Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to the title character in Dracula A.D. 1972, released by the UK’s Hammer Films in the title year.
This was Hammer’s attempt to give a “mod” spin to their Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Dracula series. It opens in 1872 (long before the 1897 date of the Stoker novel) with Van Helsing (Cushing) & Dracula (Lee) fighting it out again on an out-of-control carriage. It ends badly for both of them—the Count meets the business end of a broken wheel spoke.
But a century later, after the opening credits, a Drac disciple with the rock-star-like name of Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame, looking insufferably pouty & Byronic) leads a group of thrill-seeking Chelsea hippies in an unholy ceremony in the ruin of a church, & succeeds in re-integrating the vampire prince, who is particularly ungrateful & entitled about it: When his young benefactor says “I summoned you,” he snaps “It was my will.” Typical freakin’ aristocrat.
I watched this for the first time in decades this past weekend, & was struck by how very little Lee was given to do in the film—with the title, one might hope for psychedelic party scenes of the Count mingling with the Mods, but except for the fight in the prologue, Lee, who’s top-billed, spends all of his brief footage in the wrecked church—to which Johnny A. dutifully delivers him such delectable snacks as Caroline Munro, Marsha Hunt & Stephanie Beacham, in return for an equal lack of gratitude—& speaks only a handful of lines. Cushing, as a modern Van Helsing, does the expository heavy lifting.
All that being said, the film is fun early-‘70s artifact, & it features an appearance by the American rock ensemble Stoneground. They perform, in an hilarious scene early on, at an upper-crust party that’s been crashed by decadent hippies, to the elaborate scandalized horror of the guests.
In Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Lee doesn't speak at all, but just hisses. He claims that this was because the dialogue was so bad he refused to say any of the lines, but the screenwriter claims he wrote it without dialogue for Dracula.
ReplyDeleteHa, yeah, I remember reading about the discrepancy--I remember Jimmy Sangster disputing Lee's claim by saying that he designed the script that way on the grounds that "Vampires don't chat." I like that movie, but it always seemed strange to me that you'd hire Lee & not avail yourself of that beautiful voice. Still, I'd tend to believe Sangster's account, especially since Lee was reportedly very annoyed that he had no lines as The Monster in "Curse of Frankenstein."
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