You can’t keep a good man down! Eighty years of age is mere trifle to the immortal Christopher Lee who lived and died as Dracula over and again. How thrilling to see him as Saruman the White in “The Lord of the Rings,” and in the extended DVD with that one last scene between Saruman and Wormtongue. It was a shame that the 007 “The Man with the Golden Gun” flick didn’t work out for him years ago, but I blame that on Roger Moore. I blame everything on Roger Moore. Even the two Tim Daltry 007s after him and the one George Lazenby 007 before him. But I digress. |
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1958 - Horror of Dracula - IMDb - Netflix Above and beyond the best of them all, Peter Cushing plays Dr. Van Helsing who forces Dracula into the sunlight by forming a crucifix from two candle holders. The grisly meltdown scene was censored in the U.S. version, jump-cutting from a slightly sunburnt Chris to a silly fake skull. I’ve seen the gory in-between photos of Dracula’s skin peeling to down to the bone in Famous Monsters of Filmland. I demand the Collector’s Edition! |
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1966 - Dracula, Prince of Darkness - IMDb Hammer Films tried for eight years to coax the actor back into the titular role and this is what it got him. A village idiot mixes blood with the vampire’s ashes from the last film. Dracula arises, killing him and others. Big ending. He falls through the ice and into the river. The filmmakers claim that running water paralyses Dracula. More likely, the writers were paralyzed. |
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1968 - Dracula has Arisen from the Grave - IMDb - Netflix A village idiot falls off his wagon, rolls down the embankment, and knocks his head on the frozen river, his blood conveniently dripping through a crack in ice and Dracula arises, killing him and others. In the end, Dracula is impaled on the broken spoke of a wagon wheel and the vampire melts into preternatural goo. There was much debate at Cannes whether this climactic wagon wheel was the same wagon wheel that had broken off the wagon depicted at the beginning of the film. |
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1970 - Taste the Blood of Dracula - IMDb - Netflix Village idiots decide it is a good idea
to drink from a tiny bottle containing
the preternatural goo from the last film.
Dracula arises, killing them and others
while uttering the memorable lines, “The
first... the second... the third...”
Yes indeed. Dialogue like that almost
writes itself. In the end, Dracula plummets
onto a gravestone in the shape of a cross,
impaling him from the backside through
to the frontside, and he melts into preternatural
goo once again. |
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1971 - Scars of Dracula - IMDb Studying a sample of the preternatural goo from the last film, a mad scientist decides he can control Dracula if he resurrects him under scientific conditions. He is wrong. Dracula arises, killing him and others. In the film’s climax, Dracula transforms into a bat to escape the dawn, but fails. He bursts into flame and his ashes blow to the four winds. A difficult resurrection scenario methinks. |
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1972 - Dracula 1972 A.D. - IMDb I temporarily renounced my allegiance with the undead when I went to college and discovered two-for-a-buck art films. By this time, Hammer Films was pretty much hammered as it mass-produced these gems. |
Doesn’t that son on the end look like a young Hugh Hefner? I had heard that they were going back
to the Bram Stoker novel and making a
serious adaptation. |
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Too serious to be booked in the U.S. apparently. Maybe it was the Magnum P.I. moustache. Hammer Films teamed Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in their Dracula series, their Frankenstein series, their Mummy Series. Why they needed to hide Christopher Lee (versus, say, anyone) under all that Mummy make-up I’ll never know. And last, in The Hound of the Baskervilles they had it backwards. Lee ought to be Holmes and Cushing, Watson — elementary! |
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