The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

We begin with a Satanic ceremony being performed, in which a cockerel has its throat cut so that the blood can spurt all over a naked young woman lying on an altar. Is there ever a better way to start a movie?

(Too bad I decided on a "no nudity" policy for this blog - I could have put a really good picture here otherwise.)

While this happens, a man who is tied up in another room manages to escape. He runs a gauntlet of guys in sheepskin coats on motorbikes, who are gunned down by someone in a black car. The man manages to drag himself into the car and is driven back to a secret headquarters, where British government agents quiz him about what he's witnessed. He describes the ceremony in detail (even though he didn't seem to be in the room at the time) including how the woman was stabbed, seemed to die, then revived and her wound healed in seconds. He also has five photos taken with his secret-agent-wristwatch, which show that the leaders of the cult are a top scientist, a peer of the House of Lords, a general, and the government official who actually heads the department the secret agents are working for. The fifth photo shows an empty doorway - do you think it could actually be someone who doesn't show up on film?



Unsurprisingly, they are not pleased about this. They would be even less pleased if they knew that their secretary was being chased down and kidnapped by the guys on motorbikes.

They decide that the only course of action is to call in the same bumbling Scotland Yard inspector from the previous movie, who in turn calls in Lorimer Van Helsing. It turns out that the scientist is an old friend of Van Helsing, so he goes to see him and discovers that he has created a massively beefed-up version of the bubonic plague that will destroy all human life extremely quickly if released. The next thing you know he has been knocked unconscious by a bullet to the head (huh?) and wakes to find that his friend is hanging from a noose and the Petri dishes containing the plague have gone.

The inspector and two of the agents then proceed to head to the mansion where the rituals had taken place and knock on the door, seemingly without any sort of plan or even a coherent cover story, and set about making light banter with the woman who lets them in (who just happens to be the same person who lead the rituals at the start of the movie).

Meanwhile Van Helsing's daughter Jessica (this time played by Joanna Lumley) also sneaks into the building and heads straight to the basement, where she is promptly attacked by four female vampires, one of whom is the kidnapped secretary. Her screams draw the authorities, who rush down to stake their former secretary and rescue Jessica.



It turns out that the cult is lead by someone called D. D. Denham, a mysterious recluse who has never been seen and who just happened to turn up at around the time that Dracula had been staked two years earlier and whose headquarters are on the site of the demolished church. The minute that Van Helsing discovers this, he heads straight to the lion's den and demands to be shown in. For some reason Dracula attempts to disguise his identity by shining a light into Van Helsing's eyes and putting on a funny accent, and he attempts to sway the vampire hunter to his side by explaining that he wants to use the plague to overthrow the governments of the world and set up a new order.

For some reason, Van Helsing doesn't seem to think that this is a very good idea. He promptly tries to shoot the Count with a silver bullet, but is stopped by the intervention of some of the other cult leaders. Dracula has him taken to the mansion, where Jessica has been kidnapped and laid out for sacrifice.



It turns out that the whole plot is basically a huge suicide mission for Dracula: he plans to wipe out the entire human race so that, deprived of a food source, he will finally have his eternal rest. In the meantime he wants Jessica as his consort just to fuck with Van Helsing's head. The rest of the cult are disturbed to hear that they are to be infected with the plague and used to spread it, as they thought they were just going to use it as blackmail to obtain massive power, but Dracula controls their minds and starts forcing them to infect themselves.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint) the bumbling cop has managed to start a fire upstairs, which now spreads to this room. Van Helsing leaps out of a window, pursued by Dracula, and manages to lure him into a Hawthorn bush (supposedly what Christ's crown of thorns was made from), which messes him up enough that Van Helsing can stake him.



In my review of Dracula AD 1972, I expressed dismay that no effort was made to bring the Count effectively into the modern world, and also observed that the music made the movie seem like an episode of an ITV series. I guess I should be careful what I wish for. While this movie is energetic and fun, it's just about as far from what I want from a Dracula movie as I could imagine, with the Count reduced to the role of a corporate villain in a cheap spy movie.

The heroes are all bumbling idiots - even Van Helsing stupidly walks into a trap for no good reason - and are only saved by sheer dumb luck or (in one mind-boggling instance) because vampires can now apparently be killed by clear running water. Which means that turning on the sprinkler system does in a whole roomful of them. Joanna Lumley, who would go on to kick arse in The New Avengers two years later, spends way too much time here standing around and screaming hysterically.

