Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)

This is the sixth film in Hammer's Dracula series, and the last to take place in the Count's native time period (the next and last two, Dracula A.D 1972 and Satanic Rites of Dracula, both took place in (recent) modern times). This shift in time periods shows that by the time this flick came out, Hammer was desperate to shake up the formula. (Still, you have to admit it's a sight better than seeing Dracula In Space, but I guess we're just lucky Hammer missed out on that trend.) The weariness in the formula certainly shows here, despite a change of setting from the usual early modern European village setting in most of the Dracula films (indeed, most of Hammer's films in general) to a Victorian urban one. Mostly the signs come in the fact that this script just lacks the same enthusiasm that makes the earlier films in the series and Hammer's other products so enjoyable. True, Christopher Lee is in top form here and there's still some of what makes Hammer so successful around (such as their effective use of setting), but you can see that the problems that will fester in the series' less-than-stellar finale, Satanic Rites of Dracula, start to show up here.

The film revolves around a trio of middle-aged London aristocrats who compose a sort of 'Hellfire Club.' At least, that's what's implied. The worst any of them do is lie to their wife, chase their daughter around with a whip, and sit around looking bored as various prostitutes bounce and dance around them. In other words, nothing as cool as what Thomas Jefferson supposedly did in the historical Hellfire Club, with the mock Satanic rituals and the drunken orgies and all that. At any rate, one of the men, Hargood, has a daughter named Alice. Alice wants to date Paul (or skip straight to marrying him; I'm not even sure if the upper classes, or anybody, had dating in Victorian England), bou for some reason daddy hates the idea with a passion. Little does poor Alice or her worrying mother realize that the reason daddy doesn't go for it because Paul's dad, Paxton, is a member of the club too! After telling his wife he's going to go to the poor house to help out, Hargood meets up with Paxton and joins the third member of their club, Secker, at a hidden brothel run by a guy who's just flaming. And not flaming in the fun John Waters way, but flaming in the slightly creepy Richard Simmons way.

While there they become intrigued with a young wealthy scamp named Lord Courtley. Courtley, seeing that these gentlemen are amateurs at the whole "evil and decadence" game, promises to help them broaden their horizons. At his urging, they buy Dracula's cloak, ring, and blood (conveniently turned into powder form, no less!) from a bungling merchant who gathered Dracula's remains at the end of Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (as shown as the very beginning of this movie.) Curiously, the three men seem to know Dracula by name, implying that Dracula is at least a well-known legend in his own time (it's been years since I've seen any of the prequels other than Dracula, Prince of Darkness, so I can't say if this is something previously established.) Anyway, then they go off to an abandoned, desecrated abbey (it's only very vaguely implied, but I think it's supposed to be Carfax Abbey). In an authentically spooky scene, Courtney cuts open a vein and adds his own blood to the powder, which has been put in four goblets. After chanting and doing the usual Satanist bit, he urges them to drink, but, chickening out, they refuse unless he drinks first. He does so, has a nasty reaction, and dies a Hamlet-esque death. Like scared little Catholic school girls, the men run off and make a pact that they would never again talk about what happened that night. Meanwhile, though, Courtney's corpse goes through a transformation and turns into…a live Christopher Lee! Dracula mutters, "They have destroyed my servant. Now they will be destroyed." Thus, we have a film that can easily be retitled Dracula Knows What You Did Last Summer. (Laugh, damn you!)

