It was Hammer's follow-up to "The Curse of Frankenstein," reuniting director Terence Fisher, scenarist Jimmy Sangster, and actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. (Supporting player Valerie Gaunt also reappears.) But it's far better than "The Curse of Frankenstein;" the script is much better structured, there's more suspense, more surprises, and an even better performance by Cushing. The film is almost compellingly watchable, condensing the events of Bram Stoker's novel into 81 swiftly-paced minutes. The only defect is a brief comedy scene near the end; an early mostly humorous scene featuring Miles Malleson actually works to further the plot. And it does have a plot, though not much like Stoker's.
Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) arrives in a distant area of Europe (despite character names, the whole thing takes place in adjacent European countries) seeking Castle Dracula, where he is to begin work as a librarian for Count Dracula. But we understand from his voice-over diary that he has something else in mind.
when he later tries to deal with Dracula, Harker comes to a bad and off-screen end.
Later, we meet his associate, Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), a quiet, authoritative man who's made it his life's work to track down and destroy vampires. He and Harker have come to believe that Dracula is the central figure in the vampire mythos. We also meet Lucy, Mina Holmwood (Melissa Stribling), and Mina's husband Arthur (Michael Gough), Lucy's brother. Having returned from a dismaying visit to Dracula's castle -- where he's almost run down by a hearse speeding away, carrying a white coffin -- Van Helsing informs them of Harker's death, but will not explain the circumstances. However, when Lucy comes down with
what's diagnosed as incurable anemia, Van Helsing's interest is seriously aroused. Still, the obdurate Arthur will not listen to his tales of the Undead. We already know that Lucy has been nocturnally visited by Count Dracula (in a pair of eerie, sexy-romantic and scary sequences), and that she's well on the way to becoming a vampire, despite transfusions, garlic and crosses. (She disposes of them.) When she dies, at last, Arthur is convinced, and he and Van Helsing work together to try to protect Mina from the attentions of the Count.
However, they cannot locate where he has hidden the coffin he must return to every sunrise, and Mina begins to grow pale....
In "The Curse of Frankenstein," even though he played Frankenstein's Monster, Christopher Lee had what amounted to a supporting role. But here, though often off-screen, he shares the lead with Peter Cushing. (In fact, in England the film was called "Dracula.") He's superb as Dracula, one of his best horror movie performances; he's intelligent but also a supernatural, demonic force. (His facial expressions in the library fights that open and close the film are very effective, even frightening.) He sweeps down cobblestone walks and up flights of stairs, two steps at a time (he seems to be floating). When he attacks women, it's partly out of lust for blood, and partly out of plain old lust. Lee liked to say he was presenting "the loneliness of evil," but Dracula seems very content to be a rapacious vampire, and not lonely at all.
"Horror of Dracula" was a relatively low-budget movie, as was "The Curse of Frankenstein," but Bernard Robinson's sets seem spacious and expensive. The interiors of Castle Dracula are especially impressive, with some Byzantine design elements (such as free-standing arches), balconies without railings, and a seemingly huge library. Despite the fact that there are only a few exterior scenes, "Horror of Dracula" seems expansive, even airy at times.
The first scene in the library, when Dracula enters with a leering, blood-smeared face, is one of the greatest and most influential shock scenes in movie history. Audiences leaped when he hissed his challenge, but the challenge was really to moviemakers: let's see you jokers top THIS. "The Curse of Frankenstein" opened a door; "Horror of Dracula" went through the door with a confrontational confidence. There had never been a vampire movie remotely like this before, and audiences the world over were ready for it.
Horror movies changed direction after "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Horror of Dracula" the next year. Not only were now both Cushing AND Lee established as horror stars and Hammer as a pre-eminent horror studio, but the Grand Guignol horror elements of both films were an affront and a challenge. As writer David Pirie has pointed out, sometimes more IS more; classically, not showing the horrifying elements in horror movies was the way to go, and horror movies were made in the visual style of German cinema of the 1920s. But Hammer movies were emphatically mid-twentieth century, vividly gruesome, packed with energy and sex, and altogether something different. The changes they began have never faded away; horror movies today would not be what they are without the impact of Hammer. (Bill Warren)
In Dracula, the Count was a horrific monster who had terrorized Europe for over five centuries. Starting here, Dracula would get revived, run around for a week or two, vampirize one or two people, and then get knocked off again. This, as you’d imagine, tended to make him look rather ineffectual. By the last Hammer Dracula film, Dracula and the Seven Golden Vampires, the Count (now played briefly by Lee look-alike John Forbes-Robertson) materialized and then pretty much dispatched himself in the space of perhaps a
minute.
