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 It's a "horror-packed" film as Christopher Lee again stars as Count Dracula.
This time the setting is London in the 1970s. Dracula has come up with a new
and improved version of bubonic plague that he and his "devil-worshipping
disciples plan to release against the population of Earth." Dr. Van Helsing
again is there to try and stop the "fiendish Dracula." Peter Cushing plays the
"dedicated professor." They list off that this movie includes "vampires,
supernatural forces and wild satanic rituals." 1974, 87 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit to being something
less than a real fan. I know there's an Anchor Bay edition out of this film
and it costs between twenty-five or thirty dollars. There's also a Diamond
Entertainment edition of this film and it costs something like six or seven
bucks. You hardcore types out there are probably more than willing to shell
out the extra bucks for Anchor Bay's superior packaging and extras (depending
on the film). I like to think that Diamond caters to those of us in the
"budget" category of movies that don't mind Diamond's dubious right to actually
sell these things (heck, you can buy them on amazon.com, so I'll let Anchor Bay
and Diamond's legal beagles fight it out over whether somebody is stomping
someone's copyright or whatever). All I know is that I remember renting The
Satanic Rites of Dracula on video a long time ago and thinking that it was a
mostly forgettable affair about Dracula and bubonic plague. The idea that I
could now own this on DVD was a lot more attractive when I figured out that it
would be at least twenty bucks cheaper than it could have been. Some of you
may question why I would already buy a copy of a movie that I've already seen
and didn't particularly care for. To those of you, I would say you can never
have
too many DVDs that you watch only once and despise. I mean, without those DVDs
(like Cannibal Ferox , Fando & Lis, and The Dunwich Horror ) you wouldn't have much of a collection would you? Now you may notice that
Diamond Entertainment has chosen to call their release of The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Count Dracula and his Vampire Brides. This is the idiotic name given the movie when it was released in the States
years ago. It isn't the real name, so it won't be reviewed under that title.
In fact, the opening credits make it painfully obvious that Diamond has changed
names of the movie, when the screen goes to a freeze frame in the middle of the
credits, the title, Count Dracula and his Vampire Brides, comes up like some special effect from a 1988 camcorder, then the credits
beginning rolling again (I'm assuming after the time where the real title was
displayed had elapsed).  This is the second to last Dracula movie that Hammer would make (The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires was understandably the last) and it was the last one
that they conned Christopher Lee into doing. Lee whines in interviews that he
didn't want to do it, that it sucked, that he knew it was going to be
ridiculous and blah, blah, blah. Don't get me wrong, because I usually enjoy
Lee in his roles, but he seems a bit snooty about the whole Dracula thing, to
the point that he apparently carried around a copy of Bram Stoker's novel on
the set with him. Geez, Chris, you've been making these Dracula movies for
Hammer for how long? And you still haven't finished that book? I might
recommend the Classics Illustrated version (you should only have to bookmark it a couple of times). Also hauled
out of the nursing home for this one, is the great Peter Cushing, appearing yet
another time as Van Helsing. In retrospect, I'm not sure that it shouldn't
have been Cushing crying about being in this movie, as he appeared far more
often than Chris Lee. Lee's Dracula rarely appears at all in this movie and
when he does, he just kind of goes through the motions (the script doesn't
really give him much to do, since the focus is on this stupid satanic cult that
is trying to cook up a batch of plague). Things begin with some dude escaping
from a house where all these people are dressed in fancy red robes and are busy
doing things like sacrificing blonde chicks, while some oriental woman
officiates things. This satanic cult though is a high tech operation and has a
control room where guards monitor things on close circuit television.
Unfortunately for the viewer these guards all have to wear these fur trimmed
vests that were last seen on Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein (or on Sonny Bono). So this guy, who has been tortured by these cultists
makes his escape, and the guards go after him on their motorcycles, but some
snipers shoot them and the whole time this music is playing that is straight
out of ten different seventies cop shows and I'm furrowing my brow wondering
what all this has to do with the lord of the undead. Snipers, motorcycles,
badly dressed guards? Was this a Dracula movie or a Roger Moore James Bond
flick?  It turns out that this dude that escaped was working undercover (apparently not
very well though) for some British police agency. They're investigating the
strange goings on at the house where all these bigwigs meet and do secret,
satanic stuff. The undercover guy has managed to take photos of all the
bigshots involved. There were five of them by his count, but mysteriously only
four of them showed up on camera. Everyone dismisses his claims of five to be
the delusions of a man that was severely beaten by a satanic cult and who will
be dying by the end of the scene. One of the guys whose reflection doesn't
have a problem appearing in mirrors and who doesn't mind the stench of garlic
is a member of the government that is in charge of funding and operations of the
police agency that is investigating these things. Because of that, the fuzz
knows that they are going to have to do this case in an "unofficial" capacity
and the superior officer says that everyone has his full support on this
thing, unless of course anyone asks him about it, at which time he will deny
all responsibility, act shocked, and fire the lot of them. Good work if you
can get it. Realizing that they're going to have think outside the box on this
case, the two cops involved decide to call in an old pal. Someone who doesn't
mind mixing it up with the dark forces of the universe and someone who would be
just sitting around the retirement home, eating soft foods and smelting silver
bullets anyway. The only man they can turn to is Dr. Van Helsing (and his
lovely
granddaughter, too!). These guys all jibber jabber about stuff I don't really
recall (this is one of those movies that you begin to forget as soon as Dracula
starts squawking about the stake in his gut). One of the guys involved is some
dude that Van Helsing knows from back in his college days when they were both
in a KISS cover band called Cold Gin. While Van Helsing went on to major in
monster slaying, this guy became some kind of expert on germ warfare and worked
with the U.N. to form one world government, I mean, to combat the threat of
germ warfare. What's he doing with a bunch of really important, powerful
Satanists? Van Helsing decides that he's going over to his house to ask him
exactly that. Van Helsing meets with his old buddy, who is hard at work making a brand new,
super-deluxe form of bubonic plague that should wipe everyone out in the world
in no time flat. Van Helsing is understandably concerned about his friend's
sudden shift to the supply side aspect of germ warfare and inquires into that.