As well and good as all this sounds, the script's weaknesses show up here in force. Namely, what the hell was Courtney thinking? With his constant references to Dracula as "lord" and "master" as well as Dracula's obvious knowledge of him, we know that Dracula isn't just something he read about in "Young British Satanists"quarterly. So it's pretty easy to assume that he'd at least know that drinking the boss' blood would be a really bad idea. Further, what was Courtney's purpose to begin with? He apparently wasn't trying to get the men to drink Dracula's blood to resurrect him, since that's what he ended up doing (and what he was about to do anyway, since he made a goblet of the stuff for himself as well.) He mentions making a pact with Satan and some such; did he just expect it would turn them into vampires or in some way give them some of Dracula's powers? It's never really explained. Then there's also Dracula's thirst for revenge, which doesn't really make that much sense because, well, technically Drac destroyed his own servant. The implication is that Dracula is enough of a vicious bastard to blame the guys despite everything, but even then it just brings you back to why Courtney didn't know better. We also have to wonder what would have happened if even only the three were to drink Dracula's blood. Would we then have three Christopher Lees running around? I can only imagine the goofy yet delightful horror-comedy romp that would emerge from that scenario…(Well, to steal yet another joke from "The Simpsons," I can at least envision a film titled Too Many Draculas with Christopher Lee/Dracula having a hilariously puzzled expression on the cover.) [Addendum: Since writing this review, I've read a couple of plot summaries to make sure I hadn't missed something that explained away this confusion, like maybe one of them was holding a gun to Courtney and I just didn't notice for some reason. One summary says that Dracula is revived then Courtney is killed by the men. Another said Courtney is beaten to death by them. Either there's some seriously reworked versions of this film floating around out there, people just wrote their summaries from scanning the back of the box, or I've somehow hallucinated away large chunks of the movie without any chemical agents besides caffeine. -Chad].

Dracula, who despite all his faults is always good on his word, begins right away. A drunk and guilt ridden Hargood chases Alice with a whip when he catches her coming back from a midnight rendeveuz with Paul, only for Alice to run into Dracula who hypnotizes her into bashing daddy's skull in with a shovel. One by one, Dracula goes after the other two, hypnotizing and then "semi-vampirizing" their respective kids into killing their own parents. The strange paternalness of Dracula's actions, implying that he viewed poor Courtney as a "son" (even despite the whole "taking over his body and reshaping it in his own image" thing) and thus considers having these fathers killed by their own children just compensation, makes this more than your usual villain-seeks-revenge plot. There's also the interesting if barely explored fact that Dracula never turns his victims here into vampires (he leaves Secker's son to be arrested and executed, kills Paxton's daughter Lucy after he's through with her, and abandons Alice), even after he's through carrying out his revenge through them. It's almost as if Dracula may view turning them into vampires as a sort of reward and so cheating him of his revenge in a sense.

Anyway, after Alice disappears and Hargood is found dead, Paul (remember him?) becomes determined to save his lady. After failing to get the police's interest and Secker is killed by his son, he finds that Secker left a letter about vampires and confessing what happened. Paul returns to the abbey early, un-desecrates everything, and manages to free Alice from Dracula's spell. Dracula is killed by…well, images of a Mass, supposedly invoked suddenly by Paul's fiddling around with the church (why it kills Dracula at that particular moment in the battle and why Dracula didn't relocate to some place not as potentially holy are both beyond me). And you thought the death by thorny bush at the end of Satanic Rites of Dracula was lame and too convenient.

Regardless of the many flaws, this is still a fairly enjoyable film. Part of the credit goes to the usual Hammer eye for good period scenery (this is also why the next two films didn't do as well; the 1970s has fewer backdrops to offer that are as nearly as gothic or impressive as the 1870s); the abbey where Dracula lurks in particular is quite atmospheric. There's also a few nice extraneous touches here and there, such as the before-his-time arrogant, uncoroporative cop Paul deals with and the bizarre passengers from the coach at the very beginning of the film.

However, Dracula-even when played by Christopher Lee-is only as good as his adversaries. As great and suiting as Christopher Lee usually is, especially here, he becomes much less intimidating and grandiose when pitted against characters as predictable and shallow as Paul and Alice. While seeing Alice morph into Dracula's evil slave was nice (the scene where she leads Lucy to her master like a lamb to the slaughter is almost a classic), she does little else but be the Juliet to Paul's obnoxious Romeo. There's even a couple of balcony scenes between the two for God's sake! So little time is spent exploring Paul or making him a convincing protagonist that when he and Dracula finally go at it, you just wonder where Peter Cushing is when you need him. It doesn't help Dracula's reputation that he can be fairly easily killed by an aristocratic pretty boy who takes a quick crash course on vampires, nor does it help the viewer's suspension of disbelief (even Dracula, Prince of Darkness had the sense to bring in a priest/vampire hunter to help things out.) Oh well, at least Christopher Lee's Dracula was spared the humiliation of being foiled by Abbot and Castello.