Terence Young and Jimmy Sangster are the director and writer best associated with Hammer; Freddie Francis and Tony Hinds (John Elder) would probably be next on the list. These two were entrusted with the job of the Dracula franchise, Hammer’s most lucrative, and they made a fair fist of it.
This starts with the discovery of a dead girl hanging upside down in a church bell (a great image); her death is attributed to Dracula so this presumably takes place some time before Dracula’s death in Dracula Prince of Darkness. Then we go to some time later; although Drac is dead in the ice the townspeople are still feeling shaky about the whole vampire thing, so a well meaning monsignor decides to exorcise Drac’s spirit… and ends up bringing him back from the dead. And Dracula decides that instead of thanking the monsignor, he actually wants revenge. That doesn’t make sense, but then neither does a lot of things in this film.
As Dennis Meikle pointed out in his book on Hammer, Hinds/Elder doesn’t just shift the goalposts of vampire rules, he removes them altogether: a stake through the heart on it’s own isn’t enough to kill a vampire, vampires can be brought back by exorcism, etc.
There is still a lot to enjoy: the production design is excellent as ever; the visuals are passionate, with a particular leaning towards red; there is a great opening title sequence; a very sex moment where Veronica Carlson (very sweet and pretty) kneels in front of Dracula and willingly offers her neck up to him (you always wonder what the sex live of Dracula heroines are after the film when they have to root their less supernatural boyfriends); a great gory climax with Dracula being impaled by a cross as a priest performs last rites (a new requirement to kill him, apparently).
Barry Andrews is a different sort of juvenile lead – not only is he objectified like a, well, Hammer starlet (his first scene he goes shirtless), he’s also given a decent character to play (a know-all atheist who finds faith fighting vampires). I don’t know how sick of the series Christopher Lee was at this stage, but he has a real air of contempt about him – which suits him dealing with the dopey characters here. Lee aside, the elder actors aren’t particularly memorable (the quisling priest is distractingly bald – you probably need to see it to get what I’m talking about).
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