. With Taste the Blood, they're attempting to play a bit of catch-up, so one can forgive the ham-handed way in which they deliver the message. Dracula is, once again, little more than a supporting player, a sort of shadowy puppet master with very little screen time who does precious little more than lurk in the shadows rattling off the body count like the Count from Sesame Street. But then at the same, time, he doesn't have any less screen time or involvement in things than he did in most of the previous films. What Taste the Blood does is the same thing that Horror of Dracula and Prince of Darkness attempted to do, which is to keep Dracula constantly present as a threat, an ominous atmosphere of dread, even when Christopher Lee himself is nowhere to be seen. Only in the finale, which is admittedly half-baked, does Lee get to do his crazed thrashing about, though one has to wonder if the lord of the undead couldn't think of a better way to fight off a weak opponent like Paul than standing on a balcony and throwing garbage at him. It's just one step away from having Dracula swoop down and whack Paul on the head, then flutter up into the rafters to taunt him. The rest of the cast is spectacular. Paul (Anthony Higgins, Vampire Circus as well as a small part in Raiders of the Lost Ark) is more boring than the previous Paul, but no more boring than any of the other straights we've had on parade. Linda Hayden is one of the most attractive women Hammer ever put on display, and she acquits herself well as the other half of the boring romantic couple. The real strength of the cast lies in everyone else, an impressive assembly of solid character actors that perform above and beyond the call of duty, with Geoffrey Keen and Ralph Bates in the lead. For the couple scenes where he's allowed to spring to life, Christopher Lee is as good as he always is. Michael Ripper, who seems to have appeared in just about every movie Hammer ever made, gets promoted from the role of "suspicious barkeep" to "lackadaisical inspector." It's probably one of the best casts ever assembled for a Dracula film, and although it's common to bemoan the lack of Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, there's really no place for him thematically in this film, where the humans are generally so contemptible. Van Helsing's compassionate authority figure would have stood out like a sore thumb.
Taste the Blood continues to take Dracula further and further away from Van Helsing's theory that Dracula is is a perfectly explainable creature well within and soundly defeated by the powers of human reason. In fact, by Taste the Blood, Dracula is hardly even a vampire any more so much as he is some kind of supernatural demonic force. If ever he was the human made monster, you wouldn't know it at this point. The more secular means of dispatching a vampire -- garlic, running water, so on and so forth -- that were previously employed have, by this movie, been dispatched almost entirely in favor of religious iconography. Although Taste the Blood is as steeped in religious imagery as Dracula has Risen from the Grave, it doesn't have any particular comment to direct toward religion the way that previous film did. Religion is simply a matter of necessity as Dracula has become less the prince of darkness and more the Antichrist himself. Or wait, are those the same? Whatever the case, Taste the Blood again presents us with a monster which, unlike Dracula as we knew him in the first couple of films, exists entirely within a religious -- or sacreligious -- realm where bravery and reason have less to do with destroying him than do faith and Christ. Despite the weak ending, Taste the Blood is an exceptional entry into Hammer's Dracula oeuvre. Director Peter Sasdy eschews the ultra-vivid palette that characterized the Terence Fisher films and goes for a more subdued hue to the film, something more akin to reality and less stylized. Buildings and street are dark rather than brightly lit, and there is a palpable sense of decay in everything. Even Christopher Lee grudgingly admits that it turned out to be a good film, though to this day he won't stop going on about how corny the title is - and at least on this, one kind of has to agree with him, though I'd pay good money to see something under the same title debut on the Food Network. Being the final Hammer Dracula film, it was nice to see the series go out on such a respectable note. I'm kidding of course. Taste the Blood would prove successful, and thus there would have to be another Dracula film. We can only wish that Hammer stopped with Taste the Blood, because from here on out it's not so much downhill as it is straight off a cliff and into the abyss. Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1970 posted by Keith at 1:17 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, September 12, 2004Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
1968, England. Starring Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson, Barbara Ewing, Barry Andrews, Ewan Hooper, Marion Mathie, Michael Ripper. Directed by Freddie Francis. Available on DVD (Amazon).
When a creature is so vile, so evil, so much an affront to the nature of the world and of God himself as is the vampire Count Dracula, there is no easy way to destroy him and keep him down. So it is that in every episode of man's struggle against this infernal prince of darkness, we mortals seem to succeed in wholly destroying this spawn of Satan only to see him find some way to cheat death yet again, as he has for so many centuries now, so that he may once again rise up and cast his long shadow of terror and bloodshed across the countryside. It seems this notorious bloodsucker has any number of ways he can reverse the effects of his apparent destruction, but the most powerful one by far is making certain that his movie provide bushel baskets full of money for the producers. With the power to produce so much green, it was a given that Hammer Studio's Dracula would find a way to resurrect himself after being trapped under the ice at the end of Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Death by running water seemed a more easily circumvented fate than actor Christopher Lee's emphatic statements regarding his unwillingness to portray the caped one again. Lee made a big name for himself with his turn as the undead ghoul in Hammer's ground-breaking Horror of Dracula, but he was determined that the name he made wouldn't be Dracula. So he bowed out of the sequel, Brides of Dracula, and didn't return to the role until he was comfortable that he'd established himself as something more than the vampire count. But 1967's Dracula, Prince of Darkness proved that audiences were still bloodthirsty not just for Dracula, but for Christopher Lee as Dracula. That people were so quick to revert to identifying him solely with Dracula made Lee squeamish about reprising the role yet again, though the outstanding success of Prince of Darkness meant that Hammer could hardly pass on making another film. So would begin a long and sometimes irritating cycle of Christopher Lee making a Dracula movie for Hammer, complaining about what crap the film was and how he would absolutely never, ever do it again, then appearing in Hammer's next Dracula film a year later. Although Lee did have his viable points for being dissatisfied with the role - chief among them that it grew increasingly unlike anything portrayed in the original Bram Stoker novel - in the end his continuous complaining coupled with the fact that he'd always show up to do another one "under protest" kind of makes you want to tell Christopher Lee to shut the hell up. Hey, I like me the Christopher Lee, but it's not like the man built for himself some legacy of impeccable artistic integrity. He did show up in Chuck Norris films and other things far worse than even the least of his Hammer Dracula films. But that's Christopher Lee for you. Sometimes he's just a bit of a blowhard, but that doesn't make his turn in these films any less enjoyable. So obviously, despite Lee's public bellyaching, Hammer managed to sign him on for a sequel to Prince of Darkness. There was really no reason to tinker with a winning formula, and so they figured they might as well bring back Terence Fisher to direct and Jimmy Sangster to do the screenplay. Things didn't quite work out that way though, and when Fisher was injured in an auto accident, Hammer turned to Freddie Francis to fulfill the directorial duties. Additionally, Anthony Hinds ended up writing the screenplay (under his frequent pseudonym of John Elder). As good as the Sangster-Fisher team was, there was nothing to mourn in having Francis and Hinds working on the picture. Both were solid company men with a lot of good work to their credit. In fact, Freddie Francis' tendency to experiment more with dreamlike, experimental set-ups would be a nice change from Fisher's meticulous concentration on realism and detail. The film lets you know right away that it isn't going to mess around, although this warning turns out to be a bit of a fib since the movie does end up messing around a bit. But we begin with one of the finest opening sequences Hammer would devise for a Dracula movie, as a young boy goes to fulfill his duty as the local church's bell ringer only to find the corpse of a young woman - drained completely of blood - dangling inside the bell. It's a fantastic image in a film whose main strength is going to be in its imagery. This all occurs, we are lead to understand, sometime during the events depicted in Prince of