Unlike the first film, Dracula Prince of Darkness was shot in a widescreen format. Hence the climax of the earlier picture is framed to disguise this. We then continue to a funeral procession, carrying the body of a buxom young woman (this is a Hammer film) through the woods. Soon the woman’s mother appears, pleading with the attending priest to give her daughter a Christian burial. The locals are superstitious, however, and plan to stake and burn the body, lest she return as a vampire. They are interrupted by the crack of a rifle,
announcing our protagonist, Father Sandor.
We now cut to two English brothers and their wives, traveling through Hammer’s generic, vaguely 19th Century Middle Europe. The older, stuffier couple is Alan and Helen. Helen is one of those who seem to live in a perpetual state of disapproval. The younger pair are the livelier Charles and Diana (!), obviously destined to be our leads. Unsurprisingly, we are introduced to these characters in a small village tavern, a favorite locale of Hammer Studio pictures. Here Father Sandor meets our leads. He comes in for a drink to fortify against the cold, another clue that he’s more earthy and knowledgeable than pious (much to Helen’s
patent disapproval). Sandor’s knowing and scornful reaction to the cloves of garlic decorating the tavern is a small but amusing touch. He rudely informs the locals that such precautions are no longer necessary, alluding to the Count’s current state of rest in a meaningfully oblique fashion. Sandor’s presence here is a nice touch. It allows him to sternly suggest that they skirt the area around Castle Dracula (advice obviously doomed to be ignored), as well as explaining why the survivors will later seek out his protection.
Dracula. (This leads to one of the highlights of Christopher Lee’s commentary. Seeing a hand emerge from the Count’s stone coffin, Lee notes with surprise that it’s his own. "I’ve been denying doing that bit for years," he admits.) The survivors ultimately manage to escape the Castle, and seek refuge with Father Sandor. Now the battle begins to end Dracula’s reign forever…
Such is the charisma of Christopher Lee that he dominates the film despite two evident drawbacks. First, he’s on screen for well under ten minutes. This tended to be true in all his Hammer Dracula movies. Lee was always one of the more expensive elements in the films’ budgets, and his participation was kept to a bare minimum. In order to facilitate this, Dracula’s resurrection here doesn’t even occur until the film is basically half over. Moreover, or so the story goes, Lee found the dialog for his character so ridiculous that he supposedly refused to speak it. (Lee repeats this assertion on the film’s commentary track.) Therefore the Count is restricted to guttural, animalistic utterances. One doubts that the producers complained overmuch, as this undoubtedly further reduced the amount of time necessary to get Lee’s scenes in the can. Despite this, though, Dracula’s evil presence is palpable throughout the proceedings.
take a moment to mention Terence Fisher, Hammer’s best director. His work here is typically splendid, and he has a real handle on action sequences. Also of note is the superb music of James Bernard, including heavy usage of his classic ‘Dracula’ theme.
The script ranges from serviceable to inspired, particularly in the grisly ritual used to reanimate the Count. The manner in which Dracula again meets his temporary demise here is also refreshingly novel. Meanwhile, the characters, in a bracing change from most recent horror flicks, are occasionally foolish -- and then only because, unlike us, they don’t know that they’re in a horror picture -- but not stupid. Well, OK, Diana’s pretty dumb, falling as she does for the same ploy twice, but maybe she’s just supposed to be scatterbrained. And if the characterizations something appear rote, they yet evince more depth than in most horror flicks.