On the plus side, at least Christopher Lee didn't go out of the series at its lowest point (that was Scars of Dracula, unless the next movie proves to be even worse), and it's still fun to see him and Cushing together. They would continue to be teamed up in movies until House of Long Shadows in 1983.



There's only one more stop in my Hammer Dracula marathon. Having failed to update the Count to swinging London or to a modern spy epic, it was decided that the obvious thing to do was to take him back to period (1904 to be precise), to pit him once more against the original Van Helsing (who Dracula: AD 1972 had showed as dying 32 years earlier), and - crucially - to put him in a kung-fu movie. Tune in tomorrow for the only collaboration between Hammer and the Shaw Brothers: Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires!

Dracula AD 1972 (1972)

This movie opens with the climax of the previous movie, where Dracula (Christopher Lee) fights Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) aboard a runaway horse-drawn carriage. This is an exciting scene, with both actors quite literally throwing themselves into it. The scene finishes with Dracula vanquished, and the triumphant Van Helsing dying from his wounds.

The only problem is that this is not how the previous movie ended. It is, in fact, the climax to a movie that does not exist. Damn shame really.

Anyway, one of Dracula's disciples rides onto the scene, collects his belongings and dust, and buries these in the same cemetery where Van Helsing is interred.

We then advance one hundred years to a party where some dirty hippie gatecrashers are annoying the hell out of the posh society types while a godawful psychedelic blues band plays. We get to hear two complete songs, intercut with the "hilarious" antics of the hippies and the "priceless" reactions of the toffs. Meanwhile, a cadaverous-looking young man stalks around looking slightly out of place. He is played by the same actor as Dracula's disciple from the opening sequence. Could there be a connection?



Mercifully, after way too much footage of the shitty band playing, the police are called and the hippies scatter. Several of them converge on a coffee shop called The Cavern (presumably no relation to the Liverpool club where The Beatles used to play). The corpse-looking weirdo, with the not at all suspicious name Johnny Alucard, convinces them that the thing to do next is to go to a condemned church and have a black mass.



Is it a coincidence that one of the hippies is the great-granddaughter of Dr. Van Helsing? Johnny seems particularly keen on getting her to attend the ceremony, but when she is reluctant to be involved in a blood sacrifice, Laura (the gorgeous Caroline Munro) enthusiastically volunteers.



Everybody freaks out (though not in the way they'd planned) and runs away, apart from Johnny and Laura. Soon enough, Count Dracula rises from the grave and makes a snack of Laura while Johnny looks on eagerly.

Back at the coffee shop, everyone decides that the best thing to do is to pretend none of it has happened. When Johnny turns up and tells them he's just put Laura on a train to her hometown, they're a little suspicious but decide to let it slide. Before long Johnny has coerced Gaynor (Marsha Hunt, inspiration for the Rolling Stones song Brown Sugar) into coming back to his place for a joint before heading to the church for another midnight snack.

When the bodies start piling up, the police head to famed expert on the occult Lorimer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), who is of course Jessica's grandfather. The chase is soon on to save Jessica from Dracula's revenge, as his mission is to punish the Van Helsing bloodline by using the young against the old. Hmmm, Dracula brought back from the dead, spending most of his time hanging out in a desecrated church, and using children against their parents (or grandparents).... Doesn't that sound like something I've seen before?



This is a really dumb movie. It makes the fundamental mistake of keeping Dracula on the sidelines once again, as well as keeping him as an anacrhonism in modern times. In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula went out of his way to familiarise himself with the modern world. Wouldn't an incarnation of Dracula who was able to make himself at home in the time he lived in be somewhat scarier than one who would probably be staked on sight if he dared venture out in public?

It also bears way too much resemblance to the tv shows of the time. The music is a big factor here, sounding a lot like the themes from various ITV shows. Then there's the fact that the hippie characters are somewhat anachronistic for 1972; the slang and fashion is already years out of date, as even a nerd like me notices. Compare this to the youth culture portrayed in the films of Roger Corman at the time (who was influence majorly by Hammer for his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations) and this looks pretty sad by comparison.

On the other hand it's really good to see Lee & Cushing matching wits again, even if only at the beginning and the end. (The music makes their final confrontation all the more surreal in this respect.) It's also a major step up from Scars of Dracula in every important respect.

