Taste the Blood of Dracula ** (1970, Christopher Lee, Ralph Bates, Geoffrey Keen, Gwen Watford) – Classic Movie Review 1735

Director Peter Sasdy’s 1970 horror thriller Taste the Blood of Dracula is the fourth in the famous British Hammer Films Dracula series with Christopher Lee, a watchable follow-up to 1968’s Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.

This time, despite the shedding of plenty of blood, a brothel scene and gratuitous topless nudity, it is a fairly mild dose of hammy Hammer horror. But Ralph Bates adds a touch of class in a suitably grave performance as one of Count Dracula’s servants, Lord Courtley, a Satanist who convinces a trio of distinguished pleasure-seeking middle-aged Victorian businessmen (Geoffrey Keen, Peter Sallis, John Carson as William Hargood, Samuel Paxton and Jonathon Secker) visiting the local brothel to take decadent pleasure in some blood drinking.

Lord Courtley takes the three men to the Cafe Royal and claims he can give them power and pleasure if they join him in a ritual to recreate his dead master, but first they must buy Dracula’s ring, cloak, brooch and dried blood from a businessman named Weller (Roy Kinnear).

The three meet Courtley at a rundown abandoned church to partake in a night-time Devil-worshipping ceremony, during which he puts the dried blood into goblets and mixes it with drops of his own blood, ordering the men to drink. When the trio get upset and refuse, he drinks the blood himself, screams and falls to the ground. The three kick and beat him to death and flee. But the Satanic rites restore the Count to life and he lives again in the guise of Christopher Lee. Courtley’s body transforms into Dracula, who vows that those who have killed his servant will be destroyed. Unfortunately, the Count then ensures that the sons and daughters of the men exact his awful revenge by getting them to kill their fathers.

Dracula begins his revenge with Hargood, takes control of his daughter Alice (Linda Hayden)’s mind via hypnosis, picking up a shovel and killing Hargood. Alice tells Paxton’s daughter Lucy (Isla Blair) to meet her that night. They enter the abandoned church where Alice introduces her to the dark figure of Dracula, who turns her into a vampire.

Alice’s boyfriend Paul (Anthony Corlan), Paxton’s son makes his way to the abandoned church to fight the vampire and save Alice.

Alas, Lee’s fourth role for Hammer Films as the vampire Count is virtually an extended cameo appearance and the film needs more of his powerful presence. But writer Anthony Hinds pens some ingenious stuff to extend the story into yet another sequel, though he somehow manages to make Dracula too sympathetic and gentlemanly for the character to seem sufficiently scary,

However, Lee still plenty of authority and presence, and the revenge killing sequences pack considerable punch. It is a pity that Dracula isn’t actually doing the killings rather than just encouraging them and that there is some rather uninspired, characterless direction from debut director Sasdy.

Geoffrey Keen, Gwen Watford, Linda Hayden, Peter Sallis (as one of the three businessmen), Anthony Corlan (aka Anthony Higgins), John Carson, Isla Blair, Martin Jarvis, Roy Kinnear, Michael Ripper, Russell Hunter, Peter May, Keith Marsh, Shirley Jaffe, Reginald Barratt and Madeleine Smith are also in the astonishingly classy cast. They are good actors but there is not a lot they can do with this script.

The problem here is that the film was written without Dracula since Hammer intended to replace the reluctant Christopher Lee with Ralph Bates’s Lord Courtley character. But Warner Bros Pictures refused to release the film if it lacked Dracula, and Hammer somehow convinced Lee to return, with Dracula replacing the resurrected Courtley. This unfortunately results in a very muddled storyline that doesn’t really make a lot of satisfactory sense. It also put paid to the scene where Lucy bites her fiancé Secker’s son Jeremy (Martin Jarvis), who then becomes a vampire. This scene was filmed but not used, probably to avoid the confusing introduction of a third vampire in the revamped plot.

[Spoiler alert] And there is another big problem in a lame and unsatisfactory ending, with Dracula surrounded by crosses, hearing the Lord’s Prayer recited in Latin, dazed by the power of the newly re-sanctified church, then falling onto the altar and dissolving into bloody dust. It looks good, and sounds good in description, but it is totally weak and unsatisfying, particularly after Dracula’s pathetic attempts to throw killer objects at Paul and Alice, missing by a mile. And that is what this ending does too, as well as the film too, really.

The scenes of the men’s visit to the brothel were heavily cut on the film’s original release (now restored).

Hammer released Taste the Blood of Dracula in a double bill with Crescendo.

It is followed by The Scars of Dracula, also 1970.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1735

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/