Helen, for instance, might be dismissed purely as a shrew. Still, we’d do well to remember that life during this period (somewhere in the late 1800s, I’d guess) was a lot more uncertain than it is today. Then, if misfortune struck, you were pretty much screwed. No social safety net to catch folks then. Hence, Helen may be an alarmist, but with rather more reason than we might tend to give her credit for. Ironically, it may be her constant complaining that causes the others to ignore her when she’s actually on to something. It’s also interesting that while Helen sniffs at Sandor’s manner, she’s yet the most intent on obeying his injunction regarding Dracula’s Castle. The others might treat Sandor in a more friendly manner, but they still more or less laugh off his warning as faintly quaint. Also not to be overlooked is the obvious and genuine affection between Helen and Alan, no matter how long-suffering he appears. Meanwhile, the repressed Helen’s transformation into a sensuous vampire woman is one of the hallmark characterizations in vampire cinema, influencing films yet made today.
ramifications of their actions rubbed in their faces.
The dialog is fairly strong for this kind of picture. I’m particularly fond of the line Klove uses when asked if anyone now holds the Count’s title. "My master died without issue – in the accepted sense of the term," he dryly notes. Actually, Klove appears to quite enjoy playing with his doomed guests. Referring to the prepared dinner awaiting the foursome at the Castle, he announces that "My master’s hospitality is renowned." Indeed. (Ken Begg)
Fourth in the series and one of the last of Hammer's 60s gothics before the 70s melt-down, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave tries to stay true to the tone of the first instalment, but has the nagging problem of justifying the repetition of old ideas without much in the way of novelty. Christopher Lee has more screen time but his stock functions are boring, and the leisurely plot merely sets up another priest-vs.-evil opposition without any interesting characters. The best things about this one are the color camerawork and the music by Bray veterans Arthur Grant and James Bernard respectively. And to a lesser extent the
beautiful Veronica Carlson, one of Count Dracula's most lovely victims. Director Freddie Francis has been quoted as saying that he thought of the film as a romance, and that the Dracula character was merely a "fly in the ointment."
Anyone who made fun of the pale attempts at series continuity in the old Universal monster movies has to wince at the opening of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Dracula's castle has moved to the top of a mountain without the access of any kind of road, and the frozen moat that imprisoned Chris Lee at the conclusion of Dracula Prince of Darkness is now a stream barely big enough for the actor to lie down in. It was at this point that Lee started doing Dracula films at the rate of one a year, after swearing not to repeat the career-numbing role.
This is also the first non-Terence Fisher Hammer Dracula picture. It's one of Freddie Francis' better directorial jobs, but it lacks the tension and dynamism that Fisher habitually brought to equally weak scripts. Perhaps Fisher's overall reputation was enhanced by his lesser involvement as the Hammer empire wound down - his earlier pictures were more clear-cut and less commercially confused. It's been widely reported that Fisher was slated to direct the film until he wandered into traffic while intoxicated.
The original Horror of Dracula wasn't a big production, but its settings had a grand quality, with considerable atmosphere. The design of this new film seems stuck in some older tradition, like a marching band repeating a tune that it's played far too often. Everything is a cheat, including the town streets made of a building front and a blurry corner in the foreground. Nothing has much character; elaborate sets like the castle exterior have a 40s artificiality to them, augmented by some rather good matte paintings. The silliest idea is a rooftop path that connects the attic windows of the two young lovers. It's a clever bit of set design that just draws attention to its own unlikelihood. Strolling catatonic on the far-too narrow roof-edges, Veronica Carlson reminds us of Olive Oyl in the Popeye Cartoon “Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking?”
Thematically, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave dabbles with intolerance and Christian discovery. Suitor Paul (Barry Andrews, introduced bare-chested and looking almost identical to Roger Daltrey of The Who) is a worthy match for sweet Maria, who lives by the charity of her Uncle, the Monsignor. But when he admits he's an atheist, he's ordered out of the house. Thus intolearance forces young lovers to sneak around in shadows where demons like Dracula hide out. Only at the point of dying does the Monsignor call on Paul for help, atheist or not. The film finishes with the groaningly literal gesture of Paul having found his faith
through trial by vampire. The reversal is without resonance - it doesn't take much character depth to believe in God after witnessing bonafide devils and heavenly miracles.
imperiously, bare his fangs with discreet menace. As in many Hammer films, we wait forever for the characters to find out what we already know - once the Monsignor realizes that Dracula has revived, he's immediately effective against him. Dracula doesn't seem very powerful when he can't show his face and can only pick on the weak and the helpless.