Darkness. The film then picks up some months after that one ends, with the local priest a hopeless drunk and the church abandoned. When a loudmouth, obnoxious monsignor rides into town, he berates everyone for still being afraid of Dracula even though he was indisputably destroyed by that rifle-toting monk in Prince of Darkness. To prove his point, the Monsignor insists on dragging the parish priest up to Dracula's now-vacant castle to exorcise the grounds and scatter assorted religious iconography about the place. Unfortunately, while he's doing this, the drunken depressed priest takes a tumble off a ledge and cracks open his head right on top of the ice beneath which lies the perfectly preserved corpse of Dracula. As blood from the priest's head trickles through cracks in the ice, it touches Dracula's lips and, well, there you go. Instant vampire resurrection. This process of reviving the count seems a little, you know, unimaginative. Last time, someone had to be strung above his ashes and completely gutted before Dracula was revived, but this time it just takes a couple drops of blood and a convenient ignoring of the fact that, blood of a disillusioned priest or not, Dracula was still trapped beneath running water and should have just died again instead of being able to burst forth from his icy tomb to wreak terrible vengeance upon the world. This method of bringing Dracula back would, however, look positively inspired by the time the series got to Scars of Dracula, where the count is brought back to un-life when a random rubber bat flies into his crypt and drools some blood on him without any sort of build-up at all. The first thing one notices about this whole opening, which is really one of the best procession of images in any Dracula film, is the pervasiveness of religious imagery. Well, I guess the first thing you might notice is how the drunk priest's head is gushing blood in one shot and is entirely healed mere seconds later in another shot. But the religious imagery is strong, too, and indeed Risen from the Grave will emerge as one of the most potently religious of the films, continuing the progression of the series from the relatively secular adventures of Van Helsing (he pays lip service to God, but his primary faith is in science and reason, and he sees vampirism in terms of being a disease) to the "I'm religious but I'll trust my gun to do the Lord's work' view of Father Sandor in Prince of Darkness, and now into the realm of Dracula not as a plague, but as a supernatural force that exists apart from and in defiance of the laws of a rational universe. The Van Helsing-esque voice of the enlightened man of reason comes, somewhat more pathetically than with Van Helsing, from the character of Paul, a student and avowed atheist who is in love with the Monsignor's niece, though the Monsignor is none too thrilled to have a Godless screwball courting a member of his family. The battle between the forces of secularism and religion is almost more prominent than the battle against Dracula, who eventually discovers that the Monsignor has stuck a big golden cross on the castle door and thus seeks ruthless revenge on the Christian defiler by enslaving the weak priest and moving into the basement of the inn where Paul works. If you're thinking this is kind of a lame ultimate revenge against all mankind, then you'd pretty much be right. But Dracula also enslaves a buxom bar wench, so it's not a total wash-out. Dracula plans to eventually get around to making a vampire out of the monsignor's niece, but he doesn't seem to be in any big hurry, which means that while he gets to spend a lot of time hanging around in the cellar being illuminated by eerie green lights, we have to spend a lot of time watching him hang around the cellar being illuminated by eerie green lights. It does indeed make for some frighteningly effective imagery, which seems to be the entire point of this film, but a procession of eerie images doesn't necessarily assemble into a completely enthralling or entirely coherent film. Things do drag a bit in the middle as we watch Dracula push around the wench and the priest while Paul and his love engage in late-night rendezvous' on the rooftop. We know that eventually Dracula is going to kidnap her and there will be a scene of horses wildly pulling a carriage toward Castle Dracula. We just wish there wasn't so much dead time before that happens. This movie does contain one of the scenes that really set Christopher Lee off to ranting about how awful all the films are. Paul manages to drive a stake - and quite a large one at that - through Dracula's heart, which Dracula proceeds to yank out and throw at Paul. Turns out you have to stake the vampire, yeah, but it's meaningless unless you also pray while you are doing it. Paul, being an atheist or perhaps somewhat versed in vampiric lore, refuses to pray. Who's heard of such a thing? You just slam the stake in, cut the head off, and then you're done for the day. This particular scene drove Lee nuts. He still brings it up even today. Everyone knows that once you drive a stake into a vampire's heart, he's done for, prayer or no. Gaffs like that aside, this is really rather a better entry in the series than Christopher Lee would have you believe. The story, though uneven, benefits from greater depth than usual, with the battle between secularism and Christianity adding some real meat to the non-Dracula bits. Of course, any attempt to extract some sort of final message from the film is bound to be confusing. It's religion's fault that Dracula gets resurrected. If the Monsignor had listened to the superstitious peasants, none of this would have happened. And it's Paul, the atheist, who must come in and save the day when Christianity fails to get the job done. But Paul also wind sup perhaps more open to belief in Christ by the end of the film, which is full of redemption and vampires getting impaled on big golden crucifixes. So I guess the overall religious message of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is, "don't be an asshole." Don't be intolerant or a zealot, because then you just open the door for Christopher Lee to go stand on your roof while enveloped in purple mist. And while it may be cool to have Christopher Lee on your roof for a while, eventually he's going to start asking about eating some of your chips and stuff like that. Appearnace-wise, Risen from the Grave is the best looking of all the Dracula films to date, and really one of the best looking films Hammer ever produced. The atmosphere in the film seems to be heavily influenced by the more phantasmagoric look of Mario Bava's films, and the result is a Dracula film awash in otherworldly colors and swirling camera filters. It gives the movie a more dreamlike, hallucinogenic mood, which is perfectly fitting to mark the series' move toward more supernatural, less "man of reason" fare. The next in the series, Taste the Blood of Dracula (it's salty!), would contain even more overt references to Dracula not as some sort of social disease that can be explained with and combated by science, but as a creature straight from Hell imbued with the powers of Satan himself and able to be both resurrected and defeated through a series of religious or sacrilegious rituals. Lee's appearance, likewise, is even more ghoulish than previous incarnations. Each film sees him get more pallid and cadaverous, while his eyes get more bloodshot. He's in snarling animal mode here, throwing people around wildly and smashing windows. He gets a few lines this time around. It was watching this movie that I finally had my little epiphany about Dracula's behavior. I'm slow, so you'll have to forgive me if this was obvious to everyone else long ago. I was always a bit annoyed by the fact that although he is four or five times stronger than a regular man, Dracula's answer to a fight is to turn tail and run. I mean, Paul isn't exactly an imposing figure. Then it hit me, and well, all I can say is "duh." Dracula is a vicious beast, but a beast never the less, and even the most vicious beast in nature is more likely to turn around and run away than fight. It's a simple animal reaction to being challenged. Unless he's really hungry, Dracula would rather take off. Not that I'd recommend combating all vampires by waving your arms in the air and yelling, "shoo!" but it seems to work sometimes. Dracula is only fierce-acting around people he already knows are weaker than him. So there you go. I'm not especially clever, but it's a cleverly profound way to portray the count. Dracula has Risen from the Grave is a nice gothic horror despite some slow spots. It's got a decent cast, though as always Peter Cushing is sorely missed. It has a tremendous look, smart direction, the usual great James Bernard score, and a script that shoots for more meaning than usual. Lee is less of a presence here than in the last film, and his shadow doesn't seem to loom as powerfully over everything when he's not present as it did in Prince of Darkness. But when he does show up, he looks exquisite. Although Lee himself runs down these later films in the series, it's actually quite good, and the next one would be even better. Sadly, it was all downhill after that. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1968 posted by Keith at 2:10 AM | 0 Comments Monday, August 30, 2004Dracula, Prince of Darkness
1966, England. Starring Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Suzan Farmer, Charles Tingwell, Thorley Walters, Philip Latham. Directed by Terence Fisher. Available on DVD (Amazon).
