Hammer Dracula: Vampires As They Were Meant To Be

I’m getting into a horror movie vibe as Halloween fast approaches. I dug out some of my Hammer movies on DVD and decided to watch a couple of their Dracula movies. When Hammer started doing reinventions of popular Universal classic monsters in the 60's, Dracula became their most popular character with audiences demanding more Christopher Lee as the dreaded Count in movie after movie (depending on who you ask, there are about 9 Dracula movies – not all of them feature Dracula or Christopher Lee though). The two I decided to watch were Dracula Has Risen From the Grave and Taste the Blood of Dracula.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is the fourth in the Hammer Dracula series, after Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula), Brides of Dracula in which Christopher Lee did not appear, and Dracula: Prince of Darkness where Christopher Lee does appear as the Count, but does not speak. In Risen From the Grave, Christopher Lee does speak. This film features one of my favourite vampire hunters, Rupert Davies as the Monsignor. His authoritative facial expressions are awesome. You can believe that he’s this virtuous man of god that fears no devil as long as his faith is strong.

After Dracula desecrates a church by committing murder there, the Monsignor investigates and sees that everybody stays away from the church. When he asks the villagers if Dracula is dead, they’re not sure, so he goes to investigate Drac’s castle with a drunken priest. But when the priest panics, runs away and falls onto a frozen moat, he bleeds into the cracks of the ice where Dracula happens to be frozen, encased in the ice. Dracula tastes some of the blood and, well, you get the picture. I liked this one, the Monsignor is cool, especially with that giant, golden cross strapped to his back (on which Dracula is empaled in the end).


In Taste the Blood of Dracula, an antiques dealer is shown to have witnessed the impaling death of Dracula at the end of Risen. He collects Dracula’s cape and his blood, which has been turned into powder. Three foolish, rich, old men looking for a thrill are coaxed by a rich, spoiled devil worshipper into buying these Dracula items. He leads them into a ritual to bring Dracula back, but the three bolt in fear at last second, jeopardizing the ritual. The servant dies as Dracula is reborn (Christopher Lee again). Dismayed by the death of his servant, Dracula swears vengeance upon the three men and sets about killing them one by one, biting a couple other girls so they can do some of his evil bidding.

This one is cool. It has a shovel death, some classic Dracula-hypnotizing-girls action, great shots of Lee in the cape coming out of shadows or silhouette, and a lot of good Lee dialogue, delivered in that great menace which made him famous in the role. Whenever he kills one of the men, he snarls “The First!” or “The Second!” and keeps a tally. Dracula is defeated, while fighting the heroic couple of the story high up in a church, by backing into a stained glass window depicting a cross (oops!) and falling, dissolving into dust. This was followed by Scars of Dracula, which I don’t have, Dracula A.D. 1972 (catapulting Dracula into the “modern day” at the time, instead of Victorian England where the other movies took place), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (where Dracula is still in the 70’s and is CEO of a corporation that is secretly funding a satanic cult determined to wipe out all life on earth), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (an interesting movie taking place in the 1800’s again where China is battling their own vampire plague lead by 7 golden vampires. The Chinese recruit Van Helsing (Peter Cushing reprising his role from earlier Hammer Dracula movies). But Van Helsing soon discovers that the lead Golden Vampire is possessed by none other than the spirit of his old nemesis Dracula.).

Anyway, these old Hammer pictures can be a little quaint looking nowadays, but I still love them. They're classic and the Dracula movies, especially, really outlined the character as this horrible concentration of evil and plague upon the world that can spread easily, moreso than the Universal movies (though I love the Universals too). And Christopher Lee was a great Dracula. This ain't no romatic, teen dream vampire. Dracula would kill your family and your dog with no hesitation or qualm. He's pure evil, as it should be.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave 3.5/5

Taste the Blood of Dracula 3.5/5

-Deceptisean