Despite major script issues, the young cast acquits themselves nicely for the most part. Chrisopher Neame isn't bad as Alucard (it's amusing that Van Helsing has to go to quite a bit of effort before he realises what the name spells backwards) though he's no Ralph Bates, and Stephanie Beacham is fine as Jessica. The rest of the cast is a bit anonymous, but nobody is as terrible as Dennis Waterman in Scars.



All in all this is a fun little movie. It's not as cringeworthy as I'd feared (apart from that party scene) but it's also not as "groovy" as I'd hoped.



Tomorrow we have the final appearance of Christopher Lee as Dracula and the penultimate Hammer Dracula. Click back on over for The Satanic Rites of Dracula!

Brides of Dracula (1960)

An opening voice-over informs us that although Dracula may be dead, his disciples still live on to corrupt the world. Meanwhile, a young French woman named Marianne has come to Transylvania in order to take a teaching position. Her cowardly coachman abandons her during a stopover in a small village, and despite the warnings of the locals she accepts the invitation of the sinister Baroness Meinster to spend the night at her castle. It isn't long before she's discovered her son chained up in a secret part of the castle, and promptly sets him free. Before long he has killed his mother, and Marianne flees into the night. She is found by Professor Van Helsing, who has been summoned by the local priest.

Soon the new Baron Meinster is running amuck, with the aid of his mother's servant Greta. He kills a local girl, then (in a surprising turn of events) gets engaged to the impossibly naive Marianne. Meanwhile Van Helsing encoutered the vampiric Baroness Meinster, who is consumed by guilt. She confesses that she blames herself for the entire situation, which was apparently caused by her encouragement of (and participation in) his wild carousing. Van Helsing responds by driving a stake through her heart.

Meanwhile Marianne's roommate Gina expresses jealousy over her engagement. The Baron is apparently sympathetic, as he immediately turns up and bites her. David Peel plays the role of Baron Meinster with considerable glee, clearly relishing the chance to tear his way through the female population of Transylvania.



I don't want to spend too much time on this movie, simply because Dracula is not in it and is barely even mentioned. But it is a lot of fun, and as far as I'm aware it's the movie that first established the idea that Holy Water is acidic for vampires. It's also the second of three Hammer Dracula movies written (or in this case co-written) by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Terence Fisher.

Peter Cushing is once again wonderful as Van Helsing, and Freda Jackson is absolutely brilliant as the insane, cackling Greta. The scene where she reveals the Baroness Meinster to Marianne is possibly the movie's highlight.

The movie also features an interesting "cure" for vampirism when Van Helsing finds himself on the receiving end of Baron Meinster's fangs (it seems that the Baron swings both ways, as he seems to relish sucking on Van Helsing just as much as he did any of his female victims).

Interestingly, any ambiguity about vampirism that I detected in the previous movie is completely absent here. Baron Meinster is portrayed as pure evil, and as mentioned earlier it was his decadent lifestyle that apparently caused his vampirism in the first place.

There are a few oddities. Marianne is supposed to be a French visitor to Transylvania, and she has a strong French accent (presumably Yvonne Monlaur's actual voice). This serves to draw attention to the fact that the "Transylvanian" characters who all call each other Herr and Fräulein in fact all have British accents. Marianne is also disappointingly dense, failing to connect the murder of Baroness Meinster to her release of him from chains - to the point of quite cheerfully accepting his proposal of marriage scant hours after having first met him. Oops.

Also, what actually happened to the Brides of the title? Do we just presume that they died in the climactic fire? Not a lot of closure there.



It would be another five years before Hammer returned to Transylvania, next time with Christopher Lee returning but without Peter Cushing. Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry in my Hammer Dracula odyssey, Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

Dracula (1958)

After an introduction that splatters a little blood onto a coffin, Jonathan Harker arrives at Count Dracula's castle in Klausenberg to begin his employment as a librarian. He is met first by a young woman who begs for his help and claims that Dracula is holding her prisoner, but then the genial Count himself arrives and gives Harker a warm welcome. After showing him around Dracula tells Harker to treat the house as if it were his own, but he has an unusual idea of what this means because he promptly locks Harker inside his bedroom.

