It’s odd how some cinematic series start to dissipate after a while. As the series progresses, and budgets dwindle ever and ever further, the films themselves begin to vanish down an odd rabbit hole of changed continuities, fly-by-night distribution companies, and aging actors who are clearly only returning for a paycheck. And I’m not just talking about low-profile series like, say Puppet Master or The Amityville Horror. Even famed horror franchises like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fall prey to this franchise entropy.
The Hammer Dracula films, as we’ll explore in this third and final week of The Series Project devoted to them, also display this sort of dissolution into chaos. This is the week when we’ll abandon the series’ Victorian setting for the swinging youth scene of the 1970s, and eventually skew bafflingly into kung-fu.
This is not to say the films are bad. Indeed, Hammer has a great reputation for remaining classy and at least somewhat professional in their horror output. Or, to put it another way: Schlocky and lurid European horror films from the 1960s and 1970s with castles and hefty bosoms and classical monsters are always going to trump schlocky and lurid American slasher films with limp stories and nubile teens. That’s right. I said it. Come at me, bro.
The Hammer Dracula films have proven to be, overall, pretty solid horror entertainments. Despite how silly the material eventually skews (this week, we’ll be trekking far, far away from Bram Stoker), the classy actors and staid filmmaking keep the series grounded.
Yes, even through the weird-ass grooviness that is…
Dracula A.D. 1972 (dir. Alan Gibson, 1972)
a.k.a. Dracula Today
Drastic changes in setting, or some sort of new character gimmick, are usually signs of a series pandering desperately to fans. Dracula A.D. 1972 feels very pandering, and – with its hip music and hipster characters – is desperate to appeal to youngsters.
In a prologue, we see Dracula (Christopher Lee) get killed just beyond the very hallowed ground where Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) will be buried. It’s a relief to see Cushing back in the saddle, and the film begins with what this series could always use more of: Dracula and Van Helsing fighting. Dracula crumbles into ash, and a mysterious swain (Christopher Neame) collects the ashes in a vial. This is not the same red powder from Taste the Blood of Dracula, but it will serve the same function.
Fast-forward to 1972. After a 12-minute musical number from real-life California jam band Stoneground (performing a weird song about being an Alligator Man from the Alabama Bayou – – huh??), a group of hippies decide it would be fun to resurrect Dracula. Seriously. They do it for kicks. Neame (perhaps as a descendant of the ash-collector) is back as a character named Johnny Alucard, and he is friends with Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), the granddaughter of Prof. Van Helsing (Cushing), an identical descendant of our hero. Johnny is also buddies with a lithe babe named Laura played by Caroline Munro from Starcrash, Maniac, and The Spy who Loved Me.
Here’s what a badass Dracula is: When Johnny sacrifices Munro to bring him back to life after a century, his only response is “It was my will!”
The entire middle of the film is pretty dull, and is bogged down with exposition, punctuated by funky dance music. Cushing delivers his usual bouts of vampire exposition, explaining what a vampire is, how vampires work, and how they can be killed. Running water killed Dracula in Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and if running water is all that’s needed, then it was wise of Van Helsing to kill a vampire by pushing him into a common bathtub shower. Maybe that’s why we don’t see so many vampires in the age of modern plumbing. Showers are fatal to the poor saps.
Jessica falls into Dracula’s clutches (natch) and it’s up to Van Helsing to rescue her. Dracula, thankfully, has not acclimatized to the modern era; I think it would have been insufferable (or perhaps just too awesome) to see Dracula trying on 1970s pimp suits and affecting modern slang. No, he is still Dracula, still lives in a castle, and Lee is still imposing and authoritative in the role. Van Helsing eventually stabs Dracula with a silver knife, sprinkles holy water on his face, and lures him into a wooden stake booby trap.
I realize that I was missing the Dracula vs. Van Helsing fights, and it was great to have one back. And a good one at that. The bounding has returned. I also love Cushing as an actor; he takes his parts very seriously, and lends an urgent tone to the proceedings.
The next film is perhaps the worst in the series, and will be hard to track down.