For many, the first official sequel to Hammer's groundbreaking Horror of Dracula, an oft-neglected film called Brides of Dracula, was little more than a pit stop on the road to this film, the second sequel but first to feature the return of Christopher Lee in the title role of Count Dracula. Hoping to avoid being typecast as Dracula, Lee resisted doing the sequel, and it was another eight years or so before he agreed to don the opera cape once again and reprise the role that made him famous. In that time, he'd built up a pretty solid and diverse career that would ensure he would not become "nothing but Dracula" to the audience. Of course, in the end, he was best known as Dracula, but what can you do? He would, I assume, remain cranky about people calling him Dracula until, some decades later, everyone just started calling him Saruman. Christopher Lee's return to the role was much celebrated, though fans were a bit disappointed to hear that peter Cushing, who had appeared in the first two films, would not be returning in the role of Professor Van Helsing, dedicated thorn in the side of Satan's spawn. Cushing, in fact, would not return to face Dracula again until Hammer's vampire films started getting really weird with Dracula A.D. 1972. He's sorely missed since none of the other fearless vampire killers could ever hope to measure up to his standards, but I reckon Hammer decided to make the Dracula movies a Christopher Lee affair in much the same way the Frankenstein movies belonged to Peter Cushing. The big difference is that in the Frankenstein movies, Frankenstein is on the screen and running his mouth for much of the duration of the film. In the Dracula movies, Lee often appears only slightly more regularly than he appeared in Brides of Dracula, and he didn't appear in that at all. But Horror of Dracula seemed to prove that, with the count, less is more. He was hardly in that film at all but managed to make an everlasting impression on people with just a few minutes screen time and only a few lines. So if he could do that much with that little, well then heck, imagine how much more he could do with even less! Or so the thinking seems to have gone, because in Dracula, Prince of Darkness he may show up screen a few more minutes than when last we saw him, but he says even less. In fact, Dracula says nothing at all. Christopher Lee doesn't have a single line in the entire movie unless you count that animalistic, seething hiss he does every now and then. According to director Terence Fisher and scriptwriter Jimmy Sangster - both of whom served in the same roles for the previous two films - it was because they thought the strong, silent approach made Dracula even more menacing, even more like an animal. Christopher Lee maintains that the script was full of dialogue, but that it was so ripe that he flat out refused to perform it, and so Dracula became a silent role. Frankly, Lee comes off as something of a dick in this regard. It may be the case that he's telling the truth, but then, it's not like he wasn't uttering corny dialogue in other films. Hey, Chris, do I need to remind you that you'd already starred in Asian drag as Fu Manchu? And hell, it's his job to say the lines. I know Lee takes the character of Dracula very seriously as a literary figure, but really now! Since Sangster is a good scriptwriter, and since no one else's lines are bad, one has to assume that maybe Lee is taking a slight bit of liberty with the truth here, unless I'm mistaken and Sangster had Dracula popping up and saying things like, "Blah! Blah! I vant to suck your blood!" or "One, two, three! Three giant fake rubber bats! Ah ah ah ah!" or perhaps even, "Welcome to Castle Dracula. You must be weary after your long journey. May I offer you a bowl of Count Chocula? It is a fine source of iron. Iron enriches.your blood!" Short of that, I can't possibly imagine what could have been so bad that it would cause Christopher Lee to throw a fit and refuse to say his lines. I prefer to believe Sangster and Fisher. It reflects better on the movie and makes Lee sound like less of a big crybaby. So when last we saw Christopher Lee as the count, he was crumbling into dust after Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) gives him the double whammy of blasting him with a room full of sunlight and harassing him with a cross. It would seem that would be that for the evil aristocrat, but ten years later we find the small burg of Carlsbad still reeling from the lingering specter of vampirism. Just about anyone who dies gets a stake through the heart just in case, at least until a wandering monk named Father Sandor (Andrew Kier, who'd starred in a couple Hammer pirate movies and would later play Professor Quatermass in the wonderful Quatermass and the Pit) happens by and tells everyone to stop being such a bunch of barbarians. He wanders without fear through this valley of darkness, for he knows he travels with beneath the protective mercy of the Lord, the mercy of the Lord taking, in this particular case, the form of a high powered rifle. Sandor later encounters two couples from England who are away on a holiday, Why exactly they've come to the blood-drenched middle of nowhere, Transylvania, is beyond me, but I figure they were probably taken in by some flashy brochure. That or they felt that a vacation isn't a vacation unless you can eat in a tavern full of those dirty peasants who get silent and stare at you as soon as you walk in. Sandor pleads with the couples not to go to Carlsbad, but they seem determined to go take that cave tour. Well, Sandor says, if you must go to Carlsbad, then for God's sake don't go to the hellishly creepy old abandoned castle up on the hill. Hey, guess where they go? Once up at the castle they must under no circumstances even think about visiting, they encounter the groundskeeper, Klove (Philip Latham), who welcomes them with some food, beautiful old rooms, and the usual sort of ultra-creepy "butler of evil" behavior you expect from these sorts. Up until this point, the movie has been building a sense of dread in spectacular fashion, using all the requisite Gothic horror chestnuts: the menacing warnings and portents of doom, the superstitious locals who refuse to acknowledge the existence of Castle Dracula even though they can see it out the window, the misty woods, dark crossroads, stranded travelers, mysterious black coaches, and of course, the skulking butler in the abandoned castle. It all culminates in a blockbuster moment in which one of our weary travelers is strung up in a crypt by Klove and has his throat slit, allowing the blood to gush down into Dracula's open casket, where Klove has lovingly piled all the ashes of his dead master. The result: well, you can probably figure that one out. Unfortunately, the movie falters after this spectacularly gruesome scene and fails to maintain an even pace. There are plenty of stand-out moments in the second half of the film - particularly the transformation of Helen Kent (Barbara Shelley, Rasputin, the Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit) from an uptight ice queen into a wanton creature of the night (who utters one of Hammer's earliest and most overt lesbian lines when she suggests to her female friend that they don't need the men to have a good time together). Helen's transformation from sensible, repressed Victorian woman to lustful libertine vampire is representative of the film's underlying theme of Victorian-era primness giving way to a more modern, "continental" attitude about sex. When Helen is finally captured by Sandor and his brotherhood of monks, the dispassionate way in which they dispatch Helen, who writhes and hisses as if in mid-orgasm before getting the ol' stake through the heart, is Hammer's most potent sexual image, at least until Ingrid Pitt started making out with other nubile ladies in The Vampire Lovers. The surviving travelers hole up in Sandor's monastery, but Dracula is intent on making Diana (Suzan Farmer. Rasputin, The Mad Monk) his next victim, and as you know, once Dracula sets his mind on a girl, there's just no stopping him. He sure is lucky that all the wayward maidens who stumble into his castle are big-breasted bombshell beauties. What are the chances? I'd imagine Dracula would be less persistent if Janet Reno showed up at his castle. Despite being a monastery full of religious icons, it doesn't prove an entirely foolproof haven from the power of Dracula, especially when he is aided from the inside by a feeble-minded madman who falls under the count's spell (Thorley Walters in a role that is obviously supposed to recall the fly-gobbling Renfield character from the original book). We are left, then, with the usual race against time to the castle so our heroes can rescue the maiden in distress and put an end to Dracula's reign of terror once and for all and for the second time. As seems to always be the case, Sandor and Alan Kent (Francis Matthews, who like lots of other people in this film, appeared the same year in Rasputin, the Mad Monk) end up confronting Dracula right at dusk. Now look, fighting a vampire is not easy, but there are certain things you can do that will make the task much simpler to accomplish. Chief among these would be to not try and fight him at sunset. Dracula, Prince of Darkness at least goes to some lengths to give the film a plausible excuse for having Sandor and Alan facing down the prince of darkness as night is falling and allowing him a chance to spring up out of his coffin and toss Alan around. In plenty of other films, however, vampire killers seem to dawdle around al day and never get to actually trying to stake the evil one until it's dark. It's as if I was the one trying to kill the vampire. I know if it was me, I'd set my alarm for seven in the morning. That way, I could get up, have a good