Taste The Blood Of Dracula

 

Taste The Blood Of Dracula (1970)

Dir. Peter Sasdy

Written by Anthony Hinds (under the named “John Elder” and theoretically based on one character created by Bram Stoker

Starring Christopher Lee, Linda Hayden, Geoffrey Keen, John Carson, Pater Sallis

There are only so many vintage Hammer Studios movies, and since I've now seen the vast majority of them, I've been trying to parcel out the DRACULAs once a year to make them last. In this way, I hope to gradually, over many years, convince myself that Hammer movies were actually never that good to begin with and it's no big deal that there aren't any more new ones, because the thing the series is perhaps most known for is perfectly charting the arc of Hammer’s rise and fall, from the bold highs in the late 50’s to the dismal, misguided wretchedness of its final years before it closed its doors for good* following its final film production in 1979.

We're not there yet, though. TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA is definitely well past the point of diminishing returns for the franchise, but not a complete waste yet. That point is on the horizon, though. You can feel them getting a little desperate already. For starters, this one (technically the fifth Hammer DRACULA film, but who's counting?) feels decidedly more contemporary than its predecessors, with some handheld camera, a little hip camera experimentation (there's a "heartbeat" effect where the camera zooms in and out), and some swinging youth culture stuff (a blue-hair punk chick who dances with a snake in a exotic boudoir run by a mincing gay guy). It's not ruinously bad yet, but you can certainly see the hopeless attempt to chase the youth market into whatever the head honchos at Hammer believed to be the latest trend was at the moment. And you can certainly see it already not working. That has an immediate deleterious effect, if only a small one in this case: the hipper it's attempting to be, the less gothic and atmospheric it is, and the result is a film quite a bit blander-looking than the previous entries, and little able to, or interested in, conjuring any real striking images.

A lack of luxurious gothic atmosphere isn’t necessarily a death blow, but if you were counting on a finely-honed unshakably gripping plot to save it, well, I appreciate your optimism this late in the game, but at some point optimism becomes denial. So it is no surprise that the story again feels pretty blatantly slapdash. It takes way too long to get going (Dracula doesn't appear until 45 minutes in, absent the recycled footage from the end of DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE that opens the thing) and if you want to actually see Dracula DO stuff, ho ho, yeah, by this point Lee wasn't going to do anything more strenuous than stand there looking haughty and vaguely annoyed. But at least there's a fresh hook this time: three venal businessmen (Goeffrey Keen [Bond's boss 1977-1987], Pater Sallis [The voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit[!!]], John Carson [PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES]), sold on a HELLRAISER-type come-on that reviving Dracula is the ultimate rush, do in fact revive him only to discover that not only do they not have raging hard-ons as promised, but now there's a killer vampire (Dracula) after them (this is the kind of thing we used to have to deal with all the time before Viagra). So then they have to cover their tracks, unaware that Drac is stalking them and recruiting their teenage daughters (most notably Linda Hayden, BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW, THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL) to use against them.

This premise at least has the spice of being vaguely sleazy and disreputable (there's a whorehouse visit early on which was probably pretty scandalous for the time, particularly the blue-haired snake-dancer and the openly gay-coded "madam," though today it just looks rather cheap and desperate) but the problem is that the three businessmen never really emerge as interesting characters. Sure, their motive is clear enough: when the simple, old-fashioned transgressive pleasure of hanging out in an opulent cathouse become stale, they turn for advice to instigator Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE), a man even more more debauched than themselves. They're ready for headier fare, and think he might be able to suggest some (his immediate go-to is "let's revive Dracula!' and they immediately see the wisdom in this). Fair enough, but these dudes just never seem perverse enough to get so easily sold on this plan. They go from sitting around (fully clothed) with half-nude women to wanting to drink human blood and sell their soul to Satan within the course of a supper, and I just don’t quite buy it. Particularly since Bates is not exactly an irresistibly seductive salesman; more like the smuggest, richest D&D nerd you've ever met. Apparently the original plan was to let poor whiny Christopher Lee off the hook for this one, and just have Bates turn into a vampire and continue the series. This would make a lot more sense narratively, since as it stands it’s rather odd that Courtley shows up to initiate this boondoogle and then vanishes from the plot and then for some reason Dracula shows up to get revenge for him, even though they’ve never met. But Bates is simply grating and foppish – a character you definitely hate, but not in a fun way—so I, for one, am glad they chickened out and dragged Lee back for yet another miserable outing (and, presumably, yet another addition on his house).  

