A look at Hammer’s Dracula series, Part 7…
Now this is more like it. After six movies of foggy castles and horse carriages, Hammer decided to shake things up in a major way by updating the Dracula series to the present day. Long thought of as the black sheep of the Hammer series, Dracula AD 1972 is actually one of the better (if not the outright best) sequels to the original Dracula. I mean, sure - the hippie kids with their bell-bottoms and far-out dialogue make the whole affair more than a little ridiculous. But it’s that very ridiculousness that pushes the film to the enjoyable heights it often reaches… a most welcome change of pace to the standard plots and characters the series drew upon time and time again in the previous installments, and certainly one of the studios better efforts produced in their waning years.
The
film starts with one of the best scenes in the Dracula canon, as Dr. Van Helsing and the Count battle atop a
speeding carriage. Van Helsing finally stakes Dracula, putting an end to his reign
of terror once and for all.* Cut forward to a hundred years later (in a transition
that surely rivals that one in 2001
where the monkey throws the bone and it turns into a spaceship), and we meet up
with a descendent of the good doctor: Jessica Van Helsing, a freewheeling young
woman whose cast her lot in with a bunch of dirty hippies who like to crash
rich peoples’ parties by showing up dressed up like monks and snogging with
each other. Chief amongst these hedonistic societal rebels is one Johnny
Alucard, a rambunctious young man who I’m sure was not at all based on Malcolm
McDowell in A Clockwork Orange and
who seems obsessed with black magic and Satan and puppies and stuff… Or something
like that. Anyway, his friends take him up on the offer, and - wouldn’t you
know it - they wind up bringing Count Dracula himself back from the grave. It’s
a good thing Ms. Van Helsing’s grandfather is an expert in the occult just like
their ancestor, and the spitting image of one Peter Cushing.
And
that’s really what makes the film, ultimately. The last few Dracula’s were missing Cushing, the
bright spot of just about any movie he deemed to grace his presence with
(Hammer or otherwise), and all were hampered by his absence in some way or
another. Watching the actor work his magic against such a goofy backdrop is
astonishing, and the seriousness with which he handles the material instantly
brings the rest of the picture up around him every time he’s on screen. As great
as Chris Lee was as the Count, it’s fairly obvious his heart wasn’t in the last
few entries, but by once again acting against his old buddy Cushing, Lee’s own
performance seems reinvigorated. The rest of the cast is filled with rather
unexciting performers who get the job done nonetheless. As mentioned previously,
Christopher Neame most certainly was inspired by Alex DeLarge for his role of
Johnny Alucard, but the actor does have an undeniable electricity whenever he’s
onscreen. The rest of the teens are rather a bore (except for maybe Caroline
Munro, but she’s the first to go, sadly), most especially Stephanie Beacham as
Jessica Van Helsing, who pretty much sticks to type and faints and swoons like
the scores of Hammer actresses who came before her. You’d think that being a
Van Helsing would give her a little more spunk, but the film unfortunately
reverts to having her captured and hypnotized by Dracula in no time.
Another
factor the film benefits immensely from is director Alan Gibson, whose stylish
framing gets the film through more than one slow spell or awkward plot point.
As great as job as some of the others have done, this is easily the best
direction the series saw since Terence Fisher left four films ago. The film is
also aided by a funked-up soundtrack, which again helps to distinguish it from
everything that came before while also providing an air of lighthearted fun to
all the blood and bell-bottoms. Really…
what more could you want?
*
Ha! Right.**
**
And speaking of Dracula’s deaths-but-not-really, the film completely abandons
whatever loose continuity the series had going previously.
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