breakfast of Count Chocula, then get on with the killing of the vampire and be back home and finished with the whole sordid affair by lunchtime. But then, you know, seven in the morning rolls around, and I hit the snooze button, figuring Dracula can't even get up until after, what? Seven at night? So I have like twelve hours to kill before the killing. By the time I roll out of bed, it's already noon, and well, I might as well wait for the mail to come at 12:30, then grab some lunch and run a few errands. Then, before anyone realizes it, it's three or four in the afternoon, and Dracula's castle is a good two hours from here, not even figuring in for traffic or murderous gypsies along the way. So I can see how vampire hunters would always end up fighting Dracula at night if they were like me, but they're supposed to be better at this than I am. They should be able to time this stuff out. Still, like I said, at least Dracula, Prince of Darkness takes pains to explain why we're facing off with the lord of the undead at sundown, which is more satisfying than something like in the first film where Jonathan Harker sneaks down to Dracula's crypt just before dark and decides to stake the far less menacing female vampire before dispatching with the most powerful undead creature ever to befoul the earth with his presence. This is another typically strong Hammer film that manages to get over the rough spots simply by having Christopher Lee show up. His portrayal of the count here, completely without words as I said, accounts for the most savage vampire we've seen on screen up until that point, and indeed for some time afterward. In fact, I don't know that it's ever been topped. Lee's Dracula in the later Scars of Dracula is certainly more sadistic, but he's never as menacing or terrifying on such a primal level. Lee manages to do quite a lot without dialogue, though I do think his character is undermined to some degree by the silence. A few lines here and there, as in the first film, would have lent more gravity to Dracula. However, even without uttering a word, Lee manages to outshine the entire cast except for Andrew Keir. Keir was one of the strongest performers Hammer had, and while he's no Peter Cushing, that fits the character since Sandor is no Van Helsing. Although he shares similar traits with Van Helsing - a respect for reason and common sense, an acceptance of unusual things not as the supernatural, but as ugly parts of the rational world, and a basic sense of compassion - he's also very different from Van Helsing. Sandor is possessed of a certain self-righteous bombast that comes from the power of his religion. Where Van Helsing was soft-spoken but determined, Sandor possesses a bellowing voice and a big gun. Keir is perfect for the role. He's not nearly as comforting as Van Helsing, nor as competent at killing vampires, but you could do worse when it comes to protectors. But then, he does manage to let the girl get stolen from right beneath his nose while in his own monastery, so maybe you could only do a little worse. Compared to Keir and Lee, the rest of the cast hardly registers. Klove has a moment or two, and Barbara Shelley has her wonderful moment in the sun, but everyone else is imminently forgettable though the acting is uniformly solid. Dracula, Prince of Darkness was filmed back-to-back with the historical horror film Rasputin, the Mad Monk, and many of the sets and members of the cast appear in both film - including Christopher Lee, who also appears as the raving Russian holy man. Terence Fisher's direction is as strong as ever and lends a sense of continuity to the three films despite the absence of Lee/Dracula from the second film and Cushing/Van Helsing from the third. Sets and costumes are, as usual, gorgeous, and the gore quotient is racheted up another couple notches, especially during the scene in which Klove does his throat-slitting. Unfortunately, Sangster's script stumbles between that scene and the finale on an ice-covered river. The film meanders from here to there after a tightly woven and smartly twisting first half, with too much time being spent doing too little in Sandor's monastery. The final showdown between the forces of good and evil is compelling, though nowhere in the league of the finale from the first or second film. There's just something about watching spry old Peter Cushing leap all over the set that adds that extra element of excitement to a battle with the undead. The showdown on the ice is also undermined by a horrible special effect which went unnoticeable in previous pan and scan versions of the movie. But seeing it for the first time in widescreen, the bit where the ice cracks beneath Dracula's feet, sending him plunging to an icy death since vampires will drown if submerged in running water, features an obvious tilting platform where you can even see the mechanism pivoting it upward. Then the ice swings closed again as if on, well, some sort of hinge, which it is. Shoddy special effect there, but Hammer movies have never been about the special effects - and for some reason, that effect bugged me though I seem perfectly at ease with giant rubber bats flopping about on bits of string. The rough patches aren't enough to ruin what is an otherwise enjoyable film. Although it lacks the pace and excitement of the first two films, Dracula, Prince of Darkness is still a pretty rollicking good time. It's great to see Christopher Lee back in action again as the count, and really, that alone is enough to make this film enjoyable. Lee swore this would be the final time he'd play Dracula for Hammer. He was, naturally, back again as the count very shortly there after, and several more times after that, each time griping more and more about the fact that he was playing Dracula. But we'll come to those bumps in the road when we cross them. For now, we can lie back and enjoy Dracula, Prince of Darkness -- an imperfect, uneven but never the less thoroughly enjoyable foray back into the world of Hammer horror. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1966 posted by Keith at 2:04 AM | 0 Comments Sunday, August 15, 2004Bram Stoker's Dracula Release Year: 1992Country: United States Starring: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard Grant, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Monica Bellucci, Michaela Bercu, Florina Kendrick, Jay Robinson. Writer: James Hart Director: Francis Ford Coppola Cinematographer: Michael Ballhaus Music: Wojciech Kilar Producer: Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Fuchs, Charles Mulvehill Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Whenever someone is promoting a film as either "getting back to the spirit of the original" or "the most faithful adaptation of the novel," you know you're going to be in trouble. They never recapture "the spirit of the original" even when the spirit of the original wasn't that hot to begin with, and the more they crow about how faithful their adaptation is, the less likely it will be to stick to the source material. Looking back, the transgressions of Francis Ford Coppola's bloated mess of a gothic horror film seem harmless, almost quaint, when compared to more recent "literary adaptations" like I, Robot, which take a page from the Matt Helm book by stealing a book's title and jettisoning the content. Thus we enter the realm not of, "adapted from" or "based on" or even "inspired by," but of "suggested by." What does that even mean? Unfortunately, not sticking to Bram Stoker's original novel as much as they bragged they would is hardly the worst thing about Coppola's film. This one I saw in the theaters and immediately hated for a number of reasons, though the to most potent reasons were named Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. There were other things to hate about the movie, but none stood out as dramatically as those two, shall we say, rather limited thespians attempting to act, overact, and maintain British accents. However, I'm always game to give something a second chance, and some twelve years after my initial distaste, I figured why not go back and revisit the film, see if maybe I just didn't get it at the time, if maybe my tastes had changed and suddenly the film would be a revelation. Well, it was a revelation all right. What I discovered is that the film is actually much worse than I originally thought, but also that I don't hate it nearly as much. You should know the story, more or less, by now. You have the Transylvanian count who likes the blood. You have the confused Johnathan Harker. You have Lucy and Mina and crazy old Dr. Van Helsing with his ideas about vampires and the living dead. From film to film, they all assemble themselves in more or less the same story told in different ways. Before this film, the last big budget version of Dracula's story was the ridiculous but not altogether awful version starring Frank Langella and directed by that guy who made Saturday Night Fever. Maybe something else came in between, but it wasn't nearly as memorable. And Dracula 3000 doesn't count. The Langella Dracula bordered on camp, but apparently Francis Ford Coppola was sitting around drinking a batch of his own wine and thought, "I could make this movie even more overblown, campy, and full of itself!" Years later, he made good on his drunken promise to himself. I don't know if that's the actual chain of events, but at least it gives him an excuse. It's not like Coppola was a stranger to self-indulgence. Apocalypse Now was the very picture of self-absorbed mania, but it still managed to be a great film with some bad parts that were never the less utterly captivating regardless. Most of Coppola's movies are bloated and self-absorbed, and at his best, he knows how to turn that into a compelling film, both visually and narratively (is "narritively" even a word?).