Anyway, the central premise with the three business pervs just never quite adds up. We either needed to understand the utter depths of these men's corruption, or we needed to see some kind of folly which pushes them further than they'd ordinarily be willing to go -- them egging each other on or something. Having them be just regular gross old dudes who are definitely assholes but probably not really villains feels like a missed opportunity to leverage some actual drama out of this scenario; they feel purely like a plot device, rather than actual characters who behave in a way we understand and which has its own internally compelling drama. They (SPOILERS) don't even die in a dramatically meaningful order -- the guy we start with, who seems like the ringleader, dies first, leaving us with his far-less-developed companions, who then also die without really developing in any way. It's a workable setup, but it never quite gets around to working, because we never really get a good sense of who these dumbasses are. They could be filthy villains who get what’s coming to them, or they could be sympathetic, flawed old fools who must pay a steep price for their moral transgressions; either one would work, but the movie doesn’t settle on either course, and consequently just leaves any sense of narrative drama sitting there on the table, untouched.

Which is a problem, because they're as close as we're going to get to any kind of main characters, leaving a big hole where the film’s conflict should be. Lee is in maybe 15 minutes of footage total, and the standard-issue Hammer Pretty White Boys don't even know what's going on until the very end (even though the lead HPWB, Paul,** played by Anthony Corlan, is certainly less bland and more pretty than most. Woah, he plays one of the Nazis in RAIDERS!), so although they're on hand to save the day (since Hammer was certainly not going to let the women save themselves) they're basically nonentities. The young ladies fare better (and Hayden is at least a little spunky and distinct-looking, with her sad eyes and soft features); getting recruited to do most of Dracula's dirty work like a satanic Charlie's Angels looks like a fun gig, but of course they don't exactly have an arc either. I do kind of like the tragic dimension of their desire to please an openly disinterested "Master," which plays into the climax at least a little and definitely illustrates just what a dick Dracula is. But it's pretty half-formed, another idea -- like the pervert business guys-- which feels like it could have made for an interesting dramatic core had the script decided to delve into it a little rather than haul it out strictly as a plot device.

That all leaves TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA altogether too shapeless and unfocused to hit like it ought to, though by the end it gets vicious and nihilistic enough (SPOILERS - nearly everyone dies; no redemption for these pervy business dudes I guess!) that it works up a little bit of spunk. But just when it seems like it’s kicking in, it suffers another disappointing anti-climax, which really seems to be a theme with this series, perhaps in an attempt to be faithful to the weird anticlimax of the original Dracula novel.*** (SPOILERS AHEAD) Sure, they probably weren't going to top the Count’s impalement-by-cross from the last movie, but the way he dies THIS time (imagines a church, passes out and dies all by himself, without anyone doing anything) is probably his second-lamest death, after that time he just slipped on the ice and drowned. This is, like, the fourth time he's died like a chump seemingly within hours of being laboriously revived. Just how bad can he really be?

Oh yeah, I guess we saw with that lame Lord Courtley character just how lame the villains in this universe are capable of being, so maybe we should count our blessings that at least it’s still Christopher Lee taking the fall. TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (which, I should say, is a surprisingly accurate title; that’s how they revive the bastard!) isn’t nearly the bottom of the barrel, although it may well be the tipping point where the bad starts to outweigh the good. See you next year when we discover how much worse we can get!

RIPPER REPORT: Michael Ripper plays a pretty funny police inspector who does not seem particularly motivated to, you know, inspect anything, despite his condescending demeanor. Good stuff!

*Although I enjoy seeing the name on-screen again, the 2010’s Hammer revival is obviously not the same thing, though it produced at least a few worthy horror flicks.

 

** Weird that this is the second DRACULA in a row to feature a Hammer Pretty White Boy named Paul. Is this supposed to be the same character? I see no evidence that this is the case, but I also don’t see how writer Anthony Hinds (as “John Elder”) could have missed the fact that he gave the protagonist in both films –just two years apart!—the same name! Strange stuff.

 

*** Though the fact that Hammer improves upon that climax immeasurably in HORROR OF DRACULA makes it clear they’re capable of doing better when they bother to try.