The conclusion finds Lee in his first impalement gag, struggling with the giant crucifix rammed through him like Francis Lederer in The Return of Dracula. For the first time, he actually looks silly, squirming and gesticulating wildly. I saw Dracula Has Risen from the Grave at least twice in 1969 with audiences that really wanted to like it - they cheered at every Lee appearance, especially when his stunt double does that nice leap off a balcony. But they sat in a stupor through most of the picture waiting for interesting things to happen, and by the finale had no patience left.
Indicative of how culturally lost Hammer was at this time is the total lack of story context. Almost nobody exists except the main characters, and the few excursions to the pub are there almost solely to highlight cheap bosom jokes. Hammer was famous for their beautiful starlets, a reputation that played as a counterpoint to the 007 Bond girls. The self-conscious 'window dressing' here just shows that the filmmakers think that to make a Hammer hit they only need to fill out a checklist of content requirements - blood, check, fangs, check, bosoms, check check. Even the sweet character of Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper is enlisted to provide another decorative & demeaning cleavage moment. If Hammer was infantile
about female bodies here, they only got worse when the series went in for nudity two years later in The Vampire Lovers. (Glenn Erickson)
Three Victorian men who lead upstanding and moralistic lives, sneak out to a brothel on the pretext of conducting charity work. Their pleasure is interrupted by the libertine Lord Courtley who offers to show them greater pleasures. He takes them to an antique shop where he gets them to purchase Dracula's cape, signet ring and a vial of his powdered blood. In an abandoned church he conducts a ceremony but when he asks them to drink the blood, they are disgusted. Drinking it himself, he collapses. They kick and beat him to death and then flee the scene. But Courtley's spilt blood revives Dracula who swears vengeance on them for killing his disciple. Dracula then seduces each of their children, making them vampires and turning them against their fathers.
Sasdy immediately turns this Dracula into a different type of Hammer film. He eschews the rich and florid colours that Terence Fisher gave the Hammer film and what has been typified as 'the Hammer look', in favour of a grittier more realistic period Victoriana. The sets are darker instead of being brightly lit to show all there is on display. Virtually all Hammer films tap it into a a sense of repression emerging from beneath the veneer of British society, where Dracula acts as a metaphorical force to tear polite convention apart before being dispatched. And in the opening minutes of Taste Sasdy makes memorable contrast between Geoffrey Keen beating daughter Linda Hayden for smiling at a boy in church and then heading off to a West End brothel under the guise of 'doing charity work'. Although the great difference between Sasdy and Terence Fisher and the sense of Victorian repression that exists in the likes of his Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958) and Dracula - Prince of Darkness (1966) is that Fisher invariably takes the side of society and sees the vampire hunters quashing the emergence of repressed sensuality as just and honourable, whereas for Sasdy Dracula is not so much a force that catalyses repression as one that exposes hypocrisy behind the veneer of virtue that Fisher's vampire hunters defend. For Fisher the society is just and there is a sigh of relief as the transgressive is finally banished, for Sasdy the status quo is rent asunder and revealed as false.
But the film doesn't always work - as usual with the Hammer Dracula sequels the script has difficulty coming up with worthwhile motivation for Dracula. The vengeance is not well connected - it does seem overly generous of Dracula to swear vengeance for Courtley's murder, having not even met Courtley. And considering that Courtley's death was necessary for him to be resurrected it does seem slightly irrational of Dracula to then swear vengeance on Courtley's murderers. Further it makes the film into something different. It now becomes a film about vengeance rather than one about vampirism. Throughout the focus is on Dracula corrupting the children and turning them against their parents and in fact the usual business of blood-letting hardly even figures at all. (Richard Scheib)
No, I am not making that up. Once revived, he doesn't seem to do very much, although local villagers, led by a landlord (Hammer mainstay Michael Ripper), are very upset. They storm the castle, beat up Dracula's human servant Klove (Patrick Troughton, who was Dr. Who for three years), and burn the castle. (Which, afterward, seems none the worse for the blaze.)
seen Paul smash through a border gate -- and they, too, encounter the grumpy landlord, a frightened priest (Michael Gwynn) and, finally, Dracula himself.