Coppola had two things going for him when he set out to make his own version of Dracula. First, none of the other films had ever stuck to Stoker's original story all that closely, and there was still much to the tale that had been left out. Second, no one had ever integrated the historical accounts of Vlad Tepes, the Romanian warlord upon whom Stoker based some of his character, into the actual Dracula mythos. Those elements alone would be enough to make Coppola's version different from any others while still being recognizably the same old story we'd grown to love hearing over and over again from different storytellers. So he casts Gary Oldman as Dracula. Okay, I'll give him that. He's not Christopher Lee, he's no Jack Palance, but we know he can act and perhaps even lend the character the blend of animalistic sexuality, fierceness, and charisma he needs. And Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing? No problem there. And then as the lovers fated to have their lives complicated by the living dead we have...Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder? Seriously? Okay, well, what the heck? I'll give anyone a chance. I'm sure worse actors have risen to the occasion when they had a good director pushing them to perform above and beyond their previous examples of acting. Like Sophia Coppola in Godfather III. No wait... The film begins with Vlad the Impaler, which is not, I don't think, what his friends called him. Or maybe it is. If I had earned the nickname "The Impaler," I would insist that everyon call me that, all the time. Unless I'd earned that nickname working in gay porn, in which case I'd restrict its use to a select few friends and associates. After heroically defending his country from invading Turks and Hungarians and impaling them on the border so someone could make that famous woodcut of him having lunch surrounded by impaled enemies, he returns home to find his one true love dead. Peeved at Heaven, he renounces God and swears that he will live forever just to spite the Big Guy. And then, he does just that.
After that preamble, we're down to business as usual with Johnathan Harker visiting Dracula in Transylvania, only to discover that the count is more than the Englanders suspected. Dracula heads to England intent on seducing Harker's wife, who seems to be the reincarnation of Dracula's old love. This, of course, would be Winona Ryder. It's hard to judge who's worse between her and Reeves. Both are in way over their heads. Reeves is awful, but I think the tip of the hat has to go to Ryder, who is so utterly ineffectual in her role that she almost makes it a parody. Scenes of her unleashing her wanton desire are hysterically tepid, and where as the woman playing Lucy has to show her breasts in just about every scene, when Winona's Mina starts freaking out, all she has to do is tepidly undo one button and make the most hilarious "sexy growling face" I think I've ever seen. Together, Reeves and Ryder turn in performances that would sink any movie that wasn't smart enough to surround them with so much operatic gothic excess that you're willing to let them slide simply because everything around them is so beautifully overblown and overstated. Coppola turns the art design up to eleven, and every scene is heaving with preposterously lavish spectacle. They weren't just satisfied with a gothic film. It had to be a GOTHIC!!!! film. Everything is over-designed and over-stylized, making the old Hammer films I so cherish seem subtle and humble and perfectly sensible. Coppola's film boils over with bombast and screams at you with every visual. And what's with Vlad the Impaler's armor? What the hell is that stuff? Did he make that out of giant beetles? As over-indulgent as the art design is, it's also the film's saving grace. The narrative is not constructed so as to be compelling, there are no scares, and the acting is wildly uneven. But as long as you can lose yourself in the film's artistic excess, kind of like Apocalypse Now, then you can drift with it and see things through to the end. So yeah. Ryder and Reeves are stupendously miscast and unable to rise to the occasion. We expect that of them. That's what they're known for, and anyone who casts them expecting anything to the contrary is just fooling themselves. If their respective reputations as horrible performers persist to this day, it's thanks in no small part to their appearance in this film. Up until Dracula, each actor had the good sense to stay well within the limitations of their skill. Keanu was the lovable stoner from Bill and Ted and Parenthood and the surf noir Zen masterpiece Point Break. Winona was the irritating crybaby in worthless crap like Reality Bites. But it must have been stifling. Every artist, every decent person, craves a challenge from time to time, something that pushes them tot he next creative level. So you can't blame them, I suppose, for trying. And as for Coppola casting them -- well, every director wants to be the one to take credit for seeing the Academy Award winning potential in the star of B.A.P.S. or any other poorly thought-of actor. It just didn't work out for any of them. Winona looks like a confused teen romance lead who wandered into a grown-up movie and thinks the paramount of expressing sexual liberation is to squint and bite your lower lip. Keanu, bless him, tries hard. I think he always tries hard, and I respect him for that. He's just not very good, and he's not getting any better. You'd think he'd pick something up along the way. Still, better to try and fail I suppose.
But that's nothing you couldn't see coming. We expect good things from Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, on the other hand. At the very least, they have it in them to go as over-the-top as the film around them and still come off as having turned in a relatively good performance. As Van Helsing, Hopkins howls and hollers and humps someone's leg, playing the vampire-hunting doctor as half-mad and a little too bloodthirsty and comical for my taste. His manic "bride of Satan" speech complete with goofball laughter and leg humping is simply absurd, though I understand the post-modern desire to cast Van Helsing as some deranged lunatic (I don't agree with it, though -- give me Cushing's mannered man of reason and science any day). Everyone's doing it, or at least they were until he became a studly Indiana Jones type adventurer with the power to make a silly looking CGI replica of himself swing across computer-generated ravines seconds before the horse-drawn carriage in which he was riding explodes in a fiery ball of flame. Other than that one scene, though, Hopkins' Van Helsing is not bad. He hams it up too much and is nowhere near the league of Peter Cushing, but for the most part, he's as good as we expect Anthony Hopkins to be when he's overacting and having a bit of a laugh. Oldman's performance I'm less enthusiastic about. He has flashes of quality rage, and he's suitably creepy when he's in old man Dracula mode, but once he transforms into the younger version of himself, he seems to leave behind any sense of charisma or animal magnetism that might make his character believable. Instead, he just mumbles his way through his scenes and we're expected to buy his charm and menace simply because we're told it's there, not because Oldman ever makes it manifest on screen. And then there's the wailing "crying monster in a circle of candles" scene that seems to have been injected purely as fan service for goth kids who write bad poetry about sad vampires weeping as they stare at a dying rose in the cemetery. This is the guy who lined his borders with the heads of his enemies? This is the guy who got so pissed off that he tells God to fuck off and then goes and lives forever? Crying in a circle of flowers? With his mascara running? Although Coppola does stick to much of Stoker's story, at least more so than previous film versions, this weepy-eyed, tear-streaked abomination to God's creation seems way out of character. Oldman fails to channel the debonair magnetism of Bela Lugosi or the savage raw power of Christopher Lee, and in the end his Dracula is rather limp and unengaging. He might even be more of a bellyachin' wimp than Paul Naschy in Dracula's True Love, and believe me, that was a wimpy vampire. The supporting cast is pretty disposable but perfectly competent. Sadie Frost as Lucie writhes wildly and rip sher blouse open in every scene, and we thank her for that. She exudes the sexual frenzy that Winona Ryder fails so ludicrously at portraying. Tom Waits is good in what amounts to an extended cameo as everyone's favorite Dracula character, the bug-chomping Renfield. Cary Elwes plays the testy British society man for about the thousandth time in his career. Bill Campbell and Richard Grant are competent as the rowdy American and Dr. Seward respectively. Nothing to complain about from any of those stalwarts, all of whom perform with workmanlike competency.
