The Satanic Rites of Dracula (dir. Alan Gibson, 1973)
a.k.a. Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride
Although finding The Satanic Rites of Dracula may not be a high priority to anyone but a completist like me. The film is pretty damn boring. It still has Christopher Lee as Dracula, and Peter Cushing returns as yet another iteration of Van Helsing (perhaps this is the twin brother of the Van Helsing from Dracula A.D. 1972), but that’s not enough to save this film from its slow pace and plodding exposition. This is the first film in the series that hasn’t been over-designed, and the interiors are now all boring offices and under-decorated apartments. The films to date have all been lavish and gorgeous. This one is flat and boring.
The story is also a little hard to follow. So there are some suburban Satanists who have been killing and resurrecting topless babes to appease Satan. You would assume that they are the ones who will resurrect Dracula, but Dracula was resurrected before this movie began. Dracula, indeed, has been spending the last few years building up some sort of business empire that is, uh, working on a special kind of Satanic bacteria. Dracula, sick and tired of having to deal with humans, has decided to bring about the effing apocalypse.
Peter Cushing has a cool monologue about how Dracula thinks, and how bringing about the apocalypse may be Dracula’s own subtle way of committing suicide; his death is always temporary anyway, so the only way to assure his own death would be to get rid of his own food supply, i.e. all human beings.
There are a few scenes of foxy babes in vampire robes, and Joanna Lumley appears. Freddie Jones (the twitchy guy from David Lynch’s movies – the one who gave that weird chipmunk-voiced line about diseased animals in Wild at Heart) gives a twitchy speech about Dracula. Peter Cushing confronts Dracula in an office, and Dracula tries to pass himself off as a human… by imitating Bela Lugosi! Maybe that’s Dracula’s version of a double bluff.
It’s also established that the same thorny plant that was used to make Jesus Christ’s crown of thorns can kill Dracula, and Dracula is lured into said plant at the film’s end.
It’s a slow-moving, boring mish-mash of Dracula tropes only kept afloat by the two leads. Christopher Lee reportedly hated most of these movies, as he hated being typecast as the monster. Occasionally, Lee’s boredom with the material shows. Cushing, on the other hand, always sells the exposition, and clearly liked making these movies more.
Indeed, Cushing would appear in one more of these, although without Lee. Some people consider this final film not to be canon, as it differs so wildly in tone and genre from any of the previous films. Cushing’s presence, however, cements this ninth film as canon.
