BEFORE: As I write this, I'm listening to some tracks from Vanilla Fudge, a little-known band from the 1960's. They're probably most famous for their cover versions of other people's songs, like the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" and the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On". Sure, lots of bands back then covered those songs, but not everyone brought their own sounds to the party. Vanilla Fudge was famous for making those light songs sound really HEAVY, by slowing them down to a crawl and then adding a keyboard that sounded like a pipe organ, pounding drums and more than a few guitars. They had vocals that call to mind the later sound of Chicago, but many people point to them as the link between the psychedelic sound of the 1960's and the heavy metal sound of the 1970's. Think of them positioned right between the Young Rascals and Deep Purple, if that makes any sense. And check out their covers I mentioned above, plus "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", "I'm a Believer", "I Can See for Miles", "For What It's Worth" and "Gimme Some Lovin'", and you'll see what I mean about their unique, heavy take on softer songs.
And that, to me, is what Hammer Films seemed to be about - they took the characters made famous by Universal, like Dracula, the Mummy and Frankenstein's Monster, and they gave them some new weight - like, really, how scary was that old mummy when he was just a guy wrapped in bandages, stumbling towards his prey at a top speed of 1 mile per hour? Or how scary was Dracula if the camera cut away every time he bit into a neck? Frankenstein's Monster was always covered by a sheet or something, so you never saw the gory bits of sewing him together, example. Of course, those movies were made during the 1930's, and it was a gentler, less gorey time. Hammer Films came along and suddenly you SAW the vibrant red blood when a vampire got staked through the heart (OK, usually it was the mid-torso, but filmmakers weren't known for their accurate anatomy knowledge...)
So Hammer Films was like the Vanilla Fudge of horror films - they saw those soft, non-gorey monster movies and said, "These really need to be updated, and we need to show some REAL (fake) blood. It should be red, anyway, even if it's not the right shade..." And then eventually this led to more modern horror films like "Poltergeist" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" that showed murder and gore in great detail, but we might never have had the latter without the former. Just like we might not have had Led Zeppelin, Styx and Yes without Vanilla Fudge updating those old songs and putting a new spin on them. Oh, yeah, it's Halloween time, so also check out Vanilla Fudge's cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch". You're welcome.
Peter Cushing carries over from "The Brides of Dracula", but only in a flashback sequence, relating how he killed Dracula in "Horror of Dracula". Still, that counts, like a few weeks ago with Samuel L. Jackson appearing in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle".
AFTER: As we learned in the last film, Dracula is dead but there were plenty of people in Transylvania keeping his ideals alive, or looking for a way to bring him back. This film shows how one of those people was successful, he was the caretaker at Dracula's castle who somehow got a hold of Dracula's ashes, and figured out that he could bring the vampire back, just by pouring a person's worth of blood over them. (How he got the ashes is unclear, and so is how he determined this would be a valid method of resurrection...)
To get the blood, he maintains the castle every day for years, hoping to attract some lost travelers - he puts up his listing on SCARE B&B, I bet... and he lucks out when two vacationing couples from England visit Romania, you know, to do a little hiking and some sight-seeing and they don't seem to understand why everyone closes up shop before sunset and rolls up the sidewalks. As entitled Brits, they demand that the carriage driver deliver them to their next hotel, only he kicks them out of the cab in the forest, and won't drive them by Dracula's castle. However, he offers to return after dawn to pick them up...if they survive the night! (Nope, no red flags there, not one.) Well that's no way to get a good Uber review - "Dropped us off too close to vampires, would not take us to our destination. Threw our luggage into a pile of leaves. One star."
A driverless carriage soon arrives to pick them up and deliver them to the castle, so the Count can have them for dinner. Sorry, I meant have them OVER for dinner, my mistake. "The castle was very hard to find, as the locals pretended not to know where it was. While we appreciated the ride from the forest, and dinner was provided for free, we got a very creepy vibe from our host, Klove. Then we found the castle gate was locked and we could not leave. To make things worse, one of our guests was drained of blood in order to resurrect a vampire. His wife was bitten in the neck and is now undead. Zero stars."
And so two couples become one couple, but the remaining British tourists (by coincidence, named Charles and Diana) escape in a carriage, but it crashes and they encounter Father Sandor, a roving priest who serves the Van Helsing role here, who happens to sound a lot like Liam Neeson. They go with him to his Abbey, but it's not long before Dracula packs up the coffins and heads after them, because he's got a man on the inside there, a weird guy named Ludwig that the friars found in the forest years ago, who's a genius when it comes to decorative book covers but terrible when it comes to following safety instructions. "Sought refuge at a holy place, but the security was terrible. You'd expect an abbey to be free of vampires, but this place was infested with them too. And bedbugs. I know it's the 1800's but can't we do something about pests in hotels? Be sure to pack your crucifixes if you stay here. One star."
It's a little odd that Dracula has NO DIALOGUE in this film - and over the years, various reasons have been given for this. Christopher Lee stated that the dialogue he was given was terrible, so out of respect for the audience he decided not to say any of it, and express himself via hissing instead, which I have to admit is a fair sight creepier. Later the screenwriter claimed that he never could have written anything as cool as those hisses, so he didn't even bother to try. Someone here just wasn't being completely truthful.
The film ends rather abruptly, with Dracula trying to return to his castle, only his coffin slides out of the wagon and on to the ice of the frozen moat. (Funny, it was September just a few days ago, and now the moat is frozen, because the story demands it...) But the quickly-devised and conveniently aforementioned rule about vampires being killed by running water comes in very handy here - and the ice just happens to be thick enough to stand on, but also thin enough to be broken by a bullet from 100 yards away. Which is funny, because you'd think that ice of that exact thickness would be clear and see-through, but this ice resembles inch-thick white pressboard. But no matter, it's time for a quick game of "Break the Ice" so the vampire will drown. I shouldn't even have the heart to point out that a castle moat usually does not consist of running water - but that's a big NITPICK POINT right there.
Oh, that wacky Dracula, always not dying because of some technical foul in the way you kill him. He'll be back tomorrow, just wait and see.
Also starring Christopher Lee (last seen in "Horror of Dracula"), Barbara Shelley, Andrew Keir (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Francis Matthews (last seen in "The Revenge of Frankenstein"), Suzan Farmer, Charles Tingwell, Thorley Walters (last seen in "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed"), Philip Latham (last seen in "Force 10 from Navarone"), Walter Brown, Jack Lambert, George Woodbridge (also last seen in "Horror of Dracula"), John Maxim (ditto), Philip Ray (last seen in "Frankenstein Created Woman"), Joyce Hemson.
RATING:5 out of 10 terrified villagers
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