BEFORE: I've reached the end of my Hammer Films chain, for now, until I tackle more Mummy-based films next year. I still have four Dracula films - after this I'll head backwards in time to some of the classic Universal films that I skipped over last year. But only 6 more films until I go away on vacation, then 2 more horror films when I get back, then October will be over and I'll hit the home stretch for the year.
Christopher Lee carries over from "Taste the Blood of Dracula" for another appearance in the cape.
THE PLOT: Johnny Alucard raises Count Dracula from the dead in London in 1972. The Count goes after the descendants of Van Helsing.
AFTER: This film somehow found a way to both follow the continuity of the Hammer Films series, and also break with it at the same time. The last time we saw Dracula, in "Taste the Blood of Dracula", he died inside an old London church, and in this one, that's where he's resurrected, decades later. So that tracks, assuming it's the same church. But then the prologue here shows Dracula battling Van Helsing, and he dies in a carriage accident, when he's impaled on a broken wheel, and Van Helsing breaks off the round part of the wheel, leaving one of the spokes to function as an impromptu stake. But when does this happen?
It can't be a reference to "Horror of Dracula", because Van Helsing defeated Dracula there by opening the castle curtains to let the sunlight in. (Why does Drac's castle even HAVE curtains? You'd think he would have had the windows bricked over as a precaution, but whatevs...). Does that mean he was resurrected again after Van Helsing killed him, and then Van Helsing killed him again? That messes with the continuity where Dracula died in some of the previous films and then revived in "Taste the Blood of Dracula". Are we just going to ignore his various resurrections in between 1872 and 1972?
Of course, there was the 1970 re-telling of Dracula's original story, which I watched last October, but that wasn't a Hammer Films production, and it also didn't have a carriage chase in it and a wagon-wheel impalement. And Herbert Lom played Van Helsing in that one, not Cushing - so just like with the James Bond series, there's very little regard for continuity between the films. If this film says Dracula died by carriage wheel, the story just has to roll with that.
For convenience's sake, of course the same actor would play Van Helsing in the flashback sequence, and then his grandson, Lorrimer Van Helsing in the 1972 scenes - but does this really work? How many people are the spitting image of their grandfathers? I can handle the fact that the modern guy has the same last name, because that just takes one guy having a son and then that son having a son, but the physical resemblance thing is a little off-putting. How much in-breeding was there in British society to allow that to happen? This also happens with the Alucard character, the guy in 1872 that collects Dracula's ashes appears again in the modern scenes, but they don't say if that's supposed to be the same guy, or his grandson, or what.
Pity how hard it is to be British, because as we saw in the last film, people are all so bored with culture in the U.K. that they have to turn to the dark arts, just to get a few kicks. But I feel like some screenwriter totally mis-read the room here, maybe he used the Rolling Stones' song "Sympathy for the Devil" here, plus the fact that the kids were listening to bands like the Zombies, Black Sabbath and the Grateful Dead, and figured the next logical thing was for kids to go from go-go dancing to rock and roll straight to black masses and trying to resurrect vampires. And that just wasn't a thing back in the early 1970's, it never caught on.
A couple of NITPICK POINT things here, like the fact that it takes way too long for anyone to figure out what "Alucard" spells in reverse, and similarly it takes too many tries for Johnny to bring Dracula the woman that he wants to possess. Like, there are only three birds in the group, and one of them has Van Helsing as a last name - dude, it's probably her. Why does he keep seducing the wrong girl, is he really that bad at following Dracula's directions, or is he screwing up on purpose, just to get laid? And another huge N.P. would be - why would Drac use an old church as his lair, wouldn't there be crosses everywhere?
There were also some missed opportunities here, like what would happen if somebody was stoned on LSD and then Dracula drank their blood - would he get high or would he spit it out? And having been dead for 7 or 8 decades, what did he think of modern music, or cars, or telephones? I guess we'll never know. Could he seduce a woman who was attracted to women and not men? And the other side of that, would he have an easier time seducing a gay man, or does Dracula not swing that way? Certainly all the ladies in London here found out that "Once you go Drac, you never turn back". But that's because he drank all their blood.
And if Hammer Films had kept making the Dracula films, what would have come next? Would they have followed the trends of the 1970's, and moved Dracula to New York, for a "Saturday Night Fever"-inspired spin through the disco scene, or maybe "Welcome Back, Dracula", where the Count would then return to his Transylvanian home town to teach high school? It's tough to say. I'm also sorry that the "Johnny Dracula" spin-off never came to be, I thought that one might have some legs - but I guess there's no place for vampires in the 1970's if they can be defeated so easily by modern plumbing.
Also starring Peter Cushing (last seen in "Dracula: Prince of Darkness", Stephanie Beacham, Christopher Neame (last seen in Licence to Kill"), Marsha Hunt (last seen in "Never Say Never Again"), Caroline Munro (last seen in "The Spy Who Loved Me"), Janet Key (last seen in "1984"), Michael Kitchen (last seen in "My Week with Marilyn"), Lally Bowers, Maureen Flanagan, Michael Coles, William Ellis, Philip Miller, David Andrews, Constance Luttrell, Michael Daly, Artro Morris, Jo Richardson, Brian John Smith, Penny Brahms.
RATING: 5 out of 10 goblets of blood
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