HAMMER’S DRACULA SERIES:

1: THE HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

2: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

3: DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966)

4: DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)

5: TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970)

6: SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

7: DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972)

8: THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973)

9: THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974)

(see also: Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN series)

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)

Dir. Freddie Francis

Written by Anthony Hinds, using the name "John Elder"

Starring Chirstopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson, Barbara Ewing

 

The bad news first: DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE --Hammer's third sequel to their studio-defining 1958 DRACULA (aka HORROR OF DRACULA), second with Christopher Lee, and second which Lee openly did not want to be a part of-- is broadly more interested in the character drama than the horror. That is a highly questionable decision for a movie called DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE to make, and probably reason enough for most folks to just ignore it entirely and focus on genre movies that would actually like to, you know, do genre movie stuff.

 

The good news, though, is that for those who stick around, that character drama is surprisingly tolerable. Which is not to say that it’s an overwhelming good story; or even much of a story at all: this time Dracula gets revived after a uptight Monsignor (Rupert Davies, WITCHFINDER GENERAL, CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTER, winner or the inaugural Pipe Smoker Of The Year Award [yes, really]) decides that even though Dracula is already dead (having drowned like a chump at the end of DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS) he should not leave well enough alone and instead should march up to Dracula's Castle and exorcise it. In the process, a dorky local priest (Ewan Hooper, KINKY BOOTS) manages to fall down and hit his head and the blood flows into a nearby body of water (implied in the last movie to be far from Dracula's Castle, but no good ever came of trying to parse the continuity between these movies) which happens to be the very short-term resting place of our titular character, so of course that brings Drac right back, to get up to his old tricks. And if those old tricks (i.e., visiting the bedrooms of virginal maidens to gradually vampirize them) happen to coincide with getting revenge on the Monsignor who exorcised his castle (even if he did revive the Count in the process) because the victim is the old codger's niece, well, so much the better. 

The odd thing is, although that is the plot you'd have to summarize if you were, say, trying to write a review of DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM HIS GRAVE, it doesn't really accurately describe the movie. All that business with Dracula and the Monsignor and the nocturnal visits and all that makes up a relatively small portion of the runtime. Mostly, the movie chronicles the lives of various denizens of a local inn, one of whom (a fellow named Paul, played by Barry Andrews, BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW) happens to be the boyfriend of said virginal Monsignor's niece. They all notice some strange goings-on, and eventually begin to fall prey to Dracula's depredations, but a lot of the time is simply spent hanging out at the workplace, or dealing with the tension caused by the uptight Monsignor's extreme displeasure at the prospect of having his niece date anyone, least of all a --gasp-- hunky atheist like our handsome generic white boy™ Paul. 

As I mentioned above, you'd have every right to doubt that this focus would prove as fruitful as doing something crazy like centering your movie with DRACULA in the title around, you know, Dracula. But it turns out to be a surprisingly charming time. In fact, basically every major role is more interesting and better played than you’d have any right to expect. The script, by Anthony Hinds (alias: John Elder, THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, THE REPTILE, and the next two DRACULA films, replacing previous series scribe Jimmy Sangster, whose script had so displeased Lee last time around) contributes to this by making each character and their corresponding web of relationships more complex and multi-dimensional than they need to be, and the actors across the board respond by giving spirited, lively performances. OK, so the main victim girl (Veronica Carlson, far better in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED) is pretty boring, another naive, virginal damsel, so innocent she sleeps with a doll. But that’s to be expected; when was the last time Hammer had a young male lead who seems as vivacious as Andrews makes Paul, or who looked kind of like Roger Daltrey? Rarely if ever. And he's surrounded by a whole crew of able character actors who do their part to make these stock types feel distinct. I'm particularly taken with Zena (Barbara Ewing, TORTURE GARDEN, MUTE, EYE OF THE NEEDLE), Paul's fellow bar-worker, a bawdy, worldly lady with her own unrequited affection for the young man, who brings a world-weary melancholy to her poor doomed role. But honestly everyone is doing good work; even the stodgy old Monsignor --who has a complex, not-quite-romantic relationship with his widowed sister-in-law-- proves to be a little more interesting and worth spending time with than you'd suppose.      