Dracula, which was called Bram Stoker's Dracula not so much because it was the most faithful retelling, but instead because someone else owned the rights to just calling a film Dracula, puts the love triangle of Mina-Johnathan-Dracula in the forefront, then proceeds to undercut it by having two awful actors trying to carry part of it while the film around them indulges itself endlessly with sumptuous visuals and stylization. As such, the story itself becomes very uninteresting, as if the film itself loses interest and simply wants to hurry along to the next scene full of flickering candles, graveyards, and flowing nightgowns. It takes full advantage of relaxed moral standards by having Dracula's brides topless and biting Keanu Reeves' crotch. And no matter how bad a movie may be, nude Monica Belucci results in an automatic additional star from me. Seriously -- if you were Dracula, and you had naked Monica Bellucci waiting for you back at your castle, wuld you really turn into a blubbering gargoyle in a circle of candles over the fact that Winona Ryder didn't love you? Similarly, Lucy can't go five seconds in a scene without having her boobs pop out. When she and Winona Ryder's Mina share a thoroughly gratuitous rain-soaked kiss, it's oddly unarousing thanks to Winona's ability to convey no sexuality at all, no matter how much she droops her bottom lip and touches her sternum. Sexuality has always been a part of the Dracula story and of vampire myths in general (at least after the time vampires were just considered brutish peasant thugs return from the grave to eat people), and like everything else, this movie seizes on that and cranks it up to nearly absurd levels. It's a mess. I wouldn't call it terrible, but I would stop well short of calling it good. However, these subjective judgments ultimately mean nothing, because the film endears itself to me simply because it's so willing to go so overboard in almost every aspect. It's brash, supremely operatic, terribly overwrought, and easy to get absorbed into. If it's a mess, it's a beautiful mess. At times, this film almost feels like a parody. I mean, naked vampire brides biting Keanu Reeves in the crotch? Van Helsing humping someone's leg? Winona Ryder trying to act sensual, or trying to act at all? Stylistically, the film is just as inconsistent with its mood. Certain fancies, like the old-fashioned wipes or the tendency to superimpose Dracula's eyes on the blood-red sky behind the characters scream parody as much as homage to the classical style of filmmaking, but other times the film seems to take itself overly seriously. The Hammer films succeed because they handle the fantastical material with the utmost sincerity. Coppola seems unwilling to commit to his story. He just can't resist the tendency of films from the 1990s on to poke fun at and undermine themselves. His final product is always beautiful, sometimes overwhelming, occasionally romantic, never scary, and potentially campy. In a sense, it's one of the biggest, most lavish B-movies ever made. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Netflix Diary, Year: 1992 posted by Keith at 3:59 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, August 01, 2004Brides of Dracula Release Year: 1960Country: England Starring: Peter Cushing, Yvonne Monlaur, David Peel, Martita Hunt, Freda Jackson, Miles Malleson, Henry Oscar, Mona Washbourne. Writer: Peter Bryan, Edward Percy, Jimmy Sangster Director: Terence Fisher Cinematographer: Jack Asher Music: Malcolm Williamson Producer: Anthony Hinds Availability: Buy it from Amazon  When people talk about the sequence of films that make up Hammer Studio's "Dracula" series, a good many of them make the eight-year leap from the first film, 1958's Horror of Dracula to Dracula, Prince of Darkness in 1966. It's quite a jump, indeed, but one that seems to land you just about where you need to be, with the latter film beginning with a quick recap of the climax from the former. What gets lost in between the two films is the actual first sequel to Horror of Dracula, which is a shame because it's one of the best in the series, and one of the best vampire films Hammer ever produced. 1960's Brides of Dracula gets skipped over primarily for two reasons. First, it is the one of the only Hammer Dracula films not represented by a DVD release as of this review. This means that fans amassing a Hammer collection have a notable hole in the series that some of them might not even realize exists. The second reason Brides of Dracula tends to lurk in the shadows is because, while it sees the return of Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing, it is Dracula - and Christopher Lee - free. Upon seeing how popular he was in the role, Lee was keen not to play the count again lest he be typecast and never get to play anything again besides Dracula or some cheap public domain variation thereof. The phenomenal success of Horror of Dracula and the first two Hammer Frankenstein movies showed the producers that audiences were hungry for the Hammer brand of Gothic horror, and another entry in the Dracula series was a given. But where to go when your Dracula doesn't want to do it again? That was the question facing Hammer as they set about creating a sequel to Horror of Dracula. Without Lee, where do you go? The most obvious option would be to cast another actor in the role. That Dracula was destroyed in the finale of the first film was meaningless. Hammer could make up any number of ways to resurrect the count if they had the right man in the cape. But dropping another actor in, even another very good actor, just wouldn't do. Hammer was smart enough to recognize that a big part of the reason Dracula was so popular was because of Christopher Lee. Replacing him would almost surely result in fan backlash. So Hammer went with the second option, which was to attempt to handle the franchise the same way they were handling things in the Frankenstein movies. Going into Horror of Dracula, Peter Cushing was the big name, and Christopher Lee was still an unknown commodity despite his appearance as the creature in Curse of Frankenstein. Coming out of Horror of Dracula, if Lee wasn't quite as big a name as Cushing, he was inarguably a big name. Hammer had progressed to a second Frankenstein film without Lee, focusing the series on Cushing's Baron Frankenstein instead of the monster. Perhaps, then, they could do the same with Dracula, and focus the film on the reoccurring character of Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing and his conflict with a parade of vampires. Assembling the remaining key players from the first film - director Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster - Hammer went about creating the sequel to Horror of Dracula without Dracula or Christopher Lee. Initially titled Disciples of Dracula, the film soon became Brides of Dracula because even if Dracula isn't it, that doesn't mean you can't have his name in the title. Bruce Lee could tell Dracula a thing or two about that. The movie begins with fearless Hammer beauty Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur, also in Circus of Horrors and Hammer's Terror of the Tongs) finding herself stranded in one of your standard-issue creepy little villages with an ominous secret. She's desperate to make it to the academy where she's to start a new teaching job since showing up days late with stories about villagers giving you the evil eye rarely endear you to the headmaster. Naturally, no one is willing to go out after dark though no one will explain exactly why. And they're not willing to give her a room at the inn, which is often the case with these grumpy locals, though I can't for the life of me figure out why. The landlord yells at you not to go out after dark and then, a breath later, yells at you to get out because he'll not rent a room to ye! What does he get by not renting out the room? I mean, they're often shown later regretting their decision and going, "Well, what you have had me do?" How about give her a room and then see her off in the morning with a smile? Marianne eventually finds a sour old woman named Baroness Meinster who is willing to give Marianne a place to stay for the evening. Now all of a sudden the landlord has all sorts of rooms for rent and pleads with Marianne not to go. What's with these guys? If you went and ordered a pint of ale from them, they'd yell, "We've no ale for likes of you!" as they were serving you up a pint of ale. Every one of them is loopy as a shithouse bat. Not wanting to stay with the gruff and apparently crazy innkeeper, Marianne graciously accepts the Baroness' invitation to spend the evening in a posh mansion. Of course, we