Harker, who until now has seemed like the ultimate patsy, then sits down and starts writing in his diary that Dracula seems to have fallen for his ploy and that soon he will be able to bring his reign of terror to an end. He manages to escape from his room and encounters the young woman again, who pleads for his help once more but then bites him on the neck. In a moment that must have embarassed people with weak bladders in 1958, Dracula suddenly reappears.



Harker now finds himself in dire straits. Having been knocked unconscious and slept through most of the day, he heads downstairs shortly before sunset to deal to the Count and makes the mistake of staking the woman who has bitten him first. By the time Van Helsing arrives on the scene, Harker is already a vampire and has to be dealt with most harshly...

This entire opening sequence seems specifically designed to confound expectations. Instead of Jonathan Harker slowly coming to realise that Dracula is a vampire, he already knows this and is actually there to kill him. Instead of Harker barely escaping with his life, he is actually vampirised himself. And instead of this all being a slow build-up to horror, the entire sequence takes less than ten minutes and features a sudden appearance of Dracula looking as fearsome as he ever has in a movie.

Jimmy Sangster's script often doesn't make sense (e.g. why exactly does Dracula tell Harker to make himself at home if he's going to blatantly lock him up five seconds later? And why does Harker leave himself wide open to being bitten by someone he must already know is a vampire?) but director Terence Fisher keeps the pace brisk and the proceedings energetic. Christopher Lee plays Dracula first as informal and charming, and then as animalistic and terrifying. Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, far from the fussy old professor of earlier versions, is immediately presented as a no-nonsense man of action. And the movie's just getting started.

The rest of the story mixes and matches the characters from the novel in fairly random fashion. Now it is Lucy who is Harker's fiance; in this version Mina is Lucy's sister, and is married to Arthur Holmwood. Dr. Seward has only a small walk-on as Lucy's physician. The story is presented as a battle between Dracula and Van Helsing.

That opening sequence probably plays rather differently now than it did when the movie premiered 52 years ago. When Dracula bounds into the fray all red-eyes and snarls, it seemed to me that he was pissed off that his girlfriend was fooling around with the hired help. When he deals to Harker, it doesn't seem too unreasonable - after all Harker had just murdered that same girlfriend. There is no real hint that Dracula wanted anything more sinister from Harker than someone to organise his books.

Anyway, having staked Harker but failed to find Dracula, Van Helsing visits Harker's fiance Lucy to find that she is mysteriously ill. Although she seems too weak to stand, the moment she is alone in her bedroom Lucy leaps up, disposes of her crucifix, opens her bedroom windows, and lays back on her pillow where she starts panting in anticipation.

Do you think that she could be waiting for someone?



The rest of the movie features some familiar scenes as Lucy dies and is staked, at which turn Dracula sets his sights on Mina. She proves to be just as receptive as Lucy; soon she is clutching a fur collar tight around her neck and smiling like the cat that got the cream. Given that Arthur Holmwood is portrayed as being about as dynamic and sexy as a tin of spaghetti, it's little wonder that Dracula is able to charm his way into her affections.



It's interesting that the battle in this movie is between the sensual and seductive Dracula and the dynamic but almost asexual Van Helsing. This being a British movie made in 1958, of course it's the the stiff upper lip that gets the upper hand. When Dracula is vanquished (in an exciting scene that's surely the first incarnation of Van Helsing as action hero) the status quo is restored, but I doubt that Mina was entirely happy with the situation; she would probabyl have preferred to keep Dracula in the basement in perpetuity. (Yes, in the basement. All anyone needed to do was open the door and there was his coffin, not even hidden. I guess it didn't fit in the wardrobe.)

The story is simplified even more than usual. Despite appearances (and accents) the Holmwoods seem to live not too far from Castle Dracula, so the journey to England (and the race back to Transylvania) is completely omitted along with all trace of Dracula being an unwholesome foreign influence. Renfield is completely missing, along with Quincey Morris and any trace of Lucy being courted.

Lee is a magnetic presence, and though he bears no relationship here to the character as written by Stoker, it doesn't matter in the slightest. His comparatively short screen time is all put to excellent use, and every time he appears the movie catches fire. Cushing matches him as Van Helsing, and it's a shame that they would not play these characters together again for another fourteen years. More on that next week, when I get to the end of my Hammer Dracula marathon.

Tomorrow, Brides of Dracula. I almost considered leaving that one out as Dracula does not actually appear, but he's in the title so what the hell.