In fact, the only person who doesn’t seem to be trying very hard is Christopher Lee, who is not really bothering to hide how much he doesn’t care by this point. He speaks again, after his controversial mute turn in the previous film... but it’s probably only four or five unimportant lines, and he’d be better off staying quiet. They also have this dumb effect where they make his eyes all bloodshot, which just makes him look high and distracts from Lee’s naturally cold, imperious gaze. It's hard to say if the script gives him short shrift, or if Lee was being such a baby about returning to the role that they just tried to write a movie around him doing as little as possible, but the end result is that he is almost comically inactive here. He simply doesn’t do that much, and the stuff he does is just recycled from the last couple films (basically, just menacingly visit an innocent virgin in her bedroom a few times). But at least director Freddie Francis (TALES FROM THE CRYPT, TROG) knows how to shoot him so he looks cool and imposing; even a totally coasting Lee can hardly look otherwise, but having the movie shoot him like a total boss certainly helps make the case that Dracula is in some way important to this Dracula movie. And he does get a real hum-dinger of a death, almost certainly the best he's ever going to get, and a real significant upgrade from the lame watery demise he met last time. And again, Francis (who had won an Oscar for best Cinematography back in 1960 for SONS AND LOVERS, and would win another for GLORY in 1989, though he's working as director in this case with Arthur Grant [QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED] behind the camera) gives it the epic framing it deserves.In fact, it’s one of the nicest-looking Hammer pictures, full of cool sets and some of the most intense abstract lighting I’ve ever seen in a British movie, coming within shooting distance of what Bava was up to in Italy around the time he was making KILL BABY KILL and THE WHIP AND THE BODY. Francis and Grant also use some kind of odd prismatic lens which creates an iris effect, with the edges of the screen glowing red and orange. It’s a cool effect which might benefit from a little more restraint than is shown here, but when it works it’s pretty baller. 

The ultimate result is a movie which is more amiable than terrifying, and more handsome than consequential, but that's still enough to qualify as a pleasant surprise, given that this is the third sequel to a movie which arguably didn't need any sequels. It does not make one particularly confident that this series should continue for another five more entries, but for those who appreciate that special Hammer vibe, it's a tolerable, if very inessential, way to spend 90 minutes. I mean, Michael Ripper plays a drunken innkeeper, for heaven's sake. And who could resist that poster?

HAMMER’S DRACULA SERIES:

1: THE HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

2: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

3: DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966)

4: DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)

5: TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970)

6: SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

7: DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972)

8: THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973)

9: THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974)

(see also: Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN series)

Dracula: Prince Of Darkness

Dracula: Prince Of Darkness (1966)

Dir. Terence Fisher

Written by Jimmy Sangster

Starring Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews

It’s easy to be cynical when you see a studio --not necessarily Disney in this hypothetical example, could be anyone-- grinding out completely unnecessary sequels even in the painfully obvious absence of anywhere for the story to go, which, again, not necessarily STAR WARS, could be anything, I could be talking about Hammer studios in the late 1960s for example. Which as luck would have it, I am. Both you and I know that Hammer Productions’ two-decade-long death march of sequels to their era-defining 1958 HORROR OF DRACULA was not exactly inspired by the uncontrollable creative urge, and both you and I know that it ended very, very poorly. But give them credit for this: they managed to hold off six long years since the previous sequel, 1960’s BRIDES OF DRACULA, before finally caving into the obvious opportunity to cash in on a sure-thing franchise installation. Can you imagine Marvel waiting six years between franchise sequels because they didn’t really have a good idea? Hell no. So credit Hammer for that, at least.

That’s probably the most surprising and the most artistically laudable aspect of 1966’s DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, but the movie’s also more respectable than I had feared going in. It’s pretty well made, confident, and focused on delivering the goods; it’s just that those goods are of a distinctly familiar tenor. The good and bad thing about D:PoD is that it’s basically a lightly re-skinned remake of HORROR OF DRACULA. Not a lot of new ground covered here. But if we must trek through thoroughly familiar and well-mapped territory, at least the scenery is nice.

We begin with two British couples -- Charles (Francis Matthews, CORRIDORS OF BLOOD) and his wife Diana (Suzan Farmer, DIE MONSTER DIE), and Alan (Bud Tingwell, THE DISH) and his wife Helen (Barbara Shelley, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED)-- on a nice vacation in Germany. Or, actually, we begin slightly before we meet this charming quartet: we begin in the German countryside, where superstitious peasants are interrupting a funeral because they want to stake the corpse through the heart, just in case. In rides action monk Father Sandor (Andrew Keir, who assumed the role of Quatermass in QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, rather less memorably than cranky drunk Brian Donlevy did in the first two films) to chide them for their actions and tell them that as a genuine expert on vampirism, they should take his word for it and leave the poor dead girl alone. But also vampires are real. Just not this particular one. He seems pretty crazy, but he speaks with such authority that he seems to win them over, although I notice he doesn’t stick around to make sure the mob doesn’t get jittery again before they get the unfortunate corpse in the ground.

Keir was something of a Hammer staple (you remember him from BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB), but his boisterous, eccentric performance in this role is almost certainly his most memorable for the studio, creating a character who --dare I say it-- is actually a more fun and charismatic foil for Dracula than Cushing’s Dr. Van Helsing ever was. I love Cushing, of course,* but Hammer never really figured out anything interesting for the character to do, and in fact now that I’m thinking about it, the problem may just be the character itself. Seriously, every Dracula adaptation knows to cast a real classy actor as Van Helsing --Cushing, Anthony Hopkins, Herbert Lom, Laurence Olivier, Rutger Hauer, Christopher Plummer, Peter Fonda, Hugh Jackman, Mel Brooks-- but think back, in all those adaptations, does the character ever actually seem all that interesting? BRIDES OF DRACULA actually puts something of a test to this hypothesis by leaving Dracula out altogether and focusing on the continuing exploits of Van Helsing. It’s a pretty fun romp, but is it because the character is just so classic we can’t resist him? I’ll give you a hint: the only other movie I can think of that foregrounds him is VAN HELSING. That didn’t go so well in my opinion. Somebody should consider giving Father Sandor another chance.

Anyway, Sandor shows up at the Unwelcoming Superstitious Village Inn (which, judging from these Hammer films, must be a hugely successful chain) where our oblivious English duet of couples is staying. While cheerfully warming his ass by the fire, he explains to them that yes, vampires are real, and also, on a related note, don’t go to Karlsbad, and if you absolutely must, at least don’t spend the night at the mysterious and obviously sinister castle along the way, where all the villagers are afraid to go, anyway, well, good to meet you all. So naturally, guess what our heroes end up doing almost immediately.

They’re morons, of course, but they’re a surprisingly charming group to spend time with, if we absolutely had to do it. It must be said: Hammer just does so much better with adult actors (like these four) than the usual pretty bland kids; while we might reasonably question the wisdom of taking a sinister driverless carriage up to an obviously evil castle which they had just been admonished to avoid, and then deciding what the heck, why not spend the night? We can still enjoy their cheerful British obliviousness, particularly because the script sets up a pretty funny dynamic between them. You see, Helen is already established as a gigantic stick-in-the-mud, one of those Karl Pilkington characters who really never wanted to leave England in the first place and is constantly fretting and complaining about anywhere which is not her particular neighborhood in London. Now, she happens to be extremely justified in her concern about the evil castle they’re staying in currently, but since she’s been whining the whole trip you can totally understand why everyone else ignores her. Obviously in real life I’m 100% on the pro let’s-stay-in-this-haunted-castle side of this debate. But we also know this movie is called DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, so there’s some reasonable cause for caution. Helen’s been wrong about everything so far… but she does happen to be right about this. Shelley --something of a Scream Queen of the period-- works hard to make Helen kind of likable despite being such a whiny wet blanket, and settles on the right Cassandra tone here to provide some fun tension about if she’ll be able to warn everyone in time (spoiler: no). She gets rewarded for her efforts in the second half of the film, where she gets to indulge in a very different kind of performance.

Our heroes have barely settled in before they encounter an evil butler (Philip Latham, FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE) with a plan to resurrect… well, I shan't spoil it, except to say that this movie is called DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS. And actually that still might not completely ruin it, because the last one was called BRIDES OF DRACULA and if you’ll recall, it delivered neither brides nor Dracula. But everyone is having a fun, charming time until HOLY SHIT DID THEY JUST SLIT THAT GUY’S THROAT AND DRAIN HIS BLOOD? Shit went fuckin’ HOSTEL here. This movie may be a bit predictable, but it’s definitely playing for keeps. A very wet murder scene, a gruesome discovery of a body, and a woman-on-woman vampire sequence so absolutely dripping with lesbian subtext that it might as well just call itself text -- are shocking enough to retain a little edge even today, and in 1966 must have been absolutely brain-melting.  And once Drac finally shows up, Lee plays him with even more animalistic intensity than before (with no dialogue, to the movie’s benefit), escalating his focus on making the character a malevolent, physically imposing predator. There’s something startlingly inhuman and demonic about Lee’s portrayal --and particularly this version of the Count-- which just isn’t present in the majority of Drac adaptations where the title character is more of a gentlemanly romantic. Kinski’s turn in NOSFERATU might be the only one in the same ballpark, but I doubt even he would slice his chest open and force a hypnotized woman to drink his blood.** That shit’s intense. It’s potent enough that even when our heroes escape the Count’s castle and retreat to civilization, his predacious presence continues to haunt the film. He really seems like a force which is impossible to escape from.

Now, what you may be noticing here is that while none of this is specifically the plot of Dracula, it turns out to be functionally identical. Again, we have protagonists who arrive at Drac’s castle unaware of the danger their mysterious host poses, and again, for the second half Drac goes on the offensive, traveling to a new location to pursue the young wife of our hero, and they must eventually chase him back to his lair with the help of a seasoned vampire hunter. We have another uncomfortable dinner scene at the castle, we have another Vampiric bride, we even get a Renfield (thinly disguised under the pseudonym “Ludwig” and portrayed by the redoubtably broad Thorley Walters of FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED). All of that is as by-the-book for Dracula adaptations at they come; in fact, despite all the cosmetic changes this is probably still a more faithful adaptation of Stoker’s novel than many a screen version.

That seems to be a sticking point for some people, but it didn’t bother me. There’s enough spice here to make it at least a welcome comfort, if not exactly a revelation. But if you are the sort of person who would be bothered by a thinly veiled remake made for purely monetary reasons by many of the same people less than a decade later, I would not recommend this movie. I would usually recommend that instead you read my THE FORCE AWAKENS review, except in this case it would just reveal what a gigantic hypocrite I am for giving Hammer a pass here. At least PRINCE OF DARKNESS has the dignity to be ashamed of being a hacky remake and not draw attention to it with a bunch of lame references.

The film has some other issues too, the biggest being that even given an opportunity to re-write the anticlimactic ending of Stoker’s novel which has hobbled so many other adaptations, the makers of D:PoD somehow manage to find an even lamer way to dispatch the Count. Man, for all the talk of being indestructible unstoppable supernatural forces, it turns out fucking everything kills vampires. As Father Sandor explains with some degree of unintentional comedy, there’s no way to kill these undead fiends. Well, except fire. Or drowning, that would do it. Or cutting off the head. Or stabbing through the heart, or anything made of silver, or garlic, or crosses, or anything which even superficially resembles a cross, or holy water, or sunlight. So, basically everything which would kill a normal human, plus a few other things. But other than those things and a few others, fucking unkillable. The final chase is exciting anyway, though, because at least the Count isn’t fleeing, he’s trying to beat them back to his place to win himself a new honey. That gives it a little more tension than Stoker’s version, where Dracula is already in full retreat by the time he’s dispatched. But there’s no way around it, the actual dispatching is pretty bogus.

That having been said, most of the movie is pretty legit, particularly for a third sequel to a film which probably didn’t need any sequels. Compared to the third FRANKENSTEIN sequel (the abysmal EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN) it’s positively terrific, sporting a typically excellent Gothic Horror atmosphere (indeed, it’s one of the few Hammer films which is not distractingly overlit), well-paced direction (by Hammer staple Terence Fisher), a strong score (by series regular composer James Bernard), solid performances, and a perfectly workable --if not exactly poetic-- script by go-to Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster.

This last part is a matter of some dispute, and perhaps the thing the film is most known for. Lee, who almost immediately seems to have resented the role that made him a star, is on record claiming that his lack of dialogue in this film is because he refused to speak the lines he was given. Sangster, for his part, has disputed this, claiming that he never wrote any lines for the vampire in the first place. Both claims seem pretty suspect -- unless his lines were vastly worse than anything else in the finished movie, I know for a fact that Lee has obediently spoken much, much dumber dialogue than is on display here, and if fact would do so only two years later in the sequel to this very movie. Plus he already had two Fu Manchu movies under his belt by this time, and would finish out the decade with two more Fu Manchu movies directed by Jesus Franco, which is just about as dire a pitch as you can find in the annals of cinema. For fuck’s sake, he was in a goddam POLICE ACADEMY sequel, and not even an early one. So his case that the silent Count was the result of his unflinching artistic integrity is a bit suspect, to say the least. But then again, Sangster wrote the first two Dracula films, which definitely feature an antagonist who, if not exactly chatty, certainly speaks. It would be pretty weird for him to suddenly imagine the character as a mute, out of the blue, in his third screen appearance. So I’m honestly not sure who’s telling the truth here. But whoever had the idea, it was a good one; a silent Dracula is one which foregrounds his inhuman side, and it works to make the movie more intense and frightening, as well as somewhat unique among the many, many cinematic takes on the character.

Granted, it’s one of the only things to make it unique. But I guess that’s not such a crime when the fundamentals are as strong as this. As the series continued, we’d get progressively stranger premises in order to keep things fresh, and look where that got us. It got us goddam DRACULA: AD 1972, that’s where it got us. So maybe sticking to what you’re good at was not as bad a plan for Hammer as it might appear. DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS doesn’t offer anything essential, but it’s a pretty solid helping of more of the same. Its brisk and eventful 90 minutes give you exactly what you’d expect --in some of its strongest iterations-- though admittedly it offers very little else. But of course, what else do you really need?   

*Although I saw him recently in a big budget studio movie which was bold enough to cast him some 22 years after his death, and I decided that zombiefication isn’t his best look.

** Although fair's fair -- that scene, shocking as it is, is adapted pretty directly from the original 1897 novel. It's one of several bits in PRINCE OF DARKNESS where the movie seems to imagine itself something of a repository for sequences from the novel which weren't included in HORROR OF DRACULA, the other notable examples being the film's final chase sequence, which is far more faithful to the book than the original ending to HORROR, and the inclusion of a very Renfield-like character (shockingly omitted from the 1958 version).

HAMMER’S DRACULA SERIES:

1: THE HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

2: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

3: DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966)

4: DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)

5: TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970)

6: SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

7: DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972)

8: THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973)

9: THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974)

(see also: Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN series)

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2016 CHECKLIST!

Good Kill Hunting

TAGLINE	The World’s Most Evil Vampire Lives Again! And various derivations therof.
TITLE ACCURACY	Dracula is definitely in this one, though I have no idea what a “Prince of Darkness” is
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Based very loosely on one character created by Bram Stoker.
SEQUEL?	Third sequel in Hammer’s nine-movie cycle.
REMAKE?	There’s a 2013 film called DRACULA: THE DARK PRINCE, but it doesn’t seem to be related. Also seems to have nothing to do with John Carpenter's perpetually underrated PRINCE OF DARKNESS.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	England
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Vampire, Dracula
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Lee, probably Andrew Keir too. And of course, Terence Fisher, Jimmy Sangster, and a bunch of the Hammer regulars here.
NUDITY?	None
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	As always, there’s something sexual about the Count’s interest in women, but it’s not explicit.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No animals, not even a bat transformation or anything. Some asshole horses who are totally working for the count, though.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	None
POSSESSION?	Again, Drac uses his Mind Whammy, and we also learn a little more explicitly that “For reasons we cannot yet understand” there are certain humans who are doomed to be the vampire’s loyal servants.
CREEPY DOLLS?	No dolls
EVIL CULT?	There is again a passing mention of Dracula being the head of a “cult” of vampires, but again we see no evidence of this
MADNESS?	Thorley Walters as the Renfield stand-in  “Ludwig”
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Dracula turns from ashes to full human form, and then, subtly, from older to younger as he drinks blood.
VOYEURISM?	None
MORAL OF THE STORY	When someone tells you, “hey, vampires are real, but you’ll totally be OK if you go literally anywhere except this one specific castle in this one specific town,” why not just be extra-careful and adjust your vacation plans accordingly?