all know this'll lead to trouble, and it soon does. The Baroness seems to act weirder and weirder the longer Marianne is there, and before too long, Marianne even encounters the Baroness son, who the Baroness keeps chained to the wall in another room. Obviously this woman is as loony as the innkeeper, so Marianne agrees to free the young Baron Meinster (David Peel). Well, wouldn't you know it? The guy turns out to be a vampire, though Marianne herself is unaware of the fact. Marianne gets where she's going with the help of one Dr. Van Helsing (Cushing), who happens to be passing through the area on his never-ending quest to study, understand, and drive a stake through the heart of the undead. Meinster, meanwhile, spends his time out of the grave preying on the local beauties, as well as the girls at the finishing school in which Marianne now works. As young lovelies start dropping dead then crawling back out of the grave, it's up to Van Helsing and Marianne - but mostly Van Helsing - to put an end to Meinster's reign of terror, thus putting one more nail in the coffin of the horrible disease of vampirism his old arch-foe Dracula has spread throughout the world. Although a Dracula film without Dracula sounds like it should be a misfire, Brides of Dracula works even better for the absence of the titular neck-biter. David Peel's Baron Meinster isn't in the same class as Christopher Lee's towering prince of darkness, but he's plenty good and looks well scary when he starts to get all lusty and vamped out with bloodshot red eyes. Peel didn't have a lot of credits to his name before or after this film, but that doesn't reflect on his performance here. He is superb, tender and sincere-sounding when he needs to be, and ruthlessly animalistic once he's free to show his true colors. He wisely decides not to attempt a Christopher Lee impersonation and instead come up with a unique vampire character that has some obvious similarities stemming from the fact that the blood of Dracula runs through all vampire veins. As Marianne, Yvonne Monlaur is acceptable - another in the long line of Hammer beauties who were picked for their looks instead of their skills, but who never the lass manage to come off relatively well, or at least well enough so as not to ruin the scenes in which they appear. Though her agreement to marry the Baron comes almost out of nowhere, we can write that off as Victorian-era female innocence and the desire to be swept off one's feet by a dashing prince, or baron as the case may be. Too bad he's the baron of evil. Despite the occasional girlish foible, Monlaur has one of the better sketched-out female roles in the Dracula films. She is surrounded by women who, one by one, succumb to Meinster's charms, to say nothing of his fangs, and she rarely resorts to screaming and running down unless it's absolutely necessary. The focal point of the story, however, and the link to the first film, is Peter Cushing returning as the intrepid Dr. Van Helsing. He is here as he was the first time around: authoritative, kind, and believable. The sort of chap you'd really want looking after you if a vampire was chasing after you. From interviews I've read with his co-stars and directors, Cushing was fiendishly devoted to every role he had and did mountains of work before the cameras started rolling. The result on screen is that he makes this type of role look utterly effortless and thoroughly convincing. Hammer films have about as much half-baked mysticism and "occult anatomy" in them as the average episode of Star Trek has half-baked techno-babble, but coming from Cushing, you'd never dream of questioning his theories on vampirism not so much as a function of the supernatural, but as a social or sexual disease, very much a part of the rational world. Cushing is also very good in the action scenes, of which there are several. The finale of the film, in which Van Helsing goes one-on-one with Meinster in a burning windmill is at least as good as the climax of the first film, and perhaps even a bit better, especially given the ingenious way Van Helsing eventually defeats his undead foe. It's one of the best scenes in a film that is full of great scenes. Speaking of which, two of the other great scenes in the movies belong to the other two standout performers. Martita Hunt is wonderfully creepy as the mysterious Baroness Meinster, who seems at first to emerge as the villain of the film until we comprehend the reasons for her cruelty to her own son. The scene in which she beseeches Van Helsing to kill her after her son has turned her into a vampire (something Van Helsing seems to liken to a form of incest) is outstanding. The other scene involves Freda Jackson as the Meinsters' servant. She seems to be on the side of the Baroness, but it's soon revealed that her true loyalties lie with the vampire in the secret room. The scene in which she, in full ranting hag mode, coxes a young victim of the baron out of the grave is positively chilling. Sangster's script is well-constructed and keeps a quick pace as it navigates the many twists and turns that establish everything. The complex path upon which we're carried that leads to the freeing of Baron Meinster is quite exciting and well put-together - intricate without being convoluted. There are also a number of clever surprises in the film, not the least of which would be the fact that Baron Meinster gets the better of Van Helsing and puts the bite on him. We can guess that Van Helsing will have some multi-step ritual to reverse the infection of the bite, but even so it's a major shock when we see him actually get bitten. This script seems to have been the result of some serious rewriting when Cushing apparently reacted very unfavorably to the initial draft and said he thought that he, like Lee, might want to have nothing to do with it. Although there are some small holes here and there, the story is all the better for whatever amount of revisions they made to keep Cushing happy and on board. It's handling of vampirism from a less supernatural, more social, approach is inspired. The one short-coming in the story is that although Van Helsing is the nominal focus of the film, he doesn't show up until the halfway point, leaving the first half of the film on the shoulder of the supporting players. Luckily, they are more than capable supporting players, and so ultimately it doesn't harm the film any. Still, it would have been nice to see Van Helsing a little sooner. Fisher's direction is once again top notch. The film is filled with the various requirements of Gothic horror as set down by Hammer itself. Misty forests, decaying cemeteries, shifty peasants, and the mincing dark old house up on the hill are exploited for their full power by Fisher's expertly guided camera. Along with cinematographer Jack Asher, Fisher paints another gorgeous picture for Hammer and further solidifies the studio's emerging look and style. Asher it as much responsible for defining the look of Hammer horror as Fisher, perhaps even more so given Fisher's reportedly easy-going style of direction. Asher had already worked on the big three - Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, and The Mummy - as well as the equally superb Revenge of Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskervilles. His work in Brides of Dracula goes a long way to establishing the increasingly menacing mood developed by Sangster's script. If Brides of Dracula is the forgotten Dracula film, I can't imagine it will stay that way for very long. It's simply too good. Maybe not quite as good as the original, but definitely the equal of the next sequel, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which saw the return of Christopher Lee to the role of Dracula. Brides of Dracula may even be better than that film. It's certainly a real gem in Hammer's filmography. Almost everything about the film works perfectly, and the few parts that don't work are easy to overlook. Cushing is magnificent, Peel is solid, and in the Baroness and her servant we have two of the best supporting characters in the whole series. A proper DVD release would seem inevitable given that pretty much all Hammer horror material is making its way to the format. At that time, Brides of Dracula should be able to take its rightful place next to Hammer's best horror productions. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1960 posted by Keith at 12:33 AM | 0 Comments Sunday, July 25, 2004Horror of Dracula
1958, Great Britain. Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, Olga Dickie, John Van Eyssen, Valerie Gaunt, Janina Faye, Barbara Archer, Charles Lloyd Pack. Directed by Terence Fisher. Available on DVD from Amazon.
