Sunday, April 1, 2012

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Peter Sasdy.


TAAASTE IT!  Looks like paper mache volcano lava, tastes like strawberry jam.

Three middle aged-men act like respectable, church-going fathers by day and by night take a hansom cab to the East End of London and party hard.  When they tire of this, they hook up with a disreputable nobleman who dabbles in the black arts and arranges to inject some new thrills into their secret society by resurrecting Dracula.  Dracula then goes after the families of the three men who brought him back to life -- and of course, their buxom daughters as well.

This is not a particularly well-constructed Hammer horror despite it having enough naked boobies to please all the subscribers to Nuts magazine.  After the deliciously hypocritical abusive father William Hargood is killed off, the film completely deflates.  There's not too many Dracula films where his victims are detestable slobs who should be destroyed, but this one does.  They should have saved Hargood for last, because none of his other comrades in the secret society had fleshed out characters and so were of little interest to anyone.   

Surly William Hargood, played by Geoffrey Keen, and Madeline Smith as giggly prostitute. 

The film's last half consists of young ladies running after Christopher Lee, who brushes them aside like the jaded rock star he is at this point in the Hammer trajectory.  Anthony Higgens (here billed as Anthony Corlan, and who bears a striking resemblance to Topher Grace) tries desperately to sort everything out and save his girlfriend.  A slack last half gives way to a terrible ending, in which Dracula gets rather overwhelmed by religious iconography.  Rumour has it Christopher Lee was extremely reluctant to make this one.  You'd think a movie that begins by having a mentally handicapped person throw a pushy salesman out of a moving carriage would be so much more exciting! 


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