The movie overuses the bat props, which aren't good, but no worse than those in other films. Scars of Dracula is, in fact, one of the most brutal Hammer movies; apparently just to justify the title, there's a hard-to-watch scene of Lee applying a red-hot sword to Troughton's back. Plus lots of bat attacks. (Bill Warren)
Although it isn’t the best of the Hammer Film series and is extremely dated by today’s standards, Dracula A.D. 1972 is still worth watching (specially if you are a horror fan) thanks to the performances of screen legends Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
The film marked the sixth time Lee donned the cape to play the famous vampire Dracula, and featured Cushing returning to his role as Dracula’s enemy Van Helsing- although this time he plays a descendent of the vampire hunter. The movie’s actual plot is a bit corny with its use of ‘70’s lingo, fashion and music. It is also a departure from the period feel of the other Hammer Dracula/vampire films that has made the studio famous.
The movie begins in 1800s with Dracula and Van Helsing in a fight to the death on a runaway carriage. After the two are thrown to the ground, Van Helsing finds the vampire impaled on a wagon wheel, and quickly dies from his own injuries.
With Dracula A.D. 1972, Hammer Films brought Count Dracula into the 1970s, but severed the links with their earlier Dracula series -- A.D. 1972 played as though none of the earlier films even existed, although Christopher Lee again played Dracula, and Peter Cushing his nemesis, Dr. Van Helsing. The Satanic Rites of Dracula was the only real sequel to A.D. 72, but it's considerably better.
At least, it is in this cut. The movie was originally released in the United States in an altered and shortened version under the title Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride. Anchor Bay is to be thanked for bringing the film to the States for the first time in its original form.
Don Houghton's script begins without a trace of Dracula: we see hooded cultists attending a bloody rite, witnessed by a wounded agent for the government, who escapes and later dies. He photographed the principal attendees, however, and his pictures reveal four major figures in British society, including scientist Dr. Keeley (Freddie Jones). Because of the occult elements, Inspector Murray (Michael Coles) and his assistant Torrence (William Franklyn) consult Dr. Lorrimer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). And because of the emphasis on blood, and because the sacrificial victim seemed to revive from the dead (as reported in the
tape the agent made before dying), Van Helsing suspects that Count Dracula may live again.
When Van Helsing meets with his old friend Keeley, he's shocked to learn that the scientist has, apparently under outside compulsion, created a new strain of bubonic plague bacillus, one so virulent that it could wipe out humanity. Behind it all, looms the shadowy, Howard Hughes-like figure of reclusive billionaire D.D. Denham.
It's not giving much away to reveal that Denham is Dracula, who, Van Helsing surmises, is weary of centuries of life, and just longs for death -- but he's such a colossal egoist that he wants to bring the world down around him, to end up striding through the dead like a conquering demon. This motivation for Dracula is unique in horror movies, and gives Satanic Rites an unexpectedly mordant and thoughtful edge.
Furthermore, it's the only one of all the Hammer Dracula movies that allows Cushing and Lee to have an actual dialog as Van Helsing and Dracula. The climax itself is somewhat unsatisfying, involving a hawthorne bush (to which, we now learn, vampires are vulnerable), and simply going on too long. But the confrontation scenes are well-staged, beginning with Dracula's intention of claiming Van Helsing's niece as his final "bride," continuing through the plague breaking loose, explosions and fire. The scene of Dracula following Van Helsing through the woods is well-shot by Brian Probyn, although it goes on too long.
The Satanic Rites of Dracula isn't as good as the best of the previous Hammer Draculas, but it's well-made, with an unusual plot, and unlike most of the others, provides plenty for Christopher Lee to do, even if he isn't in the film much until the very end. (Bill Warren)
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