His pal babbles about how great evil is and what a lucky break it was to meet
Dracula and do you want to try out my new plague for me. About this time, one
of those atrociously attired guards shows up and shoots Van Helsing in the
head. Luckily it just grazed him and for the rest of the movie he would be
sporting a stylish piece of gauze taped to the side of his head. It did make
him faint, though (he is 135 years old after all) and when he comes to, he sees
his germ warfare buddy has gone ahead and done hanged hisself. Van Helsing
reports all this back to the coppers or someone and he comes up with the theory
that Dracula is looking for eternal rest and he's just lashing out at a cold
and
indifferent world and all sorts of nonsense. Doesn't this guy understand
Dracula? He's just looking for a hook up and what better way to score than to
eliminate most of the competition? More info on this secret satanic cult comes
out and on this foundation that the germ warfare guy had (it had a acronym that
was
PERGE or something cute and sinister - see this is just like a Bond movie!). It
turns out that the big money guy behind it all is someone named D.D. Denham or
something equally idiotic (what about Alucard?). Van Helsing happens to
remember that he walked by the new D.D. Denham office complex and it was built
on the very spot where Van Helsing put a wooden telephone poll up Drac's butt
the last time Hammer "forced" Chris to don the cape and glue the fangs in. So
Van Helsing decides he's going to pay his old buddy D.D. Denham a visit. A lot
of this movie consisted of people giving info to Van Helsing and him saying,
"okay, I'll go talk to the skell and see if I get him all jammed up before he
lawyers up on us." What follows is a truly awful scene where Van Helsing sits
across from D.D., but he really can't see who D.D. is because of this light
that D.D. has shining in his face. Now, you or I could plainly see that this
was
Chris Lee trying to pretend like he's not in this movie, but Van Helsing can't
see this until later when he does some trickeroo and busts out his little lady
like gun that he's loaded with a special silver bullet ( I guess he wasn't
fooled
by the old "lamp in the eyes" trick either!). Since he's old and feeble, Van
Helsing gets himself captured and hauled off to the country manor where the
local satanic cult is holding try outs for virgin sacrifices. 
The cops and Van Helsing's granddaughter stop by the country manor to check
things out and run into some problems with the living dead in the basement.
The granddaughter gets herself caught or something and everything ends up with
Dracula forcing Van Helsing to watch as he attempts to sacrifice the daughter
and make him his bride. There was also some ga ga about the plague with
Dracula's disciples appearing a bit distressed to learn that they would be the
agents of the disease. Dracula also decides that Van Helsing will also get an
"opportunity" to deliver the disease as well. There's a ruckus with one of the
cops and a guard, and things get set on fire like they tend to do at the end of
movies like this where you have candles and satanic rituals. Eventually, Van
Helsing and Dracula are outside and Dracula chases Van Helsing through the
bushes. Van Helsing remembers that Dracula doesn't like it when he gets
pricked by hawthorn bushes (cause they made Christ's crown of thorns out if it)
so he runs through them and then we see why Chris Lee was so perturbed that he
had to make this movie. The big climax involves him getting caught in a bush!
What a payoff! Maybe in the next movie they could have him hit his knee on a
couch or something! Dracula twists and turns and whines about all the owies
he's getting from the bush, so Van Helsing takes a handy fence post and rams it
through Dracula, ending the battle once and for all. A badly conceived attempt
to update Dracula to the present time. Instead of updating him, they just
grafted him onto a hairbrained story involving germs and world conquest,
setting him up as the evil mastermind. Kind of like Goldfinger or Blowfeld,
but with really large canine teeth and a cape. The bubonic plague thing never
made a lot of sense to me, though I guess it was going to be used to keep
governments in line while these British Satanists ruled everything (or so they
thought). Dracula naturally had his own agenda and it got me to wondering why
all these no good devil freaks didn't just implement their big plan on their
own? What do they need Dracula for? Surely they could have "persuaded" a germ
expert to do their bidding without the Count's super powers. I also was never
clear on what all these satanic rituals were for, other than that was obviously
the hip thing to drop in your movie (whether it fit there or not) at the time,
just like kung-fu was the hot thing when they made The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (I guess it's good that the series petered out when it did or Dracula might
have been roller skating around, while Van Helsing was break dancing or
something). There was a lot of talk about resurrecting someone (Dracula?) and
then Dracula babbled on about making Van Helsing's grandkid his vampire bride
and I have no idea of what the point was having all those undead chicks in the
cellar. This has to be classified as a muddled and ill-conceived
disappointment, even with the appearances of Hammer's big guns (Lee and
Cushing). If you're still wondering which version to buy (Diamond or Anchor
Bay), I would advise trying to trick a friend into buying it, then borrowing it
off them, but only if you have to see every single Hammer Dracula film.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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