Embrace the Darkness II rears its ugly head of comparisons (huh?) once more. Maybe for the last time? We can only hope. But I can't help but bring it up at least this one last time since it was one of the worse vampire films ever made (and most vampire films are among the worst vampire films ever made) and Hammer Studio's Horror of Dracula is, without a doubt (at least in my mind), the absolute best vampire film ever made, and quite simply one of the finest examples of proper Gothic horror that's ever been filmed. It was a busy couple of years for Britain's Hammer Studio. In 1955, their sci-fi/horror thriller Quatermass and the Pit became a smash hit, and the studio soon learned it was because audiences were hungry for shocking, boundary-pushing films of the fantastic and horrible that still handled themselves with a degree of wit, intelligence, and dignity as would befit a rousing British tale of terror. Inspired by that film's success, execs turned to studio director Terence Fisher to rework Mary Shelley's classic tale of gothic horror, Frankenstein. It was a risky move for any number of obvious reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Universal's Boris Karloff version of the monster was practically a global icon. Hammer had to come up with a completely new approach to the monster's appearance, since the Universal version was copyrighted, and they figured that while doing so, they might as well ratchet up the sex and violence and see just how much they'd be able to get away with in a horror movie. Well, we'll cover all the details of that film shortly, since it's on the block for next week, but the short of it is that the film was a huge hit for the growing British studio. It turned TV-star Peter Cushing and relative unknown Christopher Lee into bona fide sensations, and it inspired Hammer Studio to try its hand at another gothic masterpiece turned Universal Pictures horror film, Count Dracula. Even with the initial ground broken by Frankenstein, Dracula would be no less of a challenge, and Bela Lugosi's performance as the blood-sucking count was no less iconic and cherished than Karloff's as The Monster. Fisher was once again the director, and Lee and Cushing were signed again as the stars. Hammer basically repeated the same formula with a different monster, turning up the blood and sex as much as an X rating would allow them, and then seeing if they couldn't turn it up just a little more. Critics were aghast at the results, and many condemned the film as perverse, disgusting, vile, and any number of the usual adjectives applied to such a film. A few critics responded more favorably, thanks largely to the wonderful sets, direction, and acting, but ultimately, none of the critics opinions amounted to a hill o' beans. Audiences turned out for the film in droves, perhaps even encouraged by the reviews that didn't so much say the film was bad as much as they just vilified it for being so bloody and dangerous and evil. Nothing drives patrons to the theater quite like the promise of shattered taboos. Years after the fact, as taboos have been pushed far further than Hammer could have done in 1958, the film is easier to evaluate on its merits as a film than as a sensation. Chrsitopher Lee stars as Dracula, Eastern European count, dweller in a big creepy castle, and as you should well know by now. Once again, as with Macbeth, I implore you to get out and grab a copy of the book is you haven't already read it. I assume that Teleport City visitors are avid readers (you're reading this, after all). Stoker's Dracula was the first book I ever read that flat-out terrified me. I must have been nine or ten when I first cracked it open, and it kept me up late at night even long after I'd finished reading it by flashlight underneath the covers. As a late-night addict to Louisville's "Memories of Monsters" show on Saturday nights at midnight, I was also a huge fan of Bela Lugosi's film. It wasn't until years later, when I was in high school, that I saw the Hammer version for the first time. It fully blew me away at the time, and revisiting it again as a grown man has seen it lose none of the visceral impact it held that first night I saw it and realized this was an altogether different sort of bloodsucker than Bela's reserved, debonair aristocrat. Christopher Lee's interpretation of the count, based as fast and loose on the book as every other cinematic adaptation, has an air of sophistication about him, but it is quick to dissolve as Dracula acts more on his animalistic impulses. Here he is a monster, through and through, ferocious and terrifying. He does not woo the women; he simply takes them. He does not dazzle salon audiences with his wit and intelligence. He is a beast, a stalker, a predator without remorse or pity. In short, he's the Dracula you thoroughly believe will kick your ass. My number one complaint about vampires, besides the fact that modern tales of vampires so often give them silly names, is that they're generally played up as lonely, tortured souls given to self-indulgent whining about the sad state of their damnation. They're not as likely to overpower and kill you as they are likely to bore you to tears with their moping and reading of bad teen angst poetry. Blame it on a couple generations of Anne Rice fed goth rockers who play up the sappily romantic and "erotic" side of the vampire while forgetting everything else. End result? Tom Cruise in a Renaissance festival shirt. But here is a vampire who, for my tastes, does everything right. Christopher Lee isn't a man or a monster so much as he is a barely contained forced that overpowers anything with which it comes into contact. He is strong, towering, and above all, menacing. When Christopher Lee as Dracula shows up, you believe with every inch of your soul that's he going to put the serious hurt on you, not ask you to waltz or listen while he reads some verse to you. When this Dracula looks at you, he sees nothing but food. That Lee's performance is so mesmerizing, so memorable, is testament to how good it truly is - he is on screen a total of less than ten minutes, and only has a handful of lines at the very beginning. His foil in this tale is the actor who would appear alongside Lee in more films than a sane man would care to count, the man who made a career out of lines like, "But surely you can't be serious, man! I saw him die myself!" and finally the man who was born 45 years old, Peter Cushing. Cushing stars here as Van Helsing, fearless vampire killer and all-around enemy of the undead. Just as previous and later films enjoy giving us a Dracula who is suave and debonair and practically a Victorian era Rat Packer, these same films enjoy turning Van Helsing into a tortured soul, an alcoholic or drug addict. You know, a man who enjoys the occasional shot of absinthe. It's because we so often like to make our heroes into villains and our villains into heroes. But here, Cushing plays Van Helsing straight, a determined vampire hunter and caring doctor. Cushing sinks his teeth into the role (because it was far too easy to use that line about Christopher Lee) with the utmost conviction; you believe him when he says something, no matter how fantastical. In fact, the conviction with which Cushing goes about the business at hand is indicative of the entire feel of the movie. Part of the reason it's so good is that it never lets up. It never winks at you or makes a joke. It's impossible, it would seem these days, to make a movie without a comic foil or a bunch of so-called sly self-referential jokes. But everyone involved in Horror of Dracula is completely serious, and the film takes no time out for comic relief. Everyone treats the story as it should be: as a piece of literature. Lee in particular seemed very adamant about this, fan of classical literature that he is. Horror of Dracula does almost everything right, and its few missteps are forgivable if not unnoticeable. Most obvious of the foibles comes when Johnathan Harker confronts a slumbering Dracula and his bride. Harker has traveled far and risked much, including being bitten himself, to destroy Dracula. The day is waning. Completion of his task is within his grasp, so what does he do? Walk over and stake the woman first instead of doing what everyone else in the world would have done, which is take care of the six-foot four lord of the undead first, then worry about the lady. Sometimes I think horror movies do this sort of thing intentionally, just to get people worked up and shouting at the characters. The film's other misstep is debatable, and that would be how much screen time is devoted to Dracula. A fair number of people complain that he's so scarce in this film, show up mostly to either walk in on or choke Van Helsing. While I agree that I'd like to see him do a little more than just step through a doorway, then run off or run over and throw someone, I think Dracula's limited screen time keeps him as an ominous shadow looming over everything, present even when he's not actually onscreen, especially since almost everything that happens in the movie revolves around him or having conversations about him. He remains mysterious and savage and does not get overexposed. This leaves the pace of the film up to Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, and he is more than up to the task. Horror of Dracula is not a long film, and it rarely stops for a breath. Even during scenes in which there's nothing more going on than Van Helsing dictating notes to himself, the film doesn't slow down. It shows that you needn't jettison the plot or character development in order to have a briskly paced film. The success of this film cemented Hammer's position as the preeminent producer of quality horror for the next ten years. Considering that most American horror films at the time were bargain basement cheapies, the vivid color and lurid content and promise of a daring time set the country on fire and opened the way for Roger Corman and AIP to ape the style of Hammer in a series of horror films revolving around the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. But no one could match Hammer for the sheer force of atmosphere. Horror of Dracula crawls with Gothic eeriness. It clings to the film like a graveyard mist. Costumes and sets are rich and lavish even here at the relative beginning of the horror arc. They would grow more so as the films got bigger, and the look and style of a Hammer film would become as much a trademark as the blood, the buxom beauties bursting out of their bodices, and Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing chasing after one another and wearing those Victorian overcoats. Horror of Dracula was such a phenomenal success that Hammer was keen on rushing out a sequel. It happened eventually, in the form of 1960s Brides of Dracula, but without Dracula and without Christopher Lee. He and the infamous count wouldn't return until years later, with 1966's Dracula, Prince of Darkness. That movie, however, lacked Peter Cushing. No worries though, because the two would appear alongside one another in countless other Hammer horror classics, including their third re-invention of a classic Universal horror icon in 1959 with the release of The Mummy. But those are all movies for the coming weeks. Hammer films - we love them, and thankfully this Netflix project has given us the kick in the seat we needed to get some of them reviewed on this site. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer posted by Keith at 11:49 PM | 3 Comments |
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