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.
